So what happened this time?

TouchingVirus

Boards is still on vBulletin. It'll probably always be on PHP since most/all of the Distilled Media stack is built on it and their current vacancies target PHP developers.

vBulletin can auto-lock dead threads, I don't recall if it's a native thing but it wouldn't be difficult to implement. It's not really anything to do with the downtime though - neither the amount of data or the fact most of the sites content is older. Of course the DB/indexing could be more efficient but it can't be until the codebase is rewritten and the site moves away from vBulletin.

Attachments aren't stored in the database, they're stored in the filesystem (sorry Dav ), I reckon you're about right with the rest

The loss of the disks at the same time was very unfortunate and would have put the site & team under savage pressure. From my past experiences with Boards downtime (some of which I caused ) I won't even insult them by suggesting some things but I know the guys who are left have it all under control. This could be lots of little things or some big ones but all of them will be in the background and us users won't even know. Just please don't ruin my lunch break again for a few months :pac:.

NicsM

TouchingVirus wrote: »

From my past experiences with Boards downtime (some of which I caused )

Lol

I think Dav put it best, the idea of archiving/deleting parts of the site is just wrong, Boards is an invaluable source of social history.

Posy

Definitely agree.
For example, the accommodation and property forum covers the boom to bust and everything in between. It's amazing to read some of the threads from the 'price bubble' era, knowing what was to come. It would be awful to lose old information like that.

wnolan1992

And how would future generations tell the great tale of Facekicker if things were deleted?

kaimera

I think you missed my point if all the "dont delete" stuff is cos of my post.

Move the data off the main server/disks, give read only permissions to old threads. Key word, 'move'.

Still accessible.

You can read all about facekicker and all about how great it was to have a house in 2006

Merely suggestions. As TouchingVirus said, the team know best.

TouchingVirus

OSI wrote: »

Separating the data via any method is a massive task, both in terms of changes to the code, and maintenance over the long term.

And for little gain

kaimera

OSI wrote: »

Separating the data via any method is a massive task, both in terms of changes to the code, and maintenance over the long term.

RO perms, less maintenance no?

I'm not seeing the massive task in the code. Forgive my ignorance

In fairness, ~50GB of data is small, but shifting anything off the active disks can only be a good thing.

@TV - I'm not a db admin by any stretch, so I could be way off base.

Most active content is x days old, the team would have stats to show as much. Data over x days is shunted off elsewhere. Srs little gain?

kaimera

OSI wrote: »

I was going to go into a big post outlining it, but I've the flu and I'm very tired.

Suffice to say that it has been looked at by every tech person that has come through the doors of boards, and it's just not feasible without a considerable financial and time investment that's just not worth it.

Fair enough

Never think of the investment tbh; not my site!

TeddyTedson

Dav wrote: »

It's nothing to do with space actually. The totallity of the posts table is about 25GB, PMs take about 10GB (I think) and attachments are running around 15GB.

So it's not huge volumes of data by any stretch of imagination, but as it's, in the case of the posts and PMs tables, plain text, that is a vast amount of information to be processed at any given time.

For those of you who don't know, 1 character of plain ASCII text = 1 byte.
1 Kilobyte = 1024 characters.
1 Gigabyte = approx 1 billion characters

So the boards post table contains about 25 billion characters of text in it.

Imagine now that you have to try and work with all that in some meaningful way and you'll understand why our databases are so difficult to work with.

Besides which, deleting the history of the site seems abhorrent to me, I notion of the thoughts, ideas, discussions and nonsense etc of the many thousands of people who've used the site over the years just being gone fills me with a sense of dread and "wrongness" that I can't put into words.

I was joking about deleting posts over 5 years silly :P It would be like RTÉ destroying their archive! That would me amp! and Karl Hungus never existed :eek::eek:
What happens to deleted posts and that sort of thing. Do they actually get deleted? And OMFG, are you telling me boards is only 50GB :eek:
Incredible!
How often is everything backed up, so forth?
It's amazing to think they boards could literally fit in my pocket!

New Home

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17295337

Well, it seems they hadn't heard about the Boards.ie mishap!

Dades

kaimera wrote: »

You can read all about facekicker and all about how great it was to have a house in 2006.

It was great to have a house in 2006.

But only if you sold it in 2007.

Dav

I even mentioned the idea of something like archive.boards.ie this week too that would take content older than <number> and bring it away from the main DB but make sure it was always accessible on the off chance it helped things, but it seems to be way more hassle than it's worth. I've been hoping for a while to implement an "OLD POST!" notice to anyone attempting to reply to anything with more than a year since the last activity.

