Since late afternoon today, the drupal website has been down. I was typing away an explanation for one of the issues in the ldap_integration project. I hit submit and viola! I get this page:

Unable to connect to database server

 

If you still have to install Drupal, proceed to the installation page.

If you have already finished installed Drupal, this either means that the username and password information in your settings.php file is incorrect or that we can't connect to the MySQL database server. This could mean your hosting provider's database server is down.

The MySQL error was: Lost connection to MySQL server at 'reading initial communication packet', system error: 111.

Currently, the username is drupal and the database server is drupaldb2.osuosl.org.

Are you sure you have the correct username and password?
Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?
Are you sure that the database server is running?


For more help, see the Installation and upgrading handbook. If you are unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your hosting provider.

What I do not know (never had a need to) is whether the drupal folks maintain a web presence outside of the drupal system. As you know, drupal’s CMS system has tons of modules and one can run practically every aspect of the website inside of drupal. My initial thought was to alert this in the drupal forums. DOH! Drupal forums are part of drupal too. The current text that is being displayed has no information as to how end users are supposed to contact the admins and tell them about the situation.

A mini-lesson: Try not to put ALL of your website operations under 1 system. If you do, at least have an email address that people can click on on your error/upgrade/install pages.