Unscheduled Forum Maintenance

[Rawhide]

Hi everyone,

Earlier today I noticed corruption in one of the tables in the database and had to bring the forums down for some unscheduled maintenance in order to repair it.

If you notice anything strange, such as missing posts or post contents from posts before this thread was created, please report it here.

Also, in order to perform the maintenance, MySQL had to be switched off entirely. As vBulletin uses a table in MySQL to determine if it is switched on or off, accessing the page would generate a MySQL error. I redirected everybody to the forum backup notification page in order to avoid this. I apologise for any confusion.

[Story Time]

I'll just say thanks. That's all that I want to say. :smallsmile:

[Sgt. Cookie]

Agreed.

I Thank You too Rawhide.

[oblivion6]

yes thanks. i was worried for a bit. had to find something else to occupy my hours of free time...wasnt fun:smalltongue:

[DracoDei]

Keep up the good work.

[The-Mage-King]

Yep. Definitely keep up the good work.

[Shadow Lord]

I needed the down time. I believe I was suffering from Acute Forumaphilia. It's better now, I think. Or something like that.

[Esprit15]

Curious. The forum did not go through its usual error at 9pm AK time like it normally does. Was this part of the correction?

[Rawhide]

Curious. The forum did not go through its usual error at 9pm AK time like it normally does. Was this part of the correction?

Usual error?

[The-Mage-King]

At about 1 AM, EST (which, upon checking, works out to 9PM AK time), the forum seems to... Well, stop working, giving... I think it's a 503 error, for about 20 minutes. Happens almost daily.

[oblivion6]

At about 1 AM, EST (which, upon checking, works out to 9PM AK time), the forum seems to... Well, stop working, giving... I think it's a 503 error, for about 20 minutes. Happens almost daily.

i dont think i have that problem

[Castaras]

At about 1 AM, EST (which, upon checking, works out to 9PM AK time), the forum seems to... Well, stop working, giving... I think it's a 503 error, for about 20 minutes. Happens almost daily.

That's it going down for daily maintenance.

[The-Mage-King]

That's it going down for daily maintenance.

...


You mean the database backup? Because that happens at 4 AM, and I would have thought that it would include maintenance...

[Elemental]

Thank you for the explanation.
It's good to know that it wasn't due to some permanent error or something.

[Castaras]

...


You mean the database backup? Because that happens at 4 AM, and I would have thought that it would include maintenance...

Apologies, I'm in GMT and can't remember time zone differences.

Probably just coincidence, and a combination of a forum server that's struggling and a large number of people on at that time.

[Esprit15]

...


You mean the database backup? Because that happens at 4 AM, and I would have thought that it would include maintenance...

No, database backup happens midnight my time and lasts longer. Your latter idea is a possibility.

[TuggyNE]

Good to know what happened, and hopefully all is continuing fine.

I've noticed the forum backup page seems different, and no longer forcibly changes URLs. :smallsmile:

[SiuiS]

Apologies, I'm in GMT and can't remember time zone differences.

Probably just coincidence, and a combination of a forum server that's struggling and a large number of people on at that time.

At what would be 01:00 EST, is 22:00 PST for me, and the large amount f traffic at that point does cause trouble. We playfully refer to it as "Forum Error Party Hour", because everyone just refreshes over and over, making it worse.

Thank you, Rawhide, for your diligence. :smallsmile:

[Anarion]

At what would be 01:00 EST, is 22:00 PST for me, and the large amount f traffic at that point does cause trouble. We playfully refer to it as "Forum Error Party Hour", because everyone just refreshes over and over, making it worse.

Thank you, Rawhide, for your diligence. :smallsmile:

I've noticed it seems to get an opening every 3-5 minutes. A good timer is if your post fails, just hit back, go watch a YouTube clip, come back, post will likely work.

[oblivion6]

i noticed there was no database backup last night unless it was very late

[Rawhide]

I've noticed the forum backup page seems different, and no longer forcibly changes URLs. :smallsmile:

Let me be clear on something. There has been absolutely no change to the forum backup script/page.

[Rockphed]

Let me be clear on something. There has been absolutely no change to the forum backup script/page.

I'm trying to decide if this is like the complete lack of mind-control or not. :smallamused:

[Rawhide]

I'm trying to decide if this is like the complete lack of mind-control or not. :smallamused:

It's not. I am not joking when I say that it hasn't changed for years.

[Strawberries]

It's not. I am not joking when I say that it hasn't changed for years.

Well, I believe that the script hasn't changed, but there have been variations in the actual times of backup: recently, the "database backup in progress" page used to be up for almost an hour. Now we're back at 30 minutes (less rather than more).

Also, on Monday there was no backup...but I seem to remember that missing a Monday was normal. :smallconfused:

As for the "backup" page no longer forcibly changing URLs, I haven't noticed. But I'll keep an eye on it tomorrow.

