Hardware replacement, downtime

I think I have discovered the issues with the random shutdowns that took the site off line. As is the case with everything in life the solution to the problem is going to cost money and time.

I will be heading out to purchase some new hardware this afternoon and its installation will cause some downtime. If all goes as planned it will be less than an hour. I will give a 20-30 minute warning on RW before I take things down.

Google prodding still needed btw:

Conservapeida
Gish Gallop

UPDATE: Okay I lied. I am trying to get a few things done at once, and the completion time on task 1 is taking longer than I anticipated so the hardware replacement has been delayed till late tonight or tomorrow.

Poking Google

We got dropped by the search engines so I am going to poke a few of the important pages, and hope it prods re-indexing of the site:

Poe's Law
Andrew Schlafly
Conservapedia

If you have a blog or other dynamically updated website please consider poking these pages, or any of your favorite RationalWiki pages.

All systems a go

Well RationalWiki should have all cylinders firing.

Sorry for the downtime, but there was naught I could do. I will be doing some thinking about how to expand remote administration of the site over the next few days. This probably means a mini-fund raiser will be in order but hopefully we can get something set up that will prevent this kind of disaster in the future.

Getting things back online now

Not a hundred percent yet.

Main thing to do is some troubleshooting and then apparently importing pages that have been made on other wikis.

Database is locked for now.

Stay tuned for updates.

Update: Everything is working. NX is going to import pages from other wikis and then open up the database for the grand reunion. I am going to get food an caffeine. We have some "rebuilding" to do though since google dropped us. I will post on RW later tonight to poke people for help getting us back to awesome again.

When will we be back?

I have poked at the server every way I know how. It will have to wait till I get back.

I am arriving in Toronto at 3:45 pm EST on Sunday, September 6th. It is American Airlines flight 4068 if you want to track it to know when it lands.

Add an hour to get through customs and get my baggage. I then have to catch a bus back to Hamilton. I should arrive back at McMaster around 6 pm EST. Add 30 minutes to get back to my apartment. If it is a simple solution the server should be back on by 7 pm EST September 6th. If there is something more going on I will post here by 7pm to let everyone know.

It sucks that it went down. I am disappointed but its not the end of the world. Everything will be back and working well within 14 days from now.

I hope it is not to terrible for anyone, and might provide a nice break for a few people.

If this downtime has shown RW to be of particular importance to you it might be worth it to consider tossing some financial support our way. I will use that to invest in infrastructure to allow better remote maintenance options in the future.

Pretty much worse case scenario

As is obvious to most by now the site is inaccessible, however, the bot server appears to be working. This means it is not just an internet problem, but a potential issue with the server having shut down. If this is the case I doubt there is anything I can do for now.

Server down

We are experience some difficulties with mysql connections at the moment which is causing the downtime.

I am trying to track down the problem as I type this.

*EDIT*

Site should be back up. Post here if you are unable to access it.