Princeton University Blog Service

Update: We isolated the problem and fixed it. The new firewall was blocking all outgoing HTTP traffic from the blog server. This delayed logging in, and it also delayed entry publishing for those bloggers who use “ping” sites.

Original entry: Admins and authors may have noticed that logging in to the admin interface for blogs.princeton.edu takes slightly longer than a minute. Once that initial authentication and authorization step is completed, page access times are normal; however, that initial sixty-second wait can be annoying.

This log-in delay has been a problem for at least three weeks, and we think that the problem is related to moving the server behind a hardware firewall on March 26.

I apologize for the inconvenience and hope to have the problem resolved soon.

Posted by Michael D. Muzzie at 3:06 PM | Permalink

There will be an emergency outage of the blog server from 11:00 to 11:30 AM this morning to double the RAM in the server.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Posted by Michael D. Muzzie at 10:43 AM | Permalink

Update: 3/16 10:30 AM - The blog server is back up after the power outage.

I had hoped to add more content to this weblog other than outage notices, and I will soon be posting updates on a planned move to a better server box and plans for migrating older blogs over to the Movable Type 4 Publishing Platform. However, we have two more OIT-wide outages to get through first.

Outage #1: OIT has rescheduled February’s power outage for Saturday, March 15 at 6 PM through March 16 at 10 PM. Most of servers at the main University data center, including the blog server, will be shut down for the installation of new electrical equipment.

Outage #2: OIT will interrupt all campus networking services on Tuesday, March 18, from 5:00 AM to 8:00 AM. This outage is due to various maintenance activities being performed.

Both the statically-published blog sites and the database-driven MT admin interface will be inaccessible during these times.

As usual, you can monitor the left column of the OIT page for the latest outages: http://oitweb.princeton.edu/

Posted by Michael D. Muzzie at 1:25 PM | Permalink

The power outage on February 9 at the main University data center has been postponed. The Department of Facilities has identified a problem that cannot be resolved in time to proceed with the scheduled installation of the new electrical equipment.

The Princeton University Blog Service servers should remain active throughout the weekend.

At some point in the future, Facilities will need to complete the work on the electrical upgrade to the data center. We will post an update to this blog they announce the new outage dates.

Posted by Michael D. Muzzie at 5:46 PM | Permalink

The administrative interface for the MT blog server was down for most of the day on Sunday, September 9. Static files were not affected.

The system partition for the server ran out of space, and that caused the database server to go down. I will be working with our Collaborative Services Group (CSG) over the next week or so to make sure this doesn’t happen again. We may have to schedule an outage within the next month to correct the disk space issue. Watch this space for updates.

I apologize for the length of this outage.

Posted by Michael D. Muzzie at 4:21 PM | Permalink

The Office of Communications has created a new directory of faculty blogs and academic blogs. This page is currently listed under the “Website Highlights” section of the main Princeton University page. From the main Princeton page, it is also linked under Campus Life —> Campus Media —> Faculty Blogs.

If you are a faculty member who authors a blog (on this system or any other) or if you know of any other Princeton University academic blogs, you can e-mail suggestions for blogs to be added to that page.

Posted by Michael D. Muzzie at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comment (1)

Update: As of 11 AM Sunday, power had been restored, and the web server and database server were started back up.

The Department of Facilities requires an electrical power outage at the main University data center to install new power cables from the data center to an electrical substation. This work is necessary to improve the electrical infrastructure and capacity at the data center.

To minimize the impact on the University community, the electrical work has been scheduled for Sunday, February 11, from 12:01 a.m. to noon.

This outage will directly impact the Princeton University Blog Service. All weblogs and the Movable Type administrative interface will be inaccessible during this time. Blog service should be restored some time between 6 AM and noon EST.

Outage Information: Most central computing services unavailable

Posted by Michael D. Muzzie at 8:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBack