# Army.ca Status- The History of Outages & Dark Days



## Mike Bobbitt

Unfortunately, The War Diary was down from about 10:36 to 16:15 EST today. The server ran out of disk space, and no-one could log in. One registration was lost, however I have contacted that user and asked them to re-register.

The problem has been solved, I apologize for any inconvenience.

(I *really* need to upgrade this system...)


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## PteJoe

Hello,

Has this War Diary Outage delete some of the threads?  There seems to be a few missing.

Just wondering,

-Joe


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## Mike Bobbitt

To my knowledge, nothing was lost other than the one registration. After that, no-one was able to read or post to The War Diary, so there was no new information to lose.

Do you have a specific topic in mind?

Thanks


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## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

I just wanted to let you know that the CdnArmy.ca site may be unavailable from roughly 18:00 - 23:00 ET this Wednesday, April 25th.

The good news: this outage is required in order to make preparations for upgrading the site hardware.

The bad news: This is only Phase I, and no performance improvement will be seen. It will allow us to proceed to the next step, where hopefully we can start to see some benefit.

There is a chance that Phase I will not take place this Wednesday, in which case this site will be up as usual.

I appreciate your understanding and co-operation during the outage.

Thanks


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## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

Just wanted to inform you that a power bump caused an unscheduled outage from about 1130 to 2200 today, Thursday May 3rd.

Everything is back up and running now.

Sorry for the inconvenience.


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## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

My apologies for the last 24 hours. This site was unavailable due to some hardware problems. These problems have been resolved, and I don‘t anticipate another issue such as this.

Again, my apologies for any inconvenience.

Cheers


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## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

I'm going to be taking this system down this Thursday evening, to do some work on it. If all goes well, we will then be using a much faster system, donated by Todd Harris. Hopefully this will resolve some of the "page not found" issues we've been seeing over the past while.

As a comparison, this system is currently a 166MHz with 128Mb of RAM. The new system is a 550MHz with 386Mb of RAM, so we should see a noticable improvement.

Cheers


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## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks, this upgrade has been postponed. I‘m trying to re-schedule for this Sunday, at about noon. Will let you know.

Cheers


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## Mike Bobbitt

Ok, the upgrade is booked again, for Sunday morning. I expect the site will be off the air for about four hours while the work is done.

I‘ll let you know how it goes.

Cheers


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## Mike Bobbitt

The upgrade is complete!

Hopefully you will see some performance improvement in the site.

If you find anything that looks broken, please let me know so I can take a look at it.

Thanks


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## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

My apologies that the site was down all day today. I was attempting to move it to it‘s new server, but ran into some difficulties. I will likely try again tomorrow, though I expect I won‘t have to take the site down for as long.

Your patience is appreciated.

Cheers


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## Etown

Mike - Let me know if I can do anything to help. I‘ll be at the office around 5:00 pst on Wednesday, otherwise you can call me at home for most of the morning.

It looks like mail from you is taking a few days to get to me, I‘m not sure why, so it‘s probably best to call.


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## Mike Bobbitt

Ok, I think we‘re done!

If anyone notices a problem, please let me know.

And I can‘t say it enough times: Thanks E-Town!! You‘ve really pulled this site out of the fire, and we owe you one. If you ever hit Ottawa, the beer‘s on me.

Cheers


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## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

Just wanted to post a note apologizing for the extgended outage we had, which lasted from early Saturday morning, until tonight. It was apparently due to a hardware crash, and E-Town was kind enough to get us back online.

Again, I apologize for the down time, and have taken steps to ensure that it doesn‘t happen again.

Thanks


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## Mike Bobbitt

As many of you probably know, the site was unavailable from Saturday morning until this afternoon.

The good news is that the problem has been taken care of, and hopefully we won‘t see an outage this long again. It was a combination of hardware problems and back luck in the end, but we‘re now back online.

Thanks for your patience.

Cheers


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## stukirkpatrick

whew...

i got back from Shilo on Sunday and thought that the site had vanished off the face of the earth!


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## Jungle

Mister Bobbitt, this is the second time you went AWOL this year. I warn you: you do this again, disciplinary and/ or administrative action WILL be taken against you !!!


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## Mike Bobbitt

My heels are together.


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## Ex-Dragoon

Does this mean beatings will commence immediately?


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## Pikache

But he‘s not an expendable one...


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## mattoigta

> Originally posted by Kirkpatrick S J E:
> [qb] whew...
> 
> i got back from Shilo on Sunday and thought that the site had vanished off the face of the earth! [/qb]


hahaha same with me.. except not shilo


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## Slim

Has moral improved sufficiently for the beatings to be terminated?


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## Mike Bobbitt

I was just getting used to it...


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## Mike Bobbitt

Had another outage that lasted overnight, but we‘re back in business today...

The good news is that every time we have an outage like this I learn what *not* to do for next time.   

Cheers


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## Ex-Dragoon

Glad its back I missed it lol.


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## Mike Bobbitt

Yesterday at around 1600 ET, the hard drive failed in the "primary" Army.ca server. This hardware has not yet been replaced, and we are currently running off of a backup system.

Unfortunately, any changes made between approximately 1000 ET and 1600 ET on 09 March 2004 were not backed up. That means that any posts, user registrations, etc made during this time have been lost.

The current setup is temporary, and as soon as the new hardware is in place, we‘ll be back up and running "for real" again. In the mean time, feel free to post normally, all changes made from here on out will be carried over to the new system.

I apologize for the inconvenience and the loss of information.


Cheers


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## George Wallace

btt


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## patrick666

Good to have the site back, if there‘s anything I can do, don‘t hestitate to ask! 

Peace


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## winchable

*Breathing deeply in a paper bag*
*Hands trembling*
...I I...I...Came...And...it wasn‘t......No one......Error 404.....
*Hyperventalating*
Don‘t ever leave me again.....*SOB*


Seriously though, good to have the site back.


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## Mike Bobbitt

Hahah... Hey, if you thought *you* were flinching, you should have seen me!


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## Bruce Monkhouse

Talk about a long shift at work without army.ca!!
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzZZZZZz


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## LilMissChicky

Che,
You are a hoot!


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## Lexi

> Originally posted by Che:
> [qb] *Breathing deeply in a paper bag*
> *Hands trembling*
> ...I I...I...Came...And...it wasn‘t......No one......Error 404.....
> *Hyperventalating*
> Don‘t ever leave me again.....*SOB*
> 
> 
> Seriously though, good to have the site back. [/qb]


Heh, that was me too. I was at home sick and I panicked when I realised that Army.ca wasn‘t there. I e-mailed everyone I knew and told them to try and get on Army.ca to see if it was only me.

Thank God it‘s back


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## Franko

> Originally posted by Lexi:
> [qb]Heh, that was me too. I was at home sick and I panicked when I realised that Army.ca wasn‘t there. I e-mailed everyone I knew and told them to try and get on Army.ca to see if it was only me.
> [/qb]


Yeah....tell me about it. To console poor young Lexi I even let her in on George‘s and my OTHER hideout....sorry George   

Regards


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## Lexi

> Originally posted by Franko:
> [qb]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Originally posted by Lexi:
> [qb]Heh, that was me too. I was at home sick and I panicked when I realised that Army.ca wasn‘t there. I e-mailed everyone I knew and told them to try and get on Army.ca to see if it was only me.
> [/qb]
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah....tell me about it. To console poor young Lexi I even let her in on George‘s and my OTHER hideout....sorry George
> 
> Regards [/qb]
Click to expand...

Aww, I feel special.     

Well, all that matters is that Army.ca‘s back up again, and HOPEFULLY there won‘t be another failure for a while. 

Has the new hardware been installed or are we still on a backup?


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## Mike Bobbitt

The outpouring of emotion is overwhelming.   

We‘re still running on the backup hardware, which means two things:

1. There‘s no longer any backup. If we fail again. It becomes a big problem.

2. The bandwitdh on this connection is quickly going over the limit. This means we may start to incur "overage" chages soon.

I‘m trying to get the new hardware in place quickly, to resolve these issues, but it doesn‘t look like it‘ll happen until at least next week now.

Thanks for hanging in there...


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## Mike Bobbitt

Hi all,

It looks like the new hardware may be going into place shortly. That means I‘ll be taking the site down for a few hours to do the cutover. I‘m hoping it‘ll take place tonight, but if not possibly tomorrow.

Sorry for the short notice, I‘ll post here when everything‘s good to go again.


Cheers


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## Bruce Monkhouse

AWWWW Come on Mike I‘m on night shift, I need this tonight.  :crybaby:


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## Mike Bobbitt

Well, we‘re back but not on the new hardware. Something went wrong and the new system never came up when it was rebooted.

I estimate that we‘ve racked up just short of $300 in usage charges this month already, and I was *really* hoping to get things cut over. Looks like another weekend spent tinkering.

Don‘t mean to whine, but I‘m at my wit‘s end right now...


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## Bruce Monkhouse

Hey Mike,
That name I mentioned before in the PM, could he be of any help? I happen to know he works for rye and cokes and I‘m just the guy to supply it. I could ask him for a small road trip to the hamlet.


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## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks Bruce, I appreciate it. The hardware is in BC, so once it goes "off the air" it‘s impossible for me to work with from here. I have to request assistance via e-mail from a guy doing me favours, so it can be slow at times. Troubleshooting some problems over the phone could be interesting too.

Hopefully it‘s nothing too serious, we‘ll see today hopefully...

Anyway, thanks for the offer!


Cheers


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## Mike Bobbitt

Good news! We‘re *finally* up and running on the new hardware!

I apologize again for the down time and the loss of data that occurred as part of this transition. The last couple weeks have been a challenge, and I‘ll be glad to have my weekends back!

Thanks to everyone who showed their support over the last month. It‘s been a long road, but we‘re back on the air and more stable than ever. I couldn‘t have done it without your support!

Cheers and thanks


Mike Bobbitt


P.S. The new hardware is a bit faster, so you may notice a bit of a speed-up.


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## Bruce Monkhouse

Just hoping this post will work as I seem to be all by myself here......


