Tanks for the new server. Can we see a picture of it? [more inside]
posted by 6am on Feb 6, 2009 - 142 comments

Can't post a comment to the blue. "Error—Comment Timed Out Your comment took too long to add. This happens when the server load is unusually high. Please use the back button on your browser to return to the comment form and try posting it again. Sorry for the inconvenience." [more inside]
posted by stupidsexyFlanders on Nov 28, 2008 - 34 comments

Ugh. Ok, we should be back now, mostly working. I'm sure there are lots of little things I need to fix and I'll try and get things going over the next couple days.
posted by mathowie on Mar 26, 2007 - 151 comments

Help! I see this message instead of the Metafilter homepage?

If you can see this, it means that the installation of the Apache web server software on this system was successful. You may now add content to this directory and replace this page.
posted by xammerboy on Sep 15, 2006 - 3 comments

Daddy, I want a pony.
Further to me asking this, I'd love it if Matt would make a(nother) RSS feed for each user, listing all of their contributions (posts and comments [or maybe just posts?]) - basically, a what-I-said-on-MeFi Feed. Is it a big strain on the server, making these feeds? There seem to be a lot per-user already.
posted by armoured-ant on Sep 3, 2006 - 5 comments

Metafilter's DNS is broken. (More inside.)
posted by mendel on Aug 2, 2006 - 18 comments

Any explanation for why Me* seems to be dying overnight again?
posted by antifuse on Jul 12, 2006 - 25 comments

What is being done to curb the continuing amount of times that MetaFilter dies in the arse each day (e.g. when it's inaccessible)? Just wondering.
posted by sjvilla79 on Mar 14, 2006 - 64 comments

Is Metafilter still getting hammered a la this thread? I notice that just about every day this week, I have been unable to reach mefi at all in the morning time (GMT, say 8am till roughly 11 or noon). I thought it might just be my net connection at work, but my home connection has the same issues whenever it appears to be down.

Are we just undergoing backups or some-such thing at this time? Or does Ireland just disconnect from MeFi every morning for some reason? :)
posted by antifuse on Feb 17, 2006 - 10 comments

So, Matt, what are your server log retention policies. This is not a snark, it's a serious question. I'm American, and I don't trust my government.
posted by theora55 on Feb 9, 2006 - 132 comments

What uses less bandwith, posts that are calling out people being stupid or hypocritical, or MeTa posts that are calling out the deletion of posts that call out people that are being stupid or hypocritical?
posted by Balisong on Jan 14, 2006 - 97 comments

Ask MetaFilter post message has spazzed out and I keep getting server errors ("Server is still starting up"??).

I just thought I'd impart this thrilling news for your edification and reading pleasure.

I'm done now.
posted by bat on Aug 22, 2005 - 1 comment

Sorry for the downtime, I was tweaking one small aspect of the server when a comedy of errors ended up with two hours of hair pulling before the server was reachable once again. Everything should be back to normal now.
posted by mathowie on Aug 15, 2005 - 10 comments

creaky server, creaky software [mi]
posted by mathowie on Aug 4, 2005 - 18 comments

I've swapped in the new mefi homepage showing the last 50 posts for everyone, including non-members. You can use the links at the bottom to page through more results. Gone is the feature that let you customize how many days to show on the front page, but on the positive side, this should make for a much better use of server resources.
posted by mathowie on Jun 28, 2005 - 16 comments

I'm fairly new around these parts, so forgive me if this is stupid question, but why does MetaFilter occasionally just wink out of existence? This doesn't seem to happen to most of my other favorite sites.
posted by CrunchyGods on May 6, 2005 - 46 comments

Sorry about that, but for the first time since I started hosting mefi at server matrix, there was an outage:

D2 OUTAGE: www.metafilter.com Last Updated: 05/04/2005 19:05:17 Details: This server did not come back online after reboot. We will investigate shortly.

(bwalker-05/04/2005 19:05:17): This server would not power on. We have swapped the chassis and this machine is now powered up and responding to ping and RDC.

