Conspiracy not the cause of TeleRead's temporary outage

Bob Russell · 06-01-2008, 09:47 AM

Many of our MobileRead faithful are also fans of the TeleRead blog because they do a fantastic job over there at covering e-book news and fighting the good fight to communicate the impact of DRM issues and format dispersion. You may have heard of the phrase "Tower of eBabel" which was coined by TeleRead's David Rothman.

At any rate, some of you have probably already noticed that you haven't been able to get to the site for a bit. Robert Nagle has contacted me to share that the temporary outage is due to a fire at their hosting service, and they are currently working on their recovery. They are hoping to have the site back up today, but even if it takes a while longer you can be confident they will be back.

Our best wishes go out to David, Robert and the whole team over at TeleRead for a speedy site recovery.

Oh, Why Not? · 06-01-2008, 09:52 AM

As a regular peruser of the site, my best wishes go out to them too,

davidrothman · 06-01-2008, 10:22 AM

Thanks, Bob and everyone else at MR! We appreciate the help and kind words. Alas, when I checked just now, the TeleRead site was still down. Needless to say, Robert Nagle and I are going to think very seriously about changing to a different hosting service. Here's to redundancy! The good news is that our data is safe, just not reachable now. - David

Oh, Why Not? · 06-01-2008, 12:48 PM

It seems Howard Forums has the same problem.

catsittingstill · 06-01-2008, 05:26 PM

Best wishes to Teleread for a quick recovery. And thanks, Bob, for letting us know what was up.

Alexander Turcic · 06-01-2008, 05:59 PM

ThePlanet, which is the datacenter for many dedicated hosters and resellers (including David's), had a major power outage yesterday and today.

Quote:

"Customers hosting with ThePlanet, a major Texas hosting provider, are going through some tough times. Yesterday evening at 5:45 pm local time an electrical short caused a fire and explosion in the power room, knocking out walls and taking the entire facility offline. No-one was hurt and no servers were damaged. Estimates suggest 9,000 servers are offline, affecting 7,500 customers, with ETAs for repair of at least 24 hours from onset. While they claim redundant power, because of the nature of the problem they had to go completely dark. This goes to show that no matter how much planning you do, Murphy's Law still applies."

Click here and here for details.

rjnagle · 06-01-2008, 09:41 PM

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/a...or_outage.html

They are prevented from turning power back on because of fire marshall. Frankly, the ETA looks bleak. We could end up waiting another 24 hours to go online again. We are just one of many customers at our hosting service, and the hosting service is just one of thousands waiting to get back up.

I suspect this affects a lot of hosting services. David R. reports lots of library sites down.

for a rant about fire departments by another disgruntled customer, see this http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl...5&cid=23619515

basschick · 06-01-2008, 10:58 PM

i have a friend hosting at theplanet and he says the sites are starting to come back online.

rjnagle · 06-02-2008, 12:53 PM

FYI, our hosting service says that our server is one of the ones which needs to be relocated. So I expect that Teleread won't be up until Tuesday.

tcv · 06-02-2008, 02:16 PM

There are a few servers down there with that problem. I frequent Atari Age and, apparently, it's on that same floor. I wonder where this happened, exactly. I live in Houston.

rjnagle · 06-03-2008, 12:12 PM

Update: Tue late morning. I had limited service restored, but the server with Teleread is totally unavailable. ThePlanet and our hosting service (webfaction) has given us the runaround.

It's now technically possible to redirect the domain to a holder page, but David and I decided not to do this because we felt the site could come online any hour.

We may have to reexamine that decision if the site doesn't come online by this afternoon.

paulkbiba · 06-03-2008, 02:48 PM

GPSPassion, one of the sites I write for, came back up at 6:30 am EST June 2.

