Inside LabourStart

I discovered yesterday when setting up the Illinois labour newswire that it seemed to not be updating.  Then I realized that none of the newswires had been generated since 05:16 London time on Saturday.

I contacted our Internet service provider, 1&1, to complain that “cron” — the system command that instructs it to perform certain tasks at certain times — had obviously stopped working.  I’ve received two emails from 1&1 since then and they’ve not yet solved the problem.  This morning I’ve written to complain how long it is taking them.

I think they need to re-boot the server and I guess they’re reluctant to do this as it will bring down many sites, but they have no choice.

Unfortunately, it’s a Sunday and they work with a smaller staff today and will respond less quickly than we’d like.  The main effect of all this is that our newswires are not being updated — this is bad, but it’s not like our site is down or anything like that.