Monday, August 13, 2012

YubNub down

Sorry about YubNub being down, folks. The pendrell server at Joyent is having issues. https://help.joyent.com/

95 Comments:

Blogger Joaquín Núñez said...

we need yubnub back :-( a day without commands is like: back to the past

8/13/2012 5:44 p.m.  
Blogger Jonathan said...

Yeah :(

8/13/2012 6:14 p.m.  
Anonymous Monty's SoupCatcher said...

we need yubnub back :-( a day without commands is like: back to the past

lol, I know what you mean. It is strange what people come to depend on without realising it.

8/14/2012 6:06 a.m.  
Blogger Joaquín Núñez said...

still down...

8/14/2012 6:55 a.m.  
Blogger k@beza said...

hope it gets restored soon, I miss it A LOT !!

8/14/2012 6:58 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It sucks, but it's a testament to YubNub how much I'm reliant upon it.

I keep putting commands in the address bar and then remembering that it's down, saying, "Damn!" and typing in what I need.

8/14/2012 7:46 a.m.  
Anonymous Christian said...

Likewise Anonymous - I feel like some kind of internet plebian having to use google and go to websites... hope it gets restored soon

8/14/2012 8:12 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I feel the same as all people here :(

Hope we get yubnub back soon.

8/14/2012 9:07 a.m.  
Blogger Whaleback Systems said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

8/14/2012 11:37 a.m.  
Anonymous khamer said...

I was worried it was being taken down; thanks again for running such a valuable service.

8/14/2012 11:39 a.m.  
Blogger Unknown said...

I am worried I am losing as much time putting in commands now that don't work as I saved using YubNub...I NEED IT BACK!!!

8/14/2012 12:17 p.m.  
Anonymous Grant said...

Thanks for providing such an awesome tool. I can't wait to use it again!

Also, the public worklog from joyent is pretty cool. It's refreshing to see a commitment to transparency.

8/14/2012 1:00 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

+1 on relying on yubnub. It's something I use almost everytime I open a new tab.

8/14/2012 4:39 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

we need a backup/mirror... !

8/14/2012 5:39 p.m.  
Blogger Unknown said...

Phew -- I'm really relieved to see it's just server issues... After not being able to connect for so long, I was really worried that perhaps the service was gone for good.

I hope that if you ever run into problems with keeping Yubnub running due to time or money constraints, you let the community know so we can help out.

8/14/2012 8:37 p.m.  
Blogger Jonathan said...

Yeah, sorry folks. This is very unfortunate.

8/14/2012 9:15 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

man, i am relieved i am not alone.
i use yubnub for the basic stuff,
seriously, how much we rely on this amazing tool

8/14/2012 10:15 p.m.  
Anonymous soadkombucha said...

I've been using YubNub since I first read about it on Lifehacker back in 2007. It took me about 6 months to get to a point where I integrated it into my address bar, and I've been doing so ever since on a fresh Windows install, browser install, or when I get a new computer. Hoping it comes back up soon, I really miss it!

8/15/2012 12:21 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love yubnub and am really missing the service. I hope the server comes back up soon. Thanks.

8/15/2012 12:25 a.m.  
Blogger Guy said...

first thing I do on installing Firefox on a new machine: install the Omnibar extension and then install yubnub into it as my search engine. lost without it, hope they get the server issues sorted asap.

8/15/2012 12:45 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.

Once everything's up and running, I'm chipping in to your costs. I use Yubnub personally and professionally and have discovered that I can't do without it.

8/15/2012 1:00 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

HELP! I want my Yubnub back. Please!

8/15/2012 3:58 a.m.  
Blogger Unknown said...

Jonathan,
Thank you so much for running a service that's so valuable to my internet experience. If there's anything we can do to help get YubNub back up, please let us know. Also, does YubNub accept donations?

8/15/2012 9:06 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

missing yubnub too, however I can make due with DuckDuckGo's !bang syntax: http://duckduckgo.com/bang.html

8/15/2012 1:16 p.m.  
Blogger Jonathan said...