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## Mike Bobbitt

Well, we were out of commission all weekend, but we‘re back now.

Just my luck that we move onto the new hardware, and the network goes down for 3 days.   

Anyway, we‘re back on the air and I‘m working to keep it that way.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but at least this time there was no data loss.


Cheers
Mike


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## Bruce Monkhouse

It must be because I logged back on.    I just got to work and logged on and WHAM....


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## pte anthony

It worked


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## winchable

*twitching*
....b..b-b-b..back?
..w-w-w..we-re back n-n-now????

*gets off of floor*

I was fine really.


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## Mike Bobbitt

If you think *you* had a long weekend... I spent way too long trying to decide whether to cut over to the backup system (and lose some data) or just ride it out.

I rode it out and it took a little longer than I‘d hoped, but we lost nothing (except 1 year from my life expectancy...)


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## Mike Bobbitt

...and we‘re back again! This time it was a new problem - the system ran out of memory. I‘m going to try to track down what happened so I can make sure it doesn‘t happen again!

Anwyay, sorry for the inconvenience - again... We‘ll get this all worked out sooner or later.


Cheers
Mike


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## Mike Bobbitt

Just a quick note to say that we‘re back on the temporary hardware on the bandwidth limited connection. I moved us back because we were having some serious stability issues, and I didn‘t want us to be out over the weekend.

Due to the limits on this connection though, I‘ll have to move us back again after a few days, which may mean some more interruptions, unfortunately.

The good news is I purchased some new hardware for the "permanent" connection today, and hope to have it tested and in place in about a week. That should resolve the majority of the issues we‘ve been seing.


Thanks again for your patience, and please bear with me while we continue to work out the kinks.


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## Mike Bobbitt

Ok, back again after a 20 hour outage. We went out at about midnight last night and came back at about 2000 ET tonight.

It‘s a good news bad news thing: the bad news is that our router seems to be consistently failing. The good news is that a new router has already been purchased, configured and shipped, so it should be in place within a week.


Thanks again for your patience, all!


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## Mike Bobbitt

Well, through the sleuthing of some members here, it turns out we were actually *blown* off the air with intent.

Seems we were mistaken for the official site, and took a lambasting for everything from the site intro to the layout to the posts, and these guys took it upon themselves to overwhelm the site and take it down.

They must be truly proud that they managed to take a server, that was already limping along, off the air.


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## Korus

> They must be truly proud that they managed to take a server, that was already limping along, off the air.


I wouldn‘t joke about that.. They probably ARE really proud..


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## Tyrnagog

They are, in fact.  It is a running practice for them to see how many hits a site will take before it goes down...

I think the following quote will help illustrate the point..

"WOA, link is farked!!! FARK HAS DEFEATED THE CANADIAN ARMY! bwahahah"


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## webster

This might sound like a stupid question...i dont know alot about computers and stuff but is there anything we can do to help keep the forums running smothly?


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## Tyrnagog

I think when Mike gets the new equipment installed, it will help.  but, this is costing him real $$, so I am happy it is up most of the time..


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## webster

I agree. Mike I hope your not losing to much money from this site...lol


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## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks guys... I have to admit it‘s taken a bit more of my time and money than I‘d anticipated lately, but I live in the hope that these stability problems are "just about to end."   

In terms of help, you‘re already doing it... Being pateint while I work out the kinks helps, as does the odd bit of encouragement.   


Cheers


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## Mike Bobbitt

Just to give a status update: testing *seems* to indicate that our router is failing intermittently. What that means is we‘ll probably be off the air sporadically until it‘s replaced. Luckily, that should be some time this coming week.

However, there‘s no conclusive proof that it‘s the router, so there‘s a chance the problem may continue to exist for a little longer yet.

Thanks again for bearing with me through this. I know it‘s annoying to have the site go off the air without warning, and it seems to be occurring more frequently now.

I‘ll post here when the new router is in place.


Cheers
Mike


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## winchable

*sobbing* 
Why? WHYY? GOD WHY? 

Actually it‘s good luck for me, all weekend it was down I had to write a research paper and not having this wonderful distraction made it much better.

For a part-time internet Guru, a weekend down is hardly anything to be sorry about!

Cheers!


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## Mike Bobbitt

Hehe, glad you got some quality working time in this weekend.   

Well, the "good" news about the weekend outage is that I was able to confirm a few things... Previously, both the router and the actual system itself were crashing.

Now, the router is certainly crashing, but I believe I‘ve stopped the system from following suit. So once the new router is in place, we may actually be reasonably stable again!


Cheers
Mike


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## Mike Bobbitt

Well, as most of you know by now we've had a major setback. After spending a great deal of time and resources getting Army.ca running smoothly with new hardware and a new router, something went wrong. The current "primary" hardware simply won't boot. Because Army.ca is hosted remotely (in British Columbia), it's very difficult to diagnose let alone fix. Unfortunately the person looking after the server (as a favour to all of us) simply doesn't have the time to investigate.

As a result, we are back to running on the "backup" hardware on my home connection. That means a few things:


We no longer have backup hardware ready - the next crash takes us completely off the air.
Because of the nature of the connection, some Army.ca e-mail (such as to AOL accounts) may not get through. This means people registering from these accounts may never see their registration notices. I will try to manually forward these as much as is practical.
We have lost all postings and user accounts from Sunday, May 9th to Wednesday May 12th.
We currently exceed the bandwidth limit for my home connection by 6 to 7 times the allowed limit. This means that the site may need to be taken offline again from time to time, or I may have to beg for donations again.    

Clearly, this is a temporary solution and I'm investigating the following options to get us up and running again in a more permanent fashion:


Fix the hardware and ship it back to BC. The BC connection is free, so this is pretty appealing (no need to beg for donations) however the problems associated with managing a remote site have been very limiting lately. This also means that the defective hardware has to be shipped to me, fixed, then shipped back, which is likely to take 3 weeks minimum.
Obtain a new connection and probably new hardware to increase stability. I've been on a holding list for over a month for a new net connection that would help out here, but Bell hasn't actually enabled me yet. Until they do I'm on my current (limited) connection. The new connection would cost more per month than the existing options, but would allow me to host Army.ca from my house, where I can quickly address any faults. This option may be "donation driven" as I've run out of "out of pocket" money to keep the site going for the next little while.

The bottom line: things are going to be tough for a while yet, but I'm working as quickly as I can to get things back in order. As I learn more, I'll be sure to post it here.

Thanks for your patience through all this.


Cheers
Mike


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## Bruce Monkhouse

No Mike,
THANK YOU for your hard work and time.
If you need, please ask. CHEERS, Bruce


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## Infanteer

Weird, it‘s like stepping back it time.  Arguments and flames will have to be reargued and reflamed....


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## Bruce Monkhouse

Agreed, I‘m reading things I already commented on or did‘nt wish to. Hey for some people this could be a blessing.


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## Mike Bobbitt

FYI the defective hardware was shipped out today and should be in my hands early next week. Assuming I can fix it relatively quickly, we should be up and running again "for real" in more like 2 weeks... (That‘s assuming everything goes according to plan, which I‘m learning is rarely the case.)

As for the lost posts... That‘s why I was keeping the site down... in the hopes that I could recover quickly. But tonight I made the call: better to be back online with some loss than to be out for another 2-3 weeks...


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## mattoigta

Thanks for the hard work mike


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## winchable

Alllllllllllllllllllllll-right.

Good news is, thanks to the lack of distraction I‘ve got my paperwork done that had been backed up for weeks on my personal comp so now I can finally get into the landscaping dirt.

Bad news is, I‘ve been having serious withdrawls..like this rash..and uncontrollable shakes...


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## Pikache

Thanks for getting us back online, Mike.

If you need back up, we‘re there.


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## lostgrenadier

If you need a couple of bucks from each member to survive, then let‘s do it! There seems to be a good number of us, maybe with a small donation each, we could help this site get some better equipment to further enhance the spread of our b******t 
  :dontpanic:   : Hey buddy, don‘t be afraid to ask, the answer might stun you


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## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks guys, I really appreciate it. I‘m going to try to get things going "under my own steam" first, but it‘s good to know the help is there if needed.

There‘s a few possibilities where I may need some bakup... Namely, paying for bandwidth overage charges, helping cover the cost of the new connection (if it ever comes through) and possibly buying new hardware.

I have to admit the temptation to buy new hardware (as opposed to going back to the historically flaky stuff) is pretty strong... I‘m sure if we managed to raise a few bucks we could get a system that‘s more stable (and faster).

Anyway, we‘ll see how things turn out.


Thanks again...


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## girlfiredup

Mike, why don‘t you give us some idea on the amount of dollars it will cost to keep this thing permanently stable.  What are we talking here?  A couple of hundred bucks?  More?


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## jrhume

I emailed Mike separately on this topic, but I see a few posters are in favor of having some form of user support for the site.  

I‘m ready to pay a few bucks annually to make the thing stable and to take the load off Mike alone.  I already do that with another military sim-related forum I go to regularly.  There‘s no such thing as ‘free‘ when it comes to the Internet.  Somebody has to foot the bill.

This is a **** good site and one of my favorites.  I know I‘m not alone in that.  Let‘s discuss the issue.

Jim


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## Bzzliteyr

I‘d be willing to throw in a quick $10 or so to a paypal account.  If we all did that, it‘d build up pretty quick..

Bzz


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## Pte. Bloggins

Thanks for all your hard work Mike, appreciate it.


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## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks guys... As an update, the new connection was preliminarily approved today. That means I may have it as soon as next week, which is good news.

I‘ll try to get the firewall configured this weekend so we‘re ready to go.

Will keep you posted how it goes...


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## Northern Touch

Thanks for the hard work Mike.  It‘s more appreciated then you realize.


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## Slim

Thanks Mike and don‘t be afraid to ask for a few bucks...We are the people who benefit from your site and should be willing to support it.

In addition we should all buy ARMY.CA T‘s and wear them the first Thursday of every month in public...wait...o.k. that was silly.  :blotto:  

Slim


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## Bzzliteyr

Is that JUST the t-shirt?? Or can we wear pants too??

