6 ms·

Linode having some issues

34 points by axod 17y ago

linode.com and their forum are reasonably slow/offline Here's a copy of their original post: http://kovaya.com/linode.html

buugs 17y ago
The forum page isn't loading for me, what problems are they having? My vps is still up and has been up (at the dallas datacenter) and seems to be working fine.
- robotadam 17y ago
  Here's the initial note from the forum. I copied it before and can't reload, so I don't know the user that posted it. "During a shared library update distributed to our hosts, a number of the hosts incorrectly have marked Linodes as being shut down. To recover from this we may be issuing host reboots to upgrade their software to our latest stack, and then bringing the Linodes to their last state. We're working on this now and expect to have additional updates shortly. We'll also be notifying those affected via our support ticket system. Please stand by."
- andrewtj 17y ago
  Mine is also at Dallas (dallas98) but has only been up for ~20 minutes and is extremely slow. edit: Looks like my VPS was offline for 20 ~ 30 minutes and has settled down now.
  - spokey 17y ago
    For what it's worth, I have also have VPS in Dallas that is running fine right now, and has been up since my last manual reboot (more than 30 days ago).
axod 17y ago
Looks like they did an update on their host machines. The update unfortunately meant that many hosts marked linodes as being shutdown, when they should have been marked up. This meant many linodes were unreachable (No network). linode.com was extremely slow also, don't know if it's related. They're rebooting hosts to fix the issue, which is just horrible. Here's a copy of the original post, since their own website and forum are slow/offline: http://kovaya.com/linode.html http://kovaya.com/linode.html
dpcan 17y ago
If you go back in time and watch threads during almost ALL web hosting outages, the #1 COMPLAINT is always lack of communication with users. PLEASE, web hosting companies, get the point, we want constant communications, even if you have nothing new to report. WE are smart too, let us know what you're trying, what's working, what's not, maybe your USERS can help you fix the problem.
- benofsky 17y ago
  This is why Slicehost rock, they always communicate brilliantly. What I find amazing here is that the Linode representative hasn't even said sorry in the first post they made and hasn't in the second post either, crazy.
  - dpcan 17y ago
    I agree. I love Slicehost, and I really love how they haven't changed in terms of customer service since they joined up with Rackspace.
    - cmelbye 17y ago
      I've never tried Slicehost before, but I've actually had really good results with Rackspace's "fanatical" support. Slicehost's support could have only gotten better! ;-)
  - chrischen 17y ago
    Slicehost seems to cost more. EDIT: Wait? Does Slicehost not cost more? Please, correct me if I'm wrong. But from what I'm seeing you get less RAM, Bandwidth, and Space for the same price. Btw, I use Slicehost, and just recently they had problems with my server. Otherwise they're flawless though. Great support too.
    - bham 17y ago
      ... and does not have bandwidth pooling, does it?
ShabbyDoo 17y ago
What is notable to me is the surprise received by those who purchased hosting in multiple geographies to survive a datacenter-wide issue. I hadn't thought much before about the effect of centralized IT management decisions on availability. Perhaps those who really need uptime will now consider using another hosting provider as fail-over. Not sure how the DNS issues would play out as network-level load balancing isn't something I know much about.
dwiel 17y ago
I've not noticed any downtime or lagging in Dallas
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
ajju 17y ago
My first warning about this was my "Host down" sensor firing from the monitoring service, almost an hour after they noticed the issue. I really love Linode and my experience with them so far has been great but such a lag in communicating critical issues is not acceptable.
bk 17y ago
Yeah, all my linode sites are dead (timeout) and no shell, at the very least for 1 hour, NJ datacenter. Sucks. Will be interesting to see how this unfolds.
brlewis 17y ago
Guess I lucked out. My linode in Fremont was unaffected.
- techiferous 17y ago
  I lucked out, too. The world's not fair: I'm hosting a bunch of stupid sites on my Linode in New Jersey (like http://histaniputyourpictureonthewebihopeyoudontmind.com/ http://histaniputyourpictureonthewebihopeyoudontmind.com/ ), whereas I bet some other people with Linode problems are losing money. I feel for them. EDIT: I just checked my uptime and it looks like my linode was rebooted. But I never noticed (and I was actually logged in and working there a lot today).
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
tsuraan 17y ago
It doesn't look like it was a graceful shutdown either; I had to enter maintenance mode and fsck by hand. Lots of bad free block counts, but now that it's booted, I'm not seeing any corruption. I just use my linode for fun, so I don't really care too much, but it would be nice to get a better explanation than that initial explanation of hosts being erroneously marked as down.
zefhous 17y ago
It's disconcerting to discover the cause of my server problems today via a thread on Hacker News instead of getting an email or from their RSS feed or something. That being said, I think Linode is great and I've had a great experience with them so far.
kellishaver 17y ago
Personally, I haven't noticed any downtime today on our linodes in Dallas and Atlanta. I don't know. I get the complaint about lack of communication, on the other hand, though, I'd rather have them working to solve the problem than sitting and updating a blog. Was it a dumb move to push the update to multiple data centers in the middle of the day? Maybe, but then, without knowing all the details of how and why it as done, that's a big assumption to jump to. Linode is still, hands-down, the best hosting provider I've ever used (and yes, I had a slicehost account for a long time), so I'll give them a pass on this one. Sometimes problems just happen.
- shpxnvz 17y ago
  It's not unreasonable to be shocked at a upgrade in the middle of the business day for the majority of their customers. Every significant online business I've worked with does deployments and upgrades off-peak, without exception. In fact one prefers to do production changes on Friday evenings so that the technical staff has the entire weekend to come in and resolve any problems that arise before the following Monday morning peak.
  - kellishaver 17y ago
    Oh, no, I didn't mean to imply that. I don't think anyone here is being unreasonable. I just meant that I've had enough awesome from Linode that I'm willing to give them a pass on this one. Everyone screws up now and then. :)
bengtan 17y ago
One of my linode servers got affected. It was shown as running but I couldn't ping it. Reboot, and still could not ping. Then I logged in via the LISH console and found out that eth0 wasn't up. Manually configured the network settings, and it's working again. Someone of you who are affected might like to try this too.
fjabre 17y ago
Bump Technologies uses Linode and I can't access their site. http://www.bumptechnologies.com/ http://www.bumptechnologies.com/ That's rough. I'm sure some heads are gonna roll come tomorrow morning. EDIT: I just recently signed up for Linode and love their service. Mine is still up. The only thing I was a little freaked out by is that their main site uses Cold Fusion. Poor judgement?
- petercooper 17y ago
  And Hacker News uses a dialect of Lisp. Point?
va_coder 17y ago
It's funny how our standards change. I've seen a lot of internal-to-the-organization hosting providers be down for days and not seem to care much. It's good that we demand more, but in retrospect the service we have today is pretty good and much better than it was in the past.
dreur 17y ago
Other post saying they will improve their process. http://www.linode.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4768&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight= http://www.linode.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4768&start=...
brettbender 17y ago
I recently (in the last week) signed up for the most basic Linode package for a pet project. Many of the posts on the forums note Linode's stellar track record, which is a bit reassuring, but doesn't really offset the lack of communication Linode has had with this.

