Yay! A server vs served thread! Wheeee!! (via) - Sounds like it happens all the time, but I must be missing it. Any notable mefi threads out there with these entertaining exchanges?
posted by Christ, what an asshole on Mar 10, 2009 - 72 comments

The new server: you're soaking in it! We're on the new boxes now, post any bugs or weirdness you find here and we'll work on it as fast as we can.
posted by mathowie on Feb 2, 2009 - 208 comments

Preparations are in order for the big move. [more inside]
posted by mathowie on Feb 1, 2009 - 156 comments

Pony request: Can we please, please, please, do something to ease the burden of the Palin thread? People obviously want to talk about it and it's become sort of a default election thread. It's got to be killing the servers as well as everyone's browsers. [more inside]
posted by dejah420 on Sep 14, 2008 - 22 comments

Server upgrade is complete, but there were certainly bumps along the way. If you spot any weirdness after the fact, drop it here.
posted by mathowie on Apr 18, 2008 - 96 comments

We're in the process of updating the server. You probably noticed about 20min of downtime and things may be up and down throughout this evening but should resume and hopefully be faster later today and tomorrow.
posted by mathowie on Aug 20, 2007 - 32 comments

Metafilter was unreachable this morning and is incredibly slow this evening - is there something we should know ?
posted by sgt.serenity on Oct 24, 2006 - 47 comments

Why is metafilter so slow and crash-prone? I know it gets a huge amount of traffic, but what causes the regular outages? Do you guys need a new server or what? I can't think of another major site that experiences as much downtime as metafilter does. (i'm not criticizing, I know how difficult it is to run a site of this scale... just curiouis)
posted by empath on Oct 4, 2006 - 44 comments

Oh great #1, care to explain the server issues?
posted by wheelieman on Mar 21, 2006 - 38 comments

Can we have a Metafilter Counterstrike 1.6 server? I think that would be pretty sweet.
posted by thirteenkiller on Feb 27, 2006 - 54 comments

Sorry about the downtime today, it looks like some comment spammers were DoSing the box with requests for long-dead trackback URLs. After that was cleaned up, some other weird bugs kept the server unavailable for a few hours, but things should be back to normal now.
posted by mathowie on Feb 13, 2006 - 26 comments

It looks like your DNS server is failing. Metafilter is hosted by eod.com, and they aren't answering for anything in metafilter.com. I'm trying to get this posted quickly before my caches expire... I already can't reach ask.metafilter.com

Eod has only one IP address for their 'two' nameservers, 72.36.180.243. It pings, but doesn't answer name service requests.

You might want to consider hosting your domain with someone with enough money to put two servers on the net. :(
posted by Malor on Dec 16, 2005 - 2 comments

There seem to be fewer JRun errors lately and the site seems snappy. Are congratulations in order?
posted by trey on Jun 14, 2005 - 26 comments

I for one am interested in any plans for possible future improvements to the uptime capabilities of the website "MetaFilter". I am eager to discuss these issues with the group as a whole!
posted by Pretty_Generic on Jun 1, 2005 - 59 comments

I just updated the server to CFMX 7. If you see any obvious weird errors, toss them in here.
posted by mathowie on Feb 7, 2005 - 39 comments

Holy mother of god. It's official, even though I was kind of worried about ponying (heh) up the dough for a couple of high ticket servers, I made enough money off the $5 signups today to pay for one year's hosting. So I want to say thanks to all the new users for ensuring the future of this place. I love ya. Some more news inside
posted by mathowie on Nov 18, 2004 - 68 comments

The site is snappier than it has been in a long time, at least for me. Has the new hardware been dropped in?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken on Oct 25, 2004 - 15 comments

I switched over to Apache, so some stuff might not be working (like spellcheck). If you find any bugs with MetaFilter, MetaTalk, Ask MetaFilter, or any other site that used to be on this server, let me know here.
posted by mathowie on Jun 10, 2004 - 56 comments

Why the downtime? For the last week or so, Metafilter goes down at late morning GMT, and doesn't spring back to life until Late afternoon GMT. It seems too regular to be anything other than a deliberate act. Is it going to be a regular thing? How are us European MeFites going to waste time at work?
posted by seanyboy on Apr 21, 2004 - 38 comments

So where are we with getting the server the hell outta Some Great Guy's closet and into Some Proper Hosting Place? There's been talk of us stumping up, and that's fine by me. Especially if it means when I press the feed button of my cage I get good nourishing MeFi goodness, not "server refused the connection".

