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Wikipedia Explains Today's Global Outage

Posted by timothy on from the citation-you-requested dept.

gnujoshua writes "The Wikimedia Tech Blog has a post explaining why many users were unable to reach Wikimedia sites due to DNS resolution failure. The article states, 'Due to an overheating problem in our European data center many of our servers turned off to protect themselves. As this impacted all Wikipedia and other projects access from European users, we were forced to move all user traffic to our Florida cluster, for which we have a standard quick failover procedure in place, that changes our DNS entries. However, shortly after we did this failover switch, it turned out that this failover mechanism was now broken, causing the DNS resolution of Wikimedia sites to stop working globally. This problem was quickly resolved, but unfortunately it may take up to an hour before access is restored for everyone, due to caching effects."

15 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Wow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    DNA resolution failure

    1. Re:Wow! by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 3, Funny

      DNA resolution failure

      Clearly they thought captchas were too easy to defeat.

      --
      Jumpstart the tartan drive.
  2. This was terrible! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Because of this outage, I actually had to work this morning.

  3. DNA DNS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I could see why the failover didn't work... They should try resolving names instead of nucleic acids. :\

  4. Do we accept this... by Al's+Hat · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...as proof of global warming?

  5. rndc flush by ls671 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I noticed wikipedia wasn't resolving this morning.

    Flushing my "DNA" cache fixed it ;-))

    rndc flush

    --
    Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
  6. Re:Hate by Locke2005 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I don't have a problem with DNA not resolving.
    I have a problem with getting it out of the sheets.

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  7. DNA resolution? by gad_zuki! · · Score: 2, Funny

    Whoa, why is the DNS resolving dATP.dGTP.dCTP.dATP?!?

  8. Hour Delay by Reason58 · · Score: 5, Funny

    This problem was quickly resolved, but unfortunately it may take up to an hour before access is restored for everyone, due to caching effects.

    If you don't want to wait an hour for it to update, you can open a command prompt and type "ipconfig /flushdna".

    Please be warned that this may also revert you to some sort of single-celled organism.

    1. Re:Hour Delay by Dancindan84 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I /flushdna all the time. Hasn't had any noticeable effect except clogging my toilet.

      --
      "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
    2. Re:Hour Delay by BertieBaggio · · Score: 2, Funny

      I /flushdna all the time. Hasn't had any noticeable effect except clogging my toilet.

      ...?!

      I'd recommend you see a doctor about that.

      --
      If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
  9. FTFA by Rik+Sweeney · · Score: 4, Funny

    We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.

    [Citation needed]

    --
    Summation 2
  10. I just assumed DNS was reverted... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    ...to the old setting by some Admin who edited it the last time, and who would be damned if he let anyone else get in the last word.

  11. Deleted? by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Funny

    I thought maybe they had simply deleted Wikipedia because some admin decided nothing on there was "notable".

  12. Global "Outrage"? by sxedog · · Score: 2, Funny

    I started reading the article and wondered why there was such global outrage about dns resolution on Wikipedia, then I went back and looked at the title again...

    --
    If it ain't broke, DON'T fix it.