About
The sorry service provides an error message when a site is down (i.e. OS patching). It does not provide error messages for any other types of error (i.e. page not found).
The new sorry service is based upon some conventions that have existed in the past and provides the opportunity for having more generic and custom sorry pages.
What's Changed
In the past sorry pages have had the URL of http://idstatic.cit.cornell.edu/[hostname].sorryservices/. The replacement URL will be http://sorry.hosting.cornell.edu/[hostname].sorryservices/. The old URLs will continue to work, but users are encouraged to update configurations to use the new URLs.
What's New
The new sorry service is built to better integrate with the Hardware Load Balancer (HWLB). In the past most hosting sites would be redirected to http://jujuba.cit.cornell.edu:8080/sorry/sorry.cgi?error=500. This is not a very friendly looking URL. Instead there are two methods for creating a sorry page.
- Redirect Sorry Page
- Cloaked Sorry Page
Redirect Sorry Page
A "Redirect Sorry Page" behaves much like the existing sorry pages, except it can be customized. By default the HWLB can redirect traffic to http://sorry.hosting.cornell.edu/[hostname].sorryservices/. This will display the generic sorry page that looks like http://sorry.hosting.cornell.edu/sorry.hosting.cornell.edu.sorryservices/ that displays the site name and a generic error. A customized template can also be created such as http://sorry.hosting.cornell.edu/customsorry.hosting.cornell.edu.sorryservices/ that has site specific information.
Cloaked Sorry Page
A "Cloaked Sorry Page" is a new type of sorry page that preserves the URL in the browser window instead of redirecting to sorry.hosting. An example of a cloaked sorry page: http://customsorry.hosting.cornell.edu/. It is not always technically possible for a site to have a cloaked sorry page, but in cases where it is possible it can provide a user-friendly way to display a sorry page without redirecting to an external website.
Creating Custom Sorry Pages
Custom sorry pages exist as pages that are stored on the static web hosting service. Updates to customized pages can be made by using webdav and pages are limited to either static HTML or a Server-Side Include. It is not necessary to create a custom page for every unique URL. There is automatic aliasing for "www" names and it is possible to have wildcard names as well.
Example of www alias
Example of arbitrary URL alias
Content URL: http://sorry.hosting.cornell.edu/customsorry.hosting.cornell.edu.sorryservices/another.html
Example of wildcard URL aliases
Content URL: http://sorry.hosting.cornell.edu/customsorry.hosting.cornell.edu.sorryservices/wildcard.html