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Bug Cloud Programming

GitHub Back Online After Service Outage 55

The Next Web reports that GitHub — home to many open source projects — suffered (and quickly recovered from) a service outage this morning, starting around 14:00 UTC. Other than that the problem "appears to have been caused by its database server," the cause isn't clear.
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GitHub Back Online After Service Outage

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  • We are seriously considering sponsoring github with a free platinum support and maintenance contract for the Linux cluster stack, i.e. DRBD, Heartbeat, Pacemaker, Corosync.

    Would that help?

    • by Cammi ( 1956130 )
      Actually, it would help if it was a simple database outage. However, it sounds like someone over at Github did something stupid .. .like, deleted the database itself. In that case, nothing can help.
      • Oh, that's not a fun kind of problem because then if you check the site with downforeveryoneorjustme.com it will show as up even though the site isn't "working."
        • by aflag ( 941367 )
          Then downforeveryoneorjustme.com should consider the HTTP status response. I'm sure it's not 200 when something bad happens.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      In my opion their system already handles everything quite well. I've noticed few outages (this one I only heard about because I was reading slashdot, it's sunday, I'm not even working on my project right now) and, so far, they all have recovered quickly. Moreover, due to the nature of git, the outages could even be longer and more frequent that it would still not be a big issue. The issue tracking system is a bit more critical, but I hardly think anything of great value will be lost due to the problems I've

      • by dkf ( 304284 )

        The issue tracking system is a bit more critical

        They should put each project's issues in a git repository, so that you can trivially keep them replicated on your own systems.

  • by MLBs ( 2637825 ) on Sunday June 02, 2013 @12:04PM (#43889255)
    But describing 14:00 as morning is a bit too much.
  • Not soon after the US government announced it would distribute info via github, github suffers failures. Coincidence? You decide.
    • Maybe Github shut down to...voluntarily add law enforcement backdoors. Yeah. Completely voluntarily. Totally not due to legislation by BSA bribe or anything.

  • by dbc ( 135354 ) on Sunday June 02, 2013 @12:32PM (#43889453)

    So, sure, I use github. But... it goes down for a couple of hours and SlashDot panics? This isn't news.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      News for nerds, that used to mean something around here. I think this sits pretty squarely within that, even if it doesn't affect you at at all. Certainly better than much of the news on here that's been not even slightly nerd related.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      No, this counts as news. It was definitely an "oh, sh!t" moment for many people, and requires an explanation. Only in hindsight is it known that the outage was temporary.

    • by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Sunday June 02, 2013 @12:56PM (#43889651)

      It's news. I've corporate partners who rely heavily on gitbub.com for access to their open source tools and even for their corporate git repositories, since they're more reliable than almost any in-house source code repository I've dealt with. This especially includes the hand-built, written by the CIO source control systems, that are surprisingly common in startups before they mature. I know companies whose automated software continuous build environments because of this, so it's certainly news.

      • I've corporate partners who rely heavily on gitbub.com

        gitbub is the best there is at what they do, but what they do best isn't very nice.

      • I just use Git. You know, that DECENTRALIZED source control thing.... yeah, might want to think about using it in a decentralized way, since, well, you know? That's what it is? I mean, unless you mean that all of the systems you're writing code with are collectively less reliable. Seems like PEBKAC to me. Hell, you can comment out one line in a .git config file to enable a post-update hook, and you're pretty much done setting up an "in-house source code repository".

        Put it this way: If any one part

        • Put it this way: If any one part of your DISTRIBUTED source control goes down for a few hours, and that's a big deal.... Then you're a fucking idiot.

          Or, truly ingenious. I have a paid up github account for work purpouses I wouldn't actually have any idea how to make a github outage become a big deal.

        • > config file to enable a post-update hook, and you're pretty much done setting up an "in-house source code repository".

          This kind of thing is _precisely_ why many developers,and many IT departments, don't get along well. For example, any developer can instlal sendmail: or Apache or a file server. Running a 24x7 critical high availability service with backup, account management, and user support is a larger task, and the IT department really has to think in those terms if they're skilled.

          github has been a

    • It was down on Thursday for a little while too - if the story were about a pattern, perhaps it would be noteworthy if not newsworthy.

      But, hey, I appreciate big sites being down every once in a while. When my systems have better uptime than those that Amazon runs, it's at least an understandable point of reference for PHB's.

  • For years, going back to the days when SourceForge (forgery of source code??) was closely associated with Slashdot, I have been nervous of centrally-located sites for massive numbers of projects. Yes, locate resources there as a robust distribution front end. But have an independent presence on the net as well.

    Centralization of something that is otherwise as free-wheeling and independence minded as Open Source Software, just seems contradictory.

    • by aflag ( 941367 )
      At first sight centralization looks like a great way to reduce costs, however, there are problems that are likely to make the cost actually rise. I'm unaware of any studies showing when it's good to centralize and when it's bad. It would be a very interesting study to read. While you may need fewer machines to run 20 websites together than you'd need to run them separately, but you'll also need more qualified staff. An avarage 16 years old with a bit of time in his hands and an interest for technology can
    • Centralization of something that is otherwise as free-wheeling and independence minded as Open Source Software, just seems contradictory.

      Yep. I never understood Giant Websites. We give the world a distributed information network with fault tolerance and a self healing structure designed to withstand entire cities disappearing (censorship, nuclear war, etc), and what do folks do? Centralize the shit out of everything. Data Silos?! CLIENT SEVER architecture?! That was the whole point. There IS NO CLIENT on the web. EVERYONE is supposed to be a server. It's a shame that greed has firmly entrenched the essentially prototype protocol IP

      • by aflag ( 941367 )
        Some centralization is required, though. There must be at least an index, like google, to find the IPs of relevant servers with the information you need. How would you solve information retrieval problem without a server-client platform. I think it's likely to be the cheapest solution for the problem. That been said, there is really no need for everyone sharing the same email server, for instance. I agree with you that there are more client-server designs than needed, but they are needed. They can also be t
        • Well, funnily, the index (DNS) that allows you to find IPs of relevant servers (and anything else) *is* decentralized. At least for many values of "decentralized".

          • by aflag ( 941367 )
            Well, it's more delegated than it is decentralized. In the end you still have an authority dictating the rules. Anyway, DNS has a very simple query and a very simple and straightforward answer. However, if you want to find some content on the Internet, the query and the answer are much more sofisticated. When you take into account spam, algorithm improvement and so on. It looks very hard to think of a decentralized index that could possible work and provide better results than google.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      For years, going back to the days when SourceForge (forgery of source code??) was closely associated with Slashdot

      Back to the days? They're both still owned by the same company (currently Dice Holdings).

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Isn't the benefit of git that you keep the repository on your local machine, not on a central server like svn? Can't a git project absorb a brief outage?

    • As someone working at a small, relatively new startup using a 'hip' stack, unfortunately, no.

      Most new shops heavily tie into Github for code deployment, configuration management, and most importantly, Agile development practices that require continuously querying Github to test code (CI) plus frequent pulls and branching.Github being down basically means development grinds to a halt and startups' ability to run their own stack diminishes.

      Like the Amazon outages, hopefully this serves to teach people that in

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