Main F2S Website Down

[j2fm]

The main F2s web site has been down all of this evening so no www.f2s.com or www.freedom2surf.net. No access to your members area etc etc.

Jim J

[scotsfilmmaker]

http://www.freedom2surf.net/

[bernashmat]

Well i can't connect to it, getting timed out,

[scotsfilmmaker]

Thanks for getting back to me. I`m at work, thought it might me a problem with our exchange server again. They must be doing some late night maintenance.

[acidtechno]

it's been down all evening, with no explanation.

no prior warning, so something bad must have happened somewhere.

[Justin]

It's been down since at least half eight.

Members Area:
https://secure.freedom2surf.net/home2/index.php

Webmail:
https://webmail.freedom2surf.net

[j2fm]

Originally Posted by Justin

It's been down since at least half eight.

Members Area:
https://secure.freedom2surf.net/home2/index.php

Webmail:
https://webmail.freedom2surf.net

Thanks for posting those 2 links that was handy.

[aos101]

I don't suppose customers will ever get an explanation as to why this happened and why it was down for so long will they?

[Andrewr_f2s]

I have checked this out upon reading this thread. We had no reports from engineering that site became unavailable yesterday evening. If in event there is another incident could one of you send across a trace route, ping for me to work with.

[aos101]

Do engineering even monitor the server? It was clearly dead from the Internet, not responding to pings or connections. Shouldn't someone look at the server logs to try and figure out what happened?

[Andrewr_f2s]

I have been told by engineering that there is monitoring in place.

There were no alerts raised for yesterday.

[Justin]

Well it couldn't be accessed from this server, for NTL Ireland, Newnet UK, F2S UK or an American and French ISP, all of which had timeouts on the last hop which was server0006.freedom2surf.net and the rest of the traceroute was as normal.

[aos101]

May I suggest some external monitoring by a 3rd party for the webservers then, so they get an idea of what people out on the Internet see of the webserver uptime.

We know the site couldn't be accessed from F2S, NewNet, NTL Ireland and this webserver in London, so I would hope they will look at why their monitoring is the only thing that thinks it was online.

[Andrewr_f2s]

I have re-raised yours/my concerns with engineering Adam.

I will let you all know how I get on.

Originally Posted by Andrewr_f2s

I have been told by engineering that there is monitoring in place.

Welcome to the real world Andrew.

It has long been established that there is no webserver monitoring since Pipex took over, despite assurances from F2S staff (who, like you, probably believed it).

When the webservers go down outside Monday-Friday office hours they usually stay that way (sometimes all weekend) until somebody gets in to your office and picks up a complaint.

This is why so many people (including me) moved their sites elsewhere in the last year.

I suggest you move your website to a proper hosting company.

...

[Andrewr_f2s]

Thanks for comments Samizdata. Your talking about shared hosting which I know we are monitoring. The servers are in a much better location now for our engineering team.

As for yesterdays main site outage this is not related to those previous events. For example we have not had a rogue, compromised script etc that has affected the site. This issue is under investigation and I am awaiting comments from one of the management.

[kmount]

I'd like to hear from the guy in Engineering who said there were no alerts raised. He's probably the fool who constantly says theres no issue when users report an obvious one.

Reminds me of the Iraqi minister who said 'everything was fine' even when Baghdad was being blasted.

[acidtechno]

Originally Posted by Chaz

Reminds me of the Iraqi minister who said 'everything was fine' even when Baghdad was being blasted.

hehe..

former Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf

also known as Comical Ali.

http://www.ministerofdisinformation.com

click on ask the minister to hear them, needs IE for the sounds to work.

[kmount]

Thats the man.

Does your engineering man look like that Andrew?

Perhaps replace the beret with a baseball cap, are we close?

[wfnuk]

Apologies! Nothing to do with this thread but seeing the picture of the former Iraqi Information Minister brought back some memories and reminded me that I'd got some associated picturess which I thought that some of you might find interesting.

They are of the actual bomb that hit the Ministry of Information in April 2003 - with a personal message to 'Saddam and Friends' from me and a friend. Our nicknames are on it, Mikey Ram and Flankie (which is me - don't ask!!) There was also a 'Get well soon' message for me on it as I was a bit 'under the weather' at the time.

Also, I have in my possession the actual 'safing pin' off the same bomb which was kept for me as a souvenir.

Hope that they are of interest!

[akita_inu]

Wow .... !!

Originally Posted by Andrewr_f2s

As for yesterdays main site outage this is not related to those previous events.

Different cause, different server, same problem - no monitoring, unacceptable downtime.

Originally Posted by Chaz

I'd like to hear from the guy in Engineering who said there were no alerts raised.

"Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience."

...

[Andrewr_f2s]

I have had an update regarding this.

Engineering have confirmed that an alert had been raised and passed to the relevant team to resolve. Unfortunately at this point the process had broken down. They are continuing to investigate why this had been missed considering the process has worked successfully for other recent server outages. Rest assured I will follow this up to ensure that there is no repeat.

[acidtechno]

thank you for the post Andrew but I find it hard to understand how a process could have broken down if engineering knew of the downtime and the team had been passed the task of fixing it, are you saying the team failed to recieve their task for some reason? is this why the process broke down? did someone not check their email/messages? do engineering not use the phone?

it's not rocket science for people looking after an ISP to know the main site is down.

I assume these engineers are looking after Pipex/Nildram/F2S etc so are busy people, but usually when working for the ISPs you are using and checking all sites regularly.

[kmount]

Left hand, meet right.

(I think I've said that before?)