Bzz


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## K. Ash

Thanks Mike. I for one, wouldn‘t have any problems donating a few bucks to help out. I‘m sure all of us put together would be sufficient?


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## Old Cent Hand

I would donate some money to this site .It is a good site , and alot of good people , have spent a great deal of time and effort into keeping it running.
PERSEVERANCE!


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## Gunner

If you wish to donate money to help run this site, you can do so through the administration tap at that top of the webpage (scroll down to donate). 

Or you can click on this link:

Donations


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## MikeM

Keep up the hard work Mike!

I‘d be willing to donate a few bucks as well for the betterment of the site.


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## K. Ash

Is there either particular amount that would be sufficient, or exceptable..??


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## Mike Bobbitt

I‘m still working on getting a handle on what the upcoming expenses are going to be... Seems like $200 to get the connection going, $85/month (which includes all the extra bandwidth) and possibly $250-300 for improved hardware. I don‘t expect all these costs to be covered by the membership; I‘d like to keep this a free (and freely available) site.

I would never try to put a figure to a donation. Any amount is appreciated, and in lieu of a donation, simple encouragement also helps me know I‘m on the right track.   


Thanks


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## Army_Deej

I just want to know what price of stamps it takes to mail something from British Columbia to Ontario for the donations.  And I just want to make a special thanks to Mike for getting this site back up, and trying to make it better. It must have took alot of time.


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## karpovage

Mike, thanks for all your hardwork.


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## Deleted member 585

Sorry about the setback, Mike, and thanks for staying online.


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## dano

I‘ll do what I can to help out.

I don‘t know what I would do without you guys...


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## Mike Bobbitt

The hard drive from the "primary" system showed up today, so at some point tonight I‘m likely going to take the site down so I can diagnose the problem. I‘m hoping it will be under an hour, but it depends on how "interesting" the problem is.

Sorry for the short notice...


Cheers
Mike


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## rcr

I have no problem waiting.  Good luck with it and thanks!


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## Mike Bobbitt

Here‘s the latest update...

I received the hard drive from the primary hardware today, and took a look at it. Turns out the problem was a simple one, and took less than 5 mins to diagnose and fix.

This now reaffirms that running the site remotely is not practical. (This minor problem caused an outage of almost a week and a whole lot of scrambling. All of which would have been avoided if I‘d hosted it locally.)

Don‘t get me wrong, since we were being hosted for free in BC, I‘m not complaining. However I think there‘s a better way.

Here‘s my plan:

1. Purchase a new connection that can handle our traffic requirements. I‘ve already started the ball rolling on this. Cost: $286.76 initial and $80/month.

2. Purchase new hardware and re-install Army.ca from scratch. This will do a few things. First, it‘ll get us on hardware that can handle our increasing load. (The current hardware is starting to strain.) It‘ll also get us off the "used" hardware that has been fairly problematic to date. (I‘d previously been a bit cheap on the hardware side, buying used gear... That doesn‘t seem to pay off.) It will also clean up some of the errors and misconfigurations that compound over time. I have not started on this step yet - it‘s a biggie. Cost: around $400.

My plan is to do this incrementally. Get the new connection up and running first, then tackle the new hardware. The timeline is fairly long, the new connection to be installed in 2-3 weeks, the new hardware in 1-2 months.

The success of this plan relies, at least in part, on donations. I grit my teeth at the thought, but raising a few bucks will sure make life easier. I‘m nearly sold out of shirts, or I‘d propose that as a reasonable fund raiser. Maybe there‘s a better way...?

In the end, I know we‘ll have a faster, more capable and more stable web site to enjoy.

I‘m open to feedback on this plan, and if anyone has questions or concerns, please let me know.

For everyone who has already donated, recently and previously, I am grateful for your support.


Cheers
Mike


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## ZipperHead

I think the PayPal route is the easiest (for the people that have accounts..... it‘s free to sign up for those that don‘t). The only downside is that there is a fee charged to the person receiving (3% I think, plus $.30 USD), so keep that in mind if you send in 25 cents (   ).

I enjoy "using" this forum (I‘ll wipe it off when I‘m done with it...), and I‘ll kick in a few bucks to keep it going.

Al


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## Michael Dorosh

There is also a fee to move the money from your Paypal account to your bank account, but I think it is only a dollar per transaction.


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## K. Ash

So how about those of use who do not have pay pal accounts?


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## Burrows

Good luck and thanks for all your hard work.


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## Mike Bobbitt

I‘m not one to turn away donations...    Have a look at this page to see alternate methods.

So what‘s the general concensus on The Plan? Good idea? Bad idea? Too ambitious?


Thanks


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## jrhume

Let‘s do it!

The check is in the mail.

   I love saying that.

Jim


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## sdimock

Mike,

Good job on the site.

Maybe you could talk to Canadian Peacekeepers, since they have an online site and I‘ve seen there adds here on occasion perhaps they could throw some space on their server your way.

Another option is they make a one time donation that they could write off.

I know they have contests/promotions at times and if presented in the right light they might be able to help.

Chimo


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## Mike Bobbitt

Update: The new connection has been purchased, and will be activated on 15 June. I'm out of town then, so I probably won't be able to cut us over for a week or so.

Will provide additional details as I know them.


Cheers
Mike


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## Mike Bobbitt

More good news!

The connection was put in today (over a week early), and is now set up. This means the last piece of the puzzle is now in place! We're now on new hardware and a new Internet connection.

I'm *very* pleased. In the last month, we've gone from running in an environment that was hard to support on flaky hardware to new, stable hardware and a local, supportable connection. This is great news, and should mean an end to Army.ca's week long outages and data loss. (Yeah, I know... I'm begging for it...)

Among other things, this means that we'll no longer have some mail automatically dropped as spam (some people could not get their initial registration e-mails because the temporary connection was in a range of addresses marked as potential spammers).

Thanks to all of you for your support (both financially and morally) and your patience in getting this far!


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Infanteer

My life is now complete....


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

...it can't be complete, you have'nt bought me a beer yet.... 8)


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I'll be honest, there were times over the last 6 months that I wasn't sure Army.ca was going to survive, given the troubles we were having. But one by one, we've knocked down the barriers, and now we're immeasurably better off than we were before.

What a relief!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

As you may know, we had an outage from Sunday night until about noon today.

The outage was caused by a local thunderstorm, which caused a power bump in my area. Unfortunately, I'm currently on the road, so I was unable to attend to the system in a timely manner. (I did manage to convince my wife to perform basic troubleshooting and bring it back online today.)

So despite the new hardware and software upgrades, power loss is still a real threat to the site. Looks like it's time to invest in a UPS once I scrape up the cash.

Anyway, we're back on the air, thanks for your patience.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## muskrat89

Thank Mrs. Bobbitt for us..  She's the bomb!


----------



## bossi

Funny - I suspected as much ...
("for want of a nail, the kingdom was lost")

Guess we know what you need for Father's Day, eh?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Ok, we're now running on a UPS, so the next power outage will have to be more than about 25 minutes to knock us out. Next up: I'm going to try to configure it so that when the UPS is low on power, the server will shut down automatically.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

If all goes well I'll be upgrading the server tonight at around 2000 ET. The upgrade shouldn't take more than an hour to complete. There should be no noticeable changes here, as it's an underlying system upgrade.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## armyrules

Thanx mike when it has to get done u get it done good on ya


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

The upgrade was a no-go, looks like a minor hardware problem. Will try again possibly this weekend. There's no rush, and you won't see any problems from the failed upgrade. (It was cleanly backed out.)


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I decided to do the upgrade this morning, so now it's done. Please let me know if you notice anything that appears to be broken as a result.


Thanks
Mike


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

All,

Please accept my apologies for the outage that ran from roughly 1100 ET yesterday, until about 1500 ET today. The issue, in essence, was that our ISP did not pay some outstanding charges to Bell, and were cut off. Unfortunately, they gave no notice to their customers, and we were left scrambling.

We are now back online, and I don't anticipate any further problems.


Thanks for your patience,


Mike Bobbitt
Army.ca Owner


----------



## Scratch_043

Thanks Mike, I was freaking out that I couldn't get my daily Army.ca Fix. :threat:


----------



## HollywoodHitman

Jeeze Mike, I thought it was my new Axe body spray....... :'(


----------



## Lexi

*Twitch* Never scare me like that again!


----------



## Pte. Bloggins

Yeah without this site working, I was actually stuck doing homework!  :crybaby:


----------



## Burrows

I was seriously going through withdrawl....it was creepy...


----------



## m_a_c

Thanks for giving me back my daily Army.ca needs.  I was kinda worried there for a bit.   ;D


----------



## armygirlfriend

After trying no less than 4 computers, in 3 different houses, I am thoroughly relieved to get my daily intake of army.ca


----------



## Ennasa

Im new here. I fell upon the site a few days ago. I was shocked when I couldnt get on yesterday. Im planning on joining the army and I have found a bunch of useful and needed info here    Glad to see the site back up!!!


----------



## Goober

I am glad it wasn't a database or server issue. I was scared all the valuable info on here might have been lost.  :crybaby:


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Knock on wood, but I think those days are gone...


----------



## Burrows

We can only hope...


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

Today Army.ca was down from 1500 to 1930 due to a router failure. I was able to purchase a replacement router, which is now in use. (Thanks Army.ca Subscribers, your support funded the replacement hardware!)

Thanks for your patience.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Trinity

Thank god

I went through withdrawls...


----------



## vangemeren

I just found this odd when I was able to come back:


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Heheh, it wasn't a "hit" just a co-incidence...


----------



## George Wallace

And I was just cursing "Dial Up"!

Does this mean I will have to apologize?    ;D

GW


----------



## Trinity

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Does this mean I will have to apologize?    ;D



Only if you cursed God's name while doing it....


----------



## civvy3840

Trinity said:
			
		

> Thank god
> 
> I went through withdrawls...



Same here


----------



## WannaBeFlyer

What was that post that was up a while ago? "Are you addicted to Army.ca?" 

Now I can definitely say - YES! :-\


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

It looks like we're having some DNS problems, and unfortunately we may be off the air shortly. In fact, we may already be off the air for some people, as a bad DNS record is propagated. I am attempting to solve the problem, but at some point soon you may not be able to get to Army.ca until this is resolved.

