Can't access Stack Overflow [closed]

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Closed 7 months ago.

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I woke up this morning and I just found I can't access Stack Overflow, as of February 7, 2025 03:37 UTC.

More specificially, I can visit the front page (stackoverflow.com) normally, but any page other than that redirects to stackoverflow.com/error.

Interestingly I can access meta.stackoverflow.com just fine, so are all other sites in the Stack Exchange network.

Is there a planned maintenance going on? Or is it outage?

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I am currently using an Android phone, I was able to visit links in Stack Overflow in Chrome (in which I am not logged in), but not from Firefox (in which I am logged in).

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I can't delete cookies using DevTools (I am using my computer currently) in Firefox. I tried to delete them using Cookie Manager, I got this error: "Cannot delete already expired cookies". I am not going to clear all my cookies to test this thing. Relogging all those websites is a pain.

I just tested, I was able to access stackoverflow.com in Chrome normally. As soon as I log in, I am redirected to stackoverflow.com/error.

Said page is blank and its status code is: HTTP ERROR 500.

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I was able to clear all cookies using DevTools on Chrome, that of course logs me out, and I can access all the pages in Stack Overflow normally.

Because of said bug, I cannot log out normally. As soon as I log in, I can't access any page in stackoverflow.com other than the front page. I was able to reproduce this perfectly without fail. (削除) If it helps I used "Login with Google". (削除ここまで) Using account plus password yields the same result.

• CPlus: Cannot reproduce.
• Elements In Space: Can reproduce: front page is fine, but links to specific pages lead to HTTP ERROR 500.
• holocronweaver: Can reproduce as well, any SO link I visit that isn't front page redirects to stackoverflow.com/error
• M--: Reproduced. I was able to browse with no issues half an hour ago or so. P.S. I wonder if this should be posted on MSO :/
• Redz: Can reproduce on Mac.
• holocronweaver: Similar SO Meta post: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/432904/this-page-isn-t-working
• user379358: Seems to be an issue with authenticated users. Firefox where I'm signed in gets the error page, but opening the same link in a private window or in Chrome where I'm not signed in it loads normally. SMH.
• user5127: Cannot reproduce, using Google Chrome and CrOS, here is UA: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x86_64 14092.77.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/93.0.4577.107 Safari/537.36 I know, old computer, just used to test, on main computer it is fine too
• user5127: Looks like something got corrupted in the authentication/advertising/analytics, because other people say it works fine
• Spevacus: Technically this is off-topic here because it's only occurring on Stack Overflow and thus should've been asked on Meta SO (and it was, I see), but I'm using this opportunity to kick it up to staff with [status-review], since, well, it's kind of important.
• Gilles Quénot: Same thing here.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/406443/…
• VLAZ: @security_paranoid SO is separated from the rest of the network. It has been the case in the past that visiting sites around the SE network doesn't work but SO still did.
• balpha: @VLAZ No, they're not separated. A request to stackoverflow.com and a request to alcohol.meta.stackexchange.com are served by the same application. The only difference is with MSE and MSO which are served by a different (but identical) instance of the same application. That said, all sites have their own configuration, and in case of SO there are a lot of differences to the others sites.
• balpha: (and no, I don't know what the issue was in this case, I just woke up to this meta post)
• balpha: @security_paranoid I responded on MSO. In this case, it was the Stack Overflow database that had the issue (each site has its own database).