PRQ Fire Takes Down Several Torrent Sites
Written by Ben Jones on February 16, 2008A fire at Swedish hosting company PRQ, owned by two of the founders of The Pirate Bay, brought down numerous torrent sites earlier today. Whilst it didn’t take out The PirateBay’s site, it did take down several of their ancillary activities, as well as other BitTorrent sites hosted there.
Initial reports are that the fire at PRQ was caused by a powerfeed to one UPS, which has now been fixed by an electrician, and that some boxes are now coming back up. The fire occurred sometime shortly before midday GMT, and took out approximately 200 servers.
PRQ’s Anakata told TorrentFreak that not everything went down because of the electrical fault, but that he had to kill the power to the entire facility in order to fix things. He added that none of the servers are permanently damaged.
The fire didn’t take out The Pirate Bay itself, much to the disappointment of some, including Swedish prosecutors. It has, however, disabled several other torrent sites and some of Pirate Bay’s services, including bayIMG, their court weblog and the Pirate Bay forums at SuprBay.
In 2007 several torrent sites moved to Sweden, and to PRQ in particular. Sweden is considered to be a safe haven for BitTorrent sites, and PRQ is popular because it is owned by TiAMO and Anakata, two of the founders of The Pirate Bay. Ironically, however, The Pirate Bay is not hosted in Sweden or at PRQ, which is probably a wise decision, you can’t have all your eggs in one basket.
Amongst the sites taken down were Waffles, Suprnova, Swebits and the popular TV-torrent site EZTV. Waffles posted the following notice on their site
FIRE AT PRQ DATACENTER
Please bear with us waffles! We’re scrambling to get you your syrup.- The servers were not harmed.
- Even in such case, no data has been lost as we have daily offsite backups.- Luckily, we have a brand new server already…
We are assessing whether to ship it to the new Swedish datacenter where arrangements have been made or to take the hospitality of our good friends in Canada (unrelated to what.cd’s move)
An admin at the private music tracker Waffles -one of the sites that is experiencing downtime at the moment- wasn’t happy with the downtime and told TorrentFreak: “… ridiculous. 2nd time this month we’ve had more than 6 hours downtime,” adding “I need to ship our new (much more powerful server) for waffles to a different datacenter in Sweden, before the Post Office closes.” Another admin said: “We noticed the downtime 7 hours ago, and only found out via someone else outside of PRQ about the fire”
Regardless, there will be some smiles in Hollywood and at the Swedish anti-piracy organization Antipiratbyrån, as well as many frowns from users all around the world. More information will be added when we get it.
UPDATE 16/2/2008 20:50 GMT: Power has been restored and half the servers are now back up
UPDATE 17/2/2008 02:03 GMT: Some sites including Waffles are back, EZTV and others are still down
Previously: BitTorrent Developers Introduce Comcast Busting Encryption
Next: We’re Back…
48 Responses
Well…that sucks. Not really PRQ’s fault on this one, I think Waffles should learn that shit happens….as for the previous downtime I don’t know what the cause of that was.
Oh well, I still say supporting the pirates by using their servers is the best way to go.
Not if their servers suck and their service is worse.
it was an attempted hit at the pirate bay!
[quote comment="291602"]Well…that sucks. Not really PRQ’s fault on this one, I think Waffles should learn that shit happens….as for the previous downtime I don’t know what the cause of that was.
Oh well, I still say supporting the pirates by using their servers is the best way to go.[/quote]
yea, shit does happens. but you don’t know how bad their service really has been for the past few months we have been there.
First Sealand, now PRQ… coincidence? i think not
Ow shit, thats really said, but acidents happen….
There are several worst hosting out there, prq is really good.
I hope they get everything up in a short :) and i’m sure they’ll get stronger.
We’ll!
its an all out attack!
all hands prepare for battle!
[quote comment="291606"]it was an attempted hit at the pirate bay![/quote]
[quote comment="291611"]its an all out attack!
all hands prepare for battle![/quote]
Shut up dude…..everyone knows TPB is not even hosted in PRQ.
“The topic in the Pirate Bay’s IRC channel says “electric fire at prq. suprbay, bayimg, suprnova down… They will be moved to other location.”
are those not the pirate bay ???
They are all separate entities run by TPB. In other words they are not The Pirate Bay, The Pirate Bay is: http://thepiratebay.com , http://thepiratebay.org .
SuprBay, is SuprBay. BayImg is Bayimg, and SuprNova is SuprNova.
Thats really really bad.
Relakks is not responding since more than one day.
