Unexpected Slashdot Downtime

Netcraft confirmed it ... Slashdot was dying for several hours (along with SourceForge, which shares a corporate overlord and router). Some planned downtime from our provider apparently didn't come back up quite as planned. Sorry for the inconvenience. On the upside, we're moving to a new network and hardware soon, so the site should be much faster and more stable rsn.

Comments

It Was a Bad Morning

[eldavojohn]

Slashdot was dying for several hours Like a heroin addict, I stumbled out of bed over to my desk and shook the mouse to wake up the monitor. Ah, the bathing goodness of #006666. I hit refresh only to find it taking an unusually long time. Was my internet connection down? No, Pidgin is still up ... wait a second, Slashdot is down! SLASHDOT IS DOWN!

I started to shake uncontrollably and found breathing difficult. My roommate heard a strange moan and poked his head in through my door "Are you ok, dude?" I grabbed the closest thing to me, my Limited Edition Ceramic Invader Zim figurine and flung it at him. It shattered into a million pieces.

I wrenched the monitor to face the corner of my room and set the drinking bird to hit F5 repeatedly. I grabbed my torn and tattered copy of this quarter's 2600 and curled up in the fetus position sucking my thumb and sobbing quietly. I picked up my cell phone to call work, I would not be coming in today ...

Re:It Was a Bad Morning

[Applekid]

I grabbed the closest thing to me, my Limited Edition Ceramic Invader Zim figurine and flung it at him. It shattered into a million pieces. And nothing of value was lost. :)

Re:It Was a Bad Morning

[jkrise]

Out here in India, about 50% of my workday consists of reading Slashdot. With nothing to do, I started talking to a few colleagues and got cryptic responses and several enquiries of my well-being! It's going to be a long night catching up...

Re:It Was a Bad Morning

[Smidge207]

In the US mainland it's more like 80%. :-D =Smidge=

Re:It Was a Bad Morning

[More_Cowbell]

In response to your initial question: "are we becoming slashdot addicts?"

Here's the acid test. If you found the GP (It Was a Bad Morning) post funny, probably you are fine.
If you actually found it insightful- seek professional help.

I thought it was a wider net outage

[suso]

At first, I was thinking there was a wider internet outage because Google was having problems this morning and so was MSN.. But I guess not.

If you look at this website it shows that there is some issue between SBC and Cogent.

Re:I thought it was a wider net outage

[Ihmhi]

tracert 127.0.0.1

Alternatively, if you can get your hands on sonar...

Fool us once...

[Aeonite]

How convenient. I suppose now you are mysteriously missing five million posts that can't ever be recovered due to this "upgrade"?

Re:Fool us once...

[Anonymous Coward]

How convenient. I suppose now you are mysteriously missing five million posts that can't ever be recovered due to this "upgrade"?

What else would you expect when your data centre is run by Scientologists...

Feds installing user tracking software on /.

[Reality Master 201]

I hear the FBI was installing software to track Slashdot posters. Is that true?

Re:Feds installing user tracking software on /.

[sm62704]

I hear the FBI was installing software to track Slashdot posters. Is that true?

No, if that was the case uncyclopedia would be down. They host quite a few slashdot posters, here are some:

Good-evening,-Mr.-Gates
Microsoft Hates Apple
Bill Hitler
Microsoft's latest product after researching the black market
A Microsoft campaign to persuade people to install Vista
A screenshot of GNU/Linux® in use, with the GNU/X-Windows GNU/Ubuntu desktop
Rotating Gears, a game which comes preinstalled with Linux®. It is considered to be the best open-source game ever created, next to Russian Roulette.
Pimp Your Linux® ~ Use Fedora Core
Natalie Portman
Hot Grits
A Beowolf cluster
In Soviet Russia...

We'll all remember the day...

[neokushan]

That slash got dotted.

Is it true?

[davidwr]

The answer to your question isGACK*THUNK*NO CARRIER

My bad

[sm62704]

I slashdotted slashdot by linking to a slashdot article on slashdot.

Sorry.

I will be suing!

[PinkyDead]

I nearly did some work this morning. If it wasn't for LifeHacker and xkcd, I don't know what kind of a mess I would be in.

Cue The Choppers

[UberHoser]

'les nessmen hitting his chest to do chopper noises'

IT's a RAID on /. HQ !

