DonationCoder Down?

[crabby3]

Google Chrome couldn't connect to DC yesterday. 

This non-connection happened around 12 pm Florida time... or around 5 pm in the UK.

Seems to be back to 'normal' today. 

Just wondering if anyone else couldn't connect yesterday. 

[rgdot]

Was down for me too, longer than those hours

[mouser]

I was just going to post about this but now ill post here.

On Saturday I flew into new york city to do the second round of cleanup of my father's apartment (he passed away last year). The first round was much more work but this was still a solid day of cleaning and sorting, and then more time coordinating tasks, etc. 

Anyway, i haven't been sleeping much for a bunch of reasons including there is no bed and im just anxious about all of the processes, and i connected remotely and learned the dc server went down.  but worse was it went down in a way i had never seen before -- the normal way i use vmware vsphere to connect to the main server and reboot it was not working.  i was so overhwhelmed with other stuff and the fact that i was connecting with laptop over tethered mobile hotspot was just making everything that much more exasperating.  long story short I couldnt figure out what to do and so a whole day passed with DC unreachable.

Eventually stephen6615 talked me off the ledge on irc chat channel and we had softlayer server company reboot the hardware of the server, and once they did that, the normal vmware process worked again and i was able to restart the donationcoder virtual machine, do the little dances that are needed to make the forum come back to life without losing any data, and we are back.

I apologize for the down time --- that's the longest we've been down in many years.

The only positive thing is that this may be the kick in the pants we needed to finish moving to a new cms/server.

[crabby3]

Was down for me too, longer than those hours

What I meant was:

This non-connection happened was first noticed around 12 pm Florida time... or around 5 pm in the UK.

The only positive thing is that this may be the kick in the pants we needed to finish moving to a new cms/server.

FWIW: From my POV there are a couple of positive things.

The bad connection wasn't caused by my computer and I'm not as inept as I thought I was... this time.

[KynloStephen66515]

It probably should be said that if the website goes down in the future, please visit us on IRC (Connection Details Below) and let us know (It might not have been noticed!).

Another way to check is to visit our facebook page (www.facebook.com/DonationCoder) to see if we have posted an update there (NB: Will only be a post there if I'm awake and/or been told about the downtime!!!) (I can't actually do very much other than bug SoftLayer to try fix things so mouser is the first person that should be poked about these things!!! I just help him to not have a nervous breakdown during these times haha).

I have sorted out a monitor for the website now so we should be notified instantly (It posts to IRC and will make mouser aware) of any downtime so it can be fixed.

IRC Connection Info
Server: irc.freenode.net
Port: 6667
Channel: #donationcoder

No IRC Client? No Problem! Why not grab something like HexChat which is available for most platforms! - (I'm not affiliated with HexChat and couldn't care less what you actually use - this is simply a quick suggestion!) 

[anandcoral]

I use https://uptimerobot.com/ to get down information of important websites including DC 

It emailed me when DC was down and also when up,
"The monitor donationcoder.com (http://www.donationcoder.com/) is back UP (HTTP 200 - OK) (It was down for 16 hours, 46 minutes and 37 seconds)."

Regards,

Anand

[KynloStephen66515]

I use https://uptimerobot.com/ to get down information of important websites including DC 

It emailed me when DC was down and also when up,
"The monitor donationcoder.com (http://www.donationcoder.com/) is back UP (HTTP 200 - OK) (It was down for 16 hours, 46 minutes and 37 seconds)."

Regards,

Anand

Heh that's exactly what I am using (combined with a couple of other services in order to be able to automatically get the info via IRC)

[Deozaan]

I use https://uptimerobot.com/ to get down information of important websites including DC 

Thanks for sharing that information. Looks useful.

[KynloStephen66515]

I use https://uptimerobot.com/ to get down information of important websites including DC 

Thanks for sharing that information. Looks useful.

It's a bloody handy site and allows you to have I think 50 different monitors! xD

[KynloStephen66515]

Just to save people from having to setup their own, here is the link for DC's monitor - Bookmark it!: https://stats.uptimerobot.com/0YWjYSgp3

[Innuendo]

Sorry to hear about your father's passing, Mouser. We appreciate this web site and all you do for us, but your priorities are straight. If the web site would have been down a few days we'd all would have understood. Taking care of your father (and yourself) should come first.

Stay strong, my friend.