Site Downtime - 24th Dec 2004

mrhahn · 12-24-2004, 08:52 PM

Hey guys,

For a few hours today the site (including the frontpage and forum) was unavailable - between approximatley 6pm - 9pm GMT. This was caused by the Apache HTTPD crashing, meaning that the site was unavailable via HTTP, and was as a result of the recent phpBB / PHP based exploits. These exploits led to much higher than normal server load levels, causing certain services to become unstable.

Following this initial downtime, between 10pm - 12pm (midnight) GMT, the MySQLD failed. This meant that, although web pages were still being served, the database-stored content could not be retrieved, including the forums. During this time a holding-page was displayed, explaining the issues.

This problem appears to be ongoing, and as such the server's stability can not be guaranteed. In the morning the situation will be re-assessed, and any necessary action taken. Rest assured, no data has been lost, nor will it. A further update will be provided when more details are available.

Thanks.

12-24-2004, 08:52 PM	#1 (permalink)
mrhahn General Join Date: May 2004 Location: UK Posts: 1,979	Site Downtime - 24th Dec 2004 Hey guys, For a few hours today the site (including the frontpage and forum) was unavailable - between approximatley 6pm - 9pm GMT. This was caused by the Apache HTTPD crashing, meaning that the site was unavailable via HTTP, and was as a result of the recent phpBB / PHP based exploits. These exploits led to much higher than normal server load levels, causing certain services to become unstable. Following this initial downtime, between 10pm - 12pm (midnight) GMT, the MySQLD failed. This meant that, although web pages were still being served, the database-stored content could not be retrieved, including the forums. During this time a holding-page was displayed, explaining the issues. This problem appears to be ongoing, and as such the server's stability can not be guaranteed. In the morning the situation will be re-assessed, and any necessary action taken. Rest assured, no data has been lost, nor will it. A further update will be provided when more details are available. Thanks.