Does that have anything to do with the fire ?
[quote comment="291614"][quote comment="291606"]it was an attempted hit at the pirate bay![/quote]
[quote comment="291611"]its an all out attack!
all hands prepare for battle![/quote]
Shut up dude…..everyone knows TPB is not even hosted in PRQ.[/quote]
someone’s never heard of a joke before..
Has anyone checked out the Web Sheriff’s alibi for the time it occurred? & where were the Village People then too?
Inquiring minds need to know…
=]
the cop from the village people wa in jail, the cowboy was on a mountain and the indian was huffin gas, and the rest have no alibi
No, those faggots wouldn’t be so agressive. Their attack would be like singing about bad weather and naughty-naughty big boys :)
The battle begins.! Ladies and Gentlemen prepare youself argghhh .! pirate forever nobody can’t stop us try it you F&@£eRs=)
SEEd..thank you
Hmm, that’s funny, I was still able to download the files that these sites host torrents for.
the site is down the peers are not
burn baby burn
Brokeps Blog is Down as well
i saw a burnin host on fire.
it went down down down and the flames went higher.
it burns burns burns, that host on fire, that host on fire.
This fire is out of control, gonna burn this city, burn this city, lalala…
Sucks =/
[quote comment="291654"]the site is down the peers are not[/quote]
HINT: My point exactly!
Village People/Web Sheriff/BREIN:
I’m a fire-starter, twisted fire-starter
You’re the fire-starter, twisted fire-starter
I’m a fires tarter, twisted fire-starter
I’m Glad they getting running again.
YOU CAN’T BEAT A PIRATE!!
I MEAN! WE HAVE EYE PATCHES!
AAARRRRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!
So you’re a tart that likes fire.
:o)
hehe – back to watching ordinary TV for a while ’till eztv is back up again!
[quote comment="291609"]First Sealand, now PRQ… coincidence? i think not[/quote]
hahahaha its a consiracy right?
conspiracy is what i wanted to say :P
Did they pay the firestarter for each time the fire was spread from one server to another? If not, that’s the same as stealing.
Damn those fire pirates.
Foul play…
Waffles.fm is back up
I noticed that EZTV was down at about noon eastern time. I went to SLYCK to see if they had any news about it, but the SLYCK main screen did not mention a problem, and the SLYCK forums were down also. I have been holding my breath since. Live on EZTV. Time shift. no time to actually watch tv. DL and watch them later, after a week or, or whenever i get the time.
go eat some real waffles, and buy the real products for once. crap happens
But those waffles are burnt.
[quote comment="291706"]back to watching ordinary TV for a while ’till eztv is back up again![/quote]
http://www.mininova.org/user/EZTV
http://www.mininova.org/user/VTV
beowulf took out eztv *hulk smash*
beowulf took out eztv
*hulk angry want to smash*
NO!
There’s not much you can do about fires, but that doesn’t excuse the horrible service you get at PRQ. I especially don’t recommend them if you don’t speak Swedish. The guy who runs things is a cranky asshole who doesn’t answer e-mails 1/2 of the time, forgets to pick up hardware sent to him for installation, and bites your head off if you try to ask him for service.
“We are assessing whether to ship it to the new Swedish datacenter where arrangements have been made or to take the hospitality of our good friends in Canada (unrelated to what.cd’s move)”
Canada?
—shades of Demonoid run down my back
beowulf took out eztv
*hulk angry want to smash*
lolololololololol
hurry back eztv
Does this explain why I get a blank page when I try to upload a torrent?
To TPB
Well something like this should have never happened… hosting providers should have really have plenty of fire prevention going to avoid things such as this.
Also people looking for good hosting should take things like fire, theft, power outs and such as a important factor.
How do you prevent an electrical fire from taking out the device that caused it? Put a sprinkler into your UPS? :P
cool things on this site for a moment chill ,look here ,thanks http://coole-pix.lx.am/
[quote comment="292082"]Well something like this should have never happened… hosting providers should have really have plenty of fire prevention going to avoid things such as this.
Also people looking for good hosting should take things like fire, theft, power outs and such as a important factor.[/quote]
There wasn’t a literal fire, only a (severe) overheating. No open flame, and totally anaerobic, so DC fire suppression doesn’t help a bit in this case.
EZTV (http://eztv.it/) is back up and running, we have a server in netherlands currently running our site until PRQ is all operational again.
TiAMO and anakata have been extremely helpful in regards to hosting our site.
bayimg does work as the article stated but ALL the images are missing. Hope they made their backups!
4 references to this post
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.