I will keep you posted on the situation, and appreciate your patience in advance.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

What luck!

I believe I have worked around the DNS problem by setting up my own nameserver, and just as I finalized that, our Internet connection went down! No ETA yet on when it will be back, but if you're reading this, we're back. 


Cheers
Mike


----------



## -rb

Hi Mike, don't know what kind of DNS problems your having but i use this site at work all the time when setting up sites or diagnosing problems...

http://www.dnsreport.com

a handy little tool.

cheers,
ryan.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks Ryan, that will help a lot. The problem was that zoneedit seemed to have corrupted the DNS record for army.ca. I put up my own nameserver this AM and 5 minutes later the DSL connection went down. It now appears that all problems are properly resolved but the link you gave will help sort out "other" DNS problems that I probably have as well. 

Thanks!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

All,

We had an outage today caused by our ISP, starting at 0900. (As of now, we're still offline.)

We'll be offline again on 01 June 05, as I am switching Internet Service Providers. (Our current ISP is no longer offering the service we have.) We may be out for some time on the 1st during this switchover.

I apologize for the interruption, I'm working to ensure it will be minimized.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## scm77

We're back now!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, just saw the good news in the form of blinking lights.


----------



## NavComm

I'm glad you're back on. Now I can have a cup of tea and abandon all the conspiracy theories I was developing to explain my inability to access the forum!


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

This harkens back to the dark days......*shudder*


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, we've had a few outages lately... Hopefully not pattern that we'll be repeating, at least past next Wednesday.


----------



## Danjanou

Oh thank God we're back up. Slow morning at work and I was forced to go over and play at militaryphotos.net alone


----------



## Island Ryhno

It was horrible, I had to go in the sun.  8)


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Just a quick reminder that we'll be off the air for a period of time today.

Since we're switching Internet addresses, running "ipconfig /flushdns" once the site is back up may speed up your ability to connect to it. (If you're not sure how to do this, don't worry about it.)


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Unfortunately we've encountered an extremely frustrating situation. Bell has disconnected us from our old ISP, but now says they need an onsite visit to hook us back up again. I am pushing for a qiuck turnaround on this, but of course Bell's idea of "quick" is under a week, so we may be facing a pretty serious outage here while we wait for Bell to get it's act together.

I realize that no-one will be able to read this until we're back online, but I'm posting a history of events here regardless.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Blakey

We're back!   ;D Go Spidey Go!


----------



## Zombie

I think I'm suffering withdrawal symptoms!  ;D


----------



## Blakey

He he, look at the "Users Online" just start filling up


----------



## beach_bum

Blakey said:
			
		

> We're back!   ;D Go Spidey Go!



That thing is hypnotizing!!!!!  LOL


----------



## scm77

If you like that....







Not sure who the other three people are but it's equally fruity. ;D


----------



## Blakey

> If you like that....


I love it!


----------



## Gunner98

Mike

All of these dancers - Spidey et al, can't be helping your Bandwidth. At 25MB plus each of Blakey's dancing Spiderman icons and scm77 latest contribution of 20+MB, these forums are being filled with senseless, wasted memory hogs.  To be clear, I mean the icons, jpg and not the members or their text posts.

IMHO - think before you post, you could be part of the problem.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Hi Gunner98,

I appreciate the concern, espeically in light of the current situation. scm's image is hosted elsewhere, so it's not a drain on the server at all. Blakey's is under 40k, which is not too bad. Really, the ball is in my court to trim services temporarily (disable avatars, close the album, etc) if needed.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## scm77

Edit: I had a post ready to go and then saw that Mike Bobbit replied and answered my question before I even got a chance to ask it.


----------



## Blakey

Ill be quite happy to host my own avatar   ;D

[Edit] But yer gunna have to show me how...Step by step....


----------



## Burrows

I did it for you.  Check out the awesome URL for where its located 

http://www.kyleburrows.com/uploaderfiles/blakey.gif


----------



## Blakey

Kyle Burrows said:
			
		

> I did it for you.   Check out the awesome URL for where its located


lol   ;D
[edit] TY[/edit]
[2nd edit] OMG lol, i thought you just provided the URL, i went to change the location and *BAM* it was already done! will wonders never cease?


----------



## Burrows

Not from me!

AH yes! For those who want to follow suit! Register at http://uploader.kyleburrows.com !  Membership approved ASAP and I won't spam you...honest..


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

All,

Sorry about the forum problems that plagued us from about 1145 to 1300 today. I performed a major system upgrade that was supposed to be "hands off" but as usual, a couple things went wrong.

We're back, but please let me know if you see anything unusual.


Thanks for your patience.
Mike


----------



## paracowboy

'sall good, homie.


----------



## MdB

Are we supposed to notice these major upgrades? And if not, what upgrades did you performed?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Good question... In this case you're not supposed to notice anything (if all goes well that is). For tech types, today's upgrade was from Fedora Core 3 to Core 4. Which means we're now using PHP 5 and a few other "under the covers" upgrades, but nothing outwardly visible.


----------



## MdB

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Good question... In this case you're not supposed to notice anything (if all goes well that is). For tech types, today's upgrade was from Fedora Core 3 to Core 4. Which means we're now using PHP 5 and a few other "under the covers" upgrades, but nothing outwardly visible.



Well, when it came back online, I noticed the loading was rather speedy and thought, my gosh, is it the new PHP 5?? (kidding!! )

Still, a good product made better. Thx.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

All,

Unfortunately, disaster struck us today at around noon ET and we had a fatal database corruption. I have been able to get things back and running by performing a database recover, and so far everything looks OK but I have to admit, my confidence level is low.

That is, there may be some data loss, and I apologize for this. If anyone notices any problems, please let me know, either by posting here or dropping me a line at Mike@Army.ca if these forums are unavailable again.

Thanks for your patience,


Mike


----------



## Britney Spears

Christ, for a few hours there I actually had to go back to work! The horror....


----------



## Burrows

I was shaking in my corner.


----------



## aesop081

I actualy had to step out of the house......

Never realized the sun was so bright


----------



## Cpl.Banks

*hisssssss* Now I actually had to go outside for a bike ride...wait a sec thats good...maybe the site should shut down on exercise day? If there is such a thing, then we could all get  a good few hours of exercise for the year! Genius I say...
UBIQUE!!!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

All,

We were off the air from roughly 2200 to 2330 tonight. At this point, I'm not sure what the cause of the outage was, but it appears to have been a problem with the server. I'll do some digging to see if I can locate the cause.

Sorry for the interruption.


Cheers
Mike

(Subject edited by Moderator to avoid panic.)


----------



## Burrows

We still love you Mike  :-*

Why is it that whenever army.ca is down I refresh the page every 2 minutes hoping.


----------



## George Wallace

That is because you are an Army.ca addict, Kyle; and you have admitted to the fact.   ;D


----------



## kincanucks

It was okay as I was watching the Canucks kick butt anyway.


----------



## Burrows

George Wallace said:
			
		

> That is because you are an Army.ca addict, Kyle; and you have admitted to the fact.   ;D


  Says the person with more posts than me ;D


----------



## canadianchick

Hey Kyle, do you think Mike knows hes spent over 107 days on this site ??? I think somebody's addicted   ;D


----------



## Burrows

I'm sure he knows. I'm also pretty sure he has something keeping him logged in.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

No such luck... it's all time well spent.


----------



## Burrows

Army.ca - Its an addiction.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

At some point over the next few weeks, the system running Army.ca will undergo a hard drive upgrade.

The new drive will have the following characteristics, relative to the current drive:


The new drive is SATA, the old one is IDE. That is, the new drive is mildly faster.
The old drive is 80Gb, the new drive is 200Gb, so we'll have notably more space. We're not really running low anyway, but this will help keep more backups of specific data.
The old drive has over 12,000 hours logged on it, the new drive will not. There are no signs of failure at this point, so this is a proactive replacement.

I'm not sure when the replacement will happen yet, as I don't have the new drive, but I expect it will be arriving some time over the next couple of weeks. The replacement process will take a couple of hours, as the data must be transferred over. During that time, Army.ca will be unavailable.

If anyone has any questions, just let me know.

Cheers
Mike


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

The new hard drive has arrived, so the replacement may happen tonight or tomorrow morning. I expect we'll be off the air for a few hours while it takes place.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks... the site was down all morning in an attempt to get the hard drive swap done. It isn't, but I discovered a slew of ways that *won't* work. I've got a system that seems to to the trick, but am only part way through it. I may try to finish it off tomorrow morning.

Thanks for your patience!


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks, another attempt and another failure. I can only say that your frustration at the site being down can only be mirrored by my frustration at wasting 2-3 days on this so far with no progress.


----------



## honestyrules

Mr. Bobbitt, it makes me think about this...

http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/36305.0.html

The upgrade to a SATA might be painfull.

Thanks for the great site anyway and good luck


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks, I appreciate the link... the drive is being detected correctly, but (to summarize) if I clone the IDE data, it won't boot - wrong kernel image paths and no SATA drivers - but if I re-install on the new drive then I lose all the Army.ca config. So it's come down to a hybrid process of installing fresh to get the right boot image, then selectively copying over data to the new drive "until things work."


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry for today's outage... the good news is that the drive replacement is finally finished.

Thanks for your patience all.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Glorified Ape

GJ on the upgrade. The problems I had with my SATA drive stemmed from its being broken and my not knowing it. 

With a new 200gb drive, Army.ca should be able to go for quite some time before expanding again, methinks.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks. Actually it was a 250 in the end, so we've got *plenty* of room to grow. Which is good, because I don't want to go through that again any time soon!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

Unfortunately, I have some bad news. Today, as a result of a number of problems and errors, we have had to roll back to last night's backup. All posts, PM's, users etc that were created since roughly 0330 ET are lost.

In short, I attempted to upgrade the forums. There were some problems with the upgrade, and in trying to fix them, I turned a minor issue into a major one and had to revert to backup.

Furthermore, it appears that all of the French accents have been trashed by the restore. I have attempted to fix this with no luck so far. I may ask for some assistance here in terms of getting the accents right.

Clearly I should have been drinking moose milk instead of working today. :-/

I apologize for the inconvenience... It's been one of those days where after a fair amount of effort, I'm behind where I was in the beginning.

Merry Christmas all,


Mike Bobbitt


----------



## Roy Harding

More Moose Milk required, I think.

Merry Christmas to you, Mike.


----------



## Ex-Dragoon

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!


----------



## Spartan

Weird glitch in Firefox in this thread - the Noo goes off the forum response section......


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I think that's because it's so loud. 

Actually it's because it's a single word and the forums are configured not to break apart words.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Seems not to be my day... I've just fixed a DNS issue that was slowly cutting everyone off from Army.ca. I'd better stop while I'm behind.


----------



## big bad john

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Seems not to be my day... I've just fixed a DNS issue that was slowly cutting everyone off from Army.ca. I'd better stop while I'm behind.



Mike, have a drink and start over on another day.  What you have already accomplished here is nothing short of amazing AND you keep improving it.  Thanks for the hard work and all the effort.  Cheers and Happy Christmas!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Taking the hint for real this time and walking away.


----------



## geo

Coulda been worse.

I remember when the Forces.gc.ca forum got nuked by a hacker
then the powers that be at the Puzzle Palace grew cold feet and destroyed what was becoming .... something like what you've got Mike.

Keep up the good work... and keep your guard up

Cheers!


----------



## NavComm

Don't sweat it Mike. We all appreciate everything you've done here. Have a glass of merriment and enjoy the holidays!

Merry Christmas to you and yours.


----------



## joseph_almeida

I was pretty worried yesterday...Thanks for making this site possible man. It has givin me hope in the recruiting system that seemed hopeless


----------



## George Wallace

I guess we have had another hour outage, with all us die hard Army.ca addicts panicing in the streets......almost enough time to have gone out to vote.   ;D


----------



## winchable

Raise your hands if you clicked "refresh" enough times that you lost count, be honest people.
;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, not sure what the cause (and therefore resolution) was for this one, but I suspect our ISP went down for a bit. Probably just reconfiguring their e-mail scanners for the new government.


----------



## Pea

I was all worried my work had decided to go through my internet history and block unknown sites when they moved to a new office on Friday.

Phew, glad to know that wasn't the case. That would be horrible if I actually had to work all day.  ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

All,

Tonight we had a brief outage caused by a disk inconsistency. The problem has been resolved, though I am taking steps to ensure that there is no "lasting" data loss. If anyone has any problems, please let me know.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Burrows

Thanks for the continued hard work to keep us up and running Mike!


----------



## Michael OLeary

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> If anyone has any problems, please let me know.



Problems?  Oh, you mean other than the sense of loss and depression I felt for that hour? And the repetitive strain injury from continuously clicking refresh?


----------



## George Wallace

2000 hrs Eastern 14 Feb 06

It seems some of us are experiencing slow service on the site tonight.

I was rebooting and running Anti-virus and other scans thinking I had a problem or bug in my computer, but a couple of messages from others have me thinking that we are suffering a bit of a slow down at the Server.  

I hope it is nothing serious, and I know Mike is probably already on it.   ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

It was probably me... I was backing up a large amount of data, but it's all finished now...


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

All,

My apologies for the outage today.  At roughly 0230 the server had a hard drive crash. The system is now back up and I believe all data has been recovered. If you see anything amiss, please let me know.


Thanks
Mike


----------



## George Wallace

Technical Problems will occur from time to time.  Equipment failures; Server problems; Mother Nature knocking out Power Lines or Telephone Lines; the possibilities are endless.  To everyone's relief, the site will always come back up and those who patiently wait will once again be able to get their fix of Army.ca.

I'll leave the rest of the explanations to the experts.


----------



## COBRA-6

I noticed a few posts missing, in Eqpt, the Flashlight thread. At least my post and one of Mudgunner49's posts are missing... ah well... it's tha intarweb eh!


----------



## Fishbone Jones

I merged the flashlight threads and removed the end where it was a flame war.


----------



## c.jacob

I guess it wasn't just the weather with a whiteout ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks, had a power outage here that took us offline for a few hours. We're back and warming up now.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Pea

Whoohoo...We're back! I was starting to think I'd have to do laundry or something....


----------



## Michael OLeary

Keep that up and I'm only going to renew my subscription a few more times.


----------



## Pearson

After work..........no army.ca is like starting my day without a Timme's  :crybaby:


----------



## George Wallace

Here it is the next day......Wednesday......Warning   (0910 15 Mar 06)

There is a major Power Outage on the West end of Ottawa and areas West to Arnprior and perhaps Renfrew.

Hopefully, it will have no affect on this site in the near future.

Ottawa Hydro and Ontario Hydro are both working on the problem.

Keep you fingers crossed.    ;D


----------



## PViddy

Mike,

I'm glad it was only the web site and not your house! man, it was windy here in Ontario yesterday! thanks for all your work.

cheers

PV


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

All,

Just a quick note to say that in the coming week or so, I expect to perform a fairly substantial upgrade to Army.ca. I estimate that it will take roughly 2 hours to complete, during which time Army.ca will be completely offline.

This is an upgrade of the underlying Operating System, which means you [hopefully] won't notice any changes to the way Army.ca operates. As I get a better idea of the schedule, I will post it here.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Michael OLeary

Saturday around lunchtime looks good to me Mike, I'll be in Toronto.  ;D


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

anytime in the early morning, I'll be sleeping. ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I may try to fit this upgrade in tomorrow morning, say 0600-0800, if everything works out.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Ok,...I'll sleep in.....


----------



## Journeyman

~gulp~  I...I......I guess I could hang out at Military.com......it's kinda like methadone for Army.ca addicts


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Tastes bad but will get ya through....?


----------



## Trinity

Michael O'Leary said:
			
		

> Saturday around lunchtime looks good to me Mike, I'll be in Toronto.  ;D



Drinks anyone?  Toronto, Saturday??!?


----------



## Pte_Martin

WHen and Where?


----------



## TCBF

"I may try to fit this upgrade in tomorrow morning, say 0600-0800, if everything works out."

- Good timing, I'll be on PT! (says Tom, hastily throwing a cam net over his wheelchair..)


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Well, it took a little longer than expected, but the upgrade has now been completed. If you find any problems, please let me know. For the geeks in the crowd, we're now running Fedora Core 5.


Thanks
Mike


----------



## Lance Wiebe

There I was, getting my morning fix, and everything disappeared!

Glad to see everything worked (at least everything seems to be working...)


----------



## karl28

"There I was, getting my *morning fix*, and everything disappeared!"      Yikes morning fix man now there is a dirty word lol Just glad that I work afternoons lol  .     Good to here that the upgrade went well mike .


----------



## George Wallace

Well!

Looks like we were off line there for a few panic stricken minutes.  

.....but we are OK now!    ;D


----------



## GAP

At about the same time Army.ca went down...I blew a power supply...I thought it was my fault!! :-\ ???


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

GAP, is that what caused it? 

We've been having intermittent network problems, I'm hoping to have them resolved soon but we're moving at the speed of Bell with this one...


----------



## Michael OLeary

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> ...... but we're moving at the speed of Bell with this one...



"Please check back during the next geological era for updates to this situation. Thank you for calling the Bell Helpless Centre."


----------



## Trinity

Although, I put the blame entirely on Bell Canada...  

I've been experiencing huge lag issues lately.  Mass bootings
in chat brings fear (to me) that people are leaving to Troops.ca, but then
they come back momentairily and I can breath a sigh of relief that
they didn't lower themselves by leaving us for them. 


But seriously, loading pages, submitting posts; just about everything
has been affected in the last month or so.  I recognize I waste a lot
of bandwidth (in my posts generally) but even so, I don't think I can
totally be blamed on this one. 


Sounds like a good time for an Army.ca Subscriber / recruiting drive
to raise some cash and add some improvements?  Last time I checked
it was 111 subscribers out of 9700 registered users? (not including banned subscribers)


----------



## larry Strong

I have noticed the same thing and am having a problem opening the pop-ups, the spell check likes to give me real grief. However I am experiencing this problem on another forum, but not on other forums, so needless to say I am getting a little confused as to what it could be. Thought it was just me till I saw this post. And it's not "troops.ca" Padre, never heard of them till now.....hmmmm feel like going on a visit.....


----------



## Scott

I'm not having the same issues as you guys and anytime I have had issues I just run Macafee to get rid of any spyware then my Army.ca surfing is mega fast. Could it be your ISP? I also thought Mike mentioned that he is in the middle of upgrades right now...


----------



## Springroll

I am also having issues with this site lagging. 
Not having lagging issues with any other forums I am on.


----------



## navymich

I haven't had problems with the board itself, but all in chat.  It will freeze and sometimes just lag, but often boot you out too.  And no set time, or fair warning.  It has happened to me with only a couple people in chat, and also with a full house.  And then I can go a couple of days with all being well, but see others experiencing the same difficulties.


----------



## GAP

With a lot of places, if you are not a subscriber, you are limited. Just enough to not make you want to go away. A suggestion might me you can't access chat room after, say 15 minutes, if you are not a subscriber...that way people can chat, but their time is limited. Same goes for the forums. They can lurk, but to respond, you are limited to 2 or 3 /24hr.  May not be feasible, but most need to understand that upgrades don't come free, let alone the time spend just monitoring, etc.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

It's nothing intentional, we're just having some problems with out dual DSL connections unfortunately. I've contacted our ISP to see if we can improve the situation.


Thanks
Mike


----------



## GAP

I hope you understand, I wasn't suggesting anything was intentional, but it amazes me that for such a popular board, so few are willing to subscribe to it, in order that the costs are covered. We're not talking great gobs of $$ here.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks. My intent is to provide the services at Army.ca for free. For those who chose to support it with a subscription (thanks!) they can enjoy some additional features, but not at the expense of the general user base. There are a lot of reasons people cannot or choose not to buy a subscription and I don't want to "punish" them but rather provide a small reward for those that can.

