something is wrong with sitemaps

I just logged into my webmaster acct on google for the first time in a while... and all 3 of my vBulletin/vbseo sites are fubar.

data folder is 777.

can't edit the dat file,

> SITE CHMOD 777 downloads.dat
< 550 Could not change perms on downloads.dat: Bad file descriptor

ok, so i killed downloads.dat and it works now...

odd....

looks like the file was chown'ed to my old server... when i moved it it didn't have permission. hrm.

i wonder how long its been like that. Its been a LONG time since I've logged in there, and i'm on my 3rd server in 2 months...

yikes..

I sure hope Google doesn't take such drastic measures for an err'd sitemap.

i don't know, but google doesn't like me anymore, thats for sure.

I just changed servers this week and tonight I noticed the same thing happening. Killed downloads.dat and I'm back in business.

Yeah, this info should be added to a faq or something.

If you move servers, KILL the downloads.dat file, as it is chown'ed to the old box and the new one won't have access to write to it, even if its chmod'ed to 777.

i had this same problem as well -- moved site, site was put into G's supplemental.

i've deleted the downloads.dat file, although it seems to be automatically regenerated on a daily basis -- is there a way i can automatically disable it?

also, are there any stories of how long it took to get back into google's index after this?

Originally Posted by kidmercury

i had this same problem as well -- moved site, site was put into G's supplemental.

i've deleted the downloads.dat file, although it seems to be automatically regenerated on a daily basis -- is there a way i can automatically disable it?

also, are there any stories of how long it took to get back into google's index after this?

That file is supposed to be there, the issue was that it was chowned to the old server. Once it is deleted and regenerated, it should work fine.

cool, thanks for your help!