New server news

[Paul]

Woohooo...erm...I'll calm down in a minute! The transfer back to hoppy is now done and we're back to zippy speedyness! The original gathering together of the database, passing over from Li'l monster to hoppy and reload took about 12 and a half minutes before, so I thought I'd try and break my record and see if it could be done even faster with a bit of preparation...I think the big bowls of monster food really did it though...this time it took 8 minutes and 17 seconds.

Welcome back to hoppy!

[Paul]

I'm really sorry for the forum being unavailable in the last 24 hours. I had tried to do a kernel upgrade on hoppy but something went very wrong again and hoppy failed to restart. I requested a second boot (classed as highest prioity) from the server company. They took 7 hours to get back to me but even the second boot failed. To give them some credit I think they may have tried more than one further boot.

This is the second time the same type of thing has happened now (the first tme multiple different attempts at rebooting failed too). It may be entirely my error, I'm not sure, but one thing is for certain - waiting for the server company to do stuff is a bit too slow for me, (not to mention the possible support costs). Last time they took about a day to install a new base system and my first attempt at rebooting this using even the existing kernel failed.

Anyway, I don't want this amount of downtime again each time I try to upgrade a kernel, so I've taken a new lease on a brand new server with another company. This new company has a system which will allow me to directly contact the server to make adjustments even if the server fails to reboot, so there should be no need to wait for any support people to do any reboots or reinstallation for me (unless there is catastophic hardware failure).

Unfortunately anything between 4.00AM and 10.00PM GMT on Monday was lost (including one new member who will need to sign up again) I did do a backup at about 8PM on monday but forgot that the database needs to be backed up in a slightly different way to the rest of the server, so the most recent database backup was the one done earlier that morning.

BaO's old server, Li'l monster has kindly come out of the forest to take care of the forum for the time that I'm setting up the new server, which will probably be about a week. This will be the third dedicated hosting company I've tried so effectively the new server will be be hoppy III ... I think that eventually when she's totally set up I'll still refer to her as hoppy though

Sincere apologies again.

[Phoenix in the Ashes]

Paul, the RPG doesn't work on this server, so it seems. Back to the old "Error: Non-Numeric Scenario Numbers"...

Er... help?

[Paul]

We should only be on this server for a few more days until I get hoppy III (the brand new server) working to her full abilities. Apologies that the server situation happened just as the RPGs were getting going again but once we get to hoppy III in a few days time everything will be checked to ensure things are running and if there need any adjustments to the RPG programming it'll be fixed as the number one priority (should be within 24 hours of the move to hoppy III unless disaster or illness occurs) once the forum is on the new server.

[Phoenix in the Ashes]

Thanks!
Sounds busy... so much management as well.

Ah well, thanks for that.

[Paul]

Yes...lots to do , both me and hoppy III are working to the maximum to get her totally organised. I had about 3 hours of sleep last night, and not a lot of time in dreamland during the 2 or 3 nights before...I don't think hoppy III has had much more either.

The version of Linux that I've used on the previous hoppy (and intend to be using on hoppy III) is very much optomised for the particular computer and processor it runs on. This is nice as it gives very good perfomance and speed, but the downside is that moving from one computer to another (with a different processor) means that the entire base system has to be rebuilt (recompiled)....Hoppy III has a celeron 2400 processor whereas hoppy II was an AMD. There are some other adjustments that need to be done too, but although the base system needs to be rebuilt, this doesn't affect the data on the forum and no posts or forum info will be lost in the move to hoppy III.

[Phoenix in the Ashes]

Oh, well that's a bit of a relief, then.

[Mint]

Awww!! We are back with Lil'Monster for a bit!!!:cat:

*leaves cookies for the Lil' Monster*

the whole processor thing/servers is beyond my understanding. I'll just pretend that Paul makes this website work by using his magic skills and a wand

[Scarlet Lioness]

I get confused too...but oh well...

*leaves milk for Lil' monster to go along with the cookies and skips off*

[Paul]

It seems like Li'l monster must like the milk and cookies - she's been performing well over the past couple of weeks or so. Apologies that the move to hoppy III is taking a little longer than planned. The new server was experiencing severe networking problems. Tests I had done showed that the server was basically uncontactable from many locations. I had noticed this immediately but thought it may fix itself as I started setting the server up, but it continued, so I first reported this to the company I lease the server from on the 8th January.

