There is a particular process on the server hardware that when it runs, causes apache (serves the web pages) to constantly restart..hence the up, down, up, down you see. The process has to be stopped manually to make it stable again. That particular process gets started again everytime there is an automatic software update (which isn't that frequent, but has happened twice recently). I'm working on trying to minimize this downtime.
BTW, I do not think that there are any 'hackers' causing these problems. It is from what I wrote above. When people see a large number of visitors to the Ledge at one time, that is typically a search engine spider. I saw the one yesterday and it was Inktomi. They come in with very similar IP addresses (traced back to them) and go from thread to thread to build their indexes. As the Ledge has been busier lately, I think it is getting spidered more frequently.
- Marty
PS-- Even as I wrote this there is a large number of guests online...they are simply hitting links around the Ledge and belong to inktomisearch.com. Perhap the owners of inktomi are Fleetwood Mac fans as they keep coming back.