[Rawhide]

As for the "backup" page no longer forcibly changing URLs, I haven't noticed. But I'll keep an eye on it tomorrow.

It does change the URLs, and it does that by design. It goes like this:

<Browser> I want this page!
<Server> That page is temporarily unavailable. You need to go to this one for now.
<Browser> Oh, ok, then I really want the one you just told me about!

[Strawberries]

It does change the URLs, and it does that by design. It goes like this:

<Browser> I want this page!
<Server> That page is temporarily unavailable. You need to go to this one for now.
<Browser> Oh, ok, then I really want the one you just told me about!

Okay, then. But... the backup time has become less, hasn't it? And it happens to miss a day, right? Please tell me I'm not crazy. :smalleek:

[happyturtle]

At what would be 01:00 EST, is 22:00 PST for me, and the large amount f traffic at that point does cause trouble. We playfully refer to it as "Forum Error Party Hour", because everyone just refreshes over and over, making it worse.

Thank you, Rawhide, for your diligence. :smallsmile:

We call it the "Server Derp". Always at 6am GMT (summer time) for me. Stays down about 10-20 minutes, with an error page popping up, though I don't remember if its 500 or 503. This is not the same as the 9am GMT (summer time) forum backup, that has the Forum Backup notification page showing.

I don't think we've ever even speculated as to what it is - just accepted it as part of the forum's quirks. Recognizing it's there means we're less likely to try and post during it.

[Anarion]

It's not. I am not joking when I say that it hasn't changed for years.

Did you just technically admit the existence of the mind control by analogy?


Regarding the backup time I agree that it did skip a day. It's possible that it was simply off schedule for some reason though, maybe in response to the unforeseen maintenance? Would that even be able to throw off the regular schedule?

[fred dref]

I will say, Rawhide, is there any way to change the behaviour of the forum backup page? If I refresh GitP during the backup, I get the backup page. That's fine and expected. If I refresh the backup page, I always get the backup page. Now this makes sense, since I'm just loading the same page again, but is there any way to make the page redirect me back to the earlier page once the backup is done?

My guy instinct says yes it is possible, but it's not worth the time to make/server load to redirect.

[happyturtle]

Back button works fine after the backup is done.

[Rawhide]

I will say, Rawhide, is there any way to change the behaviour of the forum backup page? If I refresh GitP during the backup, I get the backup page. That's fine and expected. If I refresh the backup page, I always get the backup page. Now this makes sense, since I'm just loading the same page again, but is there any way to make the page redirect me back to the earlier page once the backup is done?

My guy instinct says yes it is possible, but it's not worth the time to make/server load to redirect.

Back button is the only way at this stage.

[Douglas]

I will say, Rawhide, is there any way to change the behaviour of the forum backup page? If I refresh GitP during the backup, I get the backup page. That's fine and expected. If I refresh the backup page, I always get the backup page. Now this makes sense, since I'm just loading the same page again, but is there any way to make the page redirect me back to the earlier page once the backup is done?

My guy instinct says yes it is possible, but it's not worth the time to make/server load to redirect.
Your gut is right. It is possible - I could do it myself given the right access and enough time - but I'm sure there are many much better uses of Rawhide's time.

[Rawhide]

Your gut is right. It is possible - I could do it myself given the right access and enough time - but I'm sure there are many much better uses of Rawhide's time.

Given that we want it to change the URL and tell the browser that it is a temporary redirect, and that we want the page it redirects to to be static HTML, it's not really feasible. Especially not since this version of it will be retired soon anyway.

[Douglas]

and that we want the page it redirects to to be static HTML
That's the part that really kills it, as far as requirements on the end product go.

The work required to implement and test is probably a much bigger problem regardless.

[TuggyNE]

I actually went and wrote a little Greasemonkey script that (tries to) provide the original URL as a link on the backup page. Obviously not helpful if you were trying to post.


Re mind control/backup page: I've seen the old one several times since then, so yeah. I was referring at the time to a page I hadn't previously seen, apparently a vBulletin message rather than static HTML, and since that gave a flat error message but without changing URL, it seemed superior (albeit probably a lot slower).

There is no mind control, citizen. Please go back to your duties.

[Rawhide]

By the way, in a true case of "it's not a bug, it's a feature", the fact that the backup page includes the information after the ? in the URL was a bug in an initial version that I know how to fix but decided not to. It wasn't supposed to include that information, but I left it in as it can help to reverse the page change.

[TuggyNE]

By the way, in a true case of "it's not a bug, it's a feature", the fact that the backup page includes the information after the ? in the URL was a bug in an initial version that I know how to fix but decided not to. It wasn't supposed to include that information, but I left it in as it can help to reverse the page change.

You sir are a gentleman and a programmer. :smallwink: