[ILUG] Mary Celeste website

[Daniel Shaw]

Hi there,

> >>  From 13:14 to 14:06 there were 0 hits recorded in the logs for the
> >> site . Traffic levels didn't return to normal (arbitrarily defined
> >> for this site as hundreds of hits/minute) until 14:28.
> >
> > Wild guess:
> >
> > Filesystem holding log files ran out of space at 13:14?  Some space
> > was created at 14:06, but quickly filled again.  Small amounts of
> > space created and filled continuously until 14:28, at which time
> > there is enough consistently-free space for logging to work normally.
> 
> A nearly reasonable wild guess except that
> 
> a) It's not true - there's plenty of free space on the log filesystem.
> 
> b) It couldn't be true, because other sites on the same server (as  
> alluded to in the original mail) were unaffected.

My first instinct was also to immediately think that no hits recorded in
logs = no logging rather than no hits.

There is another possibility that could cause logging to stop given
certain older kernels and filesystems, which is that the log file
reached a maximum size (2Gb for example) and could no longer be written
to until the next log rotation.

However, in that case: 1. Hits would start again at normal rate once a
new log file was created, and not slowly over time. And: 2. Log rotation
is unlikely to have happened at 14:06..

So I guess really this remains a mystery..

Regards,
Daniel