White Screen of Death

Rails
1

Hello, I’ve heard these words to describe a RoR application returning an
empty page.

This happen from time to time even here, in the forum.

That is the cause of this misbehaviour ? Is it related with something
external to RoR itself ?

What is the solution to avoid the WSOD ?

2

On 5/17/06, Nuno [email protected] wrote:

–
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Rails mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails

The software running rubyforums.com is RForum by Andreas S… If
you’re experiencing some sort of recurring problem, here is where you
file a bug:

http://rforum.andreas-s.net/trac/newticket

3

He is not describing a problem. He is just wondering what makes this
come up and how to avoid it.

On 5/17/06, Alder G. [email protected] wrote:

file a bug:

http://rforum.andreas-s.net/trac/newticket

–
-Alder

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http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails

–

4

On 5/17/06, Nuno [email protected] wrote:

Hello, I’ve heard these words to describe a RoR application returning an
empty page.

This happen from time to time even here, in the forum.

That is the cause of this misbehaviour ? Is it related with something
external to RoR itself ?

I’ve had this sort of a problem when there has been a Ruby syntax
error. A good solution is to try the Ruby code in irb first to make
sure its syntax is clean.

What is the solution to avoid the WSOD ?

I think core developers use the console a lot to try new snippets. So
getting into that habit may be good. (I don’t use it quite as much as
I probably should)

-bakki

5

On 5/17/06, Jon Gretar B. [email protected] wrote:

That is the cause of this misbehaviour ? Is it related with something

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Well, mabye. But saying “I’m seeing a white screen” doesn’t help much.
At the very least, check the source of the page (if any) you’re
getting. Getting a blank page might be caused by a huge range of
causes, from a non-terminated tag to the webserver failing to
complete responses. It also depends on local factors, like the client
browser.

Just asking about “a white screen” is too little information.

6

On May 17, 2006, at 9:25 AM, Nuno wrote:

Hello, I’ve heard these words to describe a RoR application
returning an
empty page.

This happen from time to time even here, in the forum.

That is the cause of this misbehaviour ? Is it related with something
external to RoR itself ?

What is the solution to avoid the WSOD ?

The notorious WSOD you speak of refers to issues with session
management, etc, that existed in Rails 1.0. Avoiding the WSOD is as
simple as switching to Rails 1.1 :slight_smile:

Of course, there are ways to create a blank page within your own
code. If you’re on 1.1 and still seeing “a” WSOD (as opposed to
“the” WSOD) you’ll have to debug further.

-Derrick S.

7

Hiall,

Maybe this is not so helpful as you most probably ruled it out as a
reason already. I saw such a WSOD yesterday in my app, only to find
out that a before_filter returned false! development.log was my friend
at that time :slight_smile:

cheers
Martin