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Recent server issues

Thanks for all the input. We're looking at quotes now, and hopefully we'll be setting up a new server this week. :)
 
Getting the cash for the last server upgrade was a fairly painless operation, though ready cash is admittedly tighter for many members these days.
Also it's clear we have enough members in various areas of IT that we could get some favourable deals.
I do hope the offers of assistance in that regard are taken up. I will certainly contribute to an upgrade fund, but I'd hate to think we end up paying top dollar for a machine we might have had at a discount. It's a buyers market these days- or should be.
 
Take pictures of the new server! :D

When our forum outgrew a VPS solution and we had a drive to raise $$ for a new server, which went well, and we bought it. I took pictures for everyone.

I sent it off to the colocation facility then, which is far away from where I am (couldn't find a decent local colocation facility).

I then posted a picture of the building that it was going to end up at (found one on the 'net).

The funny thing was one day the server goes down, site's not accessible. Neither is the colocation company site! Uh oh. Call them, line is busy, busy, then get through but no answer, no voicemail, nothing. Now I'm worried.

I can't remember what led me to it but at one point I ended up at the local city website for where the colo was and right there is a "breaking" news story with a picture of a building.. the building my server was in... and there was FLAMES coming out of the top of the building!!

That would explain why the site wasn't up lol.

Anyway it ended up being a very minor fire on the roof, power was restored and the site came back up.

But it was quite fun to revive the new server thread with all the pictures and post a picture of the colocation building being on fire. :)
 
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Zep said:
Shouldn't have to do that if the thread is indexed wisely. Even just having post-numbers as an index of some sort for a thread allows selecting specific posts only to be returned for display.
Click to expand...

It is indexed on postid (and several other things). I said "or at least look at an index containing all the posts". Which you do.
 
If our performance problems can be solved by spending < $5,000 then I say it would be easy to raise money for it. Just put out a request to us to donate money. Just make sure that it is plain that all money raised would be extra money to buy and maintain the hardware and software for this forum and no money would go elsewhere, e.g. to JREF.

JREF <> FORUM.
 
I'm certainly not an expert on any of this, but couldn't we just eliminate the search function and just keep the google search?
 
tomwaits said:
I'm certainly not an expert on any of this, but couldn't we just eliminate the search function and just keep the google search?
Click to expand...

No because the search function does a bunch of things google doesn't.
 
geni said:
No because the search function does a bunch of things google doesn't.
Click to expand...

Maybe, but I think a nice cost-benefit analysis would be good here. The search function may be able to do a few nifty things, but it's very slow and notoriously unreliable. I would be willing to give up any benefits the search function has if it would stop these server issues for good, since there is already a search function supplied by google.
 
PixyMisa said:
64-bit is nice but not critical; the Linux filesystem cache can grow to 64GB (I think) even on a 32-bit system, and while it's not quite as efficient as MySQL's own buffers (assuming you're using InnoDB), it gets the job done.
Click to expand...

Wait... I'm afraid I'm missing something here, and if I am, I'm open to correction. But: How can the Linux filesystem cache grow to 64 gigs on a 32 bit system? If we're talking about cache residing in RAM, then the 4 GB limitation still applies because we're (presumably) talking about x86 hardware, and that limit is a physical one imposed by the addressing scheme, not an software one imposed by the operating system. So unless there's some funny RAM addressing tricks I'm unaware of, it still applies. Are there some tricks to get around the limitation? Or are we not talking about caching to RAM here?

Sorry for the digression, but I'm genuinely curious as to whether I'm misunderstanding this statement or not.
 
ElMondoHummus said:
Wait... I'm afraid I'm missing something here, and if I am, I'm open to correction. But: How can the Linux filesystem cache grow to 64 gigs on a 32 bit system? If we're talking about cache residing in RAM, then the 4 GB limitation still applies because we're (presumably) talking about x86 hardware, and that limit is a physical one imposed by the addressing scheme, not an software one imposed by the operating system. So unless there's some funny RAM addressing tricks I'm unaware of, it still applies. Are there some tricks to get around the limitation? Or are we not talking about caching to RAM here?
Click to expand...
There are indeed funny RAM addressing tricks. It's called PAE (physical address extension). Although any one program can still only see 4GB of memory, the operating system can support up to 64GB in total.

This has actually been around since the Pentium Pro, so it's widely supported. It even works in Vista, if you know the right buttons to push, and don't have any non-PAE drivers installed (which you almost certainly do, which is why it's turned off by default).
 
tomwaits said:
Maybe, but I think a nice cost-benefit analysis would be good here. The search function may be able to do a few nifty things, but it's very slow and notoriously unreliable. I would be willing to give up any benefits the search function has if it would stop these server issues for good, since there is already a search function supplied by google.
Click to expand...

The Google search cannot see the members only areas.
 
Cuddles said:
The Google search cannot see the members only areas.
Click to expand...
Oh, really?

Then how do you explain the following?

Google: Results 1 - 2 of 2 for "Aquarium of Blood Game". (0.44 seconds)
JREF Forum
11 Feb 2009 ... Aquarium of Blood Game Thread. by Damien Evans. Today 06:17 AM Go to
last post. 23528, 738675. Humor · Continuation-squared: The Three Word ...
forums.randi.org/forumindex.php - 58k - Cached - Similar pages -

Members Only - JREF Forum
Aquarium of Blood Game Thread. by Giggywig. Today 06:39 PM Go to last post. 23428,
724562. Humor · I think I have you now... by The Drain ...
forums.randi.org/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=20 - 30k - Cached - Similar pages -
More results from forums.randi.org »​
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 2 already displayed.
Click to expand...
 
