Potential downtime - next 48 hours

[Speedy]

There is the potential for a outage over the next 48 hours as we gear up for a shift in hosting platform. We will keep you informed as to what is going on

[Speedy]

I'm sure some of you noticed a small blip in the space-time continuum a moment ago. This means the job is 1/2 done. There will be another outrage this evening (hopefully), then probably another one tomorrow while we re-charge the flux capacitor.

[Speedy]

Ok, we're starting to mess with the voodoo which is our DNS records now. You may experience some turbulence/flatulence, and have to login again. If you have a persistent problem with logging in, you might have to clear out your cache (see your browsers help /google on how to do that)

[Speedy]

Right, I hope everybody is now using the new server this morning. You'll know, because it's a shed load quicker than the old one we were using.

If you're missing any garage images or album pictures, or avatars, please let me know asap.

[MartG]

I've had a couple of instances when posting a reply to a thread, the page you get after hitting submit timed out, though the reply had been added to the thread.

Edit - make that every time I hit the submit button
Edit Edit - except that time

[Speedy]

Yes - I've noticed that as well, and I've put some logging in place to see if I can work out why.

Also, there is a character encoding issue with the pound sign at the moment, which might come out like a question mark instead ££

[Speedy]

Anybody still having the page refresh problem when posting?

[Greddy-Matt]

Don't know if it's related, but when i click on the garage button I get logged out

[Speedy]

Don't know if it's related, but when i click on the garage button I get logged out

You might need to logout, flush your cache & cookies out, and then log back in again.

[Greddy-Matt]

lol no still doing it It's ok if I access it through the link to my car under my avater tho just not directly, oh well

[ducatichick]

i've added a new picture to my garage and its not showing...the old ones are though

[Speedy]

If you added the picture yesterday, or earlier on today, it's likely that you uploaded the picture onto the older server, which is not on the newer server.

Try uploading the picture again, and if it's still not working, post back, and I'll go investigate.

[Speedy]

Ok - that was rather more downtime than we were expecting, thanks to those of you who posted comments on the temporary homepage.

Basically, we requested a memory on this machine to help cope with the database. It looks like when they shut the machine down yesterday evening to install the new memory, they didn't shut it down correctly, which made the RAID go into a kind of safe-mode to prevent anything getting corrupted (on boot, it remounted the ext3 filesystems as read-only), so the database couldn't write anything back to disk, so the forums fall down.

Since the problem was caused by the hosting provider, we've been waiting for them to sort it out, and plug the server into the right socket in the wall.

All of your posts/pms should be unaffected by this outage, we didn't have to restore anything from backups.

Thanks for playing!

[Slarty]

Thanks for the info Speedy (I didn't understand a word of it mind)

Wondered why I couldn't access the site yesterday lol

[monkeymax]

Yup - thanks for the info. I did understand it...
So, if they can't shut down a computer properly, what else do we have to look forward to from the new providers?

[Speedy]

Yup - thanks for the info. I did understand it...
So, if they can't shut down a computer properly, what else do we have to look forward to from the new providers?

Er.. ok, now I'm scared

Bascially, they can power-cycle the machine from a command line, cos its connected into one of those clever APC thingies (I guess). Alas, it wasn't plugged into the right socket, so I guess they thought they had turned it off, and then just pulled the cable out of the back of it, causing untold grief for everybody (not least some poor web-guy, staring at the output from mount, and wondering why mount was telling him one thing, and the database and filesystem was telling him something else)

Lets hope its all plain sailing from here

[Lauren]

Okay to summarise it was all down to a disruption in the JEF time continuum caused mainly by a severe custard imbalance.

I hope that clears it up for everyone.

[monkeymax]

... and then just pulled the cable out of the back of it, causing untold grief for everybody...

Yeah, but surely looking at the light on the front first (which I'm pretty sure all Dell boxes - even custom built ones - have) before unplugging would've been a good idea?

Lets hope its all plain sailing from here

Yeah, I'll just shut up now... It'll all be fine...

[Spittinflames]

Is there also a problem with the number " 2 " aswell as the pound sign, as i've noticed craigs username is a bit iffy

Edit* Obvioulsy not as its showing on here

[Speedy]

Yes - pound sign is a known problem :http://www.imoc.co.uk/forums/viewtopic. ... 532#582532

Would have fixed it last night if the server hadn't gone on holiday.