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Friday, July 17, 2009

Lg15 and KM Still Down (or, Is Sky Falling?, asks Chicken Little)


This blog reported on July 7 that the Lonelygirl15 and Katemodern websites on lg15.com had been down and were still not back up. Lonelygirl15 Creator Miles Beckett commented on July 8 that they were "looking into this."

At this point, the sites have been down so long that if you google "lonelygirl15", the hit for lg15.com previews the wordpress errors that you see when you try to visit either http://www.lg15.com/lonelygirl15 or http://www.lg15.com/katemodern.

Hopefully the sites will return soon, but its unclear why they've been down for so long.

The 436 was not immediately available for comment.

ETA 9:45pm PDT: Thanks to Mathieas for providing this handy counter for keeping track of how many days the Creators have been "looking into this":

9 comments:

  1. *runs around

    the sky is falling the sky is falling

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wonder how long it will take to fix this time?

    ReplyDelete
  3. At least the EQAL site is still up and functioning, although they have not updated that in a while.

    Death Watch. Tick. Tock.

    ReplyDelete
  4. For a self proclaimed "technology company" it is rather strange how Eqal Inc. handles these things. Perhaps Miles has been kidnapped by aliens and left Jonas in charge.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've said this before in chat, but since not everyone goes there, here's my view on the tech side of things:

    - We can still access the sites themselves to see the error. That tells us the entire server is not down. If the software still works, but the content can't be accessed, in a CMS like Wordpress, that usually points to a database problem.

    - The message claims "Sorry folks, due to large traffic WordPress is having some issues."; if you google that error, you will notice that it doesn't really appear "in the wild" - it's not a native Wordpress error. It seems to be a custom message written for the site - which means we cannot rely on it to be technically true. Interestingly, however, large traffic can mean maxing out the number of database connections, leading to trouble displaying content. In other words: It is at least a possibility this message appears in case of database errors.

    - If you go to the old forums, you'll get a rather clear error message for a change:
    "Can't connect to MySQL server on 'data-back'".
    For those who don't know, MySQL is the database system most free software on the web, like Wordpress or phpBB, runs on.

    So, in summary: We have a situation which looks like a database error, one error message that could mask a database error, and one error message that says there's a database error.

    I think it's pretty clear where the issue is.

    Why am I telling you this? Because solving this problem should be about as difficult as fixing the header link.

    If the database server itself is still running, it should require only a single command: "/etc/init.d/mysqld restart"
    Even if their server is set up badly, it should be nothing but "mysqladmin shutdown && mysqld_safe" (+arguments).
    I myself have done the former countless times, I assure you, it really is that simple.

    If the database server itself crashed, then it's even easier - just restart the damn server. If they don't have access to it from the outside, just call the datacenter and they'll reboot it. Even if they're a low-priority customer with no special service plans, that should not take more than a few hours.


    Moral of the story:
    As usual, there are two options:
    1. The situation is simple, but the Cs simply don't give a shit.
    Or 2. There's shit happening (like wiped out databases, lacking credentials, money running out) and they don't have the guts to tell us.

    Either way reflects poorly on them.

    (Oh, and in case you didn't figure: No, it doesn't take 10 days to investigate and work around this problem.)



    In related news, as soon as the bot greenlights v18 on Safari, it's gonna be released.
    Maybe Miles is still too busy fixing that header link to restart his MySQL server?

    It's so complicated, after all. *roll eyes*

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks for the analysis, Renegade. I suspected it was yet another simple fix that had the mad tech skillz of the EQAL staff baffled yet again :)

    @Modelmotion: I would be more specific and postulate that the Gayliens have probably kidnapped Miles. One shudders at the horrors he is being subjected to that would keep him from paying attention to his FLAGSHIP website. I can think of no other reason why they would ignore such huge errors.

    ReplyDelete
  7. makes total sense

    i hope he does not surrender too many plothole secrets to they Gayliens.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Gotta take out the counter, model...or just set it to 142 and make it the header link counter.

    ReplyDelete




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