Star Lord

Dav wrote: »

I've been hoping for a while to implement an "OLD POST!" notice to anyone attempting to reply to anything with more than a year since the last activity.

I personally think that'd be a great idea.
Or automatically locking threads once they hit a year of inactivity. If they're REALLY needed, the mod could always post in it and re-open the thread.
Of course, not sure how feasible any of the above would be!

nesf

Nody wrote: »

If you want to talk lotto numbers try this one on for size (yes it happend, yes I was impacted by it as was several hospitals etc. and I got the official and unoffical report from the event).

A country site is due to go through yearly emergency power test. Site is wired with 3 pairs of batteries (one pair is enough to run it for 30 min) and two diesel generators (one enough to power the whole site). Batteries are always on but only kick in if power gets broken, generators set to be running with in 1 min of power being cut.

Power is cut as planned at 1am local and wham all three pairs of batteries fail AND both generators refuse to start. Every single server and fibe connection goes down inc. every MUX at customer site etc. loses sync.

Oh happy happy days (it took over 8h to get everything up and running once the main power was turned on again)...

They cut off the power without doing a recent test run of both generators???? Batteries fail, you can't do much about that but back-up equipment, even when there's redundancy, need to be tested very regularly...

Posy

A few posts are dug up every year on the Christmas forum because they'd still be relevant- how old should a thread be before we're locking them? I'm talking Christmas 2012 threads being resurrected in 2013, that kind of thing.

I think the Read Only option for very old threads is a good idea- this would stop shills dredging ones up to advertise their services too.

hullaballoo

For Legal Discussion, the moderators and users prefer if "old" threads are dredged up from the depths rather than having a repeat of discussions that have happened umpteen times already.

In fact, that's incorporated in the charter. The above suggestions in relation to old post won't be applicable site-wide so it might be preferable if this could be set on a forum-by-forum basis, either by the local moderators or higher up the food chain.

Dades

That would be ideal but I'd imagine that implementation being exponentially more hassle than a site-wide rule.

I still think mod discretion is key.

knucklehead6

Did boards just explode from the Liverpool fans trying to log in to slag off Utd??

mike65

Everyone piled on to the one forum and thread! :pac:

Dav et al are going to have to buy some extra weapons grade hardware as Utds form this season will test the existing gear to the max several more times methinks.

P_1

503's popping up all over the place, posts not appearing. There seems to be a rattle somewhere in the engine. Might it be a good idea to take the site offline for a day (possibly a Sunday) to find and fix the gremlin that seems to be under the bonnet?

Doctor Strange

Sorry lads, it's the United thread causing the overload due to excitement

Insect Overlord

ABU jokes in a Feedback Forum thread. Real classy. I knew there was a good reason I'd stopped reading/posting in Soccer.

Dav

d'you know, it'd be lovely if the various soccer tribes stopped being really stupid and disrespectful of each other, don't you think...?

Anyway, yes, the spike in activity around not only the soccer game, but also something on RTÉ called Amber caused some issues with the load balancers last night. The sys admins were really quick to get stuck in as always and so we were back to full speed in around 40 mins, so once again our thanks go out to them and our apologies go to their significant others who have thankfully not issued divorce proceedings after another late night.

Dades

Ah, yes - the Amber thing.

I got a rant from my missis about the ending of that as soon as she finished watching it.
Any Boards must been an outlet for many others.

mike65

Dav wrote: »

d'you know, it'd be lovely if the various soccer tribes stopped being really stupid and disrespectful of each other, don't you think...?

You don't get football do you?! :pac:

Everyone was interested very interested in the game last night for what it signified (or might do) about the "biggest club in England". Clearly this matters in Ireland

5starpool

Insect Overlord wrote: »

ABU jokes in a Feedback Forum thread. Real classy. I knew there was a good reason I'd stopped reading/posting in Soccer.

With a haughty, holier than thou attitude like that, it's probably best for all concerned that you have.

Any mentions in here have been extremely mild and good natured stuff.

Insect Overlord

5starpool wrote: »

With a haughty, holier than thou attitude like that, it's probably best for all concerned that you have.

I don't know how anybody in their right mind could have enjoyed the match threads last weekend, for example. Ye lot are horrible to each other.

P_1

Ah so the site essentially DDOSed itself seeing as the match and TV show pretty much finished around the same time. On a positive note I guess the site devs now know how much traffic the site can handle before things go belly up.

dr.bollocko