06-01-2008, 09:47 AM	#1
Bob Russell Recovering Gadget Addict Posts: 5,381 Karma: 676161 Join Date: May 2004 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Device: iPad	Conspiracy not the cause of TeleRead's temporary outage Many of our MobileRead faithful are also fans of the TeleRead blog because they do a fantastic job over there at covering e-book news and fighting the good fight to communicate the impact of DRM issues and format dispersion. You may have heard of the phrase "Tower of eBabel" which was coined by TeleRead's David Rothman. At any rate, some of you have probably already noticed that you haven't been able to get to the site for a bit. Robert Nagle has contacted me to share that the temporary outage is due to a fire at their hosting service, and they are currently working on their recovery. They are hoping to have the site back up today, but even if it takes a while longer you can be confident they will be back. Our best wishes go out to David, Robert and the whole team over at TeleRead for a speedy site recovery.

06-01-2008, 09:41 PM	#7
rjnagle Zealot Posts: 126 Karma: 2167 Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: Houston, Texas Device: ipad 1, Nook Simple Touch, Kindle 3, ebookwise 1150	http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/a...or_outage.html They are prevented from turning power back on because of fire marshall. Frankly, the ETA looks bleak. We could end up waiting another 24 hours to go online again. We are just one of many customers at our hosting service, and the hosting service is just one of thousands waiting to get back up. I suspect this affects a lot of hosting services. David R. reports lots of library sites down. for a rant about fire departments by another disgruntled customer, see this http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl...5&cid=23619515 Last edited by rjnagle; 06-01-2008 at 09:47 PM.

06-02-2008, 12:53 PM	#9
rjnagle Zealot Posts: 126 Karma: 2167 Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: Houston, Texas Device: ipad 1, Nook Simple Touch, Kindle 3, ebookwise 1150	ETA Tuesday FYI, our hosting service says that our server is one of the ones which needs to be relocated. So I expect that Teleread won't be up until Tuesday.

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06-01-2008, 09:52 AM	#2
Oh, Why Not? Groupie Posts: 176 Karma: 13065 Join Date: Aug 2007 Device: Galaxy Note 2; KindleFireHDX	As a regular peruser of the site, my best wishes go out to them too,

06-01-2008, 10:22 AM	#3
davidrothman Connoisseur Posts: 60 Karma: 32 Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Alexandria, VA Device: Paperwhite, $50 Fire, iPad Air 2, Nexus 6, Kobo Aura H2O	Thanks, Bob and everyone else at MR! We appreciate the help and kind words. Alas, when I checked just now, the TeleRead site was still down. Needless to say, Robert Nagle and I are going to think very seriously about changing to a different hosting service. Here's to redundancy! The good news is that our data is safe, just not reachable now. - David

06-01-2008, 12:48 PM	#4
Oh, Why Not? Groupie Posts: 176 Karma: 13065 Join Date: Aug 2007 Device: Galaxy Note 2; KindleFireHDX	It seems Howard Forums has the same problem.

06-01-2008, 05:26 PM	#5
catsittingstill Guru Posts: 643 Karma: 551634 Join Date: Dec 2007 Device: Kindle 1.0.8, iPod Touch, Kindle Keyboard	Best wishes to Teleread for a quick recovery. And thanks, Bob, for letting us know what was up.

06-01-2008, 10:58 PM	#8
basschick Wizard Posts: 1,096 Karma: 4695691 Join Date: May 2008 Device: Kindle Paperwhite	i have a friend hosting at theplanet and he says the sites are starting to come back online.

06-02-2008, 02:16 PM	#10
tcv Addict Posts: 330 Karma: 596 Join Date: Oct 2006	There are a few servers down there with that problem. I frequent Atari Age and, apparently, it's on that same floor. I wonder where this happened, exactly. I live in Houston.

06-03-2008, 12:12 PM	#11
rjnagle Zealot Posts: 126 Karma: 2167 Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: Houston, Texas Device: ipad 1, Nook Simple Touch, Kindle 3, ebookwise 1150	Update: Tue late morning. I had limited service restored, but the server with Teleread is totally unavailable. ThePlanet and our hosting service (webfaction) has given us the runaround. It's now technically possible to redirect the domain to a holder page, but David and I decided not to do this because we felt the site could come online any hour. We may have to reexamine that decision if the site doesn't come online by this afternoon.

06-03-2008, 02:48 PM	#12
paulkbiba Connoisseur Posts: 84 Karma: 45 Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: United States Device: Nokia e61i, iPhone	GPSPassion, one of the sites I write for, came back up at 6:30 am EST June 2.