PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

[TheCotMan]

Hello,

The user "shrdlu" has been promoted to "Forum Leader/Organizer" to the "Coffeewars" subforum. Like other contests and event, there are often many people involved in running a contests or event. Like other subforums with Leaders/Organizers, don't assume the listed leaders/organizers for any contests or event are the only people involved in this event or contest.

[TheCotMan]

Reminder: forum account and associated email address

If you ever want to ever reset your password in the future, make sure your e-mail address is valid.

You should take measures to make sure your mail quota is not exceeded before requesting password resets, and registering to the forums.

You should also take measure to ensure anti-spam measures don't trash your password reset requests.

In addition to the e-mail validation message, welcome message, and any notice of automic promotion over the first 3 weeks, and any e-mail alert subscriptions you requested, the forums will send a message to you once a year to test your address. A bounce from any of these risks converting your account back to "waiting for e-mail validation" and will require you to re-validate, or log into the forums, update your e-mail address and re-validate it before you can post again.

This can be serious, since accounts with a "zero postcount" that are "waiting for e-mail validation" that are over 2 weeks old, are also at risk for being purged as per our policy on reaping unused accounts.

Not all bounce notices will lead to changing accounts, and extra, manual, *human* checks are conducted before making changes described above. (Done to defeat attempts to forge bounce notices as an attack against forum members.)

Remember: if you lose your forum validated email account to someone else, they can steal your forum account, and since we only know you by you email address, we can't verify any claim that someone stole your forum account.

Enjoy :-)

[TheCotMan]

Forums were down yesterday eve for a hort time due to hardware *BZZZT*

Connection closed by foreign host.





Fortunately, Dark Tangent and others were present, and they moved into action to get the forum back up after some shifting of hardware, and alterations to configurations.

Total down time was probably about an hour, but less than 2 hours. For a week, we'll try for daily off-site copy of forum info in case something worse happens.

If you had problems with threads that refused to show up as having been read, that was caused by a date problem on the server, and is now fixed. In order to work properly, you may need to log out/clear all cookies and log in again.

Please report problems here:

[TheCotMan]

Forums were down yesterday eve for a hort time due to hardware *BZZZT*

Connection closed by foreign host.

Aparrently, the identical hardware being used to keep the forums running after hardware problems in the first server were more identical than anticipated. :-/

Similar problems have been reported with the new hardware, and lead to 2 hours of down time.

Database is fine, no data was lost, and we have an offsite backup of the db.

[TheCotMan]

Aparrently, the identical hardware being used to keep the forums running after hardware problems in the first server were more identical than anticipated. :-/

Similar problems have been reported with the new hardware, and lead to 2 hours of down time.

Database is fine, no data was lost, and we have an offsite backup of the db.

Ditto. total down time ~ 1 hour. db has been backed up and stored offsite.
DT is still working on building a new forum box.

Sorry. Did not notice the system clock needed to be reset after the reboot. "Unread posts" may appear unread, even after reading them until I've finished editing the posting times.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

An experimental, hidden, "social" forum with less restrictive rules is available to registered users if they wish to see it.
Visit Group Memberships (https or http) in your UserCP and choose to join the Social Group, and when you next refrsh the main forums page (https or http) you should see an extra forum in the "General Area" section.

Joining or leaving the "Social" group controls display and hiding of this new forum. You can leave this group at any time, and then hide this forum again if you don't like its content.

"New Posts" and "Searches" should not include this new forum unless you are a member.

New Users and Lurkers may also participate in this new space with little or no waiting period.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Latest report from DT:
Both the primary forums server and the secondary (duplicate hardware) are having problems. He has moved us back the the one that we were using before today, with hopes that it will work long enough for him to setup a new box with completely different hardware.
Forums are running on unstable hardware. We are performing daily backups, but that does not mean some data might be lost if there is another failure.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Bummer. More down time. It was reported that the forums box froze again as a result of hardware issues. Blame global warming? Heat is our enemy. DT reports that they will be looking to point fans on it with the case removed.

We still have no timelines for the new forums server to be ready for the public. The best estimate, is that a few core users *might* be beta testing the new box this coming weekend, if all of the software is properly built. Then, there is a long-ish period of testing before cut-over. No public dates yet.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Two more hardware failures today, and one within 10 minutes of the first.

DT says he is using a better fan. (heh-heh)

Wihthout being there, my best guess fo cause is Hard Drive failure cause by overheating. Repeated occurances of overheating is slowly destroying the drive and its ability to recover. I am going to guess we may start losing files and data if this keeps up.

I'm going to try moving all of the critical files to the new server to allow for least lost data if there is a serious drive failure on this problematic box.

It looks like about 6 GB of data, and I'll have to schedule the heavy disk-io (tar/compression) to happen at night over a few days if this older server can manage to limp along long enough to get us there.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

At around 2pm for the next few days, expect the forums to be "turned off" for a few minutes with a message about a precautionary backup.

Archives of static content to an offsite location is about 30% complete.

Yesterday's "live" content (posts, etc) has been archived.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Forums were unavailable 2 times today.

First, it was reported that there was a filter issue that caused them to be unavailable, then it was reported that there was a hardware failure (the same one as before.)

Total down time today a little over 6 hours.

[The Dark Tangent]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Forums were unavailable 2 times today.

First, it was reported that there was a filter issue that caused them to be unavailable, then it was reported that there was a hardware failure (the same one as before.)

Total down time today a little over 6 hours.

Tomorrow, the 11th there may be a problem with SSL. There is a firewall licensing issue, and for some reason the ssl stuff is jacked up, and expiring tomorrow. They are working on fixing it in time, but don't be suprised if ssl stops working for a day or two.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

So far, no problems with ssl. :-)

Change in Policy (may be temporary)
"Lurkers" (users that have confirmed their e-mail address and have accounts less than 7 days old) can now sent and receive a very small number of PM.

Their PM box has a size limit of 4.

This means they can send 2 messages and receive 2 replies before their PM box is full. They can delete "sent-items" and "Inbox" items to create more space, up to the size of 4.

This should allow for active members to PM organizers of events, contests, tee shirts, or whatnot with questions, AND allow for use of PM for private contact information as needed for things like "rides and room sharing."

This change may be temporary, and it may becomea cyclic thing, done a few months before con, but turned off after con is over.

Rules may be modified to reflect this in the near future.

Also, after 7 days, they get a larger PM box and after 14 days an even larger PM box.

[Voltage Spike]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

So far, no problems with ssl. :-)

Is this before or after Dan Kaminsky's talk? Is that the reason for the smiley?

"Lurkers" (users that have confirmed their e-mail address and have accounts less than 7 days old) can now sent and receive a very small number of PM.

Thank you. This has recently started becoming an issue for me (thankfully, my IM accounts were available). For the curious, the messages were concerning room sharing so it was definitely of a pre-con nature.

[The Dark Tangent]

Poor forums box..

Is still unhappy. We hope to switch it in the next week.