I'm up for chipping in if new hardware would help.

I would have thought a fair amount could be raised pretty quickly.

Surely at least 300+ forum members would be happy to donate at least $10.

Between 4 and 6pm GMT every day I see the same "Too many connections" error message (or whatever it specifically says).
I would pay to not see that any more.
 
I don't believe I ever found anything I set out to find using the Search utility.
Anyone else similarly underwhelmed?
 
So can we ask Darat to throw away the search index? Just keep Google and the user ids? If you want to do a search of members only area then your only options are
1. use tags
2. new posts
3. Search on user ids?
 
Or edit the robots.txt file (or whatever) and let Google index the members area
 
I do not like the idea of Google indexing the member's area. Because non members will then do searches that come up with threads in the members only area. Then be able to read the thread via the cached link. Either that or get an error when they click on the link.

Look how old that cached page is! (done 5 Feb and it is now 19 Feb!)
 
Or they could simply register and read the whole damn lot

Do you have a point?
 
I do not think it very good for the forum's reputation if people attempt to get to the forum via google and then get an error message. Not much point in having a members only area if you do not have to register to read it.
 
six7s said:
Or edit the robots.txt file (or whatever) and let Google index the members area
Click to expand...

I think the reason Google can't index the members only sections is because Google spiders can't log in. In order to make everything visible to Google, it would all have to be visible to everyone.

Soapy Sam said:
I don't believe I ever found anything I set out to find using the Search utility.
Anyone else similarly underwhelmed?
Click to expand...

I use it all the time when moderating. It's not perfect, but it works fine the vast majority of the time.
 
Cuddles said:
six7s said:
Or edit the robots.txt file (or whatever) and let Google index the members area
Click to expand...
I think the reason Google can't index the members only sections is because Google spiders can't log in.
Click to expand...
I think, in the absence of substance in your statements, that there's a distinct possibility that you're wrong

http://www.randi.org/robots.txt
User-Agent: *
Disallow: /latexrender/
Disallow: /forumlive/ajax.php
Disallow: /forumlive/attachment.php
Disallow: /forumlive/calendar.php
Disallow: /forumlive/cron.php
Disallow: /forumlive/editpost.php
Disallow: /forumlive/global.php
Disallow: /forumlive/image.php
Disallow: /forumlive/inlinemod.php
Disallow: /forumlive/joinrequests.php
Disallow: /forumlive/login.php
Disallow: /forumlive/member.php
Disallow: /forumlive/memberlist.php
Disallow: /forumlive/misc.php
Disallow: /forumlive/moderator.php
Disallow: /forumlive/newattachment.php
Disallow: /forumlive/newreply.php
Disallow: /forumlive/newthread.php
Disallow: /forumlive/online.php
Disallow: /forumlive/poll.php
Disallow: /forumlive/postings.php
Disallow: /forumlive/printthread.php
Disallow: /forumlive/private.php
Disallow: /forumlive/profile.php
Disallow: /forumlive/register.php
Disallow: /forumlive/report.php
Disallow: /forumlive/reputation.php
Disallow: /forumlive/search.php
Disallow: /forumlive/sendmessage.php
Disallow: /forumlive/showgroups.php
Disallow: /forumlive/subscription.php
Disallow: /forumlive/threadrate.php
Disallow: /forumlive/usercp.php
Disallow: /forumlive/usernote.php
Disallow:/forumlive/vbimagehost.php


User-Agent: Slurp
Disallow: /forumlive/

User-Agent: Referer Karma/2.0
Disallow: /forumlive/
Click to expand...




Cuddles said:
In order to make everything visible to Google, it would all have to be visible to everyone.
Click to expand...
Maybe you ought to read up on White Hat and Black Hat SEO and then think again
 
six7s said:
I think, in the absence of substance in your statements, that there's a distinct possibility that you're wrong

http://www.randi.org/robots.txt





Maybe you ought to read up on White Hat and Black Hat SEO and then think again
Click to expand...


You are wrong.First even if restriction would be lifted from robots.txt,indexer would have to login,since vB does require it before sending content of area.There is no way around.
Then robots.txt is in www.randi.org,so does not apply to forums.randi.org,so unless there is transparent redirect to /forumlive/ then it does not matter for this forum.
And last, community forums and regular forums are distinguished only by associated permissions and attributes in database,not by/in php files!(applies for initial proccessing,once info from db retrieved,php will differentiate)

And forums.randi.org does not have any robots.txt associated...
 
Thanks...

I have just swallowed a rather nourishing and surprisingly tasty slice of humble pie
 
Let me say, on behalf of several in the Forum:

What?!

But that's okay, we assume the tech-savvy are arguing about something meaningful.

Just tell us how much money to send where...

Thanks, MK
 
Jeff Wagg said:
Thanks for all the input. We're looking at quotes now, and hopefully we'll be setting up a new server this week. :)
Click to expand...

That is fantastic news. I have just had the longest period I have not been able to log on - every attempt over a twelve hour period failed, and I have finally got on board at 2.26am when I need to go to bed! Oh well! Anyway congrats on the new server, and hope all goes well during the install. :)

cj x
 
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