Mailing List Archive

On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 11:40:22AM +0000, Giskart wrote:
> Now when Wikipedia goes down all visitors of Wikipedia
> get a error.
>
> Wikipedians, the come back when the system is back up
> but new visitors mayby not.And it gives a bad impression.
>
> I would be very nice that when wikipedia.org goes down
> all traffic goes to a page that says that Wikipedia is
> down and will be back up as soon as possibel.

Even better would be to redirect to read only mirror,
updated nightly.

Anybody have an idea of how to implement such a "redirect", assuming
that when we need the redirect most, we're in a situation where the machine
that answers to the ip that the name wikipedia.org resolves to is
totally incapable of doing anything, and we don't control the routers
that the request would pass through.

It's a difficult thing to do without adding some hardware, and that
money would need to come from somewhere...

Jason

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 11:40:22AM +0000, Giskart wrote:
> > Now when Wikipedia goes down all visitors of Wikipedia
> > get a error.
> >
> > Wikipedians, the come back when the system is back up
> > but new visitors mayby not.And it gives a bad impression.
> >
> > I would be very nice that when wikipedia.org goes down
> > all traffic goes to a page that says that Wikipedia is
> > down and will be back up as soon as possibel.
>
> Even better would be to redirect to read only mirror,
> updated nightly.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr@bomis.com>

Good idea !!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tomasz Wegrzanowski" <taw@users.sourceforge.net>
To: <wikitech-l@wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 3:27 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] redirect when Wikipedia is down


> On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 11:40:22AM +0000, Giskart wrote:
> > Now when Wikipedia goes down all visitors of Wikipedia
> > get a error.
> >
> > Wikipedians, the come back when the system is back up
> > but new visitors mayby not.And it gives a bad impression.
> >
> > I would be very nice that when wikipedia.org goes down
> > all traffic goes to a page that says that Wikipedia is
> > down and will be back up as soon as possibel.
>
> Even better would be to redirect to read only mirror,
> updated nightly.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

On mar, 2003-02-04 at 19:12, Jason Richey wrote:
> Anybody have an idea of how to implement such a "redirect", assuming
> that when we need the redirect most, we're in a situation where the machine
> that answers to the ip that the name wikipedia.org resolves to is
> totally incapable of doing anything, and we don't control the routers
> that the request would pass through.

Hmm, one could put a short TTL on the DNS entry, and swap it to point to
another machine in case of problems.

However that could be problematic in terms of hugely increasing traffic
for the DNS server.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

>Hmm, one could put a short TTL on the DNS entry, and swap it to point to
>another machine in case of problems.
>
>However that could be problematic in terms of hugely increasing traffic
>for the DNS server.

I tried this several times... i don't think it is a good idea.
Isn't it possible to do a normal port-forwarding while doing some
work on the server?

Phil

We would have to initiate this from the machine that is not
responding, or we would have to have a router under our control
connected upstream.

The former, of course, won't work when the machine is not responding,
at least until we know why the machine stops responding (in which case
we don't need this solution anymore). The latter exceeds our current
budget of $0.00.

Jason

Philipp W. wrote:

> >Hmm, one could put a short TTL on the DNS entry, and swap it to point to
> >another machine in case of problems.
> >
> >However that could be problematic in terms of hugely increasing traffic
> >for the DNS server.
>
> I tried this several times... i don't think it is a good idea.
> Isn't it possible to do a normal port-forwarding while doing some
> work on the server?
>
> Phil
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr@bomis.com>

>>I tried this several times... i don't think it is a good idea.
>>Isn't it possible to do a normal port-forwarding while doing some
>>work on the server?
>>

Jason Richey wrote:
> We would have to initiate this from the machine that is not
> responding, or we would have to have a router under our control
> connected upstream.
>

It does not have to be that complicated. In principle, and if we assume
that client browsers support the META redirect tag (after, say 120
seconds), than a wikipedia mirror could welcome everybody who thirsts
for knowledge, no ?

cheers,
buraq

>>I tried this several times... i don't think it is a good idea.
>>Isn't it possible to do a normal port-forwarding while doing some
>>work on the server?
>>

Jason Richey wrote:
> We would have to initiate this from the machine that is not
> responding, or we would have to have a router under our control
> connected upstream.
>

I thought that the server is down for maintenance because someone is
installing new software?
So portforwarding would be possible....

Phil

And what about temporal moving to a rent server for some ours ( short-time rent room).

Made the changes, the wikipedia could return to the original server.

This is interesting to see with http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/interwiki servers interconnected.

Regards.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Philipp W." <philipp@diewebdesigner.com>
To: <wikitech-l@wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 11:51 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: redirect when Wikipedia is down


> >>I tried this several times... i don't think it is a good idea.
> >>Isn't it possible to do a normal port-forwarding while doing some
> >>work on the server?
> >>
>
> Jason Richey wrote:
> > We would have to initiate this from the machine that is not
> > responding, or we would have to have a router under our control
> > connected upstream.
> >
>
> I thought that the server is down for maintenance because someone is
> installing new software?
> So portforwarding would be possible....
>
> Phil
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

Ah, in this situation, I agree that such a thing would be easy to do.
Our most recent outage (night before last) was due to server problems
that we don't comprehend at the moment. Since this thread began the
next morning, I assumed that that was the type of outage we were
attempting to deal with.

For outages like these, it only takes a few moments to fix, assuming
someone calls me and asks me to (760-486-9194). Other than that, I
don't think there is an easily workable solution.

Jason

Philipp W. wrote:

> Jason Richey wrote:
> > We would have to initiate this from the machine that is not
> > responding, or we would have to have a router under our control
> > connected upstream.
> >
>
> I thought that the server is down for maintenance because someone is
> installing new software?
> So portforwarding would be possible....
>
> Phil
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr@bomis.com>

I'm getting the feeling that I misunderstood what everyone meant when
this thread started. I thought we were talking about times when we
have lost all contact with the server, but it seems that most everyone
is talking about when the server is not responding due to some sort of
maintenance (do we even do that?).

All I ever meant to say is that if we can't control the server at all
(that is, we can't login, and it doesn't serve any webpages), it is
unlikely that we will be able to perform any sort of redirect without
bringing in some new equipment to preempt the connection. Also, in
this type of situation, it only takes me a moment to restart the
server once I am made aware of the situation, so it would be easier
and faster if somebody called me and told me instead of trying to
redirect all traffic from the server...

Jason

buraq wrote:

> Jason Richey wrote:
> > We would have to initiate this from the machine that is not
> > responding, or we would have to have a router under our control
> > connected upstream.
> >
>
> It does not have to be that complicated. In principle, and if we assume
> that client browsers support the META redirect tag (after, say 120
> seconds), than a wikipedia mirror could welcome everybody who thirsts
> for knowledge, no ?
>
> cheers,
> buraq
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr@bomis.com>