Friday night issues update -- some short periods of downtime are anticipated tonight, starting at 10pm ET (UPDATED)

[EarlG]

Last edited Fri Nov 1, 2024, 10:27 PM - Edit history (1)

UPDATE: 11:30 PM Friday evening

Our initial testing tonight has been potentially promising, but we still have more work to do before we can re-open the site for everyone. Elad may test that a little later tonight, but even if the results look good, we will likely continue to keep the site open only for Star Members overnight, since we do not want to risk a crash.

So, there may be some time tonight when DU is open for everyone again, but overnight and tomorrow morning it is going to remain Star Members only. We're going to see how things look tomorrow, and we should be getting additional tech support tomorrow afternoon as well (if necessary). We are still hopeful that this is going to be resolved sooner rather than later, and we are glad that we can still keep the site open, even if it can't be for everyone right now.

Original message

Hello everyone,

I wanted to give you an update on the database issues we've been having over the past day or two. Today, we've been mostly waiting on tech support and discussing scenarios with our service provider. Database performance has improved somewhat, but we are still seeing underlying issues which indicate that the problem is not completely resolved.

This evening we are going to be performing some maintenance in an effort to see if we can fix these issues. This will require some brief downtime.

We expect to take the site offline at 10pm ET for approximately 15-30 minutes. After we come back up, we will perform some testing. If things look okay, we will attempt to re-open the site to all users. If the site starts to crash again, we will revert to Star Members only.

While it is possible that the maintenance we're about to perform will fix the issue, we're not confident that it will -- nevertheless, this is an important part of the testing process and it will help us determine what to do next.

Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience while we work through this, and we appreciate your patience.

[Quiet Em]

1. Thank you.

I'm sure you are getting a lot of heavy traffic.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. I've been wondering about a DDOS (or similar) attack

Is there any indication that these outages are intentional? Or are there simply a lot of DUers trying to access the site?

[EarlG]

25. We don't have any indication that this is an attack

Our traffic is definitely up overall, but that was anticipated due to the election, and we were prepared for it. This issue with the database was definitely unexpected. It's possible that the increase in traffic has caused the problem, but it's not as simple as there just being too many people trying to access DU and the servers not being able to handle the load. It's a technical issue.

[Cha]

3. Mahalo Again FOR All You & Elad DO For DU! 🕯️🕊️💙🌊🌊🌊🇺🇸🌈😇

[irisblue]

4. Dude do the business. I'll be fixing breakfast posts when I can

[Tansy_Gold]

5. Thank you!

Communication ALWAYS goes a long way to easing frustration . . . and fear.

[Ptah]

6. 7 PM Tucson.

Thanks for the hard work!

[Mike Niendorff]

7. Thank you for all your hard work.

This is much harder work than most non-techies appreciate, especially since it has to be done in real time on a live site.

Do what you gotta do, keep fighting the good fight. And thanks for keeping everyone in the loop.


MDN

[Phoenix61]

8. Thank you so much for all you do! nt

[Think. Again.]

9. Wishing everyone the best!

[sheshe2]

10. Thank you both.

We all know you are working hard to resolve these issues.

[love_katz]

11. Thank you for all that you do, and thanks for the update.

I will do my best to not panic, while the site is down.

Just kidding.

I will have a bit of trouble with withdrawals while you are away

[Alice Kramden]

12. EarlG and team YOU ROCK

We all appreciate your dedication and hard work

[irisblue]

13. Thank you Earl and Elad

[Deuxcents]

14. Many thanks for communicating with us and your hard work 🙏

[Skittles]

15. thanks for the info and for all you do!

[berniesandersmittens]

16. Whew! Back on!

[orleans]

21. back on? did du go offline yet? nt

[berniesandersmittens]

24. It was offline for a bit

Not sure exactly how long, but long enough for me to panic lol.

[chia]

17. Many thanks!

[OldSWODog]

18. do what needs to be done (apologies to G. Keilor)

Earl and Elad, greetings...I appreciate your efforts...have a figurative Powder Milk Biscuit on me...cheers, OSD

[Marthe48]

19. I was logged in on my isp at home

I am away from home, using my kids' isp. I couldn't get on DU at first, but doing ok right now. 10:21 pm est. Just fyi.

[ornotna]

20. Thanks for all you do

You guys are the best.

[greatauntoftriplets]

22. Thanks so much, EarlG.

I'm sure that this was at the bottom of your election day gift list.

[2naSalit]

23. Thank you!

[Hermit-The-Prog]

26. Obviously, it's them thar inner tubes I've heard tell of getting clogged with gifs.

Thanks Earlg!

[Gore1FL]

27. They're eating the IO. They are eating the bandwidth. They are eating the remarks of the people who post here. nt

[littlemissmartypants]

28. Thanks for all of your hard work! ❤️

[LNM]

29. Thank you to you and your team

You’re my sanity

[AllaN01Bear]

30. tank you for the alerts

[IndianaDave]

31. Sincere Thanks for letting us know . . .

and for all you do on a regular basis to keep DU running - it is a place of wisdom and sanity in a truly weird world of misinformation.

[Hekate]

32. Thx for the updates, and cheers

[CousinIT]

33. As an IT professional, I can relate! Thanks for all you do...

...to keep this place running constantly, particularly at the most critical times!

[ZonkerHarris]

34. We safe for Tuesday? I still have flashbacks to 2016.

[Ruby the Liberal]

35. Thank you EarlG and Elad

Your efforts ate very greatly appreciated

[Rocknation]

36. It's been working fine except for my post avatar

It was still on my DU profile page but not showing in my posts, and I couldn't re-upload it from my hard drive because it was no longer there. Thankfully I was able to download it from the profile page, re-name it, and save it to my hard drive. All I had to do then was re-re-upload it, and now all is well!


Rocknation

[Aussie105]

37. Hopefully no pets were harmed while the moths were cleared out of the database.

Them bugs get in amongst the vacuum tubes and create all sorts of problems!

I missed the endorphin rush from reading the posts in the pet section!