Surviving gMail 502 outages
I use mint to see live stats for the traffic to skfox.com and Google Analytics for the long term statistics. I’ve seen a resurgence today of traffic to my two blog posts (in March and again in May) about my gMail account being down. The most common for me is a “Temporary Error (502)” and it would seem to be happening to other users too. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it. On the short side, most of the outages only last 30 minutes or so with the longest being 3.5 hours. It can be terribly frustrating, but there are a few things you can do to alleviate the pain.
- Use your email client like Outlook or Thunderbird to download your messages to your local machine with POP3 while keeping your gmail account unchanged. That way, even if gMail is inaccessible, you can get to your old email for reference. Of course, you have to do this once your account is up and running again.
- Visit the gMail Google group to at the least find others in your boat and get the latest updates.
- Check the Google Apps Status Page
- Use Gmail Offline with Google Gears
Some users have reported success getting to their mail during outages by using any number of alternative links to gmail. Your mileage may vary, but here they are:
- Basic HTML version: https://mail.google.com/mail/h/
- Basic HTML version #2: http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html
- Older version: http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1
THANK YOU!! This is the first post I have found that acknowledges there is a problem today – I have been searching all morning. Thanks for the great post.
Lindsay
You’re welcome! I hope that it comes back up for you quickly. It can be such a nightmare!
[...] what is generally a first, my post on surviving gmail outages has been linked to from another site (that isn’t spammy). The host of Beth’s Blog, a [...]
The problem is back. I’ve been without GMail access for almost 18 hours now, due to error 502… on Google’s Forums there are a lot of other people who have the same problem, starting on 16 July.
I have sent two emails to GMail Support but have received no reply.
I feel your pain GlobetrotterSA. My Gmail has been down since last night and still hasn’t come back up. At least Google has acknowledged the problem.
I can’t imagine being locked out for that long. Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
I switched to Gmail because I thought it would be great to have online access to my email. Today I started getting 502 errors around lunchtime (it’s now 6:30 pm). I’m seriously regretting switching back to my old email, it looks like this error is not all that uncommon. Thanks for posting this information, I was at least able to find out that Google knows about the problem.
I meant to say I’m seriously regretting switching to Gmail and will likely go back to my old provider. It’s been a long day!
My account has been down for 8 hours already. Ugh.
this shit is soooo annoying. i got important documents that i need to access.
Use https instead of http. That works for me.
[...] enough, my gmail is out too with a Temporary Error (502). POP3 seems to be working. Following my survival guide, I checked the Gmail google group. The issue for today, 11 August 2008, is a known issue with the [...]
For what it’s worth, I’ve used it for 2.5 years without a single problem.
Thanks for the tips– which work!
Terrifying to be without for as little as an hour.
Even more so after having ZERO trouble for years.
Hope it’s not an omen.
I could use the html mode, then It seemed like deleting drafts fixed the problem.
Lately GMail has been completely unusable (502 error) and the service itself has been slow, unresponsive, and just all around terrible. I don’t believe I can rely on it any longer, Beta or not, this is unacceptable.
There was a repeat instance of the problem on 10/15 from 9AM PT which seemed to have resolved itself on 10/16 around 8AM PT… almost 24 hrs. It was published here:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=12362
[...] with it yet, knock on wood, but it would appear a lot of others are. I’ve put together some tips on surviving gMail outages and I would love to hear how you are making out in the comments. Filed in Rants and Raves | [...]
Yep…this error is affecting me…and none of the workarounds you suggest are helping me out…I guess I have to wait this one out!
Link for today outage 24th Feb 2009
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Logging-In-en/browse_thread/thread/921824e80c55c11d?q=google+apps+502#
[...] like Google Apps is the culprit this time. Marco brought it to my attention this morning, hat tip to you! I’ll have to take a look at this in depth, and update my Gmail Outage [...]
I have experiencing error 502 on my gmail account for more than 30 hours hours, i have been reading on ways to get around it but it’s all failed to cure my problem. i tried clearing cookies, using different browsers but nothing worked. i tried to log in on a couple of other machines using different browsers but nothing still. I REALLY need some help here. can anyone advice i am so desperate and gmail is my main email. i cannot afford it to be lost.