[Freelance Traveller] Site Outage 2010.Feb.05

[FreeTrav]

Our hosting provider seems to have met disaster, and their entire network is down - and has been so for over 21 hours as I write this. We may be looking for a new hosting provider very soon. If anyone has any insights into what may be happening in Canton, GA that might have caused this - other than suggesting that our provider's disaster might be fundamentally fiscal rather than technical (believe me, we're wondering that ourselves) - we'd be interested in hearing it.

Because of this outage, oure email addresses at freelancetraveller.com are also out of service.

As a temporary measure, email to us can be sent to freetrav@gmail.com

You can also visit our website mirror at http://freelancetraveller.downport.com

We will try to keep our fans updated as we find out more.

 

[ShapeShifter]

I honestly thought the thread title said "Site Outrage."

 

[Horatius]

I have tech people in Columbus. I'll direct this to them. Maybe they can help you out.

 

[Spinward Scout]

This is the third Traveller site that's gone down in the last couple of weeks. Anyone hear anything on the Hacker front? E-Commerce sites being attacked? Homeland Security's anti-cyberterrorism movement putting code into e-commerce websites they can use, maybe? I just find it strange that 3 sites have gone down in a short matter of weeks. Coincidence?

 

[fiat_knox]

This is the third Traveller site that's gone down in the last couple of weeks. Anyone hear anything on the Hacker front? E-Commerce sites being attacked? Homeland Security's anti-cyberterrorism movement putting code into e-commerce websites they can use, maybe? I just find it strange that 3 sites have gone down in a short matter of weeks. Coincidence?

It's the drokking Ine Givar. Possibly funded by the Zhodani.

I heard that Google were planning on pulling out of Querion subsector in protest.

 

[BeRKA]

No, it's not the freedom fighters of Ine Givar that are responsible. :nonono:

It is probably just old inferior impie technology that is falling apart.

 

[aramis]

Let's redirect away from the Paranoia mode, please. SS's post pushes hard on the political.

 

[fiat_knox]

This feels like O'Brien's Law in effect: The likelihood of a website being down is inversely proportional to your immediate interest in visiting it.

And I just checked - the main site's still down. I guess this means that it's likely to remain offline until Monday at the earliest.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Let's redirect away from the Paranoia mode, please. SS's post pushes hard on the political.

Sorry about that - was reading an article about Internet Censorship just before I posted.

 

[FreeTrav]

Oh, trust me - that would not be a semantic misread. See below.

 

[FreeTrav]

As I write this, it's been down for a minimum of 45 hours. I just checked again, and they have updated as of 18:00 Eastern time 2010.Feb.06 - they are saying that two separate and (ostensibly) unrelated incidents took out both their primary and backup systems, and OnTrac has been called in 'at great expense' to do data recovery. They do not have an estimate for restoration of service, other than 'as soon as we can', and they are claiming that they will have new and better redundancy/backup solutions after restoration.

This, obviously, does not help us right now.

We're still watching and waiting and fuming. And I'm going to be talking to some friends about this sort of situation, from a theoretical standpoint. Which may not stay theoretical, depending on what I learn.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

I've been able to get in to Freelance Traveller homepage through the following URL:

http://72.29.73.123/~freetrav/

I don't know why it works, it simply works for me.

 

[Theophilus]

It would now appear that the site: The-Children-of-the-Earth is also down.
If so, that would make four sites in a very short period of time.
Maybe Spinward Scout is right about a hacker?

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

But why would a hacker take away "www.freelancetraveller.com" and leave "72.29.73.123/~freetrav/" unmolested?

(I tried the link a minute ago, and it still works.)

 

[Gray Lensman]

It would now appear that the site: The-Children-of-the-Earth is also down.
If so, that would make four sites in a very short period of time.
Maybe Spinward Scout is right about a hacker?

http://www.the-children-of-earth.org/traveller/
It works for me.

 

[ShapeShifter]

http://www.the-children-of-earth.org/traveller/
It works for me.

I can raise the site too.


If FreeTraveller is back online eventually, I may have a submission after all.

 

[FreeTrav]

The numeric URL is the actual address of our mirror at Downport; it can also be reached via http://freelancetraveller.downport.com.

The site at http://www.freelancetraveller.com is down because our hosting service had a pair of ostensibly unrelated "incidents" that took out both primary and backup systems, for their entire network. At last report (8.Feb. 2010 16:00), they were hoping to restore service by the afternoon of 9.Feb.2010. We're waiting and watching (and, quite honestly, fuming).

As far as submissions... while the email service was also taken out in the outage, we DO have several backup email routes to reach us, and our mirror IS on-line (the numeric URL given previously, plus the Downport URL above), so feel free to send your submissions to freetrav@gmail.com.

We'll keep people informed in the Lone Star section as we learn more.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

The numeric URL is the actual address of our mirror at Downport...

<* Facepalm *> D'oh! I shoulda thunk it. Good to know. Best of luck with that!

Any more hints as to what your 'special theme' for the next ish might be?

 

[FreeTrav]

<* Facepalm *> D'oh! I shoulda thunk it. Good to know. Best of luck with that!

Any more hints as to what your 'special theme' for the next ish might be?

Not the NEXT issue, just a FUTURE issue - we're still accumulating material for it. And no, there will be no hints. That would spoil the surprise!

 

[FreeTrav]

WE'RE BACK!

Some time between 18:00 EST yesterday and 05:00 this morning, our hosting provider got their services running. At the present time, the main Freelance Traveller website and all email addresses @freelancetraveller.com are back in service. We apologise for the outage, and are continuing to look at options for redundancy and fallover. Thank you for bearing with us during this trying week.