The next day they emailed me to advise that they had forwarded the issue to the Network Department but after I had sent 2 more emails over the next weeks requesting what (if anything) was happening, and providing extensive test data. Having still received no reply, I phoned them on 16th January. They advised that their network was going to have an upgrade that night, but the folowing day the problems still continued. I therefore sent them a further email but had received no reply again, so on Thursday night (19th January) I sent an ultimatum that if they did not reply in the next 24 hours I would cancel the contract for the server.

Meanwhile

During all the time of waiting over the 11 days had spent countless hours looking at possible alternatives in case a solution to the problems was not forthcoming in a reasonable time period. Further investigations into whether it would be viable to use a server in my own home (I had looked into this last year) again seemed a bad option due to the maximum upload speeds available through broadband services here in the UK. Even satellite upload speeds are relatively slow compared to a properly hosted server.

One interesting thing I found is that there's a forthcoming new service called BT Max DSL which will possibly be launched in the spring of this year which will give some quite nice upload (and download) speed increases, but I've no idea if or when it'll arrive in my part of the UK, and still the speeds would be significantly slower than a server in a datacenter.

After a lot of searching around and reading reviews and capabilities of hosts, I found another, but again more expensive company which seemed to offer the type of system I want for a server. Taking into consideration the delays in getting the problem fixed with the hoppyIII server people, near the end of the period I had been waiting, I signed up for hosting to this company (and started wondering if I would need to be speaking of hoppy IV soon).

Also during this time I had done further testing on the server, and even totally wiped what I had set up between the 2nd and in the 8th January, and tried installing different Linux distributions in case the distribution I was using was causing the trouble somehow. I figured it was unlkely but seeing as the servr people were being extremely slow to respond, I guessed that even if it meant destroying a lot of work I had done, it was worth trying. Still no luck though,

Back to the problem

Well, it looks like the 24 hour ultimatum worked, as yesterday the server poeple who lease me hoppyIII replied. It seems that the default IP address that they had given me for the server was causing the problem and must have been getting blocked by certain carrier(s). My best guess is that possibly whoever previously used the IP may have done something to cause the block to occur (maybe a spammer or something?). Anyway, the server company supplies additional IP addresses, so I've changed the main IP address that I'll be using for hoppyIII.

Networking is now fully operational and I've today been able to start going over the work that I had done between the 2nd and 8th January again. That's likely to take about the same amount of time as before (6 days), then there's maybe a week's further work beyond that to fully get things operational on hoppy III.

Apologies again for the delays, and for it appearing that may be absent from the forum. I've tried to visit at least once a day (if I can) to deal with major problems (like a certain extremely unsuitable new member who had to be deleted), so I'm still watching to ensure the forum stays well, even though you may not see me posting much..

[Phoenix in the Ashes]

Well I think you deserve a big thank you from all the members of Broomsticks and Owls!

[Mint]

Yes, Thank you Paul

[Phoenix in the Ashes]

Paul, how's everything going?

Troubles?

[Paul]

Just finished everything about half an hour ago...weee heee! Hoppy is now fully set up and ready to take over from Li'l monster in taking care of the forum.

I've tested the RPG, and everything is working fine on hoppy, so it's now just a case of transferring the database and avatars over, and then changing DNS settings (the way that internet name servers fetch information from the correct server when you put www.broomsticksandowls.com in your browser). I'll put up a message in he forum index page in a moment to warn members, as the DNS changeover may take up to 24 hours (maybe a lot less or a little more depending on your Internet Service Provider), so the forum may seem to be closed for some members for a short while until the DNS changes percolate through the internet.

We're on our way to hoppy!

[Paul]

Yippeee - 'tis done and complete. Li'l monster has carefully handed the forum over to hoppy, and hoppy is now in full control of serving the site to everyone. Both Li'l monster and hoppy have been extra-large portions of monster food - one for Li'l monster as a final way of thanks before she returns to her home in the Forbidden Forest, and one for hoppy to prepare her for the works she needs to do.

Well, I was about to say I wonder who will be the first person here now that the transfer has been done, but wow, I've just spotted Lone Buck on the who's online bit of the index page already...wow, that was fast! Hello Lone Buck! And a big welcome from hoppy to all members too!