ERROR:Channel Timed Out

Question

I have a channel on my desktop, which connects to a different webserver (it's not an url scraper channel, it's a custom channel).
As this other webserver has a very heavy load, at times, it can take several minutes before a response is returned.
Although this is a temporary situation, it showed a nasty side-effect for my portal.
It seems that when one of the channels in a container times out, the ENTIRE CONTAINER, including ALL OTHER CHANNELS on it, will no longer be displayed. Instead, the error "ERROR: Channel Timed Out" is displayed.
I could have accepted that only the offending channel is not displayed, but all other channels on that same container as well ???
Anyone else noticed this problem, and has found a way around it?
(B.t.w.: It's very easily reproduced by creating a provider with a getcontent function, that never returns).
Also, I find that it takes quite a long time, until the desktop (with the error) finally gets on my screen. Can the timeout values be set somewhere?
Thank!
Michel.

Answer 1

Hi Michel,
I have seen this behaviour too! I think what's happening is that the busy server is giving an initial acknowledgement of the request, and the portal is then left waiting for a full response. Since the portal can't render the desktop until all portlets report in, you end up waiting.
I worked around this problem by a setting a sane timeout for the offending portlet (i.e. 10 seconds). That way, even if the content never returns, the portlet will end, reporting a timeout error for that portlet, not the entire desktop. You can add the timeout setting in the display profile if you don't have a entry for it on the admin console.
I hope this is helpful!
Erez.