Thanks again!


Cheers
Mike


----------



## couchcommander

What about running a donation campaign, a la wikipedia? Put a paypal "donate" button up top there. You could offer donating as an alternative to subscribing, or of course for us subscribers that are willing to give more. 

I know I would be willing to throw you another couple of bucks to keep this thing up and running.

Re: the DSL... is it all ADSL out there, ie 768k up?


----------



## Cloud Cover

Trinity said:
			
		

> that people are leaving to Troops.ca,



Wow- does that site look familiar.  :


----------



## Franko

I've noticed the lag as well and brought it to Mike's attention this morning.

I was thinking it was my browser (Firefox) but it sounds more like a Bell / ISP problem.

Regards


----------



## Trinity

Yeah...  getting the profile popup in chat won't work

And clicking on links in chat won't work for me either...


NOW...  that being said  I use firefox.

If I try it in Explorer they do work but I still experience the lag.

So some of our problems could be firefox not be compatiable?


----------



## Franko

No I don't think it's the browser at all.....or I'd have bigger problems than just lag.

I have had other notes such as " IP switch reset...." bla bla bla.

So methink's it's either Bell ( more than likely ) or the server itself.

Either way Mike's on it.

Regards


----------



## Pea

Just thought I would add I have been having trouble with lag as well. I find submitting a post, using the spellcheck, and reporting a post to a mod are taking quite a bit longer and sometimes just freeze up. Also, I have been getting booted from the chat as well, which is something I never had problems with before.


----------



## Trinity

Pea said:
			
		

> Also, I have been getting booted from the chat as well, which is something I never had problems with before.



oh..  thats just the mod's using their secret "kick" button when they get tired of your chatting!!!


----------



## camochick

Yeah I have had the lag too. The chat freezes up (perhaps it's cause i have been chatting too much too hehe) and sometimes i get an error page when clicking on a topic to read or trying to get into my PM's. I do however plan on subscribing soon, I've soaked off this site too much hehe. So Mike you can expect my subscription soon, probably when hubby gets paid (why use my own money when I can use his hahahahaha, marriage is great >)


----------



## HItorMiss

Now I'm not usually one to complain...  ;D

But yes in the last month or so (at least 3+ weeks) I have had issues such as the boards themselves going down for brief periods of times, more so then ever before.

loosing the chat, and all my logging info, which means re-submitting everything.

However as per I'm happy with everything and other then small complaint's Mike keep up the good work.


----------



## GAP

> why use my own money when I can use his hahahahaha, marriage is great )



That reminds me of a radio advertisement playing here in Winnipeg (can't remember the company, just the ad) The woman wants the man to order grilled salmon so they can share, and he wants steak. When he questions why he can't just order what he wants she quotes "But honey, you gave all that up when you got married"   ;D


----------



## Bert

I don't know the specifics of Army.ca's chat window, but the contributions of lag and connection quality between 
the client (you) and the Army.ca server do come into play.

Between the servers and client, active chats pass special data to keep the connection open.  The server
asks if you are there, and the client answers yes I am.  The idea is to close inactive sessions if the client suddenly
drops out.  The server tests occasionally to see if you're still there.   If the data is lagged, corrupted and misses 
timings, the server/chat app may decide the session is inactive (when it may not be) and closes the session.  Trinity 
gets knocked off.

Theres alot of possibilities that may contribute to the problem from Windows issues, router settings, to ISPs, 
bad wiring, server/chat app settings, gateways and equipment and issues out on the 'net outside of the ISP
sphere.

If you suspect you may have connection issues, go to www.dslreports.com, click on tools, and perform a speed
test, tweak test, and/or DoctorPing.  Its free safe stuff.   It will give you a basic idea of the quality of your 
connection from speed to packet loss.  Lot of other tools out there too.

I've never had problems with army.ca chat yet, but my connection rate and qaulity is good with Telus or at
least so far.


----------



## Franko

Mackay said:
			
		

> Ouch... I didn't think my site was that bad now...



Before this gets out of hand.....

Knock it off troops.

Regards


----------



## Trinity

Bert....

When 5 people get knocked out of chat at the same time, 
I don't think it's an individual problem. 

HOWEVER, thanks for the link, i will definately check out
my connection.


----------



## larry Strong

Scott said:
			
		

> I'm not having the same issues as you guys and anytime I have had issues I just run Macafee to get rid of any *spyware* then my Army.ca surfing is mega fast. Could it be your ISP? I also thought Mike mentioned that he is in the middle of upgrades right now...



I went back and dumped Yahoo Messanger, since it was the last thing I had configured, That got rid of the pop up problem. Thanks


----------



## couchcommander

I'm not so sure it's an individual connection issue. I've noticed this same problem (intermittent connection loss) from probably 30 different machines with 3 distinct internet connections (even different providers). 

My home connection is pretty good, doesn't usually drop packets. Not to mention I get about 6.5 mbps down... :evil:


----------



## Trinity

couchcommander said:
			
		

> I'm not so sure it's an individual connection issue. I've noticed this same problem (intermittent connection loss) from probably 30 different machines with 3 distinct internet connections (even different providers).



WHAT?  How often you do connect.  30 different machines, man you must be an addict.


----------



## Pea

I seem to be having a lot of trouble today with PM's. I lost two in a row after hitting send and then receiving the "this page cannot be displayed" message. The third one went through, and after losing two I smartened up and saved a copy as a Word file so I wouldn't have to type it again. (leave it to me to take 2 losses before I use my head and save a copy.  : )


----------



## Bert

Trinity said:
			
		

> Bert....
> When 5 people get knocked out of chat at the same time,
> I don't think it's an individual problem.



You might have a point there Trinity.  However, I've been in the chat room and seen
individual disconnections.  Though I'm not a chat addict and don't spent large amounts of time
in the chat room, I've never been disconnected myself.  There have been occasions where 
army.ca pages load slowly or a message takes a long time to post.  Difficult to say
whether is a server issue or a net problem between my client and the server.

I've always speculated that the problem occurs when Mike's beer brewing machine 
is working at 100% capacity controlled by an omnipresent AI and the power fluctuations 
kicks chatters off the server.  Perhaps on purpose if the AI is feeling vindictive when the
brew isn't just right or the amount of chatters outnumber the drinkers.  




...just kidding Mike.


----------



## couchcommander

Trinity said:
			
		

> WHAT?  How often you do connect.  30 different machines, man you must be an addict.



Well it's a pretty complex operation. I log into army.ca on each one, and set each one individually to a page I have posted to. I then have them auto-refresh so often, and if one detects that a page has changed, it starts beeping at me so I have to drop what I am doing and run over there and post a reply. A lot easier then constantly checking the "unread replies" feature, let me tell you. 

(....seriously though different machines at work/home....notably at DIFFERENT times....)


----------



## George Wallace

Mike

Just a thought; would the speed of your Hard Drive have any affect on this?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

No, the system is fine, it's definitely network related. (I'm sitting here just a few feet from the server and every page loads immediately... maybe I should start renting out a time share. )


----------



## Nfld Sapper

And I'm here in Newfoundland and the pages load just as quick. So it might be your network connection.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I think it also comes and goes... tonight could be a "good night" for the connection. (Either that or I'm actually in your basment...!)


----------



## Nfld Sapper

ACK! So that's what the strange noise are in my basement :blotto:


----------



## GAP

Quick, put out the sticky pads!! ;D


----------



## George Wallace

Mike

I see you are running some tests.  I just had problems loading a few pages.  They took over two minutes to load.  Your Server was also unavailable or down for a couple of minutes.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, the server was down a bit this morning... about 5 mins or so. However we're back up and it *seems* to be a bit better, at least for now.


----------



## Jantor

Hello,

It's working better for me right now....hope it stays that way


----------



## Scott

I think I told Franko this because his computer was on the fritz:

Take off shoe

Hold shoe in hand

Hit machine repeatedly until it busts, it works or you feel better

Just my firefighter's solution to any electronic malfunction.


----------



## yoman

Scott said:
			
		

> I think I told Franko this because his computer was on the fritz:
> 
> Take off shoe
> 
> Hold shoe in hand
> 
> Hit machine repeatedly until it busts, it works or you feel better
> 
> Just my firefighter's solution to any electronic malfunction.



I'm glad your not a computer technician.


----------



## couchcommander

Actually,

On that note. lol.

We had this bunch of IBM R31's that developed very very very small cracks in their motherboards. This would cause them to freeze intermittently.

 It took us a while to figure out what was going on with them though. We'd bring them in, run a full diagnostic on them, inspect all of the components and find nothing hardware wise wrong that we could detect... so we assumed it was a software issue, some new virus or worm that was going around. We kept formatting them and sending them on their way. Eventually the pattern became apparent, as they would keep coming back, and it was only the R31's.

Eventually, with one sitting there completely frozen despite everything I had done to it, I took it and gave it a good wack with my fist.... sure enough the unit started working again. We discovered that whenever it froze... if you hit it hard enough it would come out of it.

We mused for a while about just giving people rubber mallets to hit them with, but eventually decided to replace the defective boards instead...


----------



## MasterStryker

yesterday and today, i was having the same problems especially when I was chatting with forestedwarrior and every time i went to reply to him, i had to send the message about 2 or3 times before it actually went trough, and today just getting on the website was a hassel. and by the way i just checked out troops.ca for the first time and i say don't worry, i'm wouldn't leave here for that! :dontpanic:


----------



## Trinity

MasterStryker said:
			
		

> and by the way i just checked out troops.ca for the first time and i say don't worry, i'm wouldn't leave here for that! :dontpanic:



I  blame myself for this.

I visited troops.ca a few times, never signed in.  I threw the troops comment out originally as a joke, with
little regard to that site thinking it was an imitation army.ca.  Making fun of it would be making fun of 
milphotos or other sites we toss around.

I would like to apologize and retract my original comment about troops.  I have spoke to Mackay (owner of troops) and he
seems like a nice guy and IS A SUBSCRIBER of army.ca.

His intentions was not to compete with this site but to provide a different service for people out there.  That
I respect and fully endorse. 

