Forum working again

[SethCohn]

Due to a server freeze/reboot, the forum's database wasn't coming back up (corrupt sessions table).  Fixed.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled NHFree, already in progress...

[error]

This seems somehow terribly familiar. But I can't quite put my finger on it.

[d_goddard]

Maybe we need an industrial-strength database under this puppy.
Does SMF have sufficient abstraction to be able to plug in a different database?
It uses MySQL, right?

[error]

They have PostgreSQL support planned for version 2. But nothing currently.

Though now I remember. What happened here this morning looked almost exactly like what happened to the FSP web site yesterday.

And it appears this forum is now at Site5...

[SethCohn]

Though now I remember. What happened here this morning looked almost exactly like what happened to the FSP web site yesterday.

Gee, you mean that a server went down for a time?  Or that they both run SMF?  These might look 'identical', error, but since they are two different servers, and the cause of this was merely a server needing a reboot (it happens), a vast difference behind the scenes.  The FSP's outage was a DOS on an unrelated site hosted on the same machine, and the FSP's been looking for a good dedicated host to move to for sometime, without success.

And it appears this forum is now at Site5...

I've had very good results with Site5, among other services I've used (and use).  I'm quite picky and have tried out and rejected more than a few services, and I insisted the NHLA move off of Dreamhost (for example) a few years ago, way before the recent absurd security issues there. (Since I'm not webmastering that site, I don't know who they currently use, since they switched yet again) 

Considering that the move from Hurricane sped things up greatly for this forum...  Unless you'd like to offer a better, similarly priced service to what I offer Kat and Russell, perhaps, including the unpaid time I spend on things like this outage (nobody had to tell me about it, I was fixing the db problem the moment the server rebooted and I saw the error.)  For the low cost, there is no 99.9999% uptime guarantee out there.  The uptime is otherwise quite good for the low cost.

If you want to offer a better deal, I'd be glad to buy hosting space/etc from you.  Free Market and all that jazz.

[SethCohn]

Maybe we need an industrial-strength database under this puppy.

The problem is that a session table is usually vulnerable to the mysql outage problem (SMF, Drupal, lots of other code out there all have that issue), but it's usually easily fixed.  Transactioning is overkill in most cases.

Likely the biggest speed improvement for this forum would be dealing with the huge message table: 150 megs plus.  Perhaps archiving really old forum content?

[d_goddard]

Transactioning is overkill in most cases.

Yep, all the MySQL people say that.
Who needs transactional integrity in a database anyway? 

Likely the biggest speed improvement for this forum would be dealing with the huge message table: 150 megs plus.  Perhaps archiving really old forum content?

150 MB is "huge?!?!"
Oh, puh-leeze! That puny of a DB should be running in RAM and flushing buffers to disk only in a background thread.

Or... do you still think digital watches are a pretty nifty idea?

[Dreepa]

 

[error]

Gee, you mean that a server went down for a time?  Or that they both run SMF?  These might look 'identical', error, but since they are two different servers, and the cause of this was merely a server needing a reboot (it happens), a vast difference behind the scenes.  The FSP's outage was a DOS on an unrelated site hosted on the same machine, and the FSP's been looking for a good dedicated host to move to for sometime, without success.

I never said they were identical. Only that they looked "almost exactly" like it from the outside.

My dedicated server has been up continuously for the last 14 months, save for the occasional Linux kernel update. Tell them I sent you.

I've had very good results with Site5, among other services I've used (and use).  I'm quite picky and have tried out and rejected more than a few services, and I insisted the NHLA move off of Dreamhost (for example) a few years ago, way before the recent absurd security issues there. (Since I'm not webmastering that site, I don't know who they currently use, since they switched yet again) 

I moved from Site5 to my own dedicated server about 14 months ago. They were quite good to me. After that time I started hearing from other customers who say the level of service and support has dropped off dramatically.

Considering that the move from Hurricane sped things up greatly for this forum...  Unless you'd like to offer a better, similarly priced service to what I offer Kat and Russell, perhaps, including the unpaid time I spend on things like this outage (nobody had to tell me about it, I was fixing the db problem the moment the server rebooted and I saw the error.)  For the low cost, there is no 99.9999% uptime guarantee out there.  The uptime is otherwise quite good for the low cost.

If you want to offer a better deal, I'd be glad to buy hosting space/etc from you.  Free Market and all that jazz.

I run too many servers already. It's not the business I want to be in. (Drinking piña coladas on the beach is the business I want to be in.)

Due to a server freeze/reboot, the forum's database wasn't coming back up (corrupt sessions table).  Fixed.

Maybe you could set myisam_recover_options=default or some other option.

[error]

Likely the biggest speed improvement for this forum would be dealing with the huge message table: 150 megs plus.  Perhaps archiving really old forum content?

I've got a database bigger than that. I can get the whole thing into RAM.

[SethCohn]

I moved from Site5 to my own dedicated server about 14 months ago. They were quite good to me. After that time I started hearing from other customers who say the level of service and support has dropped off dramatically.

And then they improved again.  They clearly oversold for a while, and the service suffered.  Things have been much better in the last 6-8 months. My experience on some servers doesn't match that on other servers (such as the server the FSP's been on... Jon moans about stuff not working right that I never have troubles with on other servers)

As for the DB issue: 150 megs of forum threads is rather pointless to load into ram... Yes, it's tiny in the big picture, but it's a complete waste to load and hang onto 149 of those megs all the time, since they will almost never be accessed.  It's called archiving for a reason, and that was my point.

And if Denis aka Mr. Oracle and Michael want to strut their database guru mad skills and compare how big their tables are and where they ramming them, that's fine... just count me out from the techy macho flash.  I have better things to do, and I'm quite comfortable in my geekulinity.

[Dreepa]

(Drinking piña coladas on the beach is the business I want to be in.)

What about walks in the rain?

[d_goddard]

I've got a database bigger than that

Don't compare dick database sizes with me, boy... now go home to momma 

[error]

The least you can do is load up the index.

Then go install a PHP opcode cache...

[Russell Kanning]

I have been happy with how the forum has worked in the last month or so. Having it fixed this morning was good.