blonde poker forum

Hi Everyone,

Bream and I are two new admins brought in by Dave to look at sorting out some of the techy problems you've been having and to upgrade the site.  The first thing we're doing is sorting out the backups.  I'll be taking the forums down in a few minutes for a backup, it should only be for 5 minutes or so.  We'll be planning to do this early morning each day.

Sparks

All finished - you probably didn't even notice!

I did.

:hello:

Ta 'Leccy Man and Fish :)

I was still snoring!

 :hello:

Don't forget to backup the backup  :pop:

Thanks Bream & Sparks.

I've had loads of texts & PM's asking "what happened THIS time?", as we have a history of Forum "downs".

As you know, from when we met, I'm pretty hacked off about what I consider un-necessary "downs".

Can you, for the benefit of the blondeites, explain - in little words - what our problem is, 'cos I sure as hell can't!

I really appreciated your help the other day, by the way - thanks!

Morning gents and gentesses,

The down time that occured on the 6th was due to a blown fuse on the power supply that provides power to the machine that hosts this site. No secondary power supply had been installed to provide power, so the machine just died.

Once the fuse had been replaced and the machine brought back up, the website was fine, but the database that underlies this forum, having been caught with its pants down - still had them down and was confused enough not to know where they were or how to pull them back up again, i.e. some of its indexes were shot.

The resolution was to rebuild these indexes and once this was done, the forum started to work ok again. Enormous thanks go to Rhowena for helping us out with this.  Restoring a backup wasn't an option btw as it turns out that the database wasn't included in the backup provided to us - this issue's sorted now.

They've now installed a secondary power supply that should kick in if the same problem occurs again.

However, you've had some dodgy performance and downtime recently, apparently unrelated to any power faiures so we've been looking at how things can be improved. There are a number of things that can be done to optimise the performance of both the underlying database and the forum software that uses it. These haven't been implemented to date so we're testing a few things offline and then we'll apply them to the site. It'll be a question of 'suck it and see' to some extent but we're pretty confident that the forum'll be behaving a bit better in the future.

Thanks for bearing with us you lot.  :)

Cheers

Buy it some braces and a belt - just in case!

Thanks guys.

Tray
xxxx

Now that is a good explanation. I can understand it, therefore it's good. Ta

Wow, a techie that talks proper English!

Thanks Mr Terchie. I think I love you.

Keep us informed as to how it goes, please.

A fuse wow!
I was watching a program about the small British firm that entered a team into LeMans, they dropped out of the top ten with about 6 hours left because a jubilee clip broke on the water hose for the radiator.
A 50p part put the brakes on a multimillion pound investment, amazing really.

Hi again,

I'm about to take the site down again for another manual backup.  We'll have these automated in a few days.  The forums should be back in a few minutes.  I'm also going to tweak some database settings that should speed up the forum (when reading rather than posting) - let me know if you think the forum feels a bitter faster.  Anyway I'm off to do a backup.

Sparks

All's well again.  Post here if you notice any performance improvement.

Sparks

It does feel a little faster. 8)

Can you make it smell alpine fresh?

Seems to load MUCH quicker for me.


Any idea what "gate.ilogbox.com" is?
It is forever loading for me when i use firefox, any work around for it as i really don't wanna go back to IExplorer?

I think it is faster.

ifm,

The "gateilogbox" - you don't wanna go there. It's the equivelant of the MS-Dos source code for the root virtual memory intersponder back-up.

Sparks - TOP MAN - thanks for twiddling the knobs, & keeping us informed. If you need any technical advice, I'm here, ready to help.......

Ha ha, I thought that was connected to the warp drive....

Beam me up Scotty..................

Behave Trace, Tikay is concentrating on recalibrating his dynamic induction loops

Soo many euphemisms, so little time.

You mean trying to pop a Viagra out of the packet?

Does that mean that the hard drive is now a floppy  ;tk; :hello:

Maybe so unless he gets the pill out.....

 rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao

Just gotta love this forum, pure class

Listen, I don't need Viagra. It's a woman I need. THEN the Viagra, maybe. It's been a while, see?

