Downtime

Asok

Hi folks,
The backend fileserver for boards went a bit "weh" everything should be back online now.
Danny

Danny you can delete my thread so

phew!!

Thomas_S_Hunterson

Hurrah...something to distract me from work:D

Kimbot

Yay!!!! But if your going to have somedown time please make sure there is something entertaining in its place so I don't have to talk to the other half!!

ct5amr2ig1nfhp

Nav menu at the top of the page is missing for me! (maybe I'm just special)

EDIT: T'is back now.

Kimbot

Also alot of 404 errors on loading www.adverts.ie

Hagar

Any chance there could be a redirect to a page somewhere that says something like "Boards is down for now come back later"?

AlmightyCushion

Hagar wrote:

Any chance there could be a redirect to a page somewhere that says something like "Boards is down for now come back later"?

OR just "Boards is down time to do some work, spend time with loved ones or end it all."

Thank fúck it's back. I thought I'd have to work today.

regi

Hagar wrote:

Any chance there could be a redirect to a page somewhere that says something like "Boards is down for now come back later"?

It wasn't a big deal, I was just out of contact for the evening - only took 5-10 mins to get it back on its feet this morning.

Hagar

Sorry Regi, I'm not trying to make things difficult.:o

Last night I installed Encarta 2006 and it forces an install of .Net
After I installed it I couldn't get back onto Boards and thought it was something that I had done so I spent a few hours installing an un-installing, tweaking and cursing. This morning I gave up and uninstalled Encarta and .Net and lo and behold Boards came back on at the first attempt. I know it was only a coincidence but it was a little frustrating too. A fallover downtime page could have saved me and possibly others a bit of grief.

Anyway no big deal.

azezil

Hagar wrote:

Sorry Regi, I'm not trying to make things difficult.:o

Last night I installed Encarta 2006 and it forces an install of .Net
After I installed it I couldn't get back onto Boards and thought it was something that I had done so I spent a few hours installing an un-installing, tweaking and cursing. This morning I gave up and uninstalled Encarta and .Net and lo and behold Boards came back on at the first attempt. I know it was only a coincidence but it was a little frustrating too. A fallover downtime page could have saved me and possibly others a bit of grief.

Anyway no big deal.

lol! hate that

Tar.Aldarion

Ah phew, may have had to work.

seamus

Hagar wrote:

Any chance there could be a redirect to a page somewhere that says something like "Boards is down for now come back later"?

Unfortunately something like that would require a witness/failover server that had no other function but to make sure that all of the other servers are available.

faceman

Hagar wrote:

Any chance there could be a redirect to a page somewhere that says something like "Boards is down for now come back later"?

or space invadars!!

Cloud

Could do with a fallover page alright. Then again, one of the biggest sites in the world, Blogger, fell over yesterday - and their page wasn't much more helpful.

Sorry for the downtime, if you want to vent some frustration, there's a great forum called whineybackstabbingwebmasters.com where you can bitch and speculate to your heart's content.

In the meantime, we'll do our best to try and keep things running smoothly, part-time though our effort may be right now...

Ruu_Old

Ah! What happened there? Must have dozed off for a second. Nice one chaps.:p

Kimbot

Ruu wrote:

Ah! What happened there? Must have dozed off for a second. Nice one chaps.:p

You mean your not a Robot??? :eek:

copacetic

kingambrose wrote:

Nav menu at the top of the page is missing for me! (maybe I'm just special)

EDIT: T'is back now.

it's still gone for me and the errors seem to be forcing boards to ignore some mouse clicks? or is that me going nuts? not seen that before, scrolling isn't working reliably and I can't click in new locations in edit post windows.

daiixi

regi wrote:

It wasn't a big deal, I was just out of contact for the evening - only took 5-10 mins to get it back on its feet this morning.

:eek: oh noes, you can't have a life!

Oryx

copacetic wrote:

it's still gone for me and the errors seem to be forcing boards to ignore some mouse clicks? or is that me going nuts? not seen that before, scrolling isn't working reliably

I got the scrolling problem too and I thought it was me.

yayamark

Downtime! Man didnt know what to do with all the time actually went to bed before 1am that a record since boards took me over

Glad your back

zAbbo

Didn't notice the downtime myself, was up and running in time for my early morning browse time.

unkel

regi wrote:

It wasn't a big deal, I was just out of contact for the evening

With the greatest respect, regi, but boards.ie was down for 12 or 14 hours because your mobile was switched off? Maybe someone else could keep an eye out while you're not around?

po0k

Who? 24/7 NOC coverage is trés expensive and the admins have lives.

It's the intertubes, sometimes the tanks leak and valves seize up.

nesf

SyxPak wrote:

It's the intertubes, sometimes the tanks leak and valves seize up.

unkel

SyxPak wrote:

Who? 24/7 NOC coverage is trés expensive

Who said anything about paying someone? There are hundreds of people that moderate boards.ie 24/7 for free. There are plenty of people out there that would be honoured to be given the great responsibility to keep boards.ie up

Surely issues like security, physical access, etc. can be overcome?

nesf

unkel wrote:

There are plenty of people out there that would be honoured to be given the great responsibility to keep boards.ie up

Most of them couldn't partition a hard drive unfortunately.

