is MeFi dead?

January 10, 2003 1:44 PM

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but is MeFi dead? I haven't been getting through all day until just now, and even now I'm only seeing "Index Of" and two HRs.
posted by oissubke to Bugs at 1:44 PM (38 comments total)

That's what I just got. Never seen that one before.
posted by donnagirl at 1:50 PM on January 10, 2003

The server's been down all day working on disk errors on the hard drive.

It apparently just came back online. I'll fix things now.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:53 PM on January 10, 2003

Ok, all systems seem go.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:55 PM on January 10, 2003

i can get to specific pages, but not mefi front page...
posted by amberglow at 2:05 PM on January 10, 2003

Works for me
posted by riffola at 2:50 PM on January 10, 2003

Ok, all systems seem spotty.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:19 PM on January 10, 2003

works for me.
posted by elwoodwiles at 3:22 PM on January 10, 2003

all ok now
posted by amberglow at 3:24 PM on January 10, 2003

Working good for me. Thanks Matt. I was ready to shoot some heroin just to get some kind of buzz. If I had to reload Drudge one more time I would have shot myself.
posted by vito90 at 4:19 PM on January 10, 2003

*puts needle in vein*
posted by sgt.serenity at 4:37 PM on January 10, 2003

Condition Yellow! :::flashes light dramatically:::
posted by rushmc at 5:21 PM on January 10, 2003

Now it's down again. Of course, may be temporary...
posted by jonson at 5:32 PM on January 10, 2003

Hmm. Coincidence?

I did have a nice nap though.
posted by tyro urge at 5:39 PM on January 10, 2003

With filepile down as well, you wouldn't believe how much work I had to pretend to do.
posted by machaus at 6:41 PM on January 10, 2003

hooray ! thankyou , superman!
posted by sgt.serenity at 6:46 PM on January 10, 2003

With filepile down as well, you wouldn't believe how much work I had to pretend to do.

Speaking of the lack of Filepile, does anyone know if its coming back?
posted by bshort at 6:51 PM on January 10, 2003

Matt, would it be worthwhile at all to have a system status blog, as something to look to for basic announcements?
posted by yonderboy at 7:05 PM on January 10, 2003

I always figured that's what Metatalk was really for, and also, the equivalent of sticking your hand outside the window to check the weather.
posted by Stan Chin at 7:15 PM on January 10, 2003

would it be worthwhile at all to have a system status blog, as something to look to for basic announcements?

Maybe something on the front page to indicate when MeFi is down? Oh, no, hang on a sec...
posted by inpHilltr8r at 7:27 PM on January 10, 2003

a system status blog

There used to be one, I thought - I spent a few *cough* minutes or so at work today trying to google it up, but no dice. Anyone?
posted by yhbc at 7:46 PM on January 10, 2003

Metafilter system status.

riffola: Works for me

Which is kinda likeasking whether anyone else is here, and the guy with the knife responds saying "No!"
posted by holloway at 8:41 PM on January 10, 2003

re: filepile

It's coming back. The people at the ISP aren't answering the phone. I hate that.

Email me if you want to join the discussion list. I will tell you how.
posted by perplexed at 9:46 PM on January 10, 2003

Is it just me, or has MeFi been more or less sporadic since moving to the new server a few months ago? It seems that it goes down at least once or twice a week nowadays. Is there any grand reason for this, or just an unhappy series of unrelated incidents?
posted by dogmatic at 10:30 PM on January 10, 2003

yhbc - Do you mean MetaWatch? It was started last year by insomnyuk, but he didn't keep up with it. I thought it was a great idea, though.
posted by iconomy at 10:38 PM on January 10, 2003

Is there any grand reason for this

Yeah, the hard drive in the new server was faulty from day 1, but it didn't come to light for a few months. It will require moving onto a new drive, and copying over everything off the old drive that will copy (some sectors are just gone and can't be saved), then I have to set everything back up from scratch (web server, coldfusion, ftp server, etc). I'll probably have to fly to NYC to fix it, which I hope to do later this month.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:01 PM on January 10, 2003

...and I can setup status.metafilter.com on a separate server, and probably will soon.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:02 PM on January 10, 2003

I'll probably have to fly to NYC to fix it, which I hope to do later this month.

Let us know. We'll buy you a beer.
posted by Vidiot at 10:29 AM on January 11, 2003

Don't buy him too many beers. The last thing we need is a drubk mathowie tinkering with the server.

Also, Matt, thanks in advance for all this work you're planning on doing.
posted by katieinshoes at 10:35 AM on January 11, 2003

Yeah we can do the Karaoke MeFiNYC meet up when Matt's in town.
posted by riffola at 10:39 AM on January 11, 2003

Matt, have you considered a fund drive for at least a mirrored raid setup?
posted by machaus at 10:40 AM on January 11, 2003

i'm with machus, people would certainly contribute (well, ok, 2 people so far but you get the idea).
posted by triv at 11:29 AM on January 11, 2003

sorry, machaus.
posted by triv at 11:31 AM on January 11, 2003

Well, the problem is I don't even know how to install or maintain a mirrored RAID setup. Do you just drop in a RAID card, a few hard drives and it works?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:47 AM on January 11, 2003

We should definitely party when Matt's in town. Just say the when and the where.
posted by dogmatic at 12:38 PM on January 11, 2003

Matt:

Two options:

1.Convert the disks to dynamic disks in the disk management console in Win2K, and use software mirroring. You'll take a slight performance hit on disk writes AND reads, but it will be cheap and simple. If one drive dies, you break the mirror set, throw in another and change your boot.ini path if necessary.

2.Get a hardware RAID card, configure the drives through it's own software interface and it will transparently appear like a single volume to the OS. I'm assuming that you are using IDE drives, but this would probably be sufficient for your needs. I'd get some removable drive trays and a third drive for swapping while your at it. That way, a drive failure in the future could be handled simply with over the phone guidance, and it would recreate the mirror set at the next boot.
posted by machaus at 3:13 PM on January 11, 2003

hmm, that raid card looks cheap. machaus, would I just need to buy a couple extra drives that are identical to the replacement drive I bought? (they all have to be exact copies of one another, right?)

Also, with a hardware array setup, are disk reads (serving flat web pages to users) any faster or slower as a result of the overhead?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:30 PM on January 11, 2003

1.yeah, it's easier if all the drives are the same, but you could PROBABLY use different mechanisms.

2.In theory, yes disk reads should be faster because there is a separate controller for each IDE channel.
posted by machaus at 3:40 PM on January 11, 2003

I'd definitely suggest getting identical drives. My motherboard came with a built-in RAID controller, and I tried to set it up with two 30-gig Maxtor drives that I happened to have, but even though they were both listed as being exactly the same size, one was read as being a couple megs smaller than the other, so it refused to accept them.
posted by rushmc at 9:21 AM on January 13, 2003