So please, no one latch onto my mistake about troops.  I regret and apologize for my flippent comment about
troops (even if it did get 8 more people to sign up that day.... bad press is still good press )

Humbly

Trinity


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I know not many of you were around then, but Army.ca in it's early days was nowhere near what troops.ca is today.

Those in glass houses... 

Edit to clarify: I believe troops.ca is developing much faster than army.ca ever did. When we were "young" army.ca was pretty darn rough, I think troops.ca is doing very well for being relatively new to the scene.


----------



## HItorMiss

Mike,

I had no idea you were Alumni of Acadia. Oh the hours I spent sitting in the SUB instead of going to class  ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Army.ca was born at Acadia... a 2nd year project to help me learn this new "HTML" stuff.  The SUB was great for wiling away the hours. I think I lived on those terrible pizza slices they sold for almost a year solid.


----------



## HItorMiss

What years were you there Mike, God I hated the Pizza hut shack thing they had it never tasted right

I was never a Registered Student at Acadia though I was lucky enough to attend some lectures, and the classes I missed were High school ones ( all my friends however were students), since I never did bother to take Highschool seriously till I need my Grade 12 to join up LOL


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I was there from 91-96, started as a student ended up working full time in the computer centre there. Sounds like you were there after that... there was no Pizza Hut in my day, just a "pizza rotisserie" of slices on a heat rack. You could tell the age by holding a piece by the crust... If if drooped (rare) it was fresh. If it stayed level, it was old. Ah, the good old days...


----------



## George Wallace

Mike

Is there a reason that I have lost the site twice in the last half hour?  I have lost a couple of posts due to the fact that I could not find the Server and I had to head back to the Main Page.  It has been down for approx two minutes each time.

It has been the usual "Cannot find Server" error message.  

(Do we get to blame Ma Bell for this?)


----------



## George Wallace

Make that three times and the Server is extremely slow.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I did 2 reboots to install a new kernel and they caused the 2 minute outages. The system is slow after a reboot because it has to catch up with a deluge of requests. Should be OK now.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

All,

From about 0230 ET to 0830 ET, Army.ca was unavailable. It has been brought back online and I am currently investigating the root cause, which appears to be a system crash.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Trinity

Sorry

It was my fault.

I was arguing with a troll....

Not only did I waste valuable bandwidth, the stupidity coming from the post
MUST HAVE irritated the server so much it decided to shut down for my benefit
so I would go to bed instead of staying  up all night arguing with said troll.

I promise not to argue with trolls again.


----------



## GAP

> Sorry
> 
> It was my fault.
> 
> I was arguing with a troll....
> I promise not to argue with trolls again.


It's a sin to lie!!! tsk tsk


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

A viable theory! The filesystem turned "read only" so maybe the server was being fussy about the type of posts it wanted to accept.


----------



## Scott

Well, a few of us had to go on quite a posting run to shut down the trolls. Where were you Boss? Nevermind, take today off too!


----------



## couchcommander

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> A viable theory! The filesystem turned "read only" so maybe the server was being fussy about the type of posts it wanted to accept.



Did your HDD's check out?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yep, we're back to a "consistent" state again... until the next one.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

All,

You may have noticed that our server has been at times slow, or even unavailable over the past few days (mostly in the mornings). This morning, Army.ca was offline for a few hours while I attempted to troubleshoot the source of the problem. I believe I've found the issue, and have taken steps to reduce the problem, so hopefully Army.ca will continue to be available as we've come to expect.

Thanks for your patience.
Mike


----------



## Michael Dorosh

Thanks for yours.


----------



## big bad john

Thank you for your continuing hard work!


----------



## big bad john

Is it just me or is the site slow today?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Seems to be working OK for me.


----------



## Pea

Slow on my end today as well. However, could very well be problems with my work server again.


----------



## techie

yeah, it seems to be jugging along a little slow, takeing about 10-15 seconds to load a page. Normal time is 2-3 seconds.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Odd, the server load is actually lower than normal. ???


----------



## techie

My guess it might be a router in between the server and us. Watch out everyone, the tubes are getting full. We have to stop send our internets to eachother.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I've just restarted the networking gear, in case it was contributing to the problem.


----------



## Cloud Cover

pages are loading very quickly on my end.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

When I first logged on on about 15 minutes ago it was barely moving, in fact I thought we were off the 'air'. The pages  are flying now.....


----------



## Pea

Seems to be MUCH faster now.  ;D


----------



## techie

much faster, danke.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

We're definitely having a slow-down right now. We're experneicing an outage on one of our DSL lines (seems like it's Bell's monthly game to cause us some sort of problem). I hope to have it resolved soon.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## George Wallace

Download speeds have been fluctuating all day.  Too bad Bell didn't reimburse for time lost.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

They "say" that it will be fixed by the end of the day. I'm not holding my breath, and I may have to take our 2nd link completely offline.


----------



## George Wallace

Nnoooooooooooooo!      Doooooon't doooo it!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Don'y worry, it would actually speed things up. Right now 1/2 of you are trying to use a dead link, and it takes a few seconds to time out. If I take it out of the mix, everyone will use the available link right away. Problem is, it takes a while for the world to learn the 2nd link is down (or up) so if it's going to be fixed in a few hours, it's actually better to just leave it.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I should take this moment to thank our subscribers once more. Without them, we would not have a 2nd connection to the Internet, which in turn would mean we would be completely offline right now.

THANKS!


----------



## Pea

No thanks needed. If we were offline, then I would actually have to WORK.   Now that is a scary thought! I'll make sure to renew my subscription when it's up.  ;D


----------



## couchcommander

Pea, how dare you say that evil, evil four letter word! 

It's really for a good reason where I "work". Service has traditionally been completed in 2-3 days... what would happen if all of a sudden things started getting fixed in a day, or, even worse, in hours???  They might cut my staff!!!!  >


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

All,

Bell has fixed the problem, and we are back to full speed. Thanks for your patience.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## George Wallace

SLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG  DDDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWNNN  Again.


----------



## George Wallace

Sped up as I post..... Gotta love Bell Sympatico.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Oh I'm not on Sympatico... it's bad enough getting the raw DSL from Bell!


----------



## armyrules

I'm on Sympatico and it's not that bad and thanks for all the hard work boys this site kicks $%^% 

:cheers:


----------



## big bad john

I went out for a few hours and since I have been back the site speed has been slow and pages have been hanging.  It is not happening on any of the other windows I have open.  Is it just me?


----------



## George Wallace

I had problems just after lunch where I was logged on.  It is OK for now at home.


----------



## Rice0031

The site is flying for me.


----------



## therev

I had problems early this am before going to work,BBJ.  Thought my computer caught a bug but maybe not?


----------



## big bad john

It seems fine now.  It was so slooowwww earlier though.


----------



## Pea

Was the site down for at least an hour this morning for everyone? Or just us lucky Edmontonians?

EEEEK! What a rough first hour at work this morning.  :crybaby:


----------



## Franko

I also had a problem this morning as well.....

I'll look into it.

Regards


----------



## Quag

It was down in Petawawa, Ontario as well.

You don't realize how much you need this site, until it is gone eh? ;D


----------



## military granny

OH thank the army.ca gods for getting it up again. I was just about to switch from my morning to my evening whiskey at 7 am


----------



## 1Good_Woman

Evening whiskey huh? I need to get me some of that! Was at a loss for what to do when bored at work while Army.ca was MIA!!


----------



## GUNS

Site was not working on the ROCK as well


----------



## Journeyman

LOL
It sounds like one of those addiction rehab groups...except no one here _wants_ to quit.   ;D



> *my morning to my evening whiskey at 7 am*


Damn, why didn't I think of that. Instead, I went grocery shopping, started simmering spaghetti sauce for supper, and did some more basement renovations (painting). (Hmmm....maybe I _am_ spending too much time here


----------



## Mike Baker

Didn't work here for almost two hours :boring: . The best part of waking up, is army.ca working   .


----------



## manhole

it was not working here this morning for several hours.... ???


----------



## geo

....ohhh.... For a minute there, I thought it was the Sysop who'd found out what I was doing during office hours....

Whew!


----------



## GAP

Did I ever get a lot of work done!!!

Wow...maybe I should do this everyday!.(Naaahha)..I never knew they expected this much to be done, until Army.ca went down this morning.(shudder)  ;D


----------



## big bad john

I noticed that the site has been up and down all morning.  What's the problem?


----------



## GAP

Stop this!!! My employer is beginning to think I am here to work!! Site MUST BE UP!! I'll get fired if they ever realize what I don't do!!  ;D


----------



## Pea

I just got on the site now, and I have been trying since 0830 this morning.

Wow, what a day!


----------



## The Bread Guy

Still slow at ~ 2100 EDT in Central Canada....


----------



## Pea

Well got on at 1400 but then didn't get back on until now.

When will the madness stop?  :crybaby:

I'm glad it's back up.


----------



## Chaz

Yeah me too. It was so slow that I accidentaly reposted


----------



## Infanteer

You people need a hobby....


----------



## Yrys

well, THE hobby is army.ca  ;D 8)


----------



## Rice0031

The site is still moving at a snail's pace for me.
No, make that 1/2 a snail's pace.


----------



## grayrc

Sorry for the inconvenience - there were some issues with the site over the last 24 hours - it should be stable now. 

Regards,
Gray


----------



## yoman

Site was down all day yesterday until about 2:30pm today. 

I was getting worried.  :-\


----------



## Fishbone Jones

Thanks grayrc, Mike needs to pay you more! 

For the rest, yes we know it was down, yes we know how long. No need to state the obvious. Go get your fix ;D There's lots of other threads.


----------



## Red 6

recceguy said:
			
		

> Thanks grayrc, Mike needs to pay you more!
> 
> For the rest, yes we know it was down, yes we know how long. No need to state the obvious. Go get your fix ;D There's lots of other threads.



Yeah, there are other sites recce guy, but if you need the spell check, this is THE place!


----------



## GUNS

Finally, I was worried that Army.Ca was no more. I had to consult with Capt. Morgan for stress relief. Capt. Morgan solved my stress over not having access to Army.Ca. Now that Army.Ca is up and running again, I am having problems reading. Everything is fuzzy and wavy and I see two of everything. May have to consult with Capt. Morgan again.


