Board problems fixed....... and explained :)

[Don Seer]

OK we've had numerous problems over the last few days so here's the low down for you.

1) After new board went live it was slow.  I installed a 'mod' to the board which speeds it up considerably. Its not perfect, but its a lot lot better.

2) but.... what happened next (yesterday) was the server had problems. I don't know what these are yet. But its fixed today and the host will be letting me know what the problem was. (fix first, explain later policy - saves time )

3) so what do I wake up to this morning... and email saying its fixed.... but after it was fixed the board would show script errors. This was due to several tables in the database being seemlingly permanently locked. Since the tables in question just keep track of the users online and 'clicks' in the last hour they can be deleted and recreated. So I had to delete them and learn how to make an SQL query to make them again. Now i've learnt this I can fix it faster next time.. and i'm learning mor about SQL databases all the time... great... errr ok not... lol.  (but i'm considering as a learning exercise making this fix into a script so that its just a case of clicking a link to fix the board .. maybe if it happens again )

4) guess whats broken now.... lol ... the 'mark as read' stuff is working, but some topics are showing as always new   *** fixed!... if you reply to these "always new" topics the problem goes away, and it fixes the board index    (so if u see a weird reply from me thats why i've done it)

5) ... coming soon i guess   ............. i was right..... the 'last post' thing on the index didnt work. it was stuck on one post. somehow the post was timestamped in the future... lol. editted the time back so new posts are now the newest dates.

6) please god no!... lol  
 

if it aint one thing its another........ 3rd time lucky i hope

[Rud]

Woo Hoo!  

Yea Lets Hope So, Come On People Try To Get Some Normality Round Here!!  

Cheers For The Info Seer

[=[Euthanasia]=]

I was wondering if anything was up yesterday, I thought it might of just been my internet connection 'cos I was getting in but then it was taking ages to load up and eventually it would show an error page. It's alot better today mind, the fastest visit i've had on my computer since this new version has been up anyways.

[lbc213]

dope dope dope, much faster , again dope dope dope thx alot

[Don Seer]

added number 5...  

all clear now!  

[Murrow]

Wow!  This is actually moving fast!

[bLaDe]

Dope homie, thanks, peace

  -{bLaDe}

[Don Seer]

As you may have noticed, the server was slow or down most of Thursday.  Below is an explanation and some precautions to take.

[The Problem]
Apache was rebuilt late Wednesday night to stabilize it from previous issues.  The crew working on it made a mistake and fixed it too late.  This caused a downtrend in the server, mainly related to Perl causing problems with scripts.  Finally, any script reading the data from these Perl scripts created enormous gzip work files.  Eventually, the server failed Thursday afternoon.

[The Solution]
The harddrives were thoroughly scanned for errors, which took about 5 hours.  In light of the problems, Xnull decided (since the server was already down) to upgrade the hardware, rebuild the kernel, and upgrade to a better file system.

** Xnull is now on a new server, containing a new NIC card, a new heatsink, a new motherboard, and an upgrade to a P4 1.6ghz processor, as well as a new file system. **

We greatly apologize for the problems are continuously monitoring websites, scripts, and services for proper functionality.

[Precautions]
As a precaution, we suggest that you change your passwords for your scripts (such as forums), in case your data was compromised or corrupted in any way.  If you have lost data, you must check your daily backup from Cpanel ASAP, as we provide nightly backups that get overwritten each day.  We are considering only providing weekly backups, so you have more time to get your data, at the possible loss of 7 days of changes.  Feedback on this change idea is welcome.

Again, we apologize for the unforseen problem.  We've taken the extra step to spend more on a better server so things like this don't happen again.

word from my host  

see its not the scripts!.. i been tellin u that!

[AxleF]

word O-Seer.. Thanks for the update.

Ax-The-Wax

[Pillow]

thanks for the explanation seer

[King Tech Quadafi]

good job Seer, but for real my computer illeterate ass didnt understand ONE word u said....damn, i gotta give it to u, u know ya shit.....

[bez]

All good seer mate

Bez The Wax

[Don Seer]

biter you cant be bez the wax, you can be bez the fez or something  

[bLaDe]

biter you cant be bez the wax, you can be bez the fez or something  

lmao
 
  -{bLaDe}

[bez]

lol dam you

bez the fez