Failing to fetch an avatar from media repo makes it revert to default until browser cache expires

[turt2live]

For example:

The sender and RR are the same person in this screenshot - surely they should have an avatar on the tile?

[lampholder]

They certainly should - @bwindels does this look like a LL thing?

[bwindels]

This seems to be #7417 . If you've got any hints towards reproducing this I would be very grateful @turt2live

[bwindels]

@turt2live can you confirm the blurred out name was indeed the user's mxid?

[turt2live]

The blurred out name was the user's display name, not mxid

[bwindels]

Ok, then it's not a missing sentinel bug, but probably ending up using an earlier membership event that didn't have an avatar yet. @turt2live I guess you don't remember if that user had set an avatar earlier in that room?

[turt2live]

This happened to me again, and it looks like it's only partially Riot's fault. The user did have an avatar set, and the media repo was giving a periodic 500 error for that particular size of avatar. The request would randomly fail due to a bug in the media repo.

Aside from me fixing my media repo, Riot should probably avoid caching the 500 error if it can and retry periodically for the avatar. As far as I could tell, the avatar ended up deep within Chrome's cache and is likely to appear broken for a day or so.

[bwindels]

That's very useful info, thanks. I suggest de-prioritizing this, wdyt @lampholder?

[lampholder]

I agree - esp. if we've fixed the media repo such that this is much less likely to occur.