New server news

[Phoenix in the Ashes]

Yay!

Thanks, Paul!

[Paul]

Sorry for the downtime yesterday everyone. As Snow_Storm correctly pointed out in the NewZealand thread, a part of hoppy's software froze up at one point yesterday (as luck would have it, at just after 3.09 am UK time on Thursday morning...only about 90 minutes after I'd said the forum wasn't going kooky). That guy Murphy and his Law strikes again!

I was looking into some other things relating to the forum yesterday, (which, if I can get working in the way I intend, may be quite interesting indeed) so although I rebooted the server as soon as I had realised things had stopped, I didn't have much chance to look into what had happened in any great way, except to notice that it was just the http requests which had stopped and everything else seemed to be running OK (as far as I could quickly tell). My first guess on taking a brief look at the logs was that search engine spiders may have caused a minor overload.

I've taken a look into the logs in a bit more detail now and it does look like the search engine spiders probably did indeed cause the problem. I use hoppy to host a few other sites as well as BaO, and 4 of the main search engines plus 2 or 3 other minor spiders were taking a very good look around multiple sites on hoppy yesterday which probably caused the overload, resulting in http (web page) requests not operating. Sincere apologies for the down-time.

The search engine spiders started to return quickly after hoppy was rebooted and don't seem to have caused any more problems by the way.

[Snow_Crystal]

Hi Paul

I for one and really grateful for all your hard work as it's obvious to us all how much work you put into this site. I look forward to coming on here and just chatting as it gives me something else to think about than the rest of the world and it's going on.

Thanks so much!

[Paul]

It's comments like that which really make things worthwhile, Snow_Storm...sincere thanks for your thoughts. All in all BaO is quite probably the most rewarding thing I've done in this life. I'll admit that at times it has almost seemed too much but I've always ended up glad to have kept on going, even if at some times I've had to take short breaks from the forum myself either due to having to do other things, or once or twice just to preserve my own sanity.

One thing I've said before is that BaO is here to stay, and to that I intend to keep. Over the last 4 and a half years it's become as much a home for me as my own physical home, so I can understand what you mean about the forum giving you something else to think about than the rest of the world. Most of all of this though is the atmosphere created by members, and of course it's really down to the members that the forum is the place it is. I tend to think of it as an alternative Hogwarts - the bricks of the forum representing the virtual castle that we all inhabit here, and a place where we can go to escape from what can be a brutal world. Maybe escape is the wrong word though - more like enter a different world.

[Snow_Crystal]

What you do is extremely worthwhile and don't you forget it. I know how you feel though in some ways when you say you find it too much. I'm an IT Manager myself and where I work I am a one-man band (allbeit a female one!) - it always feels like many users make use of the systems I provide and sometimes you lose sight of why you take things on and put pressure on yourself. It is worth it though and what we do makes a difference.

By the way - like the purple front screen!!!!

[Paul]

Thanks Snow_Leopard. Are your IT systems Linux or Windows-based? It was quite a bit of learning of Linux stuff for me whilst I was setting up hoppy...at some times I was literally holding my head in my hands trying to get my brain to figure out how stuff worked. I really like the flexibility and tweakability of Linux but every now and then there's one thing that seems impossible to work out...and half of the time it's just a missing semi-colon!

[Scarlet Lioness]

Yeah I agree with Snow...word for word...hahaha

It's definately one of the best forums I've tried, the members are aawesome and of course the owner too...and yeah...

[Paul]

It's very much appreciated, Scarlet Lioness. I've got to emphasise about the members - you all have helped make what is probably one of (if not the) most intelligent as well as enjoyable, funny, kind and good-community-spirited HP forums in existence. It's the spirit of all members together that have been vital in doing this. Okies, maybe I've a bit of a biased view but I've seen other forums and really think this is true.

More good news by the way - the main new feature that I'm in the final stages of adding for the Magical Games area is almost complete and in the next day or three the Magical Games Moderators, your good self, Scarlet Lioness, and The Phoenix Reborn, and will be given a viewing around the newly built extension and a test drive of what is contained within!

[Phoenix in the Ashes]

Oh, I can't wait!

Well, I can, but I'd prefer it to not be for very long .

[Paul]

Okies, this is strange. I've just noticed that there's a whole (and exactly) 24 period from 3.10 am on thursday morning to 3.10am this morning when it appears no pages were served. I wasn't online yesterday so don't know for sure but I'm guessing it was apache (the web serving program) which was solely down again rather than the whole server itself.

This is particularly odd as it seems to have died at exactly the same time as last Thursday morning (and I'm not sure how it reactivated itself exactly 24 hours later). I'll check around to see if there's anything that can be identfied that could be causing the problem. Meanwhile sincere apologies for yesterday's unavailbility of the forum.

[Paul]

Found the problem. Seems it was a feature marked as "Experimental" according to the official Apache documentation. I don't use the particular feature anyway, so I've stopped it from loading. I won't go into too much detail as it's probably best to not give away too much publicly to protect hoppy's security.

Quite happy actually that it wasn't what I was thinking last week (an overload caused by too many search engine spiders) as I had been a bit concerned that such a small amount of traffic could cause things to crash. Good to know that's not the case and BaO can keep growing well.

[selene]

i'm not sure i understand what the problem exact was (i am computerfriendly as long as i know how the programs i need work, except when it comes to webdesign and stuff related to that) but i'm glad you found the problem

i also agree with snow and scarlet. i also think i'm not the only one

[Phoenix in the Ashes]

Do you know what day you'll be opening the special Magical Games forum (which by the way will increase the entertainment aspect in this place by a lot...) to the other members?

[Paul]

I'm thinking Saturday is probably a good idea. Seeing as it'll be the weekend it'll give everyone the chance to all have a look around at the same time which hopefully will get things going with a good start. It'll probably be lateish on that day UK time, knowing me...which I guess will be Sunday in New Zealand.

Thanks Selene. Hoppy confuses even me sometimes...just a few days ago (Saturday if I remember correctly) she decided to make the database files read-only which resulted in the forum being inaccessible for a few hours (sorry all again) and her refusing to allow me to do things that she should have permitted. Had to reboot her twice to fix it (as the first reboot failed). I think this was a temporary (and if so, hopefully non-serious) hard-drive blip but sometimes its difficult to tell with these computer creatures.

[Phoenix in the Ashes]

I can really see now why you haven't been telling everyone!