Comments on: Anything we can do to help keep MeFi up?

Anything we can do to help keep MeFi up?

johnnydark — Mon, 24 May 2004 07:21:51 -0800

Anything we can do to help keep MeFi up? Because these frequent downtimes are annoying me. I need my MeFi in the morning more than coffee.

By: y6y6y6

y6y6y6 — Mon, 24 May 2004 07:25:49 -0800

1) Pay Matt 500K for the website.
2) Get it running on a high availability and failover web farm.
3) ???
4) Profit!!!

By: y6y6y6

y6y6y6 — Mon, 24 May 2004 07:32:11 -0800

Or, more seriously, no there is nothing. This is one of the most famous site's on the Internet and is fueled by a massive database of ambiguous text blobs. The common usage is for people to hit the reload button over and over.

But it's running on a box in some guys overheated closet.

Until MetaFilter gets a revenue stream closer to salon.com it's unlikely it will get better.

By: eyeballkid

eyeballkid — Mon, 24 May 2004 07:34:34 -0800

these frequent downtimes are annoying me

Get a hobby.

By: deadcowdan

deadcowdan — Mon, 24 May 2004 07:48:08 -0800

Until MetaFilter gets a revenue stream closer to salon.com it's unlikely it will get better.

How will bringing MeFi's revenue down to zero help anything?

(It's a joke - get over it.)

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Mon, 24 May 2004 07:53:48 -0800

"How will bringing MeFi's revenue down to zero help anything?"—deadcowdan

But maybe Matt could have an IPO? Um, actually Salon has ~~underpants~~ revenue, they just didn't/don't have profit.

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Mon, 24 May 2004 08:02:58 -0800

Oh dear - this ole chestnut brings out the red herring flavour doesn't it?

Yeah, for the last few days the server has gone kaput right after I've gone to bed around midnight, then I restart it when I get up around 8am. It just died again after being up for only twenty minutes, so it looks like I still have issues with the server to work out.
posted by mathowie at 9:58 AM PST on April 21

I don't need to port it to a new platform, I just need to work on basic server stability. I'm moving to apache and/or win2003 server soon, but have to boot some friends off the box that were relying on the old IIS install (and ASP). I swear things will get better in June, though if I can figure out why IIS 5 is killing itself every few hours, it'll get better sooner.

Who here has ever run a site serving about 3 million pages out per month running on IIS/MSSQL/CF?
posted by mathowie at 4:06 PM PST on May 7

crash, the server is running mssql, tables are indexed up the wazoo and I'm caching where I can. The server's got a ton of ram (4Gb of it now) and MS SQL gets about 2-3Gb of it to pool queries.

I have IIS set to restart itself, and in checking the event viewer after a crash, I'll see messages like "IIS crashed unexpectedly after 23 restarts" with no other flags or errors.

I'm going to start testing out apache on a different port this week, and if possible, start moving some stuff over to it sooner than June 1.
posted by mathowie at 3:30 PM PST on May 8

You know, I'm starting to think it could be a buffer overflow that is causing the crashes. I haven't applied any IIS hotfixes in months but I haven't seen any get announced on the technet bulletins MS sends me.

What's really surprising is that MS has re-architected their website and it took me almost 20 minutes to end find a security bulletin page for IIS, where nothing has been announced for months. I ran the baseline security analzyer thing and it only found one component out of date.

When I switch to apache, we'll know for sure if it was just random script kiddies killing the IIS process.
posted by mathowie at 6:13 PM PST on May 9

That was just the first 4 or 5 comments from a quick search of MeTalk

I wanted to get the formatting so that it narrowed sharply towards the end. But, as you can see, it's pointless, isnt it?

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Mon, 24 May 2004 08:47:51 -0800

"Anything we can do to help keep MeFi up?" - No, not really. Reliability would defeat the purpose of DARPA's funding of Metafilter - research into intermittent reinforcement, and also the phenomenon of group convergence.

But in the morning, when you feel you most need Metafilter, you might try instead chant, or prayer.

Chant for for the reliability of the new configuration, and also for your Meta-lust to decrease. There is some research suggesting that prayer may actually have an effect at a distance.

Also, one less user in the AM will make things more reliable for the rest of us. We can take turns.

By: Hildago

Hildago — Mon, 24 May 2004 09:22:06 -0800

Matt, work harder.

Everyone else, keep reminding Matt to work harder.

Me: cold pizza.

By: i_cola

i_cola — Mon, 24 May 2004 09:32:34 -0800

Anything we can do to help keep MeFi up?

Have a look at some of the mails in your Junk mailbox.

By: MiguelCardoso

MiguelCardoso — Mon, 24 May 2004 09:33:24 -0800

June is bustin' out all over!
The sheep aren't sleepin' anymore!
All the RAM that chase ewe-sheep
All determined there'll be new sheep
and the ewe-sheep aren't even keepin' score!

People, people - if we pull together, we CAN make it to June!

By: adampsyche

adampsyche — Mon, 24 May 2004 09:34:09 -0800

I need my MeFi in the morning more than coffee.

Apparently, you've never tried my home-roasted coffee.