(filed under feature requests, although I'm not sure "works" is a feature)
posted by bonaldi on Mar 18, 2004 - 32 comments

Hey, just curious if the reason this site tends to have downtime with relative frequency (it's not terrible or anything, but it's certainly more than any other popular site I check out) is a result of the ISP it's hosted at, or the server it's running on...

I'm not asking to be a jerk or anything, I'm just curious, since I have a 1u server colocated somewhere myself, and am moving it to a new facility soon etc.. so network / hosting / downtime issues pique my interest...
posted by twiggy on Mar 4, 2004 - 7 comments

Matt, this is a question to you (as well as a push to the other users here).

How big is the drive Metafilter (or all of your stuff) is located on? Like many others, I lived in a dark world without MeFi and ask:

Have you thought about a raid level 1?
posted by filmgeek on Feb 17, 2004 - 50 comments

So alas, one of the processor fans in the MetaFilter server decided to up and die, which coincided perfectly with a planned vacation to New York. Upon coming back, no replacement fan was to be found on my doorstep (due to stupid delayed shipping by the company from whom the replacement was ordered), so a trip to CompUSA later, we're back in business. Sorry 'bout that.
posted by delfuego on Feb 16, 2004 - 78 comments

Sorry about the downtime -- it turns out that storms and thunder and lightning make the power in Brookline, MA go away for a short bit. Thank goodness for the wonder of uninterruptible power supplies and graceful shutdowns...
posted by delfuego on Aug 3, 2003 - 9 comments

Uptime will probably be sporadic over the next few days while I do some software and hardware upgrades. On the upside, I get to bask in the glow of the server while I do the upgrades.
posted by mathowie on Jul 11, 2003 - 28 comments

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 on Jan 10, 2003 - 38 comments

The irc server turlyming seems to be down, so come on over to irc.undernet.org channel #mefi.
posted by beth on Dec 17, 2002 - 17 comments

Sorry about the downtime. I was dicking around with the server a little. Things should be back to normal now. More downtime tomorrow, perhaps as I finish the upgrades.
posted by anildash on Nov 23, 2002 - 12 comments

Am I the only one who has been experiencing a good deal of downtime, timeouts, and generally slow surfing lately on MetaFilter?

I remember reading awhile back that signups were turned off the last time because of server strain. Is that the issue here or are we (is Matt) dealing with something else?
posted by The God Complex on Oct 29, 2002 - 32 comments

MeFi outage last night from about 8 p.m. PDT until 10 when I logged off and went to bed . Just me or anyone else?
posted by Lynsey on Oct 9, 2002 - 9 comments

Matt, the new server is fantastic and you've been burning through bugs at a remarkable rate. I know you've been working steadily for several days now. I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say how much I appreciate all your work.

Why don't you unplug now and go have a nice dinner? None of the bugs I've seen posted today seem that serious, and I suspect lots of them pre-date the upgrade.

posted by timeistight on Jul 17, 2002 - 14 comments

OK, either everyone has decided to take a day off of MeFi, or the new server is finally in place. Kudos to Matt (and the rest of the mefi crew), the site really smokes.
posted by kaefer on Jun 12, 2002 - 8 comments

What's Metafilter Timezone? I live in Belgium (same time zone as Paris, Madrid or Amsterdam). I have observed that the Metafilter "midnight" is somewhere in what is my morning. Where is physiscally the server? In what time zone is Metafilter's midnight?

B.
posted by Baud on May 22, 2002 - 27 comments

Yesterday I was accused of spamming by my host. Today 10+ websites and my email service has been shut down.
(cockybastard.com, Globalgasm.com, etc.)
I am *hoping* I can resolve this asap. But what if they refuse to listen to me.
I'm struck by how helpless I am. Has this ever happened to anyone here? I am close to actually driving to the Dreamhost offices in person.

posted by halcyon on May 3, 2002 - 32 comments

Gee, MetaFilter's fast. Surely, this is the new server? But so soon, just a week after Matt ordered it? That hardly seems possible! Is everyone seeing a huge speed increase?
posted by nicwolff on Apr 13, 2002 - 22 comments

Hopefully, this will mean the end to the server time-outs: I'm finally upgrading the server [more inside]
posted by mathowie on Apr 7, 2002 - 31 comments

Has mathowie got some more bandwidth or other upgrade? MeFi/MeTa seem very zippy to me, past couple of days.
posted by luser on Mar 7, 2002 - 21 comments

Is MetaFilter down for everybody else. I've been getting host not found errors all morning. I know Matt was planning to move his name server box. I'm just wondering if something in that process got hosed. If it is down, is it still available via an IP address -> I couldn't seem to find that either.
posted by willnot on Jan 23, 2002 - 11 comments

Is there a picture of the actual physical embodiment of the MetaFilter Server? I'd like to be able to visualize where all the comments go.
posted by machaus on Jan 9, 2002 - 39 comments

The site is getting pummelled lately, so I ran stats on the past few days to see if there was a national news story or something. Of the 300k page views in the past four days, 100k, or 1/3 of the traffic was solely due to the googlebot.

It appears that having 13k threads filled with 200k comments of google-loving ascii is acting as some sort of honeypot, attracting the google indexers like mad. Broken down by day, the Googlebot appears to visit over 25k pages at metafilter.com PER DAY. If you look at browser/OS stats, the googlebot visits metafilter more often than all Netscape clients combined. Also, the googlebot exceeds all visits by people using Mac operating systems.

Although I'm impressed with the results (google searches are the #1 referrer), is it worth basically bringing down the machine and keeping humans from being able to access it? If I were to include a robots exlusion file and block all search bots, would the net community be at a loss for not being able to find information discussed here?

I guess the big question is, does the utility of having the site indexed outweigh the problems the indexing causes?
posted by mathowie on Jan 4, 2002 - 32 comments

I'm currently visiting metafilter with my images turned off in the hope that it will reduce server load just a little. does it?

along the same line of thought, matt, an version of metafilter until server problems are resolved? ala emergency CNN? would it make a difference?
posted by rebeccablood on Oct 5, 2001 - 18 comments

does the site seem slow to anybody lately, or is it me? there are long waits when i click on comments, or basically anything which loads from the database.
posted by moz on Sep 27, 2001 - 12 comments

I keep getting the following when accessing Metatallk:

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Error Occurred While Processing Request

Error Diagnostic Information

An error has occurred.


HTTP/1.0 404 Object Not Found

Please inform the site administrator that this error has occurred (be sure to include the contents of this page in your message to the administrator).

Any idea why?


posted by ParisParamus on Jun 15, 2001 - 13 comments

Will new users ever* be let into** MetaFilter?

*I’m not interested in starting a conversation about the various benefits and liabilities of more users.

**Open MetaFilter.com with cookies off, and you'll see what I mean.
posted by capt.crackpipe on May 31, 2001 - 13 comments

Great job, Jason, MeFi is speedy once more. And I'm within a mile of the box itself.

Somehow being in such close physical proximity to MeFi is soothing.
posted by anildash on May 31, 2001 - 17 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

So I Want To Set Up A Server. Since I trust the MeFiFolk, I'm asking this here: can anyone point me to a guide that tells me, a complete server hardware neophyte, what I need to get my own box on the net? Much obliged....
posted by hijinx on Apr 18, 2001 - 28 comments

Is the 5k affecting MeFi this morning? I keep getting timeouts and server too busy messages.
posted by iceberg273 on Apr 11, 2001 - 14 comments

There were DNS issues today, there might be more soon, as I switch to new servers. Beware.
posted by mathowie on Mar 8, 2001 - 0 comments

So, um, the MetaFilter box may be moving soon. I can bring it home and host it off my DSL (upgrading the upload line to 384kbps), but it'll be slightly slower than the shared T1 we had at Pyra. If anyone has any ideas for budget rackspace or has some bandwidth to spare, let me know here or via email, thanks.

I'll give warning if/when it moves, but expect 24-48 hours of downtime when that takes place (and to the 15 other domains I host on the same box).
posted by mathowie on Feb 2, 2001 - 14 comments