What the?!

Joined : 12 Jun 2008 Posts : 33 Location : Tas

Hey all.

I am loathe to actually start a thread just to ask this question, but just in case there's something other than a coincidence going on and there's another night-owl around...

I continuously have AE and SAB tabs open (in addition to ACF of course) to keep an eye on the trade and cultivation threads. I also have a few other science blogs open, and a plethora of other work-related sites.

Some time in the last half hour or so both AE and SAB went down, with messages about an 'error in the database' (IPS driver error, SAB) and 'could not connect to the database' for AE. I'm not normally inclined to paranoia but everything else I refresh as usual is fine.

Is there something nasty happening that I/we may need to keep an eye out for, and is there any chance of ACF falling over too? are these two sites simply hosted by the same source, which may have innocently burped?

Of course, it might all be sweet in a few hours or so, but if I need to kick Norton in the guts or something I'd like to know sooner rather than later. I think that I might anyway, even though it'll put any serious work on the shelf for the rest of the night...

Apologies in advance if I am taking up unnecessary or irrelevant bandwidth.

Moderator Joined : 06 Apr 2008 Posts : 357 Location : oz

Had a quick look at the sites you spoke about:

I think that you will find they are hosted on a common ISP hosting company within australia that has partially fallen over.

Depending on the way they "present" their site, a mySQL database problem will cause different types of problems to be displayed when you go to each site.

I don't think there is anything "sinister" happening. (and yes you should ALWAYS have anti-virus software running, and a whole bunch of other things too)

Subject: Re: What the?! Sun Jun 15, 2008 12:57 pm

Thanks for explaining that calycium.

In answer to ACF going down, not sure, but I doubt it, it has never happended before. Though saying that it will now probably happen within 7 seconds on me posting this, knowing my luck Rolling Eyes

The company who host ACF seem to be pretty on the ball when it comes to keeping the forums up and running.

I have had this happen to me at SAB a few times, sometimes it's just a simple matter of the admin update the system. Never happened to me at AE before though.

Like cal said though, it is likely that it is with the ISP host.
_________________
mmm spikey...

Subject: Re: What the?! Sun Jun 15, 2008 4:52 pm

Yeh SnS is down too as to be expected due to it being an offshoot of SAB. Has happened a few times in the past as Trig said but has never really been down this long that i can recall. My recall aint much to go on though hehe.

Subject: Re: What the?! Mon Jun 16, 2008 1:38 pm

Hmm that's odd. SAB and AE are still down. Never usually takes this long.

Maybe something did happen...maybe they have been shut down. Hope not.
_________________
mmm spikey...

Age : 27 Joined : 04 Apr 2008 Posts : 74 Location : SEQLD

Sns still down!!! Love to know WTFs going on.

Subject: Re: What the?! Mon Jun 16, 2008 6:28 pm

Was meant to be back online this arvo at the earliest so still mite be a bit of a wait yet. Ill see if i can find out anything more tonite Smile

Subject: Re: What the?! Mon Jun 16, 2008 6:45 pm

Be nice to be told by the admin as I am a mod on one of those forums Rolling Eyes

_________________
mmm spikey...

Subject: Re: What the?! Tue Jun 17, 2008 12:01 am

Apparently T was away when it all went down and he had no access to the email address for the server support [reboot had failed]. He is on it now but has no idea how bad/good the situation is as yet, hopefully all is good.

Joined : 16 May 2008 Posts : 152 Location : Canberra

Thanks PD, its good to know whats is going on....

Joined : 12 Jun 2008 Posts : 33 Location : Tas

Dum-de-dum (cue elevator music!)

At least it's only a technical hitch, by the sounds of it. Still, I'm starting to miss my daily perusals of three different trade and propagation threads!

Speaking of trade, I indulged in retail therapy today and finally bought an O. trollii... I had to capitulate - it was so beautifully hairy.

Age : 27 Joined : 04 Apr 2008 Posts : 74 Location : SEQLD

I've turned to religion.

Joined : 12 Jun 2008 Posts : 33 Location : Tas

Hmmm. Seems that FUBAR is the order of the day.

This afternoon the message changed to the Firefox window that pops up when the wrong url is typed in, and now I am getting:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /forum/
on this server.Additionally, a 403 Forbidden
error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Looks as though the ISP is majorly broken.

I am peeved.

Surely no-one pulled the plug...?

Joined : 16 May 2008 Posts : 152 Location : Canberra

My work productivity is up 17.5%

is taking a while to get back on its feet -

Its my bet it will be up and running tomorrow morning - Thursday 11am.

Joined : 28 May 2008 Posts : 19 Location : ACT

Taking bets now? I'll go for Thursday in the late PMs... maybe 6pm.

My work productivity is also up by a similar figure... I'll go 19%.

There's a small hollow space inside me.