But all should be good now.
posted by mathowie on May 4, 2005 - 59 comments

I've been trying to track down a post about a guy who had a server (from which he was hosting his site) inside his body. Does anyone remember this or have I just gone mental and imagined the whole thing?
posted by fizz-ed on Apr 14, 2005 - 4 comments

from looking at this thread, hoder mentioned a thread that (presumably) I made and that was deleted. I tried to go to the page in question, http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/35470, and got a "connection failure" notice. What's up wit dat, yo?
posted by bob sarabia on Nov 16, 2004 - 6 comments

Moving on up... If all goes well, I'll start moving everything over to our new servers later today. When that happens, I'll be shutting the site off during the move (to conserve bandwidth for moving actual files). Just a heads up that the site may be down between now and say, Monday at the latest.
posted by mathowie on Oct 29, 2004 - 34 comments

talespin.net = MetaFilter? Weird.
posted by soundofsuburbia on Sep 5, 2004 - 15 comments

The future of the Internet? If your posted site is getting mefi'ed, you might consider also providing a link from Coral. Coral is a p2p network that replicates content across participating servers. Heres metafilter through Coral.
posted by vacapinta on Aug 28, 2004 - 10 comments

Is there any way we unfortunate non-Californians can help to ensure that MetaFilter becomes a 24-hour operation once more? [More inside.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on May 6, 2004 - 36 comments

Okay, since I sort of wasted my last MeTa post by being too fast on the draw, how about something more constructive. I think we could save a great deal of overhead on the server by changing the way 100+ post threads are displayed.
posted by y6y6y6 on Feb 27, 2004 - 29 comments

These days there's enough traffic on MeFi (which is a good thing) that it takes a while, what with interruptions and such, to get through all the new links, comments, and new comments on previously-seen threads. So Matt, could you increase the timeout setting (or make it configurable on the User Page) for deciding when to update the new comments count? Thanks!
posted by billsaysthis on Jul 16, 2003 - 7 comments

Tomorrow, I’ll shut down all the computers that still live in my old apartment in New York (including the one running this site and the MetaFilter server), drive them up to Boston, and set them all up on the new T1.
5 Jul 03 @ 9:31 PM"
Expect downtime. MetaFilter addicts take note. You have been warned. We now return to your regularly scheduled flamewar.
posted by wendell on Jul 5, 2003 - 85 comments

Was anyone else offline last night between 6 & 11 p.m. PDT besides me?
posted by Lynsey on Jun 9, 2003 - 11 comments

I tried to load up metafilter earlier and it was taking a while. I noticed at the bottom of my explorer window it said something like "Opening page http://www.b4ta.com/metafilter" Then the page failed to load entirely. I'm confused.
posted by SimStupid on Apr 9, 2003 - 12 comments

Alas, there was a critical fact overlooked on the recent hardware upgrade, one which left the server vulnerable to the [sapphire|slammer|SQ hell] worm. All's better now.
posted by delfuego on Jan 25, 2003 - 17 comments

Server's back up. Not all the updates are done, but the server should be exactly the same as before.
posted by anildash on Nov 24, 2002 - 29 comments

Sorry about the brief outage today; the networking equipment at this end of the T1 had a seizure, apparently, and needed to be restarted in order to get things back in order. Makes no sense to me (or to the networking gurus at my ISP), but there you have it.
posted by delfuego on Jun 26, 2002 - 12 comments

The new server is here for now:
http://209.10.108.225/
Be a dear and please give it a go today. It's a copy of the entire server, as of this past weekend, and I don't mind if you post drivel there, as I'm just checking to see how it performs. Try out the search engine, change your sorting options, post a dozen comments. The server should be downright zippy at all times, do report back here if you find any snags or slowdowns.
posted by mathowie on Jun 17, 2002 - 116 comments

I would guess that the new server is up. Wow! Thanks Matt. Anyone else notice or am I just getting lucky?
posted by anathema on Jun 10, 2002 - 9 comments

Yay-- MeFi's back! What happened?
posted by maudlin on May 19, 2002 - 38 comments

