Downtime Announcements

[Barry]

Re: Downtime Announcements

Same as above

[Leo Lakio]

Re: Downtime Announcements

I'm getting a "500" error a lot on HT today ---

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@hawaiithreads.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

[Leo Lakio]

Re: Downtime Announcements

I never got the temporary link to the other site

For a short while, Ryan was able to set it up so that you would be directed there when you tried to access HT; then HT was up and running again. It was a nice extra step on Ryan's part.

[Menehune Man]

Re: Downtime Announcements

Yes thanks sooooo much!
It really kinda amazes me how much I'm at a loss when I can't get a HT/GPSHawai'i fix.

Sometimes various things in life get in the way and I'll notice myself thinking,
I wonder what's going on in (this or that) thread? HaHa!

[EastCoastTropics]

Re: Downtime Announcements

Thanks for all the hard work you do! And I'm sure glad you're back!

Lovena

[Vanguard]

Re: Downtime Announcements

Thanks for your good work and investments, admin!

[GeckoGeek]

Re: Downtime Announcements

So. As noted above, we'd been struggling with server load. HawaiiThreads, as well as the many other domains I manage, were starting to bog down (both for all of us, as well as hundreds of other sites hosted on the same machine).

Hmmm, that means it's becoming popular - and that's a good thing, right? <hope>

Part of it, no doubt, was my fault, given that I'd configured many of my sites years and years ago, before I knew what I was doing, with bizarre dependencies and user permission quirks I'd long forgotten.

I empathize. It's one of the perversities of computers - you need the experience up front when you set things up so you know how to do them right, securely and not create traps for yourself. But of course you don't get that experience until you've been doing it awhile.

Meanwhile, my webhost was -- and still is? -- having severe problems with a DNS DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack that is rendering its machines unreachable.

For the non-techie, you're just collateral damage in a digital war zone. Not much you can do about it expect find a zone that doesn't have a war going on.

In any case, I sincerely apologize for this extended outage.

No, Thank YOU!

[Barry]

Re: Downtime Announcements

I never got the temporary link to the other site but thanks for all you are doing Ryan. It's much appreciated.

[Walkoff Balk]

Re: Downtime Announcements

I just read the archives that I didn't get around to reading in order to get my HT fix. Threads with names of celebrities for the people section just reminded me of who passed away.

[Leo Lakio]

Re: Downtime Announcements

...and thank you for the temporary link to another site, where you were able to explain the situation.

[LikaNui]

Re: Downtime Announcements

I'm sure we're all sorry that you have to go through all that aggravation, Ryan. Just know that we also appreciate the heck out of it!!!

[cyleet99]

Re: Downtime Announcements

No apologies needed...Thanks for your diligent work!

Is there anything we could do to help?

[admin]

Re: Downtime Announcements

We're back. I think. Whew.

So. As noted above, we'd been struggling with server load. HawaiiThreads, as well as the many other domains I manage, were starting to bog down (both for all of us, as well as hundreds of other sites hosted on the same machine). In the past week, I've upgraded twice to improve capacity and performance. First from an old machine to a newer one, and then from that newer one to a "virtual private server" (which has strictly segregated resources and fewer tenants overall).

That last move, the big move, was supposed to take an hour. And it started 30 hours ago.

Part of it, no doubt, was my fault, given that I'd configured many of my sites years and years ago, before I knew what I was doing, with bizarre dependencies and user permission quirks I'd long forgotten. Meanwhile, my webhost was -- and still is? -- having severe problems with a DNS DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack that is rendering its machines unreachable. Chances are, they were more distracted by that than anything.

In any case, I sincerely apologize for this extended outage. It was supposed to be so quick, the downtime would be indistinguishable from some of the outages we've seen lately. I was finally investing the money to give HawaiiThreads.com and its siblings a better home, and in the end, it took things down longer than they'd ever been down.

Thanks for your patience. The upside of all this is, hopefully, more reliable performance overall. At the very least, I'll have finer, direct control over everything. I'll still set a load limit that will require people to log in at peak times (i.e. limiting guests and search engine robots), but that may be slowly raised as well.

[turtlegirl]

Re: Downtime Announcements

If I understand it right, that condition is normal

okay, but the past few days its happened every time I go to HT, vs it used to happen to me maybe 2 x a week.

[helen]

Re: Downtime Announcements

yep, me too. the server has been giving that 'unavailable, please register or login' message.

If I understand it right, that condition is normal.

logging in takes longer and pages take longer to appear,

I am not sure about that condition.

and often I get a 'server error' message, over the last 2 days

I have been seeing this today as well. I just notifed the admin of it.