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GitHub major issues - repos have "lost" commits and site is erroring

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Re: GitHub major issues - repos have "lost" commits and site is erroring

#31

Just posted to the support page. "Sorry guys, there was a Javascript error displaying an error when there was none. We've deployed a fix for this and everything should be good to go."

This seems to be fixed now - for my repo at least.

The GitHub guy saying it was a "JavaScript display error" is incorrect though. I was pulling a repo and getting an old version.

EDIT: I'm not getting the javaScript display error, but I'm still missing my commit, so I guess these errors are unrelated :/

Re: GitHub major issues - repos have "lost" commits and site is erroring

#32
post #8

I'm still on the fence about that whole cloud thing, personally.

Well, here's the beauty of Github--if they lose all my repos I just don't care. Since I've got a copy of my repos locally, there's absolutely nothing they can lose... Worse case if they go completely down for a couple days I can still collaborate using ssh or "git send-email". This is the only reason I decided to use Github after avoiding Sourceforge and their ilk for the past decade and a half.

"This is the only reason I decided to use Github after avoiding Sourceforge and their ilk for the past decade and a half."

But why github? Why not gitorious.org?

If github goes away, I still have my code, but I lose any issues people have filed on the site, and I lose being able to easily check on forks of my projects where people might be doing interesting stuff.

I had been using gitorius.org, but moved to github for all the things other than git that makes one public git host different from another.

Re: GitHub major issues - repos have "lost" commits and site is erroring

#33
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A major selling point of Git is the distributed part. You are allowed (even encouraged) to have more than one "source of truth". For ~7$/mo (including admin. and cheaper than Linode), GitHub is just another place to have a hosted version of your repo, with a nice UI and social features. Shit happens, servers go down, that's why you also have a remote repo hosted on Linode, and X, and Y too.

This is an interesting theory, but it isn't how git's client actually works. If the repository exported a list of "mirrors" to the client that it then stored and was willing to use, that would be awesome, but otherwise you have a million people out there who are now just getting error messages when they do "git pull" and the only fix is for them to go back to your web page and try to get information on what is happen…

This is a straw man argument. The question isn't whether Git could be more intuitive/user-friendly (Hint: It should be, in fact I bet my company on it [see my profile]), or whether it is more secure/cheap to host your own repo.

If you have a million people `pull`ing from your repo, of course you should have be hosting your own public access point. But, in 80% of cases, people can't be bothered to figure out how to set up Gitosis, pay for slices, mess with DNS, etc. just to host a repo.

To put it another way, see: Heroku vs. EC2

Re: GitHub major issues - repos have "lost" commits and site is erroring

#34
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A major selling point of Git is the distributed part. You are allowed (even encouraged) to have more than one "source of truth". For ~7$/mo (including admin. and cheaper than Linode), GitHub is just another place to have a hosted version of your repo, with a nice UI and social features. Shit happens, servers go down, that's why you also have a remote repo hosted on Linode, and X, and Y too.

This is an interesting theory, but it isn't how git's client actually works. If the repository exported a list of "mirrors" to the client that it then stored and was willing to use, that would be awesome, but otherwise you have a million people out there who are now just getting error messages when they do "git pull" and the only fix is for them to go back to your web page and try to get information on what is happen…

But git-over-http is just a normal http client, and http supports redirects. So while nobody does this, it's possible to load-balance http clients to "valid" servers just like you would with any other http-based app.

ssh:// and git:// are more difficult, but project contributers with commit access can just ping you on irc to see what's up with the repo and where to push to today.

Re: GitHub major issues - repos have "lost" commits and site is erroring

#35

I hope this has nothing to do with the people who hacked sourceforge..

Git has full cryptographic history (and data) authentication, so any changes to the history would be easily detectable. And you can sign known-good commits, so that even if you've never pulled before, you can still verify the part of the history that's been signed.

SVN and CVS are missing this key feature, which is why the sf.net hacking is scary.

