What's up with EnMasse being down?

I wanted to drop in and check on some old friends last night, but their server was down. Still down this morning. 

Invasion by Babbleonia?

Babbleonia runs on windpower.

Just dropping in to say that I too have been trying to log on to En Masse, with no success. Nor any idea why.

Geez, there's some heavy-duty irony here.

 

Anyway, cco, could you explain that trick to open enmasse in a way that us non-techs can follow?

I'll do my best, al-Q: when you type in the name of a site like enmasse.ca, the computer has to look up the IP address of the hosting site using something called DNS, which is sort of like a phone book listing, except that you have to pay to be listed, not unlisted. Forget to pay for your listing (and I believe the last time that site was renewed was six years ago, so it's completely understandable it wouldn't be a memorable recurring event), and your address gets taken out. Since they're still paying for their hosting, however, the site itself is still there. If it were a dedicated server, you could just type in the address, but since there are a lot of sites hosted by that company, what you have to do is, essentially, manually add the address to your computer's personal phone book, so it works just like it got the address from DNS. This phone book is called your hostsfile. On UNIX-based systems (including Macs), this can be found at /etc/hosts . (Upon asking some Windows-knowledgeable folk, I have been informed that the equivalent file in Windows can be found at c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS .) On either system, you need to open the file up to edit it TextEdit will work fine on Windows for these purposes, but on a Mac, I'd follow this sequence of instructions: First, open up Terminal (go to Applications, then Utilities to find it). Then type in this command: sudo pico /etc/hosts You will then have to enter your password. You should get a few lines of code featuring the word "localhost" prominently. Don't touch any of them. Instead, go to the bottom, and on a new line, add this: 66.196.39.101 enmasse.ca www.enmasse.ca Then hold down Control and press O to save and (still holding Control) X to exit. You're done. (On Windows, just add the above line to the HOSTS file, save, and exit. I think.) Note that the above trick will no longer work if, for whatever reason, the hosting service changes its IP, so once the DNS has been restored, you're probably better off removing the line in question from the file. Hope that helps.

Hey people, I'm one of the elected moderators of EnMasse. I have talked with my fellow mods, and they are working on this and doing what they can to get it back.

Cco, thank you for your pointer about the domain.

al'Q

It's a linux fix

I'd like to be the military attache that can go either way in that event.  I still have my beret, a pair of mukluks, and as a fashion accent, a green scarf made from the same material as long johns.

Good one! Did that actually happen? Gotta check my scholarly sources (Wikipedia).

Isn't that Breadnstopia?

It appears that Enmassedonia has been razed and its domain sown with salt.

 

"Enmasso delenda est?"

Does this mean another babble Stike is imminent?

No problem cco.  I don't know if supplying arcane information to selected individuals is going to help the site much, though.  Unless people can freely get into the place without secret handshakes, etc., Enmasse isn't going to be viable. 

 

What we need is for someone to throw the switch that reopens the site.

 

Interesting choice of metaphor.