Run for your Lives !!!!!

Re:Cue The Choppers

[spun]

'les nessmen hitting his chest to do chopper noises'
IT's a RAID on /. HQ !
Run for your Lives !!!!! With God as my witness, I thought servers could fly.

Earlier today...

[GBC]

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of nerds suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."

Glad to know I wasn't the only one suffering withdrawal symptoms. Out of curiousity, what are the stats for Slashdot's uptime? It must be pretty damn good as this is the first outage I can remember for a long time...

Re:How about moving to a better news system?

[TheLostSamurai]

The quality of stories on /. has been down for the past few years. Things I hate about /.(No particular order) 1. Goddam CSS design 2. dupes 3. slashadvertisement 4. bad summaries 5. lazy editors And yet here you are.

Re:If it was planned downtime...

[Pharmboy]

If it was planned downtime....why wouldn't you just post a story about it? That way we don't all panic when Slashdot won't load (and hit the site nonstop when it comes back).

And exactly HOW were we to read this story that was posted on the website, while that website was down? You have suggested yourself into a circular argument. Most normal people (which includes /. readers) don't check the site every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day, so the vast majority wouldn't have seen it.

Re:Suggestion.

[spun]

If you eliminate the "Web 2.x" junk and embrace a spartan layout/format... That's madness!

Admit it...

[micahfk]

... Slashdot got Slashdotted.

Re:Easily fixed

[Miseph]

Lobotomies aren't that cheap.

Please update the FAQ, too!

[martyb]

Hey, CmdrTaco!

Great to hear the news that you're going to be upgrading the tech that supports this site. /. has been a daily part of my life for well-nigh 10 years. Having seen many changes over the years, I'm especially interested in what will be supporting the site when you finish with the upgrade... so, PLEASE update the FAQ - Tech page? ("Last Modified: 6/13/00")

Thanks in advance and please accept my gratitude for (the often thankless job of) keeping this site running so well.

Modernization?

[idiotnot]

On the upside, we're moving to a new network and hardware soon, so the site should be much faster and more stable rsn.

Will this new network include IPv6 access, or will ./ remain in the 20th Century?

Re:Modernization?

[moosesocks]

Idealism is fantastic, but you've got to draw the line between ideology and pragmatism somewhere, and focus on supporting your existing users (and paying the bills).

This is why slashdot was so reluctant to use .PNGs on the homepage for years. (The topic icons are still .GIF, although I believe that's simply due to the .GIF patent expiring around the same time that it became "safe" to use .PNGs as a design element)

That all said, IPv6 wouldn't break compatibility with existing IPv4 users, and would be a fantastic gesture to the internet community at large. Of course, if IPv6 support would cost a mint to implement, or force them into a "less desirable" data centre, it wouldn't be practical.

Re:Modernization?

[jc42]

Will this new network include IPv6 access, or will ./ remain in the 20th Century?

Actually, the main thing that would make for 21st-Century cred is accepting UTF-8 text.

I've had a couple of posts recently on topics where it would have been better to use Chinese or Japanese characters (though not very many of them). I had to settle for pinyin/romaji instead, which isn't really ideal. The ability to correctly include text in non-Western language is of growing importance in the world, even to people whose primary language is English.

Of course, there are somewhat similar sites in other parts of the Web that work in languages other than English. The real problem is the barrier between the English-speaking world and the rest of the world, caused by our ongoing inability to include text in other major languages inside our English text, even as small examples.

Re:Modernization?

[dkf]

Actually, the main thing that would make for 21st-Century cred is accepting UTF-8 text. Agreed, even though I'm an English speaker.

I've had a couple of posts recently on topics where it would have been better to use Chinese or Japanese characters (though not very many of them). More to the point, those of us who are math and science geeks (I hear there are a few round here) will like being able to express basic things like greek letters, superscripts, assorted operators, etc. Browsers have got a lot better at their UTF-8 support over the past few years, and there are a good few decent fonts about too.

What are the reasons for holding back? Well, the main one is that the current database holds the data in ISO-8859-1 (probably) and would either need converting or at least to have some kind of migration strategy (extra column for the encoding?) which could be rather messy.

Re:Easily fixed

[mijelh]

You must be joking!! people on Digg alway go off-topic and they never RTFA. Oh! wait....