10 ms·
So what happened to the HN server?
I'm sure I'm not the only one curious how that Altair is holding up.
- JosephRedfern 14y agoThere was a post about it recently (advising that there would be downtime) - they've upgraded. It's considerably quicker now!
- neeee 14y agoThat was for Saturday morning.
- pyre 14y agoObviously the new server has some growing pains. :P Just because the switch-over went smoothly doesn't mean that normal operations didn't fall apart later on.
- gabriel34 14y agoBut saturday morning the site was up Perhaps the server upgrade was delayed or something went wrong with it.
- neeee 14y agoThe site was down briefly saturday morning.
- detst 14y agoThat was Saturday but appears to be related. PG posted this to Twitter[1]: Apologies for the HN outage. We think it may be related to the new server. This could take a while to fix. [1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/303350671460147200 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/303350671460147200
- level09 14y agoisn't a bit long for a server upgrade ? shouldn't be there better strategies for quick switching ?
- neilkelty 14y agoAre you paying for this?
- lucb1e 14y agoWhat would you say if Google.com was down for 2 hours due to a server upgrade? Do you pay Google for searching? Bonus points if you do actually. Their search API is limited to 100 a day, which is not a lot.
- shawnz 14y agoIf you're using google search, you're paying google in ad impressions.
- icebraining 14y agoAnd what do you think these[1] are? HN has ads, they're just less conspicuous. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs
- oijaf888 14y agoAren't those free for Y Combinator companies? Also you could just say the entire site is an ad for Y Combinator.
- level09 14y agoThis actually confirmed my thought, it was not a money related issue .. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5239673 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5239673
- viraptor 14y ago
- supercoder 14y agoThough do wonder if it being quicker has something to do with everyone getting bored of refreshing it.
- gabriele 14y agooriginal pg's announcement: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5229364 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5229364
- superflit 14y agoMy bad karma tainted the server..
- supercoder 14y agoI'll upvote you so it doesnt happen again.
- superflit 14y agoThanks Bro. Lived in Colorado for 3 years, Eric cartman was my role model ;)
- dutchbrit 14y agoCurious too. I was able to ping the servers when it went down again a few hours ago just fine. Let's just hope it stays up now!
- guojh0570 14y agoI think it may need some time to adapt the new server.
- dotmanish 14y agoMore importantly, why isn't there a status page for something that's equivalent to a lifesaving drug for many?
- supercoder 14y agothere's only one server. if the server is down, then assume the status is not 'green'.
- dasil003 14y agoHow can Joe-random-user be certain the server is down?
- lucaspiller 14y agohttp://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/
- beaumartinez 14y agohttp://isup.me/ http://isup.me/ (their official shortened link).
- objclxt 14y agoAside from the various services to test on, if you're using Chrome you'll see a "Other people have reported this site is unavailable" message in addition to the standard errors.
- andrewcooke 14y agouse twitter - there were various things there, including an explanation from pg and some people recommending alternatives. https://twitter.com/search?q=hacker%20news&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?q=hacker%20news&src=typd
- GFischer 14y ago
- gbraad 14y agophew Almost thought HN was blocked here in China...
- lucb1e 14y agoThere is no way to know if it's just you for whom it's blocked? Are services like isup.me/domain also blocked?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- bbrizzi 14y agowww.viewdns.info has a "Chinese Firewall Test" to check if a particular domain is blocked in China.
- gbraad 14y agoThere s a plethora of checks I could do, and a lot of sites which check from different locations within china. The Internet is not same everywhere... But even some of these sites are blocked. I did visit one of those quickly and the result was HN should be reachable... Hmmmm, therefore I. Checked with another age and this also timed out on my tablet. So either my ADSL or the server was problematic? I went for dinner and upon return it worked. The check I used was http://www.blockedinchina.net/ http://www.blockedinchina.net/ First time I used this site...
- X4 14y agophew lmost thought HN was blocked when behind VPNs
- gbog 14y agoWhen blocked browser behave differently. btw I'm in Beijing too, maybe we met in open parties?
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoThis looked more like the block you get when you are on the site's black list. How many HN readers are in Beijing? In zhongguancun?
- runarb 14y agoDo we get a new server? Please tell me more :)
- kaushaldhora 14y agoThank God Its Up now...:)
- tferris 14y agoSaturday, I thought: "This guy (PG) is really brave, everybody is nowadays using virtualized server environments on mulit-core machines and PG just gets some bare metal and puts his app on one core and one thread. WTF, this guy is a genius, single-threaded apps on bare metal FTW, this is so great and I am doing this too." After seeing this thing down for several hours -- and Google hate downtimes, they punish you instantly -- I think: "Maybe not." However, happy to hear what went wrong and why we still should go for the bare metal thing.
- supercoder 14y agothe site actually runs very quickly, so can't argue it needs more cores / threads. seems the issue was more with the migration. so i reckon you're good to get back to removing all the threads from your apps :)
- tferris 14y agoI totally agree, this new machine is so fricking responsive that I still think bare metal rules but I am just so afraid of the system operations of such a machine. But maybe Paul can give us some hints and why it's still worth to go the bare metal route. EDIT: since Heroku fooled Rapgenius and us all it would be one more reason to get into system operations again and host on bare metal.
- voidlogic 14y agoMany people use baremetal for their base-load and virtual/cloud instances for their fail-over and elastic loads. Its not all or nothing.
