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Note: 2021-10-01 04:00Z - Maintenance is complete. We didn't finish all the tasks and we have scheduled another maintenance window. Thank you for your patience!

Note: 2021-10-01 01:00Z - Beginning second upgrade attempt now.

Note: 2021-09-29 04:00Z - Upgrade attempt failed. We have reverted to the previous configuration. We will be trying again during the next window.

Due to a planned network upgrade, all Stack Exchange sites will be read-only for a maximum of two hours this week. The first window was Tuesday, September 28, 2021 between 9 PM (21:00) and midnight (23:59) US/Eastern (a.k.a. NYC-time), but that upgrade attempt failed. The second window will be Thursday, September 30, 2021 (also between 9 PM and midnight US/Eastern). During this window, the site will be read-only for up to two hours, likely less.

Translation to UTC time:

Due to a planned network upgrade, all Stack Exchange sites will be read-only for a maximum of two hours this week. The first window was Wednesday, 29 September 2021 between 01:00 and 0:400 UTC, but that upgrade attempt failed. The second window will be Friday, 1 October 2021 (also between 01:00 and 04:00 UTC). During this window, the site will be read-only for up to two hours, likely less.

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  • 3
    If I am understanding correctly, the second time in the title is given in EDT? EST is at UTC-5 always, and most regions Eastern Time are currently observing DST which puts it in EDT at UTC-4. Please let me know if my edit has invalidated anything.
    – hyperneutrino
    Commented Sep 27, 2021 at 21:07
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    But then how will I learn more about measuring butterfly testicle powder?
    – SurpriseDog
    Commented Sep 27, 2021 at 21:13
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    Yes, that should have been EDT. Blasted typos that pass the quick eyeball check! Thanks for the fix!
    – Jade Sprague Staff
    Commented Sep 27, 2021 at 21:59
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    @JadeSprague Why was this not put on the Network Status site, where the read-only mode banners point to? And (still hasn't been retroactively placed for historical reference)
    – Sampson Crowley
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 3:56
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    @SampsonCrowley related: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/366770/…
    – Luuklag
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 9:30
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    Thanks for keeping us informed. Well, at least it didn't actually fail again. I hope things go better for you next time. Good luck.
    – Makyen
    Commented Oct 1, 2021 at 4:11
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    I think the comments (1) "Note: 2021-10-01 04:00Z - Maintenance is complete" and (2) "Note: 2021-09-30 01:00Z - Beginning second upgrade attempt now" indicate a 27-hour interval for the upgrade. Presumably, the date on (2) should also be 2021-10-01? Or perhaps both should be 2021-09-30 with appropriate adjustments to the time and replacing Z with EDT?
    – Jonathan Leffler
    Commented Oct 1, 2021 at 13:49
  • No, the date on (2) should indeed be 2021-10-01, I spaced.
    – Jade Sprague Staff
    Commented Oct 1, 2021 at 15:24

4 Answers 4

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During this outage, a banner was displayed on every read-only site:

This site is currently in read-only mode; we'll return with full functionality soon. Follow @StackStatus or visit our status blog for more info.

This site is currently in read-only mode; we'll return with full functionality soon. Follow @StackStatus or visit our status blog for more info.

But neither linked status page gave any information about the outage at all.

@StackStatus

@StackStatus screenshot

Stack Exchange Network Status:

blog screenshot

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    I agree with this. What happened? One moment I was happily chlling on my parent site, and the next thing I knew, BLAM! The site went into complete shutdown. When I saw the banner appear, the announcement wasn't there.I just found out about this because of that! What happened with the usual staff updates? Anyways, I do hope the maintenance is worth the wait.
    – Anonymus 25
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 3:34
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    Could not type my frustration (with screenshots) fast enough! The lack of proper communication also resulted in a number of spurious reports to downdetector. Not everyone is going to know how/where to find out if this outage was legit.
    – Ian W
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 3:42
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    There was eventually a tweet saying that the planned maintenance was taking longer than expected ... but my experience from previous incidents is that Twitter is almost never where you want to look. (Now there is also one saying chat is back up.)
    – tripleee
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 3:45
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This year several of the planned maintenances weren't announced on the blog or on twitter. Whenever that happens users ask here to keep those two channels updated, not just because they're linked in the read-only message but also because that's where a lot of us tend to look for the info first.

References:

Today: Adding a link to Meta when the Stack Exchange network is under maintenance

June this year: Can we reinstate stackstatus.net as a channel to update on any reliability/availability issues on the network?

From 2019: Remove link to abandoned Stack Status blog from read-only mode banner

From 2015: Please keep the support Twitter stream and Blog up to date

(etc...)

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    And sadly we can't just hop over to Nick Craver's Twitter page to see a live feed of the team's thoughts/progress anymore.
    – TylerH
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 13:24
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    @TylerH I think I found those Twitter posts you mention and they were really cool. Apparently there's some thought being given to this maybe there'll be an expansion on the live feed format.
    – bad_coder
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 13:27
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    Yeah, they are super cool and work well for a smaller more agile team, and Nick was awesome enough to be able to scale with it and maintain that informal process, more or less. But the downside is it was an informal/ad-hoc thing, so now that he's left SO, it leaves an awkward void. Good find on that staff comment though; since it's been >3 months I'll ping that staff member to request an update.
    – TylerH
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 13:51
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I really hope that the next notification about such a significant event will be more in advance (so that the community really has time to get acquainted with this notification).

I also need to note that the wording "Translation for people that speak UTC" does not sound very polite. And, by the way, most people on earth use UTC as the Global time, and it is this time (and not your local time) that is advisable to use as the main time for notification of upcoming events.

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    That phrase is left over from this announcement, where it was contributing via juxtaposition to the "Translation for people in California" joke. On it's own... no, it doesn't sound that great.
    – Makyen
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 3:53
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    I'll just say that the joke about UTC is as perfectly fine as the joke about California. I "speak UTC" and have no problem whatsoever with that wording. Or are people in California the only ones expected to have a sense of humor?
    – wimi
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 12:19
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    I think the joke is funny (can't find anything offensive about it).
    – bad_coder
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 21:37
  • I didn't know that this phrase is being published again, and in what context it was published the previous time. If it's so - OK, maybe it's a funny joke. In any case, I hope that it will not be published one more time in the next notification: even the best jokes are not so funny for the third time.
    – Ivan Olshansky
    Commented Sep 30, 2021 at 2:17
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Ok, thanks for fixing this.

I am not sure whether chat was open or not... I was in to chat, but then got logged out, then refreshed it and got back in.

And chat messages where repeating... So was chat actually meant to be open?

Also, on Twitter, there wasn't anything about this maintenance, thus the upper banner linked there. And it was a link with no resourced about this maintenance.

On https://stackexchange.com/users/11900153/u12-forward I was still logged in. And I could see the reputation number I got on the the top right corner, also messages. But if I click on them some strange misaligned text:

Some error occurred.

Showed up, also the bottom half of the text was cut off due to the size of the background.

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    chat was throwing me into A51 for a bit. Looks ok now
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 3:48

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