Unexpected Server Outage – 10/23 and 10/24

[Jeremy]

The WGA server went offline about 5pm last night and was brought back around 3:30pm today. The WGA web team apologizes for this unexpected downtime. Of course the problem happened at a time where we were not in the best position to handle it… in most cases, this problem could have been fixed in a matter of hours. We were able to get a “sorry we are down” message up this morning so people knew what was happening versus just getting a timeout… and we received about 5000 hits on this offline page.

Thanks to several folks who emailed or called me to let me know there was a problem. If you ever suspect there is a problem with the website, PLEASE email or call me ASAP. (Phone: 414.975.1509, Email: jsv vechinski com) Do not use any @wi-geocaching.com email addresses for emergency communication, as any mail sent to these addresses while the server is down will not be delivered until after it is available again.

Technical Details Of The Problem For Nerds

A DHCP issue similar to what we experienced back in April was to blame. Essentially, the server lost its connection to the Internet, and when it came back, it failed to reacquire some of the settings it needed to start communicating again.

I’m now in the process of hard coding some parameters to eliminate our reliance on DHCP so this doesn’t happen again (fingers crossed). In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the greatest idea to rely on DHCP to configure the TCP/IP parameters of the server, but we did this to make moving the server between various hosting environments a breeze.

[K0rpl]

Thanks Jeremy and all others Involved.

DHCP. Gotta love it!! Or hate it!!! Your call..
We run into issues with it all the time at work with Copiers and Printers. Some just don’t like to work under the DHCP Umbrealla.

I attempted to Ping it Yesterday from Home, and from remote, and neither worked.

Thanks again.

Justin

[furfool]

It sounds all Greek to me. Or is that Chinese or maybe Indian? I’m just glad to see the sight up and running again. Thanks.

[Team Hemisphere Dancer]

I’m just glad I have a connection to my lifeline again.

Thanks

[Trekkin and Birdin]

Me too, I was logging today’s finds and now gc.com went crazy on me! Thanks for all the work providing us with this site. I keep discovering new things beyond the forums here all the time!

[Timberline Echoes]

Had no time to check in here yesterday so good to hear it slowed everyone down. Jeremy are you sure we didn’t finally get at the computer with that Off Topic forum??????
TE

[PCFrog]

Oh… I was so hoping that the reason for the servers being down was due to the fact that yall were prepping the site for the WGA coin sale. 😆

Thanks for getting the site up. 😀

[cheezehead]

@Trekkin’ and Birdin’ wrote:

Me too, I was logging today’s finds and now gc.com went crazy on me! Thanks for all the work providing us with this site. I keep discovering new things beyond the forums here all the time!

I saw it posted on the GC forums that they were gonna be doing some work on their site also, so it was going to be on off too.

[kbraband]

@Jeremy wrote:

In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the greatest idea to rely on DHCP to configure the TCP/IP parameters of the server.

Exactly.

(What did he just say?)

[Vegas Gamblers]

@kbraband wrote:

@Jeremy wrote:

In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the greatest idea to rely on DHCP to configure the TCP/IP parameters of the server.

Exactly.

(What did he just say?)

I will second that.

[Jeremy]

@Timberline Echoes wrote:

Jeremy are you sure we didn’t finally get at the computer with that Off Topic forum??????

We’ve had to add some additional storage capacity to handle all the posts, but so far the thread stealers have not killed the server. Keep trying guys! 😛

@PCFrog wrote:

Oh… I was so hoping that the reason for the servers being down was due to the fact that yall were prepping the site for the WGA coin sale. 😆

It was good to get this problem “out of our system” BEFORE the coins went on sale. We are lucky this did not occur during the geocoin sale, as we probably would have lost some serious coin. 😉

[K0rpl]

I bet the CPU Usage with the Thread Stealers is not even noticeable!!!

Now Data Storage may be the Problem. I wonder what that is up to size wise???

[Cheesehead Dave]

@Jeremy wrote:

@Timberline Echoes wrote:

Jeremy are you sure we didn’t finally get at the computer with that Off Topic forum??????

We’ve had to add some additional storage capacity to handle all the posts, but so far the thread stealers have not killed the server. Keep trying guys! 😛

@PCFrog wrote:

Oh… I was so hoping that the reason for the servers being down was due to the fact that yall were prepping the site for the WGA coin sale. 😆

It was good to get this problem “out of our system” BEFORE the coins went on sale. We are lucky this did not occur during the geocoin sale, as we probably would have lost some serious coin. 😉

See: Colorado Rockies World Series ticket fiasco

[Team Deejay]

@K0rpl wrote:

I bet the CPU Usage with the Thread Stealers is not even noticeable!!!

Now Data Storage may be the Problem. I wonder what that is up to size wise???

Ya know, if we added a program to erase the text of all but the last 40 posts in that thread to reduce disk space usage, leaving the blank messages so the count kept increasing, I wonder if anyone would notice? 😆

[K0rpl]

Yeah, I would. Sometime I will go back and read it!!!!!!

So I have no life. What else is new!!!!!!!!

[Author]

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