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Mozilla Outage On Firefox 3 Record Launch Day

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the oops-sorry-that-was-me dept.

Kolargol00 writes "An outage affected the Mozilla.com website on the day the organisation launched its Guinness World Record attempt for downloads of the new Firefox 3 browser. The mozilla.com site was unreachable from around the world, occasionally responding with the message, 'Http/1.1 Service Unavailable.'" Since they decided to run their day from 1pm to 1pm Eastern time, the download day is actually still going, so you can still get Firefox and be part of the record.

23 of 427 comments (clear)

  1. Cause found, not to worry. by mrRay720 · · Score: 5, Funny

    A large chair-shaped dent was subsequently found in the side of their web server, and a large sweaty man was seen running from the scene of the crime shouting "DEVLOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS!!"

    1. Re:Cause found, not to worry. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      He was swinging from tree to tree.

  2. What a relief... by Dale549 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I thought it was my browser ...

  3. Download Counter by magister159 · · Score: 5, Informative

    As unwise as it may be to post a link to the download counter on slashdot, you can find a real time counter here.

    By my calculations, they won't be able to hit the 10 million mark in time.

    1. Re:Download Counter by Kamokazi · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hmm, if I keep replying to my own -1 Trolled posts, I bet I can knock my karma down a couple pegs.

      --
      As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable Slashdot 2.0.
  4. And THIS is why you use a CDN of some sort... by nweaver · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm quite sure Amazon would have been delighted to host mozilla.com temporarily on the EC2 cloud, or Akamai on their service, just for the bragging rights of supporting the most downloads EVAR!

    Victoria's Secret learned a LONG time ago when broadcasting their "Fashion show" online for the first time: If you want to deal with massive hordes of salavating geeks, you need to use a CDN.

    --
    Test your net with Netalyzr
    1. Re:And THIS is why you use a CDN of some sort... by Anarke_Incarnate · · Score: 5, Funny

      Amazon is a pregnant wife?

    2. Re:And THIS is why you use a CDN of some sort... by jrumney · · Score: 5, Informative

      Mozilla does have a content distribution network. www.mozilla.com is an alias for www-mozilla-com.geo.mozilla.com, which resolves to several different addresses at different times even from the same location. The downloads are further passed off to various mirror servers around the world.

    3. Re:And THIS is why you use a CDN of some sort... by o1d5ch001 · · Score: 5, Funny
      with massive hordes of salavating geeks, you need to use a CDN.

      I am sure a New Zealander or German would have been just as helpful as a Canadian. But thanks for the complement.

      --
      Q. What is Calvin's monster snowman called? A. The Torment Of Existence Weighed Against The Horror of Non Being
  5. Hard to read by Mateo_LeFou · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sorry, the font on that page is so small I can barely read it.

    --
    My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
    1. Re:Hard to read by neuromancer23 · · Score: 5, Funny

      >> Sorry, the font on that page is so small I can barely read it.

      Try it in firefox

    2. Re:Hard to read by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      No wonder they are having such a hard time with bandwidth. Use a smaller font next time!

  6. Not counted by HyperQuantum · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Only those who download Firefow from the website will be counted? That would be pretty much only the Windows users, I guess.

    Lots of people just use Synaptics or whatever package manager their distro provides. In my case it will be typing "emerge -avuDt world". I'm not going to download from the website just to get counted, you know.

    --
    I am not really here right now.
    1. Re:Not counted by luserSPAZ · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not to burst your bubble, but Linux users only account for a tiny percentage of total users anyway, so I don't think it will make much of a difference.

  7. Re:Aren't these guys supposed to be better? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sure, 'cause the guys making the browser are the same guys running the servers.

  8. Re:Microsoft-DDOS? by CDMA_Demo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Makes sense. The IE team at MS loves firefox: http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/06/17/the-cake-is-a-lie-ie-team-bakes-a-treat-for-mozilla

  9. Question by pdusen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why is it that 24 hours after the crash happened, we're now hearing about how the servers were down 24 hours ago?

    The REAL news: According to the download counter, Firefox has long surpassed their stated goal of 1.5 million downloads, and is now over 6.5 million. This is cause for frontpage news, not the stupid server crash.

  10. Either way, the real winner is Guinness... by jpellino · · Score: 5, Funny

    If they make it, everyone goes to Guinness' book site to see the record.
    If they fail, they'll be drowning their sorrows in pints of Guinness...

    --
    "Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
  11. Re:Potentially harmful? by Albanach · · Score: 5, Informative

    You might want to read this from Microsoft. In particular, take a look at the setting for DefaultFileTypeRisk

  12. Re:Pointy Haired Wisdom by burris · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can't easily count bittorrent downloads, especially since they are only counting completed downloads.

    As soon as a client completes a download it makes an HTTP connection to the tracker and says it is complete. This is why every BT tracker/index-site is able to display a counter for complete downloads. Are you sure you know how BitTorrent works?
  13. Re:Microsoft-DDOS? by Jamu · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's why you should only eat open-recipe cakes.

    --
    Who ordered that?
  14. Re:OSS Incompetence by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 5, Funny

    "SHUT THE FUCK UP WITH THE WHINING!!!!!"
    I can't recall the last time I encountered someone who so desperately needed to follow their own advice ...
    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  15. Which is why XAML is so important by theolein · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The reason that Microsoft pushed XAML as hard as they do is because they wanted to once again control the web. Some moron in Microsoft's marketing department must have thought that with XAML being easy to use and implement would stop supporting html/xhtml and slowly move over to XAMl based applications.

    This, of course, didn't happen for the same reason activex didn't become hugely popular: it's not compatible with other browsers.

    The web has come far enough now, that microsoft cannot really control it realistically.

    But then, another goon in marketing thought that Silverlight would be the answer...