Terry

nesf wrote:

Most of them couldn't partition a hard drive unfortunately.

I can do that.
Self taught.

Sel;f high five. woooooooooooooooooo

mike65

nesf if that were true then 'Computers' and other tech boards would be much quieter than they are.

Mike.

Tar.Aldarion

I taught two IT poeple how to partition a drive this summer...

seamus

nesf wrote:

Most of them couldn't partition a hard drive unfortunately.

And most of those who do know how, would probably do it when it's not required

While issues of physical security can of course be overcome, there are other issues after that, which need to be considered. The more access/responsibility you give someone, the more they may want in return. For example - say I have been given physical access to the machines and a privileged login to the servers. In this case, I would have had to hop in my car and drive over to the NOC to sort this problem. I'm entitled to have my expenses paid, right? How does that work, I'm not an employee. If I invoice boards.ie, suddenly I'm a contractor, and that could be construed as a conflict of interests (as well as incurring more headache for me).

It's one thing for people to be happy to spend their online time looking after the forums, it's another entirely to ask them to spend their physical time and money to do the same.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's a much bigger prospect than making someone a moderator.

Tom Dunne

unkel wrote:

Who said anything about paying someone? There are hundreds of people that moderate boards.ie 24/7 for free. There are plenty of people out there that would be honoured to be given the great responsibility to keep boards.ie up

Surely issues like security, physical access, etc. can be overcome?

While I admire your enthusiasm, have you ever done 24 hour support? I am in no way getting at you, don't get me wrong, but I am just wondering if you know the practicalities of supporting something, especially out of hours.

Moderating and providing systems support are very different beasts.

The biggest thing is as you mention physical access. Do you think Digiweb will allow a non-employee access to their crown jewels (their data center) unsupervised at 4:00am? Not in a million years. And if they did allow supervised access, I am sure management would take issue with their employee engaging in non-business activities such as supervising a non-employee.

nesf

seamus wrote:

And most of those who do know how, would probably do it when it's not required

Exactly. Out of hours support to a site is not something that the vast majority of people know well enough for them to be realistically allowed to try and fix things unsupervised and people who have the experience to do it generally won't do it for free because they realise how much of a headache it can be. That's before all the hassle of people getting physical access to the equipment etc.

Gone West

unkel wrote:

With the greatest respect, regi, but

Obviously "greatest respect" is lip service.

unkel

tom dunne wrote:

Do you think Digiweb will allow a non-employee access to their crown jewels (their data center) unsupervised at 4:00am? Not in a million years

That's constructive criticism. Thanks Tom! Maybe some of regi's colleagues in work are on boards? They might volunteer to keep boards.ie up.

DeVore

unkel wrote:

That's constructive criticism. Thanks Tom! Maybe some of regi's colleagues in work are on boards? They might volunteer to keep boards.ie up.

You mean, like... um .. Asok.

DeV.

Sparky

unkel wrote:

With the greatest respect, regi, but boards.ie was down for 12 or 14 hours because your mobile was switched off? Maybe someone else could keep an eye out while you're not around?

Jesus so feckin what if boards went down for 12 hours! I'd understand your comment if this was an online bank.

Imagine if it went down again while regi and asok try to have a life...

mike65

*lightbulb moment*

Mike.

TimTim

tom dunne wrote:

The biggest thing is as you mention physical access. Do you think Digiweb will allow a non-employee access to their crown jewels (their data center) unsupervised at 4:00am? Not in a million years. And if they did allow supervised access, I am sure management would take issue with their employee engaging in non-business activities such as supervising a non-employee.

Physical access to servers is becoming less of a problem these days. You could get a server with a lights-out card in it or hook up a proper KVM to the machines
and throw in a APC remote power switch you'll never have to enter a DC 99% of the time.

And if worse did come to worse Digiweb have a 24/7 NOC on-site (according to their site) so you shouldn't have a major problem getting physical access.

Tom Dunne

TimTim wrote:

And if worse did come to worse Digiweb have a 24/7 NOC on-site (according to their site) so you shouldn't have a major problem getting physical access.

tom dunne wrote:

Do you think Digiweb will allow a non-employee access to their crown jewels (their data center) unsupervised at 4:00am? Not in a million years. And if they did allow supervised access, I am sure management would take issue with their employee engaging in non-business activities such as supervising a non-employee.

TimTim

tom dunne wrote:

While I can't be sure of the relationship between digiweb and boards, personally if it was me and managment took exception to me getting access to my hardware, I'd be finding a new DC to host my gear.

regi

One of the major reasons we (I work in Digiweb, in the hosting / datacentre team) have an on-site 24 hour NOC is to precisely cater for customers who want to work with their kit at 4am.

Terry

But not at 3am.

Sorry. Just had to throw that in there.
I know you all do your best to keep this place up to scratch and I persoanlly appreciate the work you put in.

passive

Hrm... What is the 3am thing, since Terry has slyly brought it up? why does a little piece of all of us die at that time? is it in any way related to Zombie outbreaks and the prevention thereof?

feylya

Nightly backup.

passive

feylya Nightly backup.

Impending Nightly backup... Sweet dreams all.