2024-07-18 lemm.ee downtime

Hey folks!

Unfortunately, roughly 2 hours ago, lemm.ee went offline. The cause was our load balancer: it suddenly decided that all of our servers had become unhealthy, despite all health checks responding successfully when I requested them directly. In such cases, the load balancer stops serving all requests, effectively meaning that lemm.ee is unreachable for all users. I am still not sure what exactly caused the issue, but I will try to investigate more over the weekend.

For now, we have partially recovered, and I am continuing to work on remaining issues. Hopefully we will be back to 100% very soon. Sorry for the inconvenience!

196 points · 28 comments · view on lemmy.world

28 Comments

UltraGiGaGigantic@lemm.ee · 72 pts · 2y

We appreciate what you do hero

TLGA@lemm.ee · 24 pts · 2y (2 replies)

I was wondering what was going on, status.lemm.ee said the server was ok but the federation was broken. Thank you for fixing it

sunaurus@lemm.ee · 21 pts · 2y (1 reply)

Sorry for the delay in updating the status page - I actually had gone out for lunch just a few minutes before the downtime started, so I didn't even realize anything was up until I was back at my computer about 45 minutes later 💀

ToxicWaste@lemm.ee · 7 pts · 2y

no need to apologise. still a better response time, than some of the professionals I work with ;-)

don@lemm.ee · 21 pts · 2y

I survived the July 18th lemm.ee downtime, and all I got was this lousy comment.

Draegur@lemm.ee · 11 pts · 2y

All is forgiven, thank you for running this lovely instance ^_^

p3e7@lemm.ee · 10 pts · 2y

Thanks for your great work and transperancy!

fossphi@lemm.ee · 9 pts · 2y (1 reply)

Thanks for the quick fix! What did you have to do to get the load balancer working again?

sunaurus@lemm.ee · 16 pts · 2y

For now, I just redeployed all of our servers completely, but as I don't know the actual root cause of the issue yet, I'm still investigating to figure out if anything more is needed.

Amanduh@lemm.ee · 9 pts · 2y

I'd like to speak to a manager /s

ramble81@lemm.ee · 9 pts · 2y (3 replies)

Nginx? I had an nginx LB shit itself yesterday. Luckily it auto-recovered and I had HA but just weird it happened.

sunaurus@lemm.ee · 9 pts · 2y (2 replies)

Actually, we're using Hetzner's cloud load balancer for lemm.ee. But if this issue repeats in the near future, then I will definitely consider setting up something else.

db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 2y (1 reply)

haproxy is where it's at!

eleitl@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 2y

It's probably a managed haproxy in Hetzner's case.

db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 pts · 2y

Typically when this happens, the issue is on the LB itself. Maybe its own network had issues?

EABOD25@lemm.ee · 7 pts · 2y

Would it be in bad taste to blame Russia?

clot27@lemm.ee · 7 pts · 2y

Sometimes, downtimes are awesome. Get off your machine and spend time with your family, folks!

scytale@lemm.ee · 5 pts · 2y

I thought the entire lemmy network was down because status.lemm.ee was saying our instance was fine and federation wasn't working with every other instance. lol

becausechemistry@lemm.ee · 5 pts · 2y

o7

JimmyBigSausage@lemm.ee · 4 pts · 2y
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LedgeDrop@lemm.ee · 4 pts · 2y

Seriously, your professionalism in handling the situation and in reporting it is fantastic.

It's totally above and beyond anything we should expect for a service powered by donations!

Thank you!

yournamehere@lemm.ee · 4 pts · 2y

love you guys!

SuperSpaceFan@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 2y

Thank you for keeping us abreast of what's happening. I appreciate you, and how you manage this instance.

tacosanonymous@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 2y (4 replies)

Is there another instance where you could report issues?

If we logged into another account, we’d be able to see those before it comes back up.

sunaurus@lemm.ee · 9 pts · 2y (1 reply)

There are two useful sections on https://status.lemm.ee for this - firstly, there is an automated check for federation with all other instances on the bottom of the page, and everything there being red is a definite sign that something is wrong with lemm.ee itself. Secondly, near the top of that page, I will always write a status message manually when I discover & start work on any issues. This second part can have a bit of a delay, as it requires manual input from myself, but I have updated it every time we had any issues so far.

tacosanonymous@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 2y

That’s good info. Thanks.

EinfachUnersetzlich@lemm.ee · 4 pts · 2y (1 reply)

There's a Discord server in the sidebar that updates are posted in: https://discord.gg/XM9nZwUn9K

tacosanonymous@lemm.ee · 10 pts · 2y

I know. I just don’t want to join a discord.

veniasilente@lemm.ee · 1 pts · 2y

Totally healthy servers have a right to rest every once in a while too. Thanks for keeping us notified!