----------



## geo

GUNS....
either put the glasses back on 
(or put the glass down) 
((as the shoe fits ))


----------



## GUNS

Goe, i shell folow yur advvvviccce butt wht as my soes got too due wit my glaasses.


----------



## geo

They provide mobility of course....
they can also step on said glasses (but not when on your face )


----------



## Mike Baker

I was unable to access army.ca for all of yesterday and most of today. At least now it's back, I began to think for a little bit.


----------



## josh

I thought most army.ca posts were fueled from the influence of Captain Morgan? ;D


----------



## Rice0031

He _*does* _have command authority around these parts.


----------



## kratz

I was not sure what was wrong with the site when we could not find it yesterday. 

Great to see things back to normal.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

Sorry for the downtime, I was out of town (and offline) and the server had a few problems. In short, the web server log files got too big for one of the housekeeping jobs to handle. At any rate, the issue is permanently resolved now.

My thanks to grayrc who drove all the way1 to my house and battling a few unexpected problems2 in order to get the server back online.

Edit: I also learned the hard way that I can't reboot the server through my cell phone. 

Thanks



1: Taking the scenic route of ~3 hours.

2: I neglected to give him my alarm code in a timely fashion, and barely missed a difficult explanation to the police.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks, a few more hiccups today. I've resolved them for the time being, and am keeping an eye out for a recurrence.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Yeah I noticed that but keep up the good work Mike.


----------



## George Wallace

Some glitches today?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Earlier, yes (~0900 ET) but we should be solid now.


----------



## navymich

A bit of a problem during the night?


----------



## johodamofo

Site down in London, ON. What am I gonna do now??? :-\


----------



## Sig_Des

was down all night and just till now for me


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Same for me, site came back at 1025 hrs NDT.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, sorry about that folks... Looks like there are still some unresolved problems with the system.


----------



## George Wallace

Would this post be a clue towards solving a problem, or is it legit?

http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/50088/post-442236.html#msg442236


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

As much as I'd like to blame the NDP for this one, I think it's technology.


----------



## Wookilar

I think their hemp keyboards would melt after about 5 minutes of intense "education" on this site. Too much reality for the tinfoil hat brigade.

Good to see the site up though. 

Question: Could the large number of guests on line last night and this morning have anything to do with it? I'm no computer guru, just asking.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

That's quite reasonable. Basically the database became overloaded for some reason... it could have been (minor) corruption, many guests or a runaway process. Still not sure at this point.


----------



## Centurian1985

Site would not work for me last night but seems to be working ok now....


----------



## George Wallace

I seem to be having periodic 'White Outs' when I refresh a page or move to another link.


----------



## George Wallace

Who was it that was asking for the "WARNING BANNER"?  

Mike has put up his "Reboot" warning - so I guess it is time to go for a coffee....... ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Standby!


----------



## George Wallace

I have noticed some site slowdowns in the 1000 to 1030 hrs time period.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yep, that's the bad news. The good news is I was watching and have started to get a handle on what's going on.


----------



## George Wallace

Looks like another couple of periods of Slowdown/Hangups.  2308 -2322 and then at 2330-2332.


----------



## big bad john

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Looks like another couple of periods of Slowdown/Hangups.  2308 -2322 and then at 2330-2332.



I concur.


----------



## HItorMiss

Mike

Are you doing alot of work on the site I have lost the site 3 times today just curious?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

We're still seeing problems unfortunately, but I'm on the case.


----------



## HItorMiss

I'm sure you eill sort it all out, I mean you have 10 new subscribers and there money to work with  

seriously though We're all sure you will fix it.....


OR we will find a new leader a stronger, faster, better looking leader with less facial hair  ;D


----------



## Mike Baker

It was down here all yesterday and most of Saturday. Was it down for anyone else?


----------



## patrick666

> It was down here all yesterday and most of Saturday. Was it down for anyone else?



It was down here as well.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, sorry about that... It was a case of the cure being worse than the disease, but that particular cure (PHP accelerator) has been removed until I find out what's going on.


----------



## couchcommander

Getting time for an "Upgrade the Server" fundraising drive?


----------



## geo

Just by curiosity Mke.... what are you running for a server on this thing?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Dedicated 2.8GHz linux box with 2Gb of RAM. Should be plenty of horsepower, but there are other issues at play. I just need to nail those down and I think we'll be set for the time being.


----------



## big bad john

Mike, Mike, always working away at all hours...what can I say but thank you very much.  Now go have a beer and spend some time with your family.  We love you!


----------



## geo

Mike, make sure you don't ignore the Mrs... else she might be the problem with your server.......


----------



## George Wallace

Site speed is fluctuating this morning.  Is it another Maint Day for you Mike?

Or are we a very popular site on a Saturday Cartoon Morning?


----------



## armyvern

I've been on since 4 this morning, and the speeds been changing on and off.


----------



## rmacqueen

The Librarian said:
			
		

> I've been on since 4 this morning, and the speeds been changing on and off.


Same with me


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I've noticed some issues as well, and just reset all the networking gear in case that was contributing. I suspect our ISP is having issues though.


----------



## navymich

The site has been quite slow for me the last couple of days, and was inaccesible for about the last 1/2 hour.  As well, PMs often freeze when sending.  Just wondering if anyone else has been having any of these problems, or it's just my connection?


----------



## Trinity

Slow?

Try STOP.

Outages for me here today.


----------



## 211RadOp

Had the same problem for about the last 20 mins.


----------



## George Wallace

Yupper!  It was unavailable there for a good twenty + minutes.  

Took us down to under 150 online.


----------



## Pea

I had to work for about 25 mins..  :'(


----------



## muffin

I hear ya ! It was down for 20 min and I reviewed 2 handbooks and sent 3 emails... who knew I could be so .. productive! haha  ^-^

I thought I had broken it - becuase it froze as I was trying to post something.    :-\


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

It was another runaway database problem. The site gets so slow when this happens it takes a *very* long time to log in and restart things. I was hoping we'd seen the last of these incidents, but apparently not. Back to the drawing board...


----------



## armyvern

Geez, pour souls...It's 1643 here...I was travelling home from work when it happened!!


----------



## Mike Baker

I don't find it bad at all.


----------



## Klc

navymich said:
			
		

> As well, PMs often freeze when sending.  Just wondering if anyone else has been having any of these problems...



I have seen this problem often as well, also when posting. The post/pm will still go thru, it just freezes before changing to the next page.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks, the site has been having some serious problems today. The web server itself is overwhelming the system, and I'm not sure why.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

I seem to have found and neutralized the source of the problem, at least for now. Thanks for your patience.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

I hadn't noticed any problems with it.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Looks like I didn't find the source after all. Ugh.


----------



## George Wallace

Ah!  “A Tortoise in the Works!”  And I was wondering if it were my corrupting my system…..

So slow, I can't post without timing out.....


----------



## Mike Baker

I am on now, went off at about 5 an couldn't get back on. It is still *very* slow.


----------



## MOOXE

Just curious....

What are the server specs for army.ca? And what are the load averages during peak times?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

2 Gb RAM, 2.8GHz CPU, 250 Gb SATA drive

Load average was well above 100 earlier today. (Geeks will whistle in awe at that)

I've narrowed it down to apache, the httpd processes are raking up all the CPU. Not sure why. strace shows a lot of '-1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)' messages, but since I didn't check before the problems, I don't know if that's normal or not. The problem seemed to come out of nowhere this afternoon, reboots don't help. When apache is shut down, the system goes quiet.

You know what I know.


----------



## Journeyman

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> *You know what I know.*


Not even remotely. 

Since I was obviously intended to be one of the sheep within the Matrix, never offered the choice between the red or blue pill, I'm massively grateful for you guys that can keep this sort of thing running  ;D


...and yes, dammit, my VCR _does_ flash  12:00   12:00   12:00


----------



## Klc

Had an outage here for at least one hour around 1800 CST, both the boards and the website were inaccessible.


----------



## Mithras

What version of Apache are you using? And have you optimized any of the options or are they stock?  How is mysql/php configured?

I have had similar issues with Apache and in my case it was the keepalives settings gobbling up all the memory.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Hi Mithras,

We're using:

php-5.1.6-1.1
httpd-2.2.2-1.2

KeepAliveTimeout was recently reduced to 5 from 15, but had not discernible effect. We're using the prefork MPM with these settings:

StartServers       8
MinSpareServers    10
MaxSpareServers   30
ServerLimit      256
MaxClients       256
MaxRequestsPerChild  0

I'm open to suggestions on those, I haven't adjusted them for over a year and in that time, have largely forgotten the nuances.


Thanks
Mike


----------



## Mithras

You may want to try giving "MaxRequestsPerChild" a value.  Apaches default is 10000 and worked well enough for the high traffic server I was administrating.

What you are doing by not giving it a value is allowing child servers to run indefinitely and potentially incurring memory leakages which of course leads to excess memory usage.  Giving it a value will cause the child server to "die" and a new one to start. 

What is your setting for "MaxKeepAliveRequests"? If it is '0' you may want to give it a value.. default is 100 but a higher value is generally better.  From experience somewhere between 500-1000 works alright.  But each server is unique so you may have to tinker.

Aside from that, if you haven't optimized mysql you might want to try that too.  You can get discernable results by tweaking only a few settings.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Hi Mithras,

Thanks for the info. I've given MaxRequestsPerChild a value of 10000 and bumped MaxKeepAliveRequests up from 500 to 800. MySQL was "roughly" optimized not too long ago, but doesn't seem to be the issue... it generally doesn't break 10% CPU and 25% memory. httpd on the other hand spawns a lot of processes (which is not abnormal for Army.ca) but these take up all available CPU.

Anyway, thanks for the advice, we'll see where things go from here.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Mithras

No problem.  Hopefully you find the sweet spot.. I know from experience how annoying it can be.


----------



## MOOXE

There have been reports that last month there was a strong surge in spam. All types of it, referrer spam being the one web admins have to deal with. Sometimes when I check my logs theres 1000's of lