Yes, Distributed Proofreaders is experiencing an extended downtime.
The March 1, 2014, OS upgrade took place as scheduled at 10am and went smoothly, completing in just under one hour. However, upon reboot we encountered a boot configuration issue which is preventing the server from getting past the bootloader and back online. Since then, we have tried several approaches to correct this problem remotely (and have come tantalizingly close) but have not yet succeeded. I’ll skip the technical details, but note that it has been incredibly frustrating to be able to see the drives on the controller and the filesystem contents, and yet be unable to fully boot into it.
We do have console access to the machine and have verified that all data is present.
We will continue to work at least part of tonight and tomorrow (Sunday March 2) to resolve the issue remotely, but we are close to exhausting those options.
If we cannot resolve the issue remotely, then I will have to travel to the server, or the server will have to be shipped to me. In either case, we are probably looking at being down for approximately a week.
It’s worth noting that the shipping option does open up the possibility for us to migrate to one of the two servers which were donated to DP by Tom Kowal. They are underutilized in their current role providing an additional layer of off-site backups.
Please check back here for further updates on our progress. I apologize for the inconvenience and thank everyone for their patience during this outage. Please wish us luck!
Thanks to Casey and Brian for their assistance today, and special thanks to the staff at Interserver for their hands-on help.
David (donovan)
Hot off the Press 
Thanks for the information – always good to be informed. My heart bleeds for you – my experience in DP (Data Processing) gives me deep understanding for the frustration you must be feeling. May the force return to you!
Bess
Yes, me too, do feel deeply for you because I myself am completely lost, if my computer does not work the way I expect. I really hope you will succeed shortly, not only because I don’t know what to do without dp proofing…. Good to know, that we have to be patient and please keep up the information! Thanks and Good Luck!
Maj
I’ve signed up to proof for DP Canada – perhaps an option for those at a loose end?
@MWS: Just remember that the DP-Canada proofing guidelines are different from those at DP, so make sure to read them and apply the right guidelines depending on the site you’re working at. You can also try DP-It ( http://dp-test.dm.unipi.it/ ) with the same caveat about the guidelines being different.
A special thanks to Charlene (puppernutter) for emailing a heads-up.
How does one get on the heads-up email list? I’d like to know what’s happening, too…
I got it through gutvol-d:
http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d
Thank you very much for keeping the community informed!
My thanks and appreciation to all who are struggling with this frustrating problem. I have every confidence you will find a solution, but just in case you need it–good luck!
Its all good — but thanks for the heads-up! I’ve been accomplishing an extraordinary amount of back-burner RL stuff, though, so take your time! Thank you for all your hard work!
Thanks for the info
Thank you so much for your hard work, and for letting us know what’s going on, David.
Appreciate all your work with the upgrade – am missing my daily dose of D.P. but I have cleaned out a couple of cupboards instead, so that has got be good. Keep up the good work & hopefully we will all be together again soon. Fiona
Hey David, “Don’t carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.” The world won’t end if the outage continues for a space. Causation is causation (not chance), and don’t buy any karmic crud from anybody. Sleep well. Rob
Thanks for the info and good luck. In the interim I discovered Librivox and reading out loud for Gutenberg, which I’m going to have a try at!
Thanks for keeping us informed, David. I have a suggestion, though? Why not keep the server close to where you live, if you are the only one who can fix it?
Cheers,
ckendall86
thanks for keeping us informed, looking forward to hear good news. Lisa
Fingers crossed all goes well and thanks for letting us know what’s going on.