34 points by axod 17y ago

linode.com and their forum are reasonably slow/offline Here's a copy of their original post: http://kovaya.com/linode.html

buugs 17y ago

The forum page isn't loading for me, what problems are they having? My vps is still up and has been up (at the dallas datacenter) and seems to be working fine.

robotadam 17y ago
Here's the initial note from the forum. I copied it before and can't reload, so I don't know the user that posted it. "During a shared library update distributed to our hosts, a number of the hosts incorrectly have marked Linodes as being shut down. To recover from this we may be issuing host reboots to upgrade their software to our latest stack, and then bringing the Linodes to their last state. We're working on this now and expect to have additional updates shortly. We'll also be notifying those affected via our support ticket system. Please stand by."
andrewtj 17y ago
Mine is also at Dallas (dallas98) but has only been up for ~20 minutes and is extremely slow. edit: Looks like my VPS was offline for 20 ~ 30 minutes and has settled down now.
- spokey 17y ago
  For what it's worth, I have also have VPS in Dallas that is running fine right now, and has been up since my last manual reboot (more than 30 days ago).

axod 17y ago

Looks like they did an update on their host machines. The update unfortunately meant that many hosts marked linodes as being shutdown, when they should have been marked up. This meant many linodes were unreachable (No network). linode.com was extremely slow also, don't know if it's related. They're rebooting hosts to fix the issue, which is just horrible. Here's a copy of the original post, since their own website and forum are slow/offline: http://kovaya.com/linode.html http://kovaya.com/linode.html

dpcan 17y ago

If you go back in time and watch threads during almost ALL web hosting outages, the #1 COMPLAINT is always lack of communication with users. PLEASE, web hosting companies, get the point, we want constant communications, even if you have nothing new to report. WE are smart too, let us know what you're trying, what's working, what's not, maybe your USERS can help you fix the problem.

benofsky 17y ago
This is why Slicehost rock, they always communicate brilliantly. What I find amazing here is that the Linode representative hasn't even said sorry in the first post they made and hasn't in the second post either, crazy.
- dpcan 17y ago
  I agree. I love Slicehost, and I really love how they haven't changed in terms of customer service since they joined up with Rackspace.
  - cmelbye 17y ago
    I've never tried Slicehost before, but I've actually had really good results with Rackspace's "fanatical" support. Slicehost's support could have only gotten better! ;-)
- chrischen 17y ago
  Slicehost seems to cost more. EDIT: Wait? Does Slicehost not cost more? Please, correct me if I'm wrong. But from what I'm seeing you get less RAM, Bandwidth, and Space for the same price. Btw, I use Slicehost, and just recently they had problems with my server. Otherwise they're flawless though. Great support too.
  - bham 17y ago
    ... and does not have bandwidth pooling, does it?

