Forums Down or Scheduled Maintenance on 3-14-2011?

I have been unable to login for several hours this morning. The error message that I was getting said:

504 Gateway Time-Out

Unable to connect to origin web server. The web site you are attempting to access is currently unreachable. This may be due to a network outage, or the web site might be experiencing technical difficulties.
Do we know what was going this time with the forum Software?

Thank You,

I had the same problem, but everything looks good now.

As I run Akregator to read the RSS feeds of the several (sub)forums every ten minutes, I can tell that the Forums were down for several hours.

According to a post on IRC, at least 3 hrs.

Maybe someone needs to configure Server Monitoring? There are various that can test overall server, specific services for up/down.

Then someone(s) needs to commit to responding 24/7/365 if a text message is sent to their phone…

In any case, according to accounts I’ve read this outage was restricted to Forums, nothing else seems to have been affected (anyone is aware of).

Tony

On 03/14/2011 07:36 PM, tsu2 wrote:
>
> Then someone(s) needs to commit to responding 24/7/365 if a text
> message is sent to their phone…
>

you would think that an IT company would have thought of that, and
directed it happen, a long time along, huh?

here is a ‘catch 22’ for you to ponder:

this page http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Services_help gives a
comprehensive list of points of contact to report system
outages…look at how one should report the forums down!

i’ve suggested several times that both of those connectivity
deficiencies be addressed…

at this point, my only hope is that Attachmate cares more about
openSUSE users than Novell seems to…


DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
[NNTP posted w/openSUSE 11.3, KDE4.5.5, Thunderbird3.1.8, nVidia
173.14.28 3D, Athlon 64 3000+]
“It is far easier to read, understand and follow the instructions than
to undo the problems caused by not.” DD 23 Jan 11

On Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:06:01 +0000, jdmcdaniel3 wrote:

> I have been unable to login for several hours this morning. The error
> message that I was getting said:

Nope, not maintenance, just a hiccup in the system.

Jim


Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

On Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:36:01 +0000, tsu2 wrote:

> Maybe someone needs to configure Server Monitoring?

Actually, it’s supposed to be monitored, from what I understand. I do
know there were some staffing changes, so maybe the notification list
needs updating.

Jim


Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

Humm, if you start with this link:

openSUSE:Services help - openSUSE

and you want to report the forums as being down, you would use this link:

Contact Us - openSUSE Forums

But since forums.opensuse.org was down, I am thinking that is not going to work. Now, if we were provided with an email address, outside of the forum address that someone looks at, we could report that the forum is down, but you don’t know if it is already known to be down or what action, if any, an outsider should take when you can’t get into the openSUSE forums.

Thank You,

I suffered the same error/message as the OP, while submitting a post which was lost as a result. Immediately following the failure, I received an invitation from Novell to participate in a detailed (network) survey which would take place at the end of session after collecting detailed information - anyway something like that. Needless to say, not wanting to have my time wasted any further I declined. Never seen a request like this before, at least not from Novell or this forum. I got the survey request again later when I tried again to access the forum, even though the same error message presented. I wonder if the survey request and forum outage were related i.e. cockup rather than hiccup.

During the outage I was able to login to opensuse.org, but not access the forum. Could I have made contact that way with anyone/thing to find out whether the outage affected all forum users or just my connection (the latter unlikely I guess)?

Could/was there a news/notice placed on opensuse.org warning (forum) users of the forum outage and apologising for it?

The outage seems to have affected everyone. Maybe the forums were overloaded because of the hype over 11.4 ? :slight_smile:

Best regards,
Greg

On Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:06:02 +0000, jdmcdaniel3 wrote:

> Humm, if you start with this link:
>
> ‘openSUSE:Services help - openSUSE’
> (http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Services_help)
>
> and you want to report the forums as being down, you would use this
> link:
>
> ‘Contact Us - openSUSE Forums’
> (http://forums.opensuse.org/sendmessage.php)
>
> But since forums.opensuse.org was down, I am thinking that is not going
> to work. Now, if we were provided with an email address, outside of the
> forum address that someone looks at, we could report that the forum is
> down, but you don’t know if it is already known to be down or what
> action, if any, an outsider should take when you can’t get into the
> openSUSE forums.
>
> Thank You,

That’s a good point, I’ll make sure we address that.