Thanks guys. So the issue now is that there are some lighttpd issues that Joyent staff are working to resolve. Hopefully things will be back soon.

8/15/2012 1:56 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'd guess a 500 server error is better than countless hours of nothing at all.

8/15/2012 7:04 p.m.  
Blogger dp said...

I'm patient! Thanks for this amazing service. Awaiting its return :)

8/16/2012 7:07 a.m.  
Blogger Jonathan said...

Thanks guys. So the latest update from the web host (Joyent) is that the machine is up, but they are helping me to figure out why lighttpd is giving errors.

8/16/2012 9:30 p.m.  
Blogger Unknown said...

Hey, just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your work. As others elsewhere have noted (prbly here too, I haven't read through), the upshot of this interruption is that it really takes something like this to make you realize how much you rely on the 'Nub. It wouldn't have been this noticeable, disappointing, & disruptive to find google shooting blanks (seriously). I wonder if they'd be willing to trade servers.

:(

I use the 'nub from keybreeze. I'm not sure I remember how to even open the dang browser without it...

"404 error: the Internet you requested is unavailable. Please check your ISP or try again later."

8/16/2012 9:32 p.m.  
Blogger Jonathan said...

Thanks, Li! Keybreeze looks cool.

8/16/2012 9:33 p.m.  
Blogger sys.out said...

Hi guys
wow, I'm kinda relieved to see it is "just" a service problem.

Like you guys, after 7 years I'm still using it a lot with my good ol' Fastyub plugin.

All the best to all of you
Michele

8/17/2012 12:41 a.m.  
Blogger sys.out said...

Hi guys
wow, I'm kinda relieved to see it is "just" a service problem.

Like you guys, after 7 years I'm still using it a lot with my good ol' Fastyub plugin.

All the best to all of you
Michele

8/17/2012 12:42 a.m.  
Anonymous Pascal said...

Hey
I'm also Happy to hear it's a server issue.
I user yubnub with launchy on every system i use. even created i winxp install disc which installs launchy with the yubnub plugin in it, so i will never miss it on a new system and it is with me from the beginning :)

thank you very much for running such a nice service.

Pascal

8/17/2012 4:56 a.m.  
Blogger Unknown said...

Think I use it about 1 out of 3 times I use chromes location bar. We should have a mirror system with everybody who can share a couple of ticks hosting a yubnub mirror.. with the commands in a githubbish thing?

8/17/2012 8:55 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

server issue? a whole week?

8/17/2012 8:15 p.m.  
Blogger Guy said...

yeah maybe consider changing the hosting; most downtime in my experience is in the hours, not days.

I second the thoughts of having mirror servers and also of encouraging the community to donate; I would be more than happy to chip in.

8/17/2012 11:39 p.m.  
Blogger soadkombucha said...

I keep finding myself back here checking every few hours to see if YubNub is back up, because I still find myself having to force myself into thinking "OK. Type the URL first. Then search. Don't do it the easy way.", and after 5 days, this is getting a bit ridiculous. I don't understand why Joyent is having such a rough time getting their server back up, but I agree with the previous comment about a suggestion of changing your host, or possibly finding some way to host a mirror of YubNub, just in the event of something like this happening again. Really missing the service!

8/18/2012 1:13 a.m.  
Blogger Christer said...

A search engine down for more than an hour, let alone several days?! Someone needs to give Joyent a real kick in the pants D:

Man, my adress bar feels so useless now. Thanks for a great service!

8/18/2012 3:37 a.m.  
Blogger Jonathan said...

Yeah, thanks guys. Basically I need Joyent to restart the custom lighttpd script that they have set up for Yubnub. I am contacting them via email. Haven't heard back from them for the past day or so - hopefully they'll get to my request soon. Once it's working, they'll re-grant me access to the lighttpd script so I can stop/start it myself. All this is happening because they needed to rebuild the machine that Yubnub is running on.

