No access to site

[EvanDavis]

@Ian I got this message around 10:15am today when trying to access the site.

 

[Ian]

Thanks for the heads up Evan, I just had an e-mail about this and it looks like the server took some automatic steps to restart the problematic services. I upgraded PHP last night (which has made page rendering much faster ), so I'll keen an eye on this in case it is related to that.

 

[Taffycat]

I was able to access the site, but received the same message as Evan, when trying to reply to one of the threads. First at 10:13 am. It looked normal again within a few minutes, but happened again at 10:30 am. The thread, in case it helps, was V_R's "Hackers Remotely Kill Jeep."

 

[nivrip]

I have had it on a very few occasions in the past but have simply gone out and into PCR again and all has been well.

 

[Ian]

Thanks guys, as it's happened again at 10:30, I'm looking at the logs right now to see what the cause is .

 

[Ian]

OK, I've made a change which requires a server restart, so I'll hold off doing this until tonight (unless it goes down again).

 

[Taffycat]

Just a quick heads-up. It happened again just now.

At 13:45 pm, I clicked on the link contained in an e-mail from PCR, (to the thread: Holiday First Aid Kit) and received the Internal Server Error message, mentioned above.

I also tried my direct shortcut link, that too, produced the same message. It had cleared by 13:47 pm

 

[Ian]

Thanks TC, I've just had the same thing - I'm delving in to the logs now and may need to restart the server.

Patching PHP versions is such a pain when it causes problems like this, it's supposed to be more stable rather then less .

 

[Taffycat]

Well from an ordinary user's viewpoint, PCR runs very smoothly, with very, very few glitches. So kudos to you Ian.

 

[V_R]

Agreed TC.

 

[Ian]

Sorry folks, the server has been temperamental for the past ten mins - I'm under the hood trying to figure out why this version of PHP is causing problems. I think someone may be DDOSing the server, as the load gets extremely high from one particular page.

 

[EvanDavis]

DDOSing the server

Not good.

 

[V_R]

I take it they're attacking the host and not the site itself Ian!? We ain't that bad!

 

[Ian]

Yeah, not the site directly (I hope!). Think it's all working now though .

 

[EvanDavis]

Yeah, not the site directly (I hope!). Think it's all working now though .

Is the site on a shared server ?

 

[Ian]

Is the site on a shared server ?

Yeah there are a other sites on the server now. The problem seems to be resolved thankfully .

 

[muckshifter]

Microsoft were testing their downloads off it.

 

[EvanDavis]

@Ian 18:43 just got the same as my original post.

 

[Ian]

Thanks Evan, I was just about to make a post here as it happens . I've patched PHP again as there was a new version released which may fix the problems we had last time. Let's see how it goes this time .

 

[Ian]

I've made some significant changes to IIS/PHP in the last few moments, so I'll be keeping a close eye on how the server performs. If it works, it means that the site is around 8x faster at generating pages (although that won't necessarily be visible as most of the loading time is based on the distance of the server). Fingers crossed this works better than last week!