By: dflemingdotorg

dflemingdotorg — Mon, 24 May 2004 10:08:08 -0800

On a warm summer's eve,
In a bar out in 'Frisco,
Met up with the Howie,
We were both too tired to sleep.

So we took turns staring,
At the server, at the downtime,
The boredom overtook us,
And he began to speak.

He said son, I built this site,
On a server in a closet,
I knew it was a good idea,
If only it would fly.

So if you don't mind me sayin,
I can see you want to post here,
For a taste of your whiskey,
I'll tell you why she died.

So I handed him my bottle,
And he drank down my last swallow,
Then he bummed my powerbook,
And used my wi-fi-i.

And the night got deathly quiet,
And his face lost all expression,
Said if you're gonna be a site admin,
You gotta learn to do it right.

You gotta know when to patch 'em,
Know when to port 'em,
Know when to up the ram,
Or replace a fan.

You never count your pageviews,
When you're sitting with the server,
There'll be time enough for counting,
When the site is done.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Mon, 24 May 2004 10:15:39 -0800

That must be the first mefi'd Kenny Rogers song--ever....well done, dfleming! (i guess)

By: kaibutsu

kaibutsu — Mon, 24 May 2004 10:23:53 -0800

I recommend everyone put together a hard-drive prayer wheel mantra to help restore MeFi to health. Which each of us contributing a prayerwheel at 4800 rps, we should be up and running well in no time!

By: bingo

bingo — Mon, 24 May 2004 10:35:48 -0800

But maybe Matt could have an IPO?

But, google-style, the registered users should get the preferred stock.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Mon, 24 May 2004 11:29:11 -0800

I have an apache test install, which often works when IIS is dead. I still need to work on getting the subpages to work though (none of the comment pages work).

By: Lynsey

Lynsey — Mon, 24 May 2004 11:45:20 -0800

Nice one dfleming!

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Mon, 24 May 2004 13:02:11 -0800

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Mon, 24 May 2004 14:49:04 -0800

::sniggers::

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Mon, 24 May 2004 16:34:43 -0800

While you wait for matt to fix the server (hint: how much load comes from seeking in the archived posts ?) tune on howard stern or buy crash davis mefiagra.

By: holloway

holloway — Mon, 24 May 2004 17:20:53 -0800

Where are the bottlenecks in the current system?

Anything I can do to help? (phpilfer is ready, but I'm meaning coldfusion stuff or a front end mod_cache)

By: mathowie

mathowie — Mon, 24 May 2004 17:44:30 -0800

I've got apache running now, let me know if you find any problems at http://www.metafilter.com:8080/

That will eventually move to port 80, putting IIS to sleep forever (hopefully by this weekend). If you find MeFi down in the next few days, try the 8080 port to see if Apache is staying up.

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Mon, 24 May 2004 18:01:48 -0800

Mat, how do we form internal links with port 8080? I mean, the front page shows well at http://www.metafilter.com:8080/, but what about MeTa, AskMe and posted threads? (Dumb question? Sorry...)

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Mon, 24 May 2004 18:05:08 -0800

Ah, ok - all internal MeFi links are http://www.metafilter.com:8080/........ It's just the MeTa & AskMe arent.

S'ok...

By: tittergrrl

tittergrrl — Mon, 24 May 2004 19:08:43 -0800

Apparently, you've never tried my home-roasted coffee.

MefiCoffeeSwap, anyone?

By: scarabic

scarabic — Mon, 24 May 2004 19:50:14 -0800

Matt - I know you are already doing, and have long since done many things I'm not even aware of that have brought this site into existence. I implicitly trust that if anything within your power can be done for it, it has been done, or will be done as soon as humanly possible. I sincerely hope you don't often have to agonize between having a life and responding to the sentiment this thread represents.

But if there really *is* something we can do, don't hesitate to make it known. At this point I honestly have no clue whether money is really needed or what. It would seem that your time is the most valuable commodity in the equation. Obviously I can't replace your entire income to free your time up, but if several hundred smackers here and there really can impact uptime, help with hardware costs, bandwidth, a new air conditioner for the closet, whatver, please, please say so.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Mon, 24 May 2004 21:13:08 -0800

dash_slot-, it's just a single test site. If all goes well, I'll try testing out metatalk and ask metafilter later this week.

Thanks for the offer scarabic, but I think when we switch over to the new server next week, things should be peachy.

By: scarabic

scarabic — Mon, 24 May 2004 23:41:54 -0800

Cool. I hope when the time comes you'll let us know what the new platform is and how the various pieces fit together. I'm curious.

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Tue, 25 May 2004 08:17:22 -0800

Cheers matt. You do a grand job!

By: yerfatma

yerfatma — Tue, 25 May 2004 09:50:35 -0800

Matt, the scripts for the spell checker and comment controls (B, I, link) are not being included on the Apache server.

By: attackthetaxi

attackthetaxi — Wed, 26 May 2004 04:43:42 -0800

This port 8080 Apache deal is like 101 times as good as that other one, so far.

By: DrJohnEvans

DrJohnEvans — Thu, 27 May 2004 10:03:38 -0800

Man, I ignored this thread 'cause I figured it was just another complaining-about-downtime rant. Now I glance through it and find that there's been an Apache test server which I could've been using! I gotta read every single comment on the site more carefully.