Board issues of late.

[ICE CROW]

I gotta throw this out there, is there any chance we can get the ability to change our avatars using URL back again. Before it was still accessible when the site was in performance mode when everything else was shut off. Does the change avatar with URL function actually tax the server so much it has been disabled, or have the recent changes that have been made just removed that function from performance mode. If i remember correctly in October or November when the nameserver change happened, the change avatar with URL function was gone. Ran had to make it functional again himself.

[123prism]

I was getting the cloudfire website offline error thing for like 3 days straight? Was the site down for everyone, or was something weird on my end?

[Linda]

Sometimes the Cloudflare thing seems to get stuck. Make sure you don't just reload the page, hit the link that says retry the live version.

[Sparks]

I've also just tried rebuilding the Apache/MySQL settings around a different performance model, as of about 10 minutes ago. Let's see if this works any better...

[Sparks]

(Side note: it helps if I actually kick MySQL to get the new configuration in place. Don't try to sysadmin during your lunch break at work, people. LEARN FROM ME.)

[Sparks]

And now I gave up and completely rebuilt the server using a custom, mutant version of lighttpd that I wrote for something else. We're losing integration with CloudFlare and a few other Apache-specific things, but if the Seven smile on us, the server should not go down in flames quite so often anymore.

[Sparks]

Just FYI, I had to take us down for a couple minutes to change over all the backup tools to the new setup.

I may have to take us down one or two more times tonight while I tweak things, but I'll try to keep things down for no more than 5 minutes at a time. Overall, the performance of the new setup seems to be much better.

Edit: Aaaand the maintenance should be done, everything should be backing itself up properly again so that if the server explodes we don't lose anything, etc.

[Howdyphillip]

Just a quick question to the powers that be... Can throwing money at the sever problems make it go away? I would be willing to donate... Maybe we can get together a drive..

[Sparks]

Just a quick question to the powers that be... Can throwing money at the sever problems make it go away? I would be willing to donate... Maybe we can get together a drive..

Keep in mind that the donation drives really don't cover the costs of running the machines, so while I love getting the donations, something like 7-8 months of the year I basically host the site out-of-pocket for Ran and Linda. That said, there's a point at which I experience a nervous breakdown and go missing, only to be found catatonic and sobbing under my desk days later. SO, in terms of hardware upgrades, I've talked to Ran about what the options are, so he has some idea what various possibilities are going forward.

However, with luck, the changes I've made today over the past five hours or so (ripping down most of the server setup and rebuilding it with different software, some of it custom) will keep things solid for a bit. Keep an eye open for weird behavior, though, since pretty much every single piece of software involved (other than the actual .php files for the forum and wiki) has changed. Our SQL is now set up differently, we're using a different (and modified) web server, a different (and modified) way of handling PHP in general, etc. So there's all KINDS of fun places that things could go wrong.

So far, none seem to be (now that Ran and I tracked down and dealt with some weirdness over on the wiki), but...

[Howdyphillip]

Thanks for the work... This sight is greatly appreciated. Please let me know where I can donate anyways. It would make me feel a little better about the countless hours that I have spent stalking this board.

[lostinwesteros]

I am just looking for a place to post a very, very big THANK YOU to all of the people who worked so valiantly (Yes, valiantly! No exaggeration!) to get this site expanded to handle all of the extra heavy traffic. I can not tell you what a delight it is to just open up the site now and post away.

[mor2]

Lately I have been having a few "500 - Internal Server Error" on the forum/wiki, assume its something todo with customized software comptability with cloudfire or something, but overall its MUCH better, compared to before this just a minor annoyance.

[Ran]

Thanks. Those are actually when the forum is à little overloaded. I should have turned off a couple of features on the board that are fairly intensive, but was too busy today when load climbed. Still, yes, much much better.

[Morrigan]

I don't know if this is the right place to post about this... but I have had a few problems using this forum. I use Chrome (latest version) so I don't know if it's limited to this browser. But things I noticed:

- I usually use the quick reply box, but sometimes I'll click "more reply options". When I do, and if I click "preview", after that I cannot post anymore. Clicking any of the buttons do nothing, even "cancel".

- The layout previewing the posts above mine is usually distorted, with part of it (usually the left side) hidden by some div or other.

- Using the editor, especially if I use stuff like bold or italic or the buttons in the editor (or at least it seems to me), often messes up my cursor. Sometimes I'm typing quite normally, then my cursor appears in the middle of the line I was typing (a few words back) and that inserts garbage into my post. I have to delete it, reposition my cursor and start over.

Not sure if I'm explaining it correctly, but I really wonder what's causing these glitches. Am I the only one experiencing this? Are they limited to Chrome?

[BlueHighwind]

I'm new here, so I guess this is all news to me, but really, somebody should know. This is probably the buggiest website I've ever frequented. Pretty much every time I sit down to look over the forums, Cloudfire will crash. After that, when I reload the site, I'll get a 500 error. The forum really does not work well for me. It could be the mediocre college Internet I'm using, I don't know. I have Firefox, maybe that's a thing.

There are also a few boards that inexplicably will not let me comment on them. When I go to the edit box, the entire format will go crazy and when I try to click the "Post" button, it simply will not work. I don't know what the deal with that is.

[Ran]

The forum has been pretty stable, far as I know, and I can only think that response times from your end are why Cloudflare is triggering incorrectly. We do have brief outages -- had a couple earlier a the web server sort of rebooted some things to clear out a problem -- but for the most part it's good. If Cloudflare is kicking in for you, that's generally because it senses some sort of long delay between you and us and tries to serve cached versions at their nearest edge server.

The reply issue is a known problem, related to a bug in our skin that we have not been able to pin down. Quick reply should generally always work, in the interim.

[A Menina Cebola]

Hello. I feel like I'm being incredibly stupid for asking, but I did read through some other threads on recent issues and didn't find an answer.

My messages/messenger doesn't appear to be working. I get an email saying that I have a new message but when I click on the messenger button it says I have no messages. I thought maybe it was linked to the profile viewing being turned off but I thought I'd check just in case. I also have had a few issues getting error 505 if I try and load both the forum or the wiki. Wasn't sure if this was linked to the cloudflare issue?

[Lady Winter Rose]

Why I can't see my profile?

How much times I can change my display name?

[Ran]

Those features turned off for the next day or two to deal with the high traffic we get after an episode.

[A Menina Cebola]

Those features turned off for the next day or two to deal with the high traffic we get after an episode.

Thank you. :)