8/18/2012 7:31 a.m.  
Blogger Guy said...

I would certainly look into leaving Joyent if I were you Jonathan - the level of service from them seems to be pretty pathetic!

8/18/2012 7:51 a.m.  
Anonymous Sabre said...

Just wanted to drop in that we really appreciate the work and maintenance you've put into this, Jonathan! Not having YubNub is giving me withdrawal symptoms and often makes me want to break the keyboard when my browsing efficiency has dramatically dropped, sigh.

Oh well, cheers and hope it gets restored soon. Again, thank you for YubNub and its awesomeness! :)

8/18/2012 8:38 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i really.. really... reallyreally...... miss yubnub.... like cookie monster miss cookie..... :(

8/18/2012 10:56 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Can we donate to help you fix it?
Suffering withdrawal... need my Yubnub 'fix'... :P

8/18/2012 4:34 p.m.  
Blogger Jonathan said...

Yeah, really sorry about this guys. Still waiting to hear from Joyent.

8/18/2012 8:13 p.m.  
Blogger Jonathan said...

Thanks guys for mentioning Yubnub on the Joyent thread. Lighttpd is just giving us errors on startup. So Joyent is thinking maybe we should switch to Mongrel instead of Lighttpd. The trouble is, I don't have much time to work on this after work :-(

8/20/2012 9:34 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Joaquin,
Do you have any usage statistics of Yubnub? Just curious...
Thanks

8/20/2012 10:12 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Where did you go, my lovely.

8/20/2012 11:58 p.m.  
Blogger KTamas said...

Hey Jonathan, while I'm no expert, I know a thing or two about rails and deployment and I'd be happy to help you out restoring yubnub (because I'm terribly missing it too).

Also have you thought of switching from joyent to another hosting provider?

8/21/2012 12:03 a.m.  
Blogger KTamas said...

I may also be able to help to upgrade Yubnub to Rails 3.2 and have it deployed somewhere else with something more up-to-date i.e. nginx+passenger.

I know I can fork the code on github -- https://github.com/jcnetdev/yubnub -- is this the latest version?

8/21/2012 2:23 a.m.  
Blogger Joaquín Núñez said...

the guy at joyent said that you need to fix some issues with the version of rails and ruby. if this is the original source code https://github.com/jcnetdev/yubnub and you can tell us what must be done, i can help.

although i dont know ruby, i can learn :-)

i will appreciate your directions

greetings

8/21/2012 7:49 a.m.  
Anonymous Mark said...

I'm missing YubNub a lot. Let us know if there's anything we can do to help!

8/21/2012 1:36 p.m.  
Blogger dp said...

As a stop gap, you can use http://www.sugarcodes.com/ -- works pretty well. Though I'll switch back to YubNub once it's fixed.

8/22/2012 8:44 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

YOU'RE BAAAAACCCKKKK!!!!!! AHHHH!!!!! <3<3<3<3<3

8/22/2012 10:29 a.m.  
Blogger KTamas said...

it's back! my life is complete again!

8/22/2012 10:38 a.m.  
Blogger Jonathan said...

Yay! Many thanks to Jacques Marneweck at Joyent for fixing up Yubnub by switching it from fastcgi to mongrels.

8/22/2012 10:39 a.m.  
Blogger KTamas said...

Jonathan, is there a way to download all the commands from the yubnub site? I'd like to put up a mirror for myself -- just in case, in the future -- and possibly play around upgrading it to rails 3.2.

8/22/2012 10:44 a.m.  
Anonymous Grant said...

HOORAY!! My omnibox runneth over!

8/22/2012 11:20 a.m.  
Blogger Jonathan said...

KTamas - send your email address to jonathan.aquino@gmail.com and I can email you a sql dump of all the commands. Also I have put yubnub on GitHub.

8/22/2012 2:25 p.m.  
Blogger KTamas said...

Jonathan: mail sent :)

8/22/2012 3:27 p.m.  
Anonymous Mark said...