Morning,   I'm about to perform the backup - normal service will be resumed shortly. Cheers.

All done and dusted - hope that didn't inconvenience anyone too much.

What a service! Now if you could sort out tikay's problem all would be well with the world.

Judging by the times of your posts you are getting slower, let this not be a trend or we set Snippy on ya!!

Morning all - The Forum will go into Maintenance Mode in 5 minutes - Please hold your breath......

 ;fish;

If you can read this - it's done - if not.................................

Morning everyone. Manual Backup in 5 minutes. Won't be long.

All Done. Have a Good One

 ;fish;

Think I'm the only bugger awake when you do these.

Doesn't bother me one bit though, only seems to take you a few minutes and the results are a speedier forum. :)up

Likkle ole me here too :D

Beggin' your pardon there Guv.

You're on your own now though, I'm off for a McMuffin.

Its backup time again.  Back in a few minutes.

Sparks

All done.  Took the database down for a minute so you might have noticed an outage.

Dear Mr Sparks and Mr Bream

Is there any reason why the forum keeps telling me I have already posted my post?

On some occasions I have to preview first and then post, on other occasions I just give up and don't bother posting.

I haven't double clicked like it tells me I may have done, nore have I hit refresh in error.

Help please cos it is starting to get me angry - and you won't like me when I'm angry!    <<<  joke btw
T
xx

Thank goodness it's not just me who gets that.

To be honest, I haven't a clue!  If you could let me know when it happened and if possible which topic you were posting to (ie the number in the url in the address bar eg 4394.30) I can look in the database and see if there were any corresponding errors.  I'll have a look on the SMF support forum and see if there is anything there.  How often do you see this happening?


Sparks

Too often!

Sorry I know that doesn't help.  It's random.  One time it does it most is if I hit quote and then add my reply.  It may even happen with this one, but won't know until I hit "post".

T


EDIT:   Typical it didn't.

Same as Tracy, It's random, perhaps 30 times in the last 400 posts. Not a huge amount but enough to be niggling.

sparks i have checked the error log as it happens to me all the time infact with me ita about 75% of time

thought it was just the quick reply that was causing this as i use quick reply rather than the default reply

It's never happened to me,I don't use quick reply

As you can probably tell, we're having problems reproducing this.  On the SMF support site, there are a few suggestions, one of which is changing the code so it doesn't report an error.  A few question to aid diagnosis:
- Are using Firefox or IE,
- Do you have multiple windows open and are you posting from multiple windows,
- Does it happen when you do a second post soon after a previous post
- Does it happen on normal reply as well as quick reply?
- Does it happen if you hit Preview first?

I've got a few other things to do now, but I'll have a go fixing this in the morning.

My "Notify" button doesn't work anymore. I think Rhow broke it

your button aint broke the forum email is down and the techs are aware of the problem

IE

doesnt matter could be my first 2nd or 3rd reply[/quote]


it didnt happen before i moved to quick reply


the only way to get my posts in is to preview them sometimes i have never had the problem with a previewed post

never bothered to check but am doing so now

the post to red was with only orginal browser open i have opened a 2nd borwser for this post lets see

seemed to work ok then

i use quick reply and have no idea what you are on about!!!
hope this helps..............

Backup time again.  I'm going to try a little tweak to fix the posting problem a few of you are having.  Let me know if it works or if you notice side effects (eg duplicate posts).

Sparks

Forum is back, with a couple of tweaks.

Sparks

I noticed that one!!!!

I had to take the database down for a minute for the tweaks, so the the forum would have been dead for that time.  Normally you can still read but not post.

I'll let you know Sparks, but don't expect it to be quick, this lot have to post something interesting first!  lmao

T
xx

i aint had any double posts problems in last coupl of days

1,2,3

and one from me

 :hello:

to my favourite teletubbie

:)  that was me - sorry

 :hello:

to my favourite fish then

Can we move this topic to the geek section?  i haven't understood a word of this........

We've got a geek section!!
COOL!! ;karabiner;

what u want