Re: [Haskell-cafe] ping haskell.org timeout

On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 9:20 PM, Ketil Malde wrote:

Jason Dagit writes:

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On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 2:39 PM, Greg Fitzgerald wrote:

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"cabal update" hangs.  "ping haskell.org" times out.  But haskell.org and hackage webpages are loading just fine.  What's going on?

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Lots of servers turn off ICMP packet responses these days

Because users don't really need error messages, that's privileged information for system administrators.

I think the reason it gets disabled is typically well intentioned. Besides, if someone is trying to debug http protocol issues using ICMP, they're taking an awfully indirect route.

Looks like haskell.org isn't one of them.

Good to know.

It takes a while to complete with no visual feedback.  Perhaps the network is just slow?  Or perhaps the web pages are cached somewhere along the way?

All of those are plausible, but I heard one of the servers needed some help restarting. I don't know enough about the network topology and setup (or what was wrong with the server) to understand why would cause the behavior Greg was seeing. I do know that several other people were able to run 'cabal update' during that time. The whole thing seems a bit odd to me, but should be behind us for now. Jason