Yay!! Back!! Thank you.

8/22/2012 4:39 p.m.  
Blogger Pocket Rebel said...

Wow, that was something else. I didn't realize I was taking YubNub for granted.... but wow. In all honesty, maybe it's time to take this to another level. I don't know how many people use YubNub, but apparently, I use it constantly. YubNub directly in the Chrome address bar is just so damned useful. Somehow we need to make sure this never happens again. Maybe others can help Jonathan out with some maintenance. Watching the blog made me think it's a lot of work... and whenever I've needed a command changed, it's been done so quickly. I don't know. I'm just thinking. You have no idea how high I just sat in my chair when I realized my commands were working again!

8/22/2012 8:11 p.m.  
Anonymous Barry said...

Welcome back!

8/22/2012 9:26 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah! yubnub is back. It was a really hard time without it.
feligs

8/23/2012 1:16 a.m.  
Blogger Guy said...

I second Pocket Rebel's comments; definitely recommend a tips jar and then with the money some mirror servers.

The internet is basically 'a bit rubbish' without YN.

Very glad it's back though! :)

btw the captcha system here on Blogger SUCKS - I have tried about 20 times so far to get my comment accepted...

8/23/2012 2:48 a.m.  
Anonymous Chris B said...

What Pocket Rebel (and many others here) have said - I had no idea what a difference Yubnub had made to me Internet experience until I was without it! I'll leave the redundancy/resilience solutions to others with more technical skills, but just wanted to say thank you Jonathan!

8/23/2012 6:33 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great to see you back! Thanks for the superb service. -Tyler from Rochester NY

8/23/2012 12:42 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OK seriously, how much would you need to charge in subscription costs to get a backup server to make sure this never happens again?

8/23/2012 2:43 p.m.  
Anonymous Jekyll said...

Wow, the past 2 weeks made me realize how much my web-surfing experience depends on yubnub! I suggest putting a donation-button on the page, so maybe you can change hosters?

8/24/2012 2:16 a.m.  
Blogger KTamas said...

Aaaaand it's down again :'(

8/27/2012 9:28 a.m.  
Blogger KTamas said...

...and back up, it seems it was only temporary.

8/27/2012 10:49 a.m.  
Blogger Jonathan said...

Thanks for alerting me to it, KTamas!

8/27/2012 7:03 p.m.  
Blogger raptros-v76 said...

Seems to be down again.

8/28/2012 8:08 a.m.  
Blogger Pocket Rebel said...

Damn. Down again w/ the 500 server error.

8/28/2012 8:19 a.m.  
Anonymous David said...

Appears to be down again. Jonathan, any word?

8/28/2012 8:24 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's down again, again. It seems to be really unstable the last few days.

8/28/2012 9:14 a.m.  
Anonymous khamer said...

It appears down again.

8/28/2012 9:25 a.m.  
Blogger KTamas said...

Okay, so I've spend the last few hours upgrading Yubnub from Rails 0.14 (? ish... that was the closest version that would run) to Rails 2.3.14. I have yet to create the migrations for the tests but it should be working otherwise. I'm planning on deploying a mirror on my server soon but I really want to add a CAPTCHA verification to the create page to prevent spam.

Anyways, the code is up at https://github.com/KTamas/yubnub.

Will comment again when the mirror is deployed.

In the future I might upgrade it to Rails 3 but that will require some really significant changes.

8/28/2012 2:15 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jon, seems to still be some issues with YubNub..right now I'm getting 500 errors again as well as just sometimes it being very very slow and "waiting on yubnub.org" ... maybe you should get another web host? Seems like these Joyent folks don't really know what they're doing...

9/03/2012 10:11 a.m.  
Blogger KTamas said...

So yubnub is down... again. I've put up a mirror (running the upgraded rails 2.3.14 code) here:

http://yubnub.ktamas.com/

It should work as a drop-in replacement, you just have to change the yubnub url from yubnub.org to yubnub.ktamas.com.

