[SamV]

Anybody have a problem accessing the BEA today?

I tried both the forum and the main web page this morning about 11:00 AM EDT, and all I got was a server not responding error in my browser.

I tried pinging and doing a trace route to the server domain too, but had equally less than successful results with that too.

Yet I know the DNS service was working cause I could access other websites.

So was there some problem?

[MunchWolf]

I had trouble too

-Munch "shrug" Wolf

[pedonbio]

Me,too.

[Chelsea74]

Yep!

[SamV]

Well thanks. It's good to know I wasn't the only one experiencing it.

When it was happening I was wondering if we were under another hacker attack.

[Q_BE]

It seems several attachments in several threads didn't upload properly while this was going on. I mentioned it in one thread, but there are several others who had images posted by g00ber and others whose images didn't post properly.

I just wanted to make the mods aware of this additional snafu as a result of the apparent downtime.

Q-"I wasn't here this time around"-BE

[gonZo]

The outage started at about 10:50am eastern time this morning. Should be OK going forward, but we lost some attachments, so if something you posted is missing, feel free to edit your post and restore it.

Our thanks to intrepid admin Doug for his swift (downright instant) and decisive response to this matter.

(Later...) It appears that attachments posted between 2:50am (U.S. eastern time) and 1:07pm today couldn't be recovered.

Pal adds: yes, kudos to Doug for getting right on this asap. I hope they'll be able to specifically identify the cause of the problem and do something to prevent if from happening again. If anyone notices any problems (with the forum or main site) as a result of the outage (other than the 10 hours of missing attachments) please send a note to that effect to [email protected] so they can deal with it. Thanks.

[solvegas]

I was at work earning a living so I had no problems  .

[Adama]

Doug told me that the cron system is down while he's working on the problem, so some things like the Addventure Recent Episode lists, are not working yet.  At the moment cron doesn't appear to be up yet, but I'm sure it will be soon.

[pedonbio]

Well thanks. It's good to know I wasn't the only one experiencing it.

When it was happening I was wondering if we were under another hacker attack.

Is there a work-around?

One of the forums I mod set up an alternate site that just provides news in case of server collapse or d-o-s attack.

Unfortunately, between attacks I forget the alternate site's address...

[gonZo]

We've discussed means of putting up messages during outages, but while an outage is happening, anybody who could put up a message is busy fixing the problem. We could start a blog for that purpose, I guess...

We were only down for about 137 minutes this time, though, which really isn't very long to remain in suspense. It's much easier for us to notify the admins of problems these days than it has been in the past, and that makes a big difference in the response times. The forum went down at roughly 10:50am eastern, we emailed Doug at 10:53, and he replied that he was on the case at 10:57.

[onion_writer]

Thanks to all who worked on the fast recovery. Your dedication is sincerely appreciated.

At the same time - holy cow! We are now all so chained to our computers that a momentary boob outage disrupts our being? It's a good reminder to me of what my quieter (and, to be honest, immensely more pleasant) life was pre-Internet. God forbid my electricity goes out!

Yes, I am embarrassed at how dependent that I, at least, have become.

Gonna go for a walk now, and talk to people in person.

[pedonbio]

O_w, I share your gratitude toward everyone who fixes things.

I wouldn't say that what happened was a sign of dependence, though. I was between tasks; I checked in, found the site was down, and moved on. Later, when I came back, it was back up.

[TheZookie007]

We've discussed means of putting up messages during outages, but while an outage is happening, anybody who could put up a message is busy fixing the problem. We could start a blog for that purpose, I guess...

This is a perfect job for Twitter. A lot of webhosts I deal with not only have dedicated email addresses for giving out status information, they also have a Twitter feed, so if your site is down, a quick check of the Twitter feed will keep you in the loop.

So, perhaps we should look forward to seeing @BEAForum on Twitter very soon.

-- TheZookie "as long as the Fail Whale doesn't show up, of course" 007

[gonZo]

Good suggestion. You can now follow or link to BEAstate on Twitter. We'll only tweet during outages when there's something important to pass along to you, so if you follow it, you won't hear from us unless there's trouble. Tweets will never name BEArchive or refer to the forum's topic; we'll just issue short, blind status reports like "down for repairs. est back up in 2 hours."