503 Service Unavailable

[melissa5]

I've been getting this error message on and off since last night.

Ok, this is weird. I can do everything as usual from Safari, but not Firefox.

[CJB]

Could have been a cache thing - might have needed to clear it

[melissa5]

Tried clearing the cache and restarting FF...didn't help. I just upgraded to FF 5.0 a few days ago. Maybe it has something to do with that.

[O'Dell]

Tried clearing the cache and restarting FF...didn't help. I just upgraded to FF 5.0 a few days ago. Maybe it has something to do with that.

Hi Melissa. FF automatically upgraded me to FF4 a month or so ago. After that I had problems DL'ing videos. Everything looked normal, but the DL's were corrupted and wouldn't play. Others have had other problems with FF4. I just reinstalled 3.6.17 and everything is fine now.

[melissa5]

Hi Melissa. FF automatically upgraded me to FF4 a month or so ago. After that I had problems DL'ing videos. Everything looked normal, but the DL's were corrupted and wouldn't play. Others have had other problems with FF4. I just reinstalled 3.6.17 and everything is fine now.

Yeah, if this keeps up I will be downgrading FF.

[OldLincoln]

I have issues with 5 also, just not this one.

HTTP Error 503 - Service unavailable
Introduction

The Web server (running the Web site) is currently unable to handle the HTTP request due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server. The implication is that this is a temporary condition which will be alleviated after some delay. Some servers in this state may also simply refuse the socket connection, in which case a different error may be generated because the socket creation timed out.

503 errors in the HTTP cycle

Any client (e.g. your Web browser or our CheckUpDown robot) goes through the following cycle when it communicates with the Web server:

• Obtain an IP address from the IP name of the site (the site URL without the leading 'http://'). This lookup (conversion of IP name to IP address) is provided by domain name servers (DNSs).
• Open an IP socket connection to that IP address.
• Write an HTTP data stream through that socket.
• Receive an HTTP data stream back from the Web server in response. This data stream contains status codes whose values are determined by the HTTP protocol. Parse this data stream for status codes and other useful information.

This error occurs in the final step above when the client receives an HTTP status code that it recognises as '503'. Frank Vipond. September 2010.

Fixing 503 errors

The Web server is effectively 'closed for repair'. It is still functioning minimally because it can at least respond with a 503 status code, but full service is impossible i.e. the Web site is simply unavailable. There are a myriad possible reasons for this, but generally it is because of some human intervention by the operators of the Web server machine. You can usually expect that someone is working on the problem, and normal service will resume as soon as possible.
Please contact the system operators of the Web site (e.g. your ISP) to determine why the service is down. They will be in a much better position to help you than we are for this type of error.

[MikeyKahr]

I was previously a huge FF fan, but with issues lately with newer versions I've made the switch to Google Chrome (85% of the time) and it's been dandy.

[jlottmc]

I downgraded to 3.1.18 and haven't looked back. On the plus side, my ad blocker works again, and I can listen to pandora without ads again.

[OldLincoln]

For me, the hardest part of running V5 is loosing some extensions until they upgrade. My favorite one came back yesterday and I really missed it.