Jim


Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

On 03/14/2011 09:36 PM, consused wrote:
>
> Could I have made contact that way with anyone/thing to find
> out whether the outage affected all forum users or just my connection
> (the latter unlikely I guess)?

no, because it was impossible to contact anyone though the established
means (via the forum using this address:
http://forums.opensuse.org/sendmessage.php)

therefore, you could not contact the forum administrators unless you
happened to have the email address of someone within Novell, or one of
the moderators who had an email address…

however, you could have confirmed if it is just you having the problem
(or not) by using this site: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/


DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
[NNTP posted w/openSUSE 11.3, KDE4.5.5, Thunderbird3.1.8, nVidia
173.14.28 3D, Athlon 64 3000+]
“It is far easier to read, understand and follow the instructions than
to undo the problems caused by not.” DD 23 Jan 11

Yes I expect it affected anyone trying to access forum. Overloaded due to 11.4 rush? That would be a tough sell, given the planned and published routemap with GA date. The forum always gets busy soon after GA, especially if there are a few nasty surprises (e.g. 11.3 and KMS <cough>). :slight_smile:

Thanks for confirming that. I had a look round the wiki, but found nothing useful. :slight_smile:

I concluded it was unlikely to be my connection, once Novell login worked (in this case), and obviously I tried several other websites successfully.

On Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:36:01 +0000, consused wrote:

> During the outage I was able to login to opensuse.org, but not access
> the forum. Could I have made contact that way with anyone/thing to find
> out whether the outage affected all forum users or just my connection
> (the latter unlikely I guess)?

It was the webserver that the forums run on that terminated. The reason
is under investigation.

> Could/was there a news/notice placed on opensuse.org warning (forum)
> users of the forum outage and apologising for it?

That’s a good idea, I’ll ask about doing that.

Jim

Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

On 2011-03-14 21:36, glistwan wrote:

> The outage seems to have affected everyone. Maybe the forums were
> overloaded because of the hype over 11.4 ? :slight_smile:

I didn’t notice anything. What hour was this outage?


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

On 2011-03-14 21:36, glistwan wrote:

> The outage seems to have affected everyone. Maybe the forums were
> overloaded because of the hype over 11.4 ? :slight_smile:

I didn’t notice anything. What hour was this outage?
I do not know the exact hours, but it was down for me between 8:30 am and 11:30 am CST. Since it was said the Web Server was down, I am not sure why it would not affect everyone. I will say that normally I am at work during this time, but I got a comp day off due to working last weekend.

Thank You,

Hi
nntp access wan’t affected which is the method Carlos E. R. uses as well as others.

On Mon, 14 Mar 2011 22:03:07 +0000, Carlos E. R. wrote:

> On 2011-03-14 21:36, glistwan wrote:
>
>> The outage seems to have affected everyone. Maybe the forums were
>> overloaded because of the hype over 11.4 ? :slight_smile:
>
> I didn’t notice anything. What hour was this outage?

It looks like it was from about 5:30 AM MDT to 10:30 AM MDT. It would
not have affected NNTP users at all, as it was the web server that
forums.opensuse.org runs on that was offline.

Jim


Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

On 2011-03-14 23:14, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Mar 2011 22:03:07 +0000, Carlos E. R. wrote:

>> I didn’t notice anything. What hour was this outage?
>
> It looks like it was from about 5:30 AM MDT to 10:30 AM MDT. It would
> not have affected NNTP users at all, as it was the web server that
> forums.opensuse.org runs on that was offline.

cer@Telcontar:~> TZ=GMT date --date=“5:30 AM MDT”
Tue Mar 15 11:30:00 GMT 2011
cer@Telcontar:~> TZ=GMT date --date=“10:30 AM MDT”
Tue Mar 15 16:30:00 GMT 2011

I did connect during that time, but certainly via nntp, and posted a few.
Maybe I noticed fewer postings, I don’t remember …] Yes, that’s right,
only nntp posts during roughly that period.

Is it only my feeling that the nntp server is more robust than the forum
web server?


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)