Yes, the Bitcoin.org Site and Forum were Down

[Bruce Wagner]

The Bitcoin.org site and associated forum were down for about 9 hours today, I think.

Some of us, using the IRC Chatroom, have expressed concern for this single point of failure.

There has been discussion about somehow making a distributed Forum... or an auto-syncing forum...

But, in the meantime, we have reacted swiftly.

On this page  http://www.bitcoinme.com/discussion-forum.html  I have listed no less that FIVE Bitcoin Forums we now have access to.   

It would be great to cross-link as much as possible, so that in the event of a major outage, people would instantly know where ELSE they could go for information.

What do you think?

[MagicalTux]

I agree, currently in case of down of bitcoin.org the only remaining official information source is IRC, I think alternative urls should be either known, or included (for example on an help page in the bitcoin client)

[Bruce Wagner]

I agree, currently in case of down of bitcoin.org the only remaining official information source is IRC, I think alternative urls should be either known, or included (for example on an help page in the bitcoin client)

Even if they were just listed, in as many places as possible...  Users would likely "bookmark" them in their browsers...  But it'd also be nice if they had access to a copy of the list-of-forums on several major Bitcoin sites...  (similar to how there are lists-of-exchange-sites all over the place).

I'm thinking of adding a wiki on bitcoin.in (or one of bitcoin.at or bitcoin.it) where this kind of information will have its right place

That sounds like a great idea too.   The more well-written resources we have, the less chance we'll ever get so cut off again... as we were today.

Didn't it feel odd....!?   I think a LOT of people were feeling very cut off from their community....   It can be a little like crack.... 

[Anonymous]

Might be a good idea to mirror the existing forum somewhere else as a backup.

[S3052]

Why was the site down?

[jorgen]

It would be great if somebody make a mirror as a tor hidden service and in I2P network. Doing so we could survive gov/hackers attacks. I was very nervous and can't sleep due to this recent bitcoin.org shutdown.

[bitcoinex]

The Bitcoin.org site and associated forum were down for about 9 hours today, I think.

Some of us, using the IRC Chatroom, have expressed concern for this single point of failure.

There has been discussion about somehow making a distributed Forum... or an auto-syncing forum...

But, in the meantime, we have reacted swiftly.

On this page  http://www.bitcoinme.com/discussion-forum.html  I have listed no less that FIVE Bitcoin Forums we now have access to.   

This page seems down too

[Anonymous]

It would be great if somebody make a mirror as a tor hidden service and in I2P network. Doing so we could survive gov/hackers attacks. I was very nervous and can't sleep due to this recent bitcoin.org shutdown.

The new .p2p distributed dns system they are creating might hold the answer. The government will be unable to shut it down even if they seize the domain name. 

[Timo Y]

There has been discussion about somehow making a distributed Forum... or an auto-syncing forum...

A distributed, auto syncing forum?

What about Usenet?

[Anonymous]

Feel free to set that up. 

[Timo Y]

Feel free to set that up.  

Usenet newsgroups can be accessed via the web using Google Groups, but to set up a new Usenet newsgroup (not just a "Google group") I believe you need a Usenet subscription.

Is there anyone here who has one?

[kiba]

So, are people actually serious about this idea?

[RHorning]

This outage was a bit strange as it seemed to impact a couple of different Bitcoins related websites.  Perhaps that was coincidence as well.  The coincidence with getting a Reddit link seems to be more than mere coincidence too.  That is why I wasn't sure if this was a denial-of-service attack or simply a bad server that may have given up due to a crush of incoming volume.

Feel free to set that up.  

Usenet newsgroups can be accessed via the web using Google Groups, but to set up a new Usenet newsgroup (not just a "Google group") I believe you need a Usenet subscription.

Is there anyone here who has one?

Setting up a usenet newsgroup isn't too hard, particularly if you run a usenet server.  The problem is mainly one of if anybody wants to bother as Usenet has been so full of spam that it generally isn't worth reading anymore.  The nice thing about Usenet is that it is decentralized... not quite peer to peer but pretty close and allows "live" synchronization between the various archives so no single server being down will necessarily keep participants from continuing conversations on the various threads or discussion groups.  I've run some quality usenet server software that takes all of about 5-10 minutes of configuration, and if all you are doing is a "private" or "custom" newsgroups with peers that you trust or know about, you can ignore the other newsfeeder services altogether.  I would suggest avoiding Google unless you are more into the Google Groups themselves, not because of usenet services.

Most quality e-mail reader software like Thunderbird has built-in usenet readers as well.  It just takes getting used to using the forums in that manner.

[kiba]

Despite the downtime, we achieved 315 posts that last day of November.

[Bimmerhead]

Might be a good idea to mirror the existing forum somewhere else as a backup.

I'd prefer the mirror approach too, rather than starting from scratch with something like usenet.  Just so that discussions can be picked up where they were left off.

Even a once daily backup wouldn't be too onerous, would it?

[kiba]

A failover would be nice. So we can continue talking while the original server is getting its shit together.

[bitcoinex]

Just do backups.

Have nothing else, if something happens to the information will not be affected and community survive.

[kiba]

Just do backups.

Have nothing else, if something happens to the information will not be affected and community survive.

But a backup is just that, a backup.

There's no communication on the forum happening until SMF is running.

[kiba]

So, have we reach a decision making point on backup?

I think the consensus is:

1. Offsite backup, encrypted. Keys held by elder members.


Nice to have.

1. Failover solution. Some way to get the forum back up and running.

[bober182]

Freenet.