Here's a weird one. I can't view the front page. (More inside)
posted by mr_crash_davis on May 8, 2002 - 24 comments

I assume the server keeps error logs. So, is there any way to edit the error message itself so that it displays how many times it's happened? The idea is that hopefully, common sense will kick in when it shows that it's happened 150 times or something and we don't end up flooding Matt's mailbox when obviously just a few notes will do.
posted by Su on Apr 30, 2002 - 5 comments

"Error Occurred While Processing Request" - Is it just me, or is Metafilter down?
posted by pracowity on Apr 30, 2002 - 35 comments

I'm curious, what did other mefiers do during the outage? I'm 1/3 through the first volume of a certain story by Proust, although to be fair I've had a lot of free time these past few days.
posted by Settle on Apr 23, 2002 - 49 comments

How big is MetaFilter? There's a description of the server on the about page, but I'm interested in how much disk space the site consumes, and how big the DB is. (more inside)
posted by mr_crash_davis on Feb 8, 2002 - 22 comments

I seem to remember Matt saying once that front page requests are the single biggest load on the server. Would it make sense to make all links, including threads, open up in a separate window (that can be reused)? People can still refresh the front page if they want the latest links.
posted by EatenByAGrue on Oct 27, 2001 - 9 comments

Is it just the adtext-fueled upbeat mood or is the server particularly fast today?
posted by MiguelCardoso on Oct 22, 2001 - 10 comments

is the site under unusual stress? the last few days i have been getting numerous timeouts and internal errors. a few days ago i installed Windows 2000 Pro and upgraded to IE 5.5 (yes i know 6 is available). i'm not seeing problems on other sites, but the OS and browser change have me paranoid. please tell me it's the high traffic!
posted by quonsar on Oct 9, 2001 - 3 comments

Sorry about the server probs this afternoon (more)
posted by mathowie on Sep 28, 2001 - 5 comments

I've restored the main page for members, non-members will get a page that is somewhat static and updated every five minutes. I've removed the custom sorting options for non-members, since it's an expensive query. I'm trying to minimize resource use, as the server is getting pummelled now. In the long term, I'll continue doing optimizations with the code and server, and hopefully be picking up the latest release of ColdFusion server (5.0) and some more RAM.
posted by mathowie on Sep 20, 2001 - 6 comments

Was it down between 1-2:30 p.m. (PDT)? I found this helpful site in my absence.
posted by rschram on Sep 5, 2001 - 4 comments

Before MeFi goes off line for its connection upgrade (see side-blog), what's the scoop on an IRC channel, especially after the last shut down? During shutdown, it might ease withdrawal < : ( > and also be interesting in and of itself. And if only I could get Ircle to run on my Mac...
posted by ParisParamus on May 30, 2001 - 2 comments

As per Matt's request, I changed my preferences to load only the last three days' links on the front page. But it still loads a full week's worth. Any idea what's up? I'm happy to help reduce the load on the server but this makes it difficult. :-)
posted by caveday on May 25, 2001 - 5 comments

We're finally back up. What a relief. I was getting really jittery. But are we back up for good?
posted by waxpancake on May 24, 2001 - 20 comments

Over the past couple of days, it's occurred to me that mefi does not scale particularly well when large numbers of comments are posted to a thread. I think that loading 100 comments or more makes for a fairly unwieldy webpage, and probably puts a lot of strain not just on the source database for the comments, but also the bandwidth of mefi. This inefficiency is particularly bad when it comes to such popular threads at the Kaycee ones that have been recently posted, as many people will be accessing it.

I think that comments should be cut up into some slightly more managable chunks. That is, rather than have all of the comments on the same page, they should be split up into groups of 25 or 30 comment pages; clicking on the "new comments" will take you to the correct page, thus bypassing most older comments, and the correct id on the page.

What do you think?
posted by moz on May 21, 2001 - 13 comments

March 2001 stats. The second most popular search term is especially interesting. heh.
posted by mathowie on Apr 3, 2001 - 18 comments