Doom9 web server problems?

[cfduggan08]

Have there been problems in the Doom9 web server lately? I'm only being able to connect at random...sometimes it loads the page properly and other times not. Just wondering if anyone knew what was up or if anyone is having the same problem?

[Doom9]

there's indeed a problem. One of the servers has been down for some time and the guy running it is currently out of the office. That wouldn't be too bad except that my dns provider who offers failsave switchover services seems to have a problem. I think they sell yearly subscriptions for the failsave switchover service but fail to mention that anywhere and I cannot reactivate the failsave switchover. I've known that since Sunday and Have already contacted customer service but the thing is.. to show them something is wrong I have to keep the non working configuration :/ So for the time being just try to resolve the url again until you get a working server.

[BlackSun]

I hope it will be fixed soon I can't read the news, only top.htm is loading... good luck.

[Doom9]

if one document is loading it's a different issue. Server down means it will not reply to any http requests whatsoever. So in your case you'd have to press F5 till everything shows up.

As for the other problem try resolving the url again using nslookup, you can also try www.doom9.net, chances are you'll get onto a good server.

[ammck55]

Greetings:

Don't know if this will help anyone.....For the past few days I've been having a similar problem, getting the "currently not available" return periodically. When this occurs, I've been able to hook up by going into my mailbox and clicking on the links from kaizen@doom9. Maybe this isn't even part of the same problem as posted here?

ammck55

[Doom9]

@ammck55: aren't you talking about the forum now? That's an other issue entirely, in this thread we're talking about problems of the main site. What you get is the result of the log generation which isn't running using nice so it eats up a lot of CPU resources around every full hour for a minute or two.. that's when you'd get such a message. Unfortunately I have to wait for the admin to change the logfile processing as I don't have the required permissions to do that myself yet.

[unixfs]

So you have a DNS balancing.
If you have a spare PC that you can add to your current servers (you don't need a powerful one) and if your servers are all in the same place (for a matter of praticity) you could consider installing on it Linux Virtual Server (a request dispatcher), that is much more configurable and reliable than a DNS balancing.

So even if only one of the real servers is active, your site will keep on running uninterrupted (surely slower).

Hope it helps.

[Doom9]

the servers are located in different countries, even different continents. I haven't had any problems with zoneedit so far, they're really reliable. In this particular case I think it's an error on their part (I believe their failsave service has to be reactivated every year, but they don't advertise that or offer facilities to reactivate).

[frank]

It seems you have a great DNS problem with doom9.org since 01-04-2002.
No way to connect to doom9.org.
When I pinged doom9.org then I've got response from
217.5.115.77 --> stats site
212.43.217.100 absolight.com, denies connection
65.43.78.94 --> ok

When I set http://212.43.217.100 into the browser then absolight denies connection with FORBIDDEN.
When the DNS servers over the world resolved this address then you have no access.

ONLY with http://65.43.78.94 I get connection to doom9.org.

Hope that helps.
frank

[Doom9]

217.5.115.77 => doom9.de

As for 212.43.217.100 you are mistaken.. that site works.. of course you can't just use the IP to access the server since it's a vhost based hosting, not an IP based one (whereas the 65.43.78.94 is an IP based hosting).

Now once again before I lose all my patience:

There are 4 servers for doom9.org, working in round robin mode. There's a failsave switchover service which automatically removes non working servers from the round robin list. In early 2003 one of the 4 servers stopped reacting, the admin is on holidays and will only be back in the office next week where he can have a look (the server only replies to pings, no remote access is possible whatsoever). This wouldn't affect us except that at the same time Zoneedit, my DNS hosting company, seems to be having a problem with the failsave switchover service. It still monitors all servers and recognizes the non responding server but it doesn't remove it from the list. Zoneedit customer service has been informed but has not responded so far. I ABSOLUTELY MUST KEEP THIS NOT FULLY WORKING CONFIGURATION TO ENSURE THAT CUSTOMER SERVICE CAN REPRODUCE THE PROBLEM. I know this is a pain in the ass but if you can't reproduce an error there's per definition no error (everybody who's ever been involved in a software project knows what I'm talking about.. just look how programmers on this board reacts if somebody just throws a "your program doesn't work" at them without means to reproduce the error.. they get ignored/flamed/striked). Now if you start hitting servers manually you may get through, but risk overloading on of the remaining servers (they still work in round robin mode). One server only has a T1 connection (incidentally the IP based hosting) so why you can access it using it's IP address PLEASE DON'T. By overloading a server you could risk that I lose a hosting and that would be really bad.

For the time being you can use http://doom9.org/ , this is a round robin for the remaining 3 servers, it has no failsave switchover service so when something goes wrong I have to manually reconfigure it (that's what I always tell people to put use www.doom9.org) plus one of my servers has dynamic IPs so when that IP changes I once again have to update the DNS configuration manually.
There you have it. Unless you work for Zoneedit customer support or know ways to get to them faster or have an unused 10mbit or faster line and a server standing by which could serve as a mirror please refrain from making any posts here.

[frank]

He, be patient. Nobody wants to attack your servers!
It was only to test the internet DNS, because my proxies didn't resolve your domain anymore.
My browser IS set on http://www.doom9.org.

Sorry for my post, and tnx for your explanation, I didn't know that the reasons of problems are known.

[ammck55]

@Doom9--> You're absolutely right about my post. I think I've strayed too far from where I belong.........the Newbies Forum.
Going back there now

ammck55

[Doom9]

Except for some missing software on the returning server (actually it's a different machine altogether, the RAID on the other box crashed) we should be okay again.. But zoneedit customer support hasn't replied to me despite having sent 3 emails from 2 different email accounts and over the period of a week. So next time a server goes down I don't know if we'll be having the same problem. Maybe I should start looking for alternative dns hostings...