Xedri's Comment
Hi Xedri,
Yeah, the front screen also uses a connection to the database, for pretty much everything, the genre selector which shows the different genres requires a connection, the Recent Updates requires a connection once every ten minutes (its a fairly long (well, 5 seconds or so) process to work out the latest updates, so its done offline every 10 minutes). The Top10 and the Choice of the Week don’t require a database connection – but because the Genre Selector does, and in fact the whole look of the front page is changeable based on information in the database – that screwed that page up too… Sorry.
My information thus far indicates that the server first failed somewhere around 17:00 EST, for approximately half an hour. It then recovered somewhat, until about 21:00 EST, where it remained dead until I discovered it at around 02:00 EST.
We currently believe the problem was caused by the database software itself not quitting when it had finished, and since the system is configured so that the database cannot request so many resources as to kill the machine, it eventually ran out. Its likely that a tweak we made that day (and tested successfully!) had the unfortunate side effect of tickling a bug in the database software that did not come to light until many hours later. The tweak has been reverted and hopefully the problem won’t re-occur. Either way, if it does, the system SHOULD now let you know its currently too busy rather than just error like that.
More information as we find it out.
Steve.