DAYS without metafilter; you guys?

January 15, 2003 4:54 AM

This is the first time since the New Year that metafilter.com has actually resolved for me. At first I thought it was something to do with where I'm connecting, but neither the site that hosts my email (energis2) or demon or my ISP could resolve it either. When I finally get here I find tonnes of postings - so what happened? Did anyone else experience it?
posted by ralawrence to Bugs at 4:54 AM (24 comments total)

Not a complete outage, but I've missed a day here, a day there with the same problem. Just blank. Kinda reminds me of college.
posted by yerfatma at 5:04 AM on January 15, 2003

after almost 3 years, i kinda doubt if metafilter will EVER resolve itself for me...

but seriously, it probably WAS your ISP if the outage was continuous since new years. sometimes ISP's get lax about name server updates, once back in the dark ages of my dialup phase, i was unable to reach my own site (which wasn't hosted by my ISP) for days - i called and bitched and they told me the site must be down, but they changed tunes rapidly when i pointed out that friends with AOL could see the damn thing!
posted by quonsar at 5:15 AM on January 15, 2003

Everyone in my office has had the same problem - a definite outage for all of us for some days now. We're in Canary Wharf, London, UK by the way.
posted by andyHollister at 5:16 AM on January 15, 2003

Everyone in your office is a MeFite? Cool.

Call for papers: alternatives to "MeFite"

I had nameserver problems all day yesterday, but that was it.
posted by luser at 5:41 AM on January 15, 2003

What I don't understand is that 4 different sites - work (pipex), home (onetel), my mail server (Energis Squared) and my other mail server (Demon) - couldn't resolve it either.

I'm in London, the mail servers are in Leeds and Nottingham.

If it was only one, I'd happily blame that - but it isn't.
posted by ralawrence at 5:53 AM on January 15, 2003

It'd be interesting to know if all those servers you mentioned are all pointing to the same domain name server.
posted by crunchland at 6:28 AM on January 15, 2003

Add my office to the unresolved status intermittently for a few days (not that I'd ever read MeFi at the office)
posted by DBAPaul at 6:37 AM on January 15, 2003

wouldn't those sites (with different isps) each have their own caches which round-robin the reference servers? or maybe they are all restricted to the (geographic?) nearest server?

if you're running linux it's not difficult to install your own cache for dns (dnscache, now djbdns) that can talk directly to the main servers (i'm curious whether this is frowned on for sidestepping intermediate servers that give the system better scaling - i didn't see any comments in the docs).

anyway, mefi's been unreliable all week, but certainly around (the name often resolves only to produce a server error...).
posted by andrew cooke at 7:18 AM on January 15, 2003

add me to the list of people who couldn't resolve to the site,
from NYC
posted by Lungsbreth at 7:26 AM on January 15, 2003

MeFi's been unresolveable for me since the 12th. Just came back this morning. Yesterday it resulted in a server error.
posted by SpecialK at 7:39 AM on January 15, 2003

can people be more precise about the errors? if an address doesn't resolve you get an error that says something like "can't find www.metafilter.com". that implies either an incorrect name or a dns error (if the name should exist).

if you get an error like "cannot connect to www.metafilter.com" then that's not a dns error - it's finding matt's server, but the software on the server isn't running (or you're being blocked by something).

finally, if you get a page that says "server error" or a mess of cold fusion related nastiness then, again, that's not a dns error, but a problem with the site.

of all those, only the first - the dns failure - means that the site is "unresolvable" (the "resolution" in question is the conversion from a name like "www.metafilter.com" to a numerical address like 209.10.108.201).

and i was incorrect in saying that the name has been resolving all week - could be that there's been a problem on the root servers, but my local cache has kept me afloat
posted by andrew cooke at 8:02 AM on January 15, 2003

Yep - I've been having the same problems from time to time as well - every time I'm paranoid it's work finally cutting me off! I'm in Gloucester, UK as well (could this be a UK thing?)

On Preview: I get some sort of proxy server error...I wasn't really paying too much attention...
posted by prentiz at 8:05 AM on January 15, 2003

This is a feature, not a bug. The loyalty of you Brits has become suspect, so we are pulling back to a defensive perimeter of good, right-thinking Americans until this time of evil has passed. (And don't even TALK to me about Portugal!)
posted by rushmc at 9:11 AM on January 15, 2003

Usually I get "Server Error" or a 404 screen. This has been off and on since 1/1, but once its come back up I've been rather glad that I wasn't trolled in to a couple pointless issues about who is and who isn't racist and what not, so I haven't been that angry, however I do miss the other stuff!
posted by Pollomacho at 9:11 AM on January 15, 2003

Usually I get "Server Error" or a 404 screen.

This has been happening to me too. I've been getting alternating non-resolving DNS and the "server error" message which is sort of weird since I know they mean two different things, inaccessibility-wise. I've only noticed it since maybe the 4th or 5th, but for the past week, since all the work was done on the 12th, it's been happening a lot. I'm not in the UK, I'm in Seattle, but I'm probably not a Right-thinking American, so maybe that's it.
posted by jessamyn at 10:55 AM on January 15, 2003

(And don't even TALK to me about Portugal!)

I'm hoping that IS why Miguel's not around any more...i miss him!

*choking sob*
posted by amberglow at 4:03 PM on January 15, 2003

I miss Miguel too... *hugs amberglow and passes the hankies*...could it be?....nah.
posted by madamjujujive at 5:13 PM on January 15, 2003

Miguel is dead. Now get over it and move on.
posted by dg at 6:40 PM on January 15, 2003

Blasphemer!

* hurls fine bottle of port at dg's head *

* wraps self tighter in smoking jacket *
posted by yhbc at 7:32 PM on January 15, 2003

yhbc, hurl rocks, save the port!
posted by madamjujujive at 7:41 PM on January 15, 2003

andrew - "can people be more precise about the errors?"

how much more precice than "unresolved status" do you want? I know the difference between can not find, can not connect, page not found as well as the server error.

those at my office attempting to connect to MeFi have been getting unresolved status as well as server errors for a few(?) days/weeks. give us some credit, we're not all knuckle draggers.
posted by DBAPaul at 7:47 PM on January 15, 2003

209.10.108.201 www.metafilter.com
209.10.108.201 metatalk.metafilter.com

Add them to the appropriate HOSTS file location. This will work until Metafilter has to move next, at which time you will probably have forgotten you did this. But it will get you through the odd DNS problem. In fact, just checking now, I find I've had them in there since at least last July. Side benefit: using the HOSTS file can often be faster than resolving via DNS.
posted by dhartung at 10:38 PM on January 15, 2003

DBAPaul - it wasn't a personal attack against you you knuckle-dragging idiot
posted by andrew cooke at 2:52 AM on January 16, 2003

I've had various problems accessing the site from my office and my home in Vienna, Austria since the new year began.

I didn't, however, catalogue the error messages I was receiving...
posted by syzygy at 8:32 AM on January 16, 2003