ShabbyDoo 17y ago

What is notable to me is the surprise received by those who purchased hosting in multiple geographies to survive a datacenter-wide issue. I hadn't thought much before about the effect of centralized IT management decisions on availability. Perhaps those who really need uptime will now consider using another hosting provider as fail-over. Not sure how the DNS issues would play out as network-level load balancing isn't something I know much about.

dwiel 17y ago

I've not noticed any downtime or lagging in Dallas

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

ajju 17y ago

My first warning about this was my "Host down" sensor firing from the monitoring service, almost an hour after they noticed the issue. I really love Linode and my experience with them so far has been great but such a lag in communicating critical issues is not acceptable.

bk 17y ago

Yeah, all my linode sites are dead (timeout) and no shell, at the very least for 1 hour, NJ datacenter. Sucks. Will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

brlewis 17y ago

Guess I lucked out. My linode in Fremont was unaffected.

techiferous 17y ago
I lucked out, too. The world's not fair: I'm hosting a bunch of stupid sites on my Linode in New Jersey (like http://histaniputyourpictureonthewebihopeyoudontmind.com/ http://histaniputyourpictureonthewebihopeyoudontmind.com/ ), whereas I bet some other people with Linode problems are losing money. I feel for them. EDIT: I just checked my uptime and it looks like my linode was rebooted. But I never noticed (and I was actually logged in and working there a lot today).
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]

tsuraan 17y ago

It doesn't look like it was a graceful shutdown either; I had to enter maintenance mode and fsck by hand. Lots of bad free block counts, but now that it's booted, I'm not seeing any corruption. I just use my linode for fun, so I don't really care too much, but it would be nice to get a better explanation than that initial explanation of hosts being erroneously marked as down.

zefhous 17y ago

It's disconcerting to discover the cause of my server problems today via a thread on Hacker News instead of getting an email or from their RSS feed or something. That being said, I think Linode is great and I've had a great experience with them so far.

kellishaver 17y ago

Personally, I haven't noticed any downtime today on our linodes in Dallas and Atlanta. I don't know. I get the complaint about lack of communication, on the other hand, though, I'd rather have them working to solve the problem than sitting and updating a blog. Was it a dumb move to push the update to multiple data centers in the middle of the day? Maybe, but then, without knowing all the details of how and why it as done, that's a big assumption to jump to. Linode is still, hands-down, the best hosting provider I've ever used (and yes, I had a slicehost account for a long time), so I'll give them a pass on this one. Sometimes problems just happen.

shpxnvz 17y ago
It's not unreasonable to be shocked at a upgrade in the middle of the business day for the majority of their customers. Every significant online business I've worked with does deployments and upgrades off-peak, without exception. In fact one prefers to do production changes on Friday evenings so that the technical staff has the entire weekend to come in and resolve any problems that arise before the following Monday morning peak.
- kellishaver 17y ago
  Oh, no, I didn't mean to imply that. I don't think anyone here is being unreasonable. I just meant that I've had enough awesome from Linode that I'm willing to give them a pass on this one. Everyone screws up now and then. :)

bengtan 17y ago

One of my linode servers got affected. It was shown as running but I couldn't ping it. Reboot, and still could not ping. Then I logged in via the LISH console and found out that eth0 wasn't up. Manually configured the network settings, and it's working again. Someone of you who are affected might like to try this too.

fjabre 17y ago

Bump Technologies uses Linode and I can't access their site. http://www.bumptechnologies.com/ http://www.bumptechnologies.com/ That's rough. I'm sure some heads are gonna roll come tomorrow morning. EDIT: I just recently signed up for Linode and love their service. Mine is still up. The only thing I was a little freaked out by is that their main site uses Cold Fusion. Poor judgement?

petercooper 17y ago
And Hacker News uses a dialect of Lisp. Point?

va_coder 17y ago

It's funny how our standards change. I've seen a lot of internal-to-the-organization hosting providers be down for days and not seem to care much. It's good that we demand more, but in retrospect the service we have today is pretty good and much better than it was in the past.

dreur 17y ago

Other post saying they will improve their process. http://www.linode.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4768&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight= http://www.linode.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4768&start=...

brettbender 17y ago

I recently (in the last week) signed up for the most basic Linode package for a pet project. Many of the posts on the forums note Linode's stellar track record, which is a bit reassuring, but doesn't really offset the lack of communication Linode has had with this.