If this had been an actual emergency…
This morning, even before the first coffee, I called up my blog page, and… nothing. No login prompt, no header, nothing.
I’m not paid enough to panic, so time to go through the checklist. Could my PHP edit yesterday be at fault? Has the server gone “away”? Is this a DDOS attack (against me)? Is my data well and truly backed up (no, not completely)? Can I retrieve the posts from somewhere else, like a browser cache (highly unlikely)? Does the log file show anything interesting? Am I even on the ‘net?
A quick FTP session allowed me to replace my edited code, but no success. The server database admin program… isn’t even online. Well, maybe the problem is bigger than just me. Get a coffee and come back to the desk.
Wait, now I have access to the database (grab some quick copies of those recent posts into a new local file, and breathe more regularly). Maybe I can just change over to another server, if things don’t start to work (it’s almost time to catch my bus, so this may have to wait for a quieter period of the day). I KNOW how this all works, right?
The end of the story is that a few minutes later, the server once again was offering up my content to the world. All was back in order. My blog is an endless source of amusement, paranoid fantasies and recollections of CONELRAD and the EBS.
Remember those television interludes, preceded by a long tone and followed by:
“…if this had been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed where to tune in your area for news and official information“. Hint: not this
site.
