Forum Down Time
 

I was just wondering why the forum has been down over the weekends for the Last two weeks and can we expect this trend of "maintenance" to continue?

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Forum Down Time
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">from the forum list.

Re: Forum Down Time
 

And there it is. Thank Narf, I was wondering how long it would take someone to post. Not long at all. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif (Less than 5 minutes.) A record.

Re: Forum Down Time
 

[quote]Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:

Quote:

Please note: The board was down this weekend due to an upgrade to allow for scenario downloads. However due to the time this will take this has been put on hold indefinetly. Thanks.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Means they have taken down the board for more than 2 days and did not accomplish ANYTHING?
And they estimate more than 2 days downtime for an upgrade???? What are they running these Boards on, a Sony Playstation? Or a Nintendo Gameboy? Are they planning to copy bit by bit via floppy disks when upgrading?

I know it is a lot of data, but you can copy a lot of data in 2 days, especially when taking the server offline. Implementing a pre-programmed update should also not take that long.

Roanon
*wonders what really has been going on*

Re: Forum Down Time
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">16 minutes.

Atrocities can't count!

of course he can't count! he's an egg! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ December 10, 2003, 16:31: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

Re: Forum Down Time
 

EDIT: Statment withdrawn.

[ December 10, 2003, 18:36: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Forum Down Time
 

so umnn why dont they test it on a coppy of the forums first?

Re: Forum Down Time
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It is quite easy to test the code you are writing on a copy of the forum. You do not have to write it on the actual server. In fact, that is about the worst way to go about it, using the actual forum server as your debugging platform. The code should be written and tested first on a dummy platform, so that it takes little time to get it working on the real server.

Re: Forum Down Time
 

I withdrew my statement because I have no knowledge of why the forum has been down. I was suggesting a possible hypothesis, but basically talking out my arse. I am confident knowing Richard as I do that it was something more complicated then simply "copying data" or it wouldn't have been down as long as it was, but I have no idea.

Geoschmo

Re: Forum Down Time
 

On that point I would be inclined to agree with you. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Forum Down Time
 

Regardless, a little warning accompanied by time estimates (down at ??:?? and up at ??:??) would be very appreciated, I'm sure. I get tired of clicking the shortcut in order to find out it's still down. If I had an estimate on when it would be back up, I wouldn't be doing that. NOt to mention, if I knew when it was going down, I could make one Last look to see if there was any information I needed (like updating the Ratings site, games on hold, etc.).

Heck, I'm in the government and as poor as our reputations are, we don't pull down any server without first posting notification to everyone.

Re: Forum Down Time
 

The forums were down this past week-end? Gee, I missed it. does someone have a transcript?

I spent the weekend and the past few days taking care of xmas shoping.

18 gifts to buy this year, 18 gifts to buy.
find a good one, make the purchase, 17 gifts to buy this year..
17 gifts to buy this year, 17 gifts to buy.
find a good one, make the purchase, 16 gifts to buy this year..
..5 gifts to buy this year, 5 gifts to buy.
find a good one, make the purchase, (Oops, my credit card is maxed and my bank account is empty.) still 5 gifts to buy this year..

Oh well, I guess the final 5 will have to be happy to get hand-me-downs. (AKA Used DVD's and VHS's)

What was this thread about again? LOL I'm loosing it people, it happens every year at this time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Cheers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Forum Down Time
 

It would be nice if there was a practiccal way to be notified by email. I'd sign up to be on that list.

Re: Forum Down Time
 

Richard mentioned that they were going to try to upgrade the Forums in this Thread:

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...;f=14;t=000096

So it wasen't a complete surprise (to me at least).

Re: Forum Down Time
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh. I only go to forum id 23... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif . After all, this forum, Last time I checked, had more Posts than all the others combined.

Re: Forum Down Time
 

No we are putting the forum move on hold. The problem is the move scripts that are used to move this style of board, to say any other style of board, are not perfect. There are things you have to tweak and prod and you can only do that after you export the board. You can test it all you want, but for a board this large it requires a lot of work afterwords no matter how much you are familiar with the process. There is just a lot of manual labor involved.

So for now the board move is permanently on hold as it is just not practical for a board this large. We have other alternatives we are exploring for downloads and such, but more on that in the future. The gist is the downloads will no longer be a part of the board, which is a good thing since downloads from a board are the wrong way to begin with.

Re: Forum Down Time
 

I always considered the upload and downloads of this forum to be one of its greatest features. But bandwidth being as it is, I can see your need to seperate them out.

Thanks for posting Richard. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Forum Down Time
 

If they are still going to provide a system to upload and download files, the bandwidth usage will not be different, unless they host them on different servers in different locations.

Re: Forum Down Time
 

well, i think they want to have a seperate download area. most websites have a seperate download area. but i'm tired and i can't think why.

Re: Forum Down Time
 

That seems to be the plan. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ December 11, 2003, 05:08: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Forum Down Time
 

I think it is a great idea to have a dedicate site for uploading and downloading things. I was just saying that I also felt that having them on the forum was big bonus. Things do change, and I am all for improving the forum, the site, and shrapnels bottom line. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Shrapnels reputation is growing as more and more people are becoming aware of the fine games they offer.

How many of you have a SEIV mouse pad? I do. How about the commerative print? I don't have that.

Re: Forum Down Time
 

I am not much in to "accessorizing" my games. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Forum Down Time
 

Change is good, as long as my avatars survive the upgrade. Speaking of avatars, I wonder if Shrapnel would like to make them available for the general masses in all the other forums? (Of course only the non-reserved avatars should/would be available to the public.)

What do you all think?

Cheers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Forum Down Time
 

I think that is a great idea David. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I hope shrapnel agrees.

Re: Forum Down Time
 

Actually I have wanted to ask you about that for a long time, but it will take some work to do.

Actually bandwidth is not an issue, between our two servers we have 2 Terabyte a month of bandwidth available before we hit usage charges.

The problem is the board solution is not perfect, it does not really allow the features that a good download/upload manager should allow for.

If I had the time I would just write it myself, but again we have other options in the works.

Re: Forum Down Time
 

You could snag the downloads module out of a Nuke portal such as PHP Nuke. Not entirely sure of the "legal" issues, but they are released under GPL for free public use...

Re: Forum Down Time
 

No offense but phpnuke is a nightmare to work with, if you want to do more than just use the standard mods. Actually if I went that route I would probably uss stock phpbb and use it's mods, or something like ezportal or mx-system. But I think our eventual solution will make more sense.