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  • #46
    Re: Downtime Announcements

    ...and again today...
    Originally posted by Leo Lakio View Post
    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.

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    • #47
      Re: Downtime Announcements

      It's happening yet again today.

      Comment


      • #48
        Re: Downtime Announcements

        It's really been bad again today - Ryan, can you give us an update? This has been happening several times over nearly three months now. Someone's not taking good enough care of your babies.

        Comment


        • #49
          Re: Downtime Announcements

          As Scotty would say, "I'm givin' 'er all she's got, Cap'n."

          Whenever errors pop up, I get a stream of automated notifications. I go into the back end, kill zombie processes, block rogue robots (some crawlers don't play nice with robots.txt), and more often than not, boost the server resources a bit while clutching my wallet.

          Note that earlier this year, when things got really bad, I'd finally stepped up to a segregated server for all my websites at considerable expense. But at least now I can directly track and manage the memory and CPU load by the hour.

          I just bumped the server CPU/memory up again another 15 percent. For comparison, we started at about 250MB, we're at 650MB now. But I'm definitely finding that whenever I "make more room," usage and traffic quickly jumps to make use of it.

          Yes, ultimately I'm running with a setup not built for the volume my various sites get. A fully dedicated server with 2GB of RAM would be ideal. But for a hobby, I'm going to be able to pay only so much. If there's a rich HT fan out there willing to trick us out to the tune of $400/mo., I'll be the first to jump at it and put their ad right at the top of the page!

          I also know that it's annoying when the site's not working, and we lose visitors as a result. But heck, that'll ultimately mean there's more space for those of us who stick around!

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          • #50
            Re: Downtime Announcements

            OK, my brother... How can we help?
            Deleting old private messages? (I know, that's chump change...)
            We like it here. We want to stay. Is there anything we can do?

            K
            Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Taken!
            ~ ~
            Kaʻonohiʻulaʻokahōkūmiomioʻehiku
            Spreading the virus of ALOHA.
            Oh Chu. If only you could have seen what I've seen, with your eyes.

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            • #51
              Re: Downtime Announcements

              Ryan, a couple questions from a relatively net-ignorant one:

              > Is it specifically HT that is eating up resources, or a combination of all your websites? Is there one site that might be drawing more resources, causing access issues for all the others?

              > Are we using up too much with the (incredible) photos posted in the photo threads? I noticed that, after the past couple days of "server errors," there's a whole slew of new photos up. If so, can we find a more efficient way to post those?

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              • #52
                Re: Downtime Announcements

                HawaiiThreads is absolutely, positively the main resource hog on my VPS. Any message board would be, but since I'm stubborn about certain things (for example, leaving all archives available and searchable back to the very beginning), HawaiiThreads is harder than most on its hardware.

                Are photos a big part of it? Not really. Though during the mess yesterday, I went ahead and changed how images are stored. Previously, attachments, avatars, and other images uploaded to HawaiiThreads were kept inside the database, right alongside posts. This made it easier to backup and have everything in one place if I needed it. But, it required more resources. So, these images (and some other elements) are now simply sitting as regular files on the webserver.

                Looking back at the logs from yesterday, it seems like something bigger was going on than just a lot of sudden and random interest in my websites. It could have been an over-aggressive search engine web crawler (see above note about archives), some kind of automated attack, or just a random process that leaked, grew, and seized everything up. Because the system looks pretty normal, but with giant mountain spikes throughout the day on Thursday.

                What can you do to help? Offers of donations are nice, but apart from a straight advertising or sponsorship deal, I'd rather not go down that path. Just be patient, and send friendly notes of concern if you think I might not be aware of an outage. I understand being disappointed -- I am, too! -- but for the most part if the server is busy or dead, I'm doing what I can to fix it and will have things back as soon as I can. I'm not torturing y'all on purpose, I promise.

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                • #53
                  Re: Downtime Announcements

                  Ryan, did you really, I mean...REALLY...get UNfriendly notes of concern? Really? If so, sounds like someone (or two or three) needs to get a life. With all of the interesting reading available on the web it boggles my mind that someone (or two or three) would become upset when an online forum gets glitchy for part of one day. It's also a perfect time to clean the toilet, the oven and the windows!

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                  • #54
                    Re: Downtime Announcements

                    Thanks for the clear answers, mon, and I hope my inquiries weren't considered to be unfriendly ones.

                    Comment


                    • #55
                      Re: Downtime Announcements

                      A bit of back up for you from across the puddles Ryan. You do a great job and are much appreciated. Because of the hours you are all behind me, I tend to get on here when you are all in bed. In a way, it's not a bad thing 'cause I have a chance to read everything at my leisure.
                      Well done Ryan and keep up the great work.

                      Comment


                      • #56
                        Re: Downtime Announcements

                        The current inabilities to access is obviously wounding this forum. Not much input at all. Hope something fixable is quickly introduced.
                        https://www.facebook.com/Bobby-Ingan...5875444640256/

                        Comment


                        • #57
                          Re: Downtime Announcements

                          I don't know how many times I can say I'm doing the best I can to keep things going. Every time this site, or my server, has issues, I chase down a dozen dials and knobs to figure out what's happening and how to get it working again. Today, it was a bot, a web crawler that was so aggressive in slurping down the pages of my personal website (which has collected about 10 years of my life in words and pictuers) that it was essentially a denial-of-service attack. I blocked the IP, and things are getting back to normal.

                          If you find the unreliability of HawaiiThreads.com to be too much to remain an active participate, I understand, and I'm sorry to see you go. For everyone else, thanks, again, for your patience.

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                          • #58
                            Re: Downtime Announcements

                            Sorry to disappoint, but I'll stick around.
                            https://www.facebook.com/Bobby-Ingan...5875444640256/

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                            • #59
                              Re: Downtime Announcements

                              PZ - once again, thank you for all the time you spend taking care of HT when you could be spending it with your family. I'm sure I'm not the only one who appreciates the privilege of being able to participate here - with all the good, the bad & the ugly things that sometimes happen. Keep up the good work for us and you have my total support in whatever actions you need to take to keep things running smooth!

                              Keep on Truckin'..........................
                              "Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be."
                              – Sydney J. Harris

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                              • #60
                                Re: Downtime Announcements

                                Originally posted by admin View Post
                                Today, it was a bot, a web crawler that was so aggressive in slurping down the pages of my personal website (which has collected about 10 years of my life in words and pictuers) that it was essentially a denial-of-service attack. I blocked the IP, and things are getting back to normal.
                                Yeah, I noticed that it was unavailable for a chunk of time today, but I finally figured out that my contacting you wouldn't help - that when it gets that bad, you're already working on it.

                                See? I can be trained.

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