Site down: Unable to start another process

[Thomas W-P]

Just found this "Unable to start another process" message and the site down. It is back up now, I think I know the reason why and am investigating how to avoid it.

[Thomas W-P]

I was right. It shouldn't happen again. It was the new meterboard updates failing because Concept 2 changed one of their pages and the code was not robust enough to spot it but kept going on and on and on looking for it, locking up the server.

[Iain]

Is it just me, or is the website access unstable? Several failed attempts to access the site at all and half a dozen attempts to post failed with the "oops can't find that page" screen. BUt eventually all posts went through.

[plummy]

Just logged on for the first time today - no issues.

[JonT]

Is it just me, or is the website access unstable? Several failed attempts to access the site at all and half a dozen attempts to post failed with the "oops can't find that page" screen. BUt eventually all posts went through.

Iain, are you still having trouble? Can you let me know. If anyone else is seeing anything like this please shout. Last time this happened it was a an attempted attack on the site which was using up all of the processing power on the server. I have just been on the site a few times and all seems to be OK.

[Iain]

Has been fine, one wobble today but may have been me!

[JonT]

Has been fine, one wobble today but may have been me!

If I had to put money on it, I would guess that someone was carrying out some kind of Denial of Service attack by sending thousands of requests to the server. After a while I report it or the hosting service spots that this is an issue and bans the address of the server attacking us. It's all a bit tedious and pointless.

[Iain]

several similar failures today. Error message essentially saying it has timed out with FS site not responding.