[Haskell-cafe] ping haskell.org timeout

[Jason Dagit]

On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 9:20 PM, Ketil Malde <ketil at malde.org> wrote:
> Jason Dagit <dagitj at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 2:39 PM, Greg Fitzgerald <garious at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> "cabal update" hangs.  "ping haskell.org" times out.  But haskell.org and
>>> hackage webpages are loading just fine.  What's going on?
>
>> 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