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Old 07-09-2010, 12:39
WatlingA5
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Nigel Whitfield asked me to put this message on here for Toppy fans - the forum server is down with a database problem and, as he is away, it may not be sorted until Thursday.
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Old 07-09-2010, 15:34
nvingo
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Thank you. It was down for a while yesterday and when it returned Nigel stated he'd struggled to get it running as he was using a mobile device as his admin terminal..
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Old 07-09-2010, 17:22
Wendolene
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Thanks for the heads-up.
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Old 08-09-2010, 18:52
AndyPRK
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Thanks for letting us know.
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Old 09-09-2010, 12:00
nwhitfield
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Well, I'm back in the UK now - long drive from Berlin yesterday - and have proper keyboards and screens, so I can try to diagnose the problems.

Sometime earlier in the week, the server started crashing; when restarted, the database was taking up a huge amount of processor time; some configuration tweaks didn't fix that, and it was also clear that either the database itself was corrupting some index files, or the crashing of the server was doing that.

My first attempt at a remote fix worked for a while, but the server load was very high and it crashed again. I tried disabling the forums by changing the config password (options are limited when you're using ssh on a mobile phone screen), but that didn't help, and seemed to load the database even more, so I did a quick and dirty fix of renaming the folder containing all the forum files.

That's why people now see a 'page not found' message when trying to access the forum. It also means that there's nothing getting as far as the database, which should stop it messing up any more.

I suspect a possible hardware problem, because MySQL doesn't normally do things like that; it also managed to corrupt part of the database for my GoneDigital blog which is on the same server. I managed to get that up, but it's a lot less complicated, and seems to have been ok for a while.

Today's task is to try and port all the database functionality over to another server, as stage one of a move of the whole site - I actually have a server waiting, but work has meant that the move didn't happen sooner. Which is a handy lesson in the perils of procrastination, of course.

So, apologies for the downtime. I hope things will be back to normal later, and thanks to WatlingA5 for posting on here - I didn't fancy trying to use the DS forums via mobile data, and my limited roaming allowances were eaten up with server admin.
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Old 09-09-2010, 15:16
nwhitfield
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The forums are now back up. Apologies for the downtime.
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Old 09-09-2010, 17:51
nvingo
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Thankyou for for the update and all the hard work.
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