June 17th, 2008

Got Firefox? 503 Service Unavailable (updated)

Posted by Ed Burnette @ 11:06 am

Categories: General, Web Browsers

Tags: Mozilla Firefox, Web Browsers, Internet, Ed Burnette

Well I waited until 1pm EDT and tried to get into the Firefox world record site to download the latest version. It should come as no surprise that the site is down:

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord :

503 Service Unavailable
Failed to resolve the name of server www.spreadfirefox.com to connect

I tried another site but that is down too:

http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ :

 Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

Update: Mozilla now says “Firefox 3 is currently only being offered as a full download from http://getfirefox.com/“. They say not to use “check for updates” and not to use any direct ftp or http links posted on the web. So I tried the official site, but (as of 2:20pm EDT) it simply redirects to another site which only lists the old version, Firefox 2.

http://getfirefox.com/ :
(redirects to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/?from=getfirefox) :

Firefox 2

The award-winning Web browser is now faster, more secure, and fully customizable to your online life. With Firefox 2, we’ve added…

I was hoping that, since Firefox 3 isn’t that big of a download  (about 7MB), and since they had plenty of advance notice, Mozilla might have been able to anticipate and handle the load. But apparently that is not the case. They can’t even get their landing pages to display the right version if you do get in. What a fiasco!

The download period for the record setting attempt ends this time tomorrow, so I guess we’ll just have to try again later. Has anybody managed to get a copy yet?

Update 2: I got in, using http://getfirefox.com/, and I’ve seen reports of others getting in so maybe the initial logjam has cleared. For some reason it used a mirror at “laotzu.acc.umu.se”, which seems a little off the beaten path for me, but it worked. The installer I received for Windows XP was digitally signed at Wednesday, June 11, 2008 5:16:56 AM by Mozilla Corporation, and it had a file version of 4.42.0.0, with a size of 7,496,920 bytes.