- lucb1e 14y agoI wanted to reply that it's actually relatively fast, not very fast. Much faster than before, but there are many sites which are much quicker. Timing some pages, the response is around 350ms. That means 95% of the loading time is networking, not generation time. You're right, the server is really fast given the load HN brings down on one server!
- markyc 14y agostrange productivity peak recorded in the IT sector during the past 16 hours
- lucb1e 14y ago16 hours?! I'm so glad I slept through most of it then!
- mattquiros 14y agostrange productivity dip happening in the IT sector right now
- carlio 14y agoSoon in the news: "New startup emerges from stealth mode after delivering on promise to improve IT efficiency by 80%"
- farious 14y agoI was starting to freak out without HN! (Even created an account just to express my feelings)
- purplepilot 14y agoi had to work for heavens sake
- jbrooksuk 14y agoGoodbye productivity.
- X4 14y agoGoodbye procrastination.
- X4 14y agoWhat else can go wrong on monday?
- X4 14y agoWhy don't you Ajaxify HN while you're at it??
- Yuioup 14y agoNot trolling but just wondering. What added value does Ajaxifying the site bring to HN?
- X4 14y ago:) I'd instantly know when I get downvoted for saying something stupid ;) seeing submissions in realtime, reducing load on the HN server. Saving F5 addicts.
- profquail 14y agoWhy don't you implement AJAX support in news.arc? That way PG won't have to spend the time writing it... https://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/lib/news.arc https://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/lib/news.arc
- X4 14y agoGood Point. Thanks for posting the link. Sorry, I don't know Lisp and Arc seems to be a dialect of it that I also don't know.
- youngerdryas 14y agoApparently it is not out of the woods yet - the comment tab links to the front page.
- samwillis 14y agoSeems to be showing the homepage, not redirecting it. I think PG/RTM must have introduced a bug while fixing the problem. Have they no unit tests ;-D ?
- youngerdryas 14y agoOr maybe they removed the comment page because it was causing the crashes, possibly related to the Unicrud Twitter crashes?
- JuDue 14y agoFast is one thing. BUT I'd much rather get rid of the "this link has expired" syndrome. Fast is only impressive if the results are modern.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- brudgers 14y agoThe superior results from my browser's back button far outweigh the inconvenience of the expired link. I click on a link from the "Ask" front page, reply to the top comment, and my comment appears in the thread. Next I click "back" on my browser and I'm back at the front page of "ask". I do that much more often than I hit an expired link.
- cincinnatus 14y agoStill, why not link to a page offset and just show what is current? Or include it with the current linking and automatically redirect? Pretty basic ux optimization.
- brudgers 14y agoBecause the functions which generate pages get garbage collected. Once the function is gone, there is no reference point. I suspect hindering spam and vote manipulation plays a part in the architectural decisions. It also makes it possible to create different HN's for different users - e.g. the hellbanned, royals, and plebeians.
- kyro 14y agoPG wasn't aware that PetSmart closes an hour earlier on Sundays, so he was forced to wait till opening this morning to get the additional hamsters needed to keep this place running.
- 3327 14y agoamazing... Just amazing... Would you happen to know what breed of hamsters he is using?
- Filligree 14y agoCured djungarian hamsters, I believe.
- JacobAldridge 14y agoDjungarian hamsters? Well now you have two problems.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- chairmankaga 14y agoI think they are deadly poisonous Zanzibar hamsters. Genetically engineered from rat and hamster DNA.
- noonespecial 14y agoAll I know is that you never have to clean the cage. I'm told that when they run, they don't have side-effects.
- ralph 14y agoI remember when this would have been considered noise here; now it's the top comment.
- 14y ago
- tuke 14y agoI thought the thing was running off of a server on an iPhone; probably just ran out of battery power.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoI have only one portal onto the Internet - this site. I check it first thing and last thing, and when it was down today I had a weird epiphany - I did not mind. HN is not a service, its not a startup trying to get mindshare - its a (luvvie alert) community - and one where the downtime had a known and obvious cause and did not matter - rtm would fix it, I would catch up, I knew this thread would exist and I would still get insight into what is happening 12 hours ahead of everyone else. I thought I would be more bothered - turns out I am emotionally invested, not emotionally dependant. To PG et al, good luck with the fixes, and thanks. Cheers
- Udo 14y agoIt's curious, isn't it, that we still have "Home" pages. For a while there, Google Reader was my starting point, but nowadays I find myself starting off from HN. This must be what Facebook feels like to normal people, but without the insidious stalking and the dreaded obligations that come from surveillance features like "X is online NOW, you have to interact with him/her!" and "X has seen this (but has neither liked nor commented on it)". Also, I wish my Facebook friends would produce a link and comment stream that is even one tenth as interesting as HN ;)
- dfc 14y agoNormal people? I just vomited a little. Thanks for ruining breakfast.
- Udo 14y agoYou're very welcome. And I allege you know that's not how I meant it. Do you really want to assert that the subject matters at HN are part of mainstream culture? I do believe that IT people tend to use the internet differently, this is not an elitist observation in case it came across as such. It's just different.
- dfc 14y agoI have a friend who is big into fantasy sports (blue collar job: construction). The first thing he does when he sits down in front of the computer is that he checks whatever roster he is managing at the time. Is he not "normal"?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- wglb 14y agoHere is a curious thing--now that its up, checking http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg times out. And apparently only for PG. Other frequent commenters work fine.
- youngerdryas 14y agoIt is back up now as well as the comments page.
- barking 14y agoThis latest test suggests that HN seeks membership of errorban club. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-hellban.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-h...