Everything _should_ work in theory and most of the stuff seems to but I'm pretty sure there are some hidden areas where it can still break, so if you find anything, don't hesitate to email me at yubnub[at]ktamas[dot]com.

9/03/2012 2:49 p.m.  
Blogger Pocket Rebel said...

and again, unfortunately. This is getting kind of goofy. Please don't think I'm blaming anyone but the server, btw.

9/03/2012 4:11 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

in the meantime I started setting up chrome shortcuts for doing exactly the job yubnub did for me. of course it's never as complete, but way way faster. i like it.
thanks for yubnub anyways, it was a big help for a long time

9/08/2012 2:50 a.m.  
Blogger Jonathan said...

Reposting this from the Yubnub google group:

Hey guys,

Sorry - yubnub went down again this morning. I restarted the mongrels, but it's still down - maybe it's an issue with lighttpd. I've asked my web host to restart lighttpd (and to show me where the lighttpd log is and how to restart it myself).

Maybe we should call it quits on this project. Life is super-busy for me right now (with work and also I am getting married soon), so I don't really have time and energy to maintain yubnub.

Jon

9/08/2012 7:03 a.m.  
Blogger KTamas said...

my mirror is still up and while it has some sort of issue with some of the external PHP scripts (i.e. ifThen), I may be able to fix those too if Jon can send me the scripts. I really want to help to keep yubnub alive if it's possible.

9/08/2012 7:07 a.m.  
Blogger Josh said...

Jon, I think it's honestly your web host. It seems that Joyent is just really slow and incompetent for a process that isn't that hard to run. I would maybe just migrate it elsewhere where you can be guaranteed of the uptime, because as a server technician in VA, I can tell you, their response time and failure to fix a simple lighttpd daemon issue...is depressing.

9/08/2012 9:27 a.m.  
Anonymous Sabre said...

I don't mean to pressure you, Jon, but I'd be one really sad puppy if YubNub went down forever. It'd be the first time I'd have seen technology go *backwards*, considering how convenient YubNub makes lives.

9/09/2012 2:46 a.m.  
Anonymous Sabre said...

@KTamas: Thanks for the mirror, that is fantastic! If we can have mirrors up like that, maybe we can let Jon enjoy his marriage after all! ;)

9/09/2012 2:48 a.m.  
Blogger Jonathan said...

Ha!

9/10/2012 9:07 p.m.  
Blogger Pocket Rebel said...

Lots of issues recently. Any idea what's up? Glad the mirror is still up.

2/06/2013 5:18 p.m.  
Anonymous Guy said...

It's down more than it's up these days... I know we have the mirror but not sure it can be integrated into the search function in Firefox..?

2/23/2013 4:40 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Jonathan, can you tell us what is going on??

3/04/2013 9:13 p.m.  
Blogger Jonathan said...

I am moving YubNub to a different host and rewriting it in php, but it is taking a while as I only work on it for half a hour a day. So we will need to be patient.

3/04/2013 10:19 p.m.  
Anonymous Guy said...

For those who can't live without yubnub, in the meantime you might want to look into duckduckgo.com and its !bang commands which are very similar to yubnub's - e.g. !g is 'search google'.

More info here:

https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html

3/05/2013 8:37 a.m.  
Anonymous Chris said...

Thanks for the update, Jon, and many thanks again for all your work!

3/05/2013 11:52 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

this is completely ridiculous. c´mon
hosting a website isn´t a big deal these days.
open up a paypal donation account and pay
the rent!

3/07/2013 3:19 a.m.  
Anonymous cyborgemu said...

Just wanted to say that it's now been about two weeks of non-stop working Yubnub!

That six months of intermittant yubnubbing was frustrating and made me realize just how wonderful and convenient a tool it is. So glad to have it back!

Thank you so much Jonathan! You are the sort of person that makes this particular internet (and this particular world) great!

3/26/2013 4:09 p.m.  

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