Forum Downtime

[UglyJoe]

If it happens again are we entitled to any kind of compensation?  It doesn't seem right that their software mistakes can wipe us out until they can get round to a quick fix...

The forum software is technically at fault, not the provider.

[famifan]

twice in a row. too suspicious.

what if someone finds a way to reproduce the issue again? it would be nice to fix the root cause if it's known already.

anyway, thank you for keeping this forum on line.

quick question on the topic. if i see the forum isn't operating than my first action would be sending a message to administrator about the observed issue. to whom and how to contact in case of emergency? or is it too redundant to notify administrator about the downtime? what is the best i can do for the forum in that case?

[MaxXimus]

To be honest I was wondering the same thing. Is there some way we can report the issue?

[Famicom Billy]

I was about to contact the main site, but I thought it could have happened the same as with smsrealm

[UglyJoe]

twice in a row. too suspicious.

I have reason to believe it was caused by a scheduled task.

what if someone finds a way to reproduce the issue again? it would be nice to fix the root cause if it's known already.

The forum software was doing a database "optimization" every 7 days.  This seems to fail somehow and, when it does, it leaves the table in a bad state.  Because we're on shared-hosting rather than a VPS, I can't fix that sort of thing myself.  I have turned off the "optimization", so it shouldn't crash again (I hope).  I'm also making more frequent backups of the database now, so if it does crash again I can just restore the backup rather than wait for support to fix it.

quick question on the topic. if i see the forum isn't operating than my first action would be sending a message to administrator about the observed issue. to whom and how to contact in case of emergency? or is it too redundant to notify administrator about the downtime? what is the best i can do for the forum in that case?

In case it isn't clear, I am the Administrator they're referring to

The moderators can see my email address, so they should probably use that.  I'm on twitter @ximwix , which would alert my phone if you messaged me.  I do have the uglyjoe@famicomworld.com email, as well, but I haven't checked that for months (never added the account to my new phone).

[MaxXimus]

I never noticed your email in your profile. I'll have to save that.

[UglyJoe]

Some scheduled maintenance on the database will take us offline for a couple of hours:

We will be working to improve service on your MySQL server this Thursday, March 30th, starting at 2PM PDT. This maintenance is estimated to take up to 2-3 hours to complete with a total of roughly 2 hours of downtime. Databases will not be available during this 2 hour period.

[MaxXimus]

Alright here we go! "Holds breath"