Re: GitHub major issues - repos have "lost" commits and site is erroring

#36
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a student, and I make a new git repo for each assignment or class. Github would become extremely expensive if I was to do this. And my model for working on git projects is not distributed. We use a centralized model (which is totally viable and one of the many uses) instead of pull requests and branches. On small projects, I find this faster and easier for people to use. Yes, I have backups, but when my centraliz…

You mentioned Github would be prohibitively expensive if you were to use it for all of your school assignments? Github actually has a program where if you tell them you are a student/professor you can get free private repo's.

I didn't know that, thanks! Free is always nice :)

Re: GitHub major issues - repos have "lost" commits and site is erroring

#37

Just posted to the support page. "Sorry guys, there was a Javascript error displaying an error when there was none. We've deployed a fix for this and everything should be good to go."

This seems to be fixed now - for my repo at least. The GitHub guy saying it was a "JavaScript display error" is incorrect though. I was pulling a repo and getting an old version. EDIT: I'm not getting the javaScript display error, but I'm still missing my commit, so I guess these errors are unrelated :/

Did you file a support ticket for this? It sounds like an unrelated problem. We can investigate if you let us know what repo is causing the problem. Visit http://support.github.com or email support@github.com.

Re: GitHub major issues - repos have "lost" commits and site is erroring

#38

Is it just me or has guthub's performance and reliability been getting progressively worse over the past month or two? Even putting this issue aside, and the outages, pushing to a private repo takes _minutes_ now, and file lists in the web interface often don't load without a page refresh.

At the price and size of Linode instances, it's cheaper and I feel better knowing I'm in control when I run Redmine+Gitosis. When I had my github account and something went wrong, I couldn't just ssh in and fix it. All I could do is wait. Now, for some people, I can see how waiting is an easier solution. I personally just don't like it. (of course, this is reffering to private repos. public repos are still king on gi…

It's amazing to me that you feel more confident in your own abilities to keep a server running than GitHub... you must be a really great sysadmin! The GitHub folks are pretty hardcore!

I, for one, am a positively mediocre sysadmin. And the amount of time I have to spend waiting for GitHub to fix bugs is almost certainly far, far, FAR less than the amount of time I'd spend scrambling (but not waiting!) to fix my own.

This is also how I feel about Heroku.

For whatever reason, I prefer the helplessness I feel while waiting for them to fix stuff to the helplessness I feel when I'm in "OH SHIT MY SERVER IS DOWN AND I DIDN'T EVEN DO ANYTHING AND WHY IS THE DATABASE NOT RESPONDING IT RESPONDS WHEN I QUERY IT MANUALLY AAAUUGGHHH!!!" mode.

Although I do try to keep myself sharp by doing things by hand in other areas of my engineering activities.

Re: GitHub major issues - repos have "lost" commits and site is erroring

#39
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be fixed now - for my repo at least. The GitHub guy saying it was a "JavaScript display error" is incorrect though. I was pulling a repo and getting an old version. EDIT: I'm not getting the javaScript display error, but I'm still missing my commit, so I guess these errors are unrelated :/

Did you file a support ticket for this? It sounds like an unrelated problem. We can investigate if you let us know what repo is causing the problem. Visit http://support.github.com or email support@github.com.

I posted the name of the repo to the thread, and someone else on the thread is confirming the same problem.

Re: GitHub major issues - repos have "lost" commits and site is erroring

#40

Is it just me or has guthub's performance and reliability been getting progressively worse over the past month or two? Even putting this issue aside, and the outages, pushing to a private repo takes _minutes_ now, and file lists in the web interface often don't load without a page refresh.

I have two repos living in "Repository temporarily unavailable" status for several days now. I understand that shit happens, but what's really frustration is inquiry about what can or will be done about it and getting no response. Do I wait? Do I just move stuff to my own server? Go back to Gitorious? It's not that I can't keep working, but the main reason I use Github is to make my OSS projects available. For other…

Two questions: 1) did you file a support ticket? that seems like the sort of thing they'd be serious about fixing, and 2) do you have a paid account? In some sense, it doesn't matter, OSS developers are important to their mission too, but... well, I'm curious because I have a paid account and if you do too then that makes me more afraid for myself.
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