Ha, you were a little premature. At this point, we're not sure. Before things crashed completely, I noticed that the CPU on the web server was being pushed to 130x its capacity (i.e., 130x more requests were being placed on the processor than it could process). Possibly a denial-of-service attack, possibly a hardware issue, possibly a memory leak caused from a recent operating system update on the server... We're looking through the logs now. One issue that has been identified is that something has gone a bit wonky with the local networking stuff, as the server is not cycling back on after a restart (and has to be restarted manually).
That sounds exciting. It is nice to see it back, even for long enough to learn what the problem was and that you're around and looking after it. Were you away? Maybe it missed you.
No, I was around. I had cancelled my trip that was supposed to take place for some of last week and the weekend because of a sick cat. Unfortunately, I was powerless to do much about the situation - I don't have the keys / codes to the building where the server resides re: manually restarting it, so we all had to wait until people started work again (after the holiday Monday here in Canada).
Well, the same "runaway train" event continues to occur with the server. I suspect it's not going to be easy to figure out. Look for occasional outages over the next little while...
Boy, I've missed this forum! That says how good it is..everyone wants to visit! Many thanks for your hard work in getting it back...and hope your cat is better, too!
I was too busy gardening to use the Forum, sorry to hear it had some problems, but more worried about the cat... Please tell the computer people though, that the Forum is a wonderful accompaniment to gardening, and it is nice to come in for cup of tea and see what else cropped up on it... and such useful book suggestions, contacts, info.... We want to see it get priority for computer service and care!
Well, hoping for the best. The Forum seems to behave slightly differently, popping up very vigorously and then suddenly shifting to the end of the thread... I don't remember it happening quite that way before...but then my computer has been cranky too, and we have made some changes with the anti-virus and pop-up blockers etc. which seem to make the Firefox browser behave differently; I can use Windows XP's Internet Explorer too, but it has a mysterious "missing file" now and behaves a bit strangely at times. If only things could stay the same when they're good...
Not sure what's causing those issues, Janet, but I don't think it would be the server. Anyway, the server seems to have settled down with a few performance tweaks, and I didn't notice any glaring issues yesterday, so perhaps that'll be enough. I'm not certain on the status of the server cycling back up after a shutdown, but I'll let you know if there's going to be some downtime because of it once that somewhat separate issue is resolved.
When it shifts to the end of the thread, does it then list the next newest, etc, in reverse order of entry, or is it just at the end? There's a setting to select whether you want to see the postings earliest first or last first. I can't imagine the server having anything to do with that, and I can't imagine it changing without your setting it, but you can check whether it's the way you want it: Click on My Settings (it's at the top left on any forum page) On the list on the left, under Settings and Options, click on Edit Options In the third area, Thread Display Options, you can select Linear Newest First or Linear Oldest First. This setting applies to all the forums. Links can be set to go to specific postings within a thread, so if you're going to a thread via a link, that could be happening.
Ah, I'm relieved to hear there actually was a problem with the site, as I wasn't sure if my RSS reader was acting up, or some DNS problem was occuring :)
Thanks, W. Cutler, for those tips regarding settings. I have not really explored them much owing to time issues, but that was helpful.
So, as many of you have likely noted, the issue has returned. The main server / network IT person isn't around today, so I'm trying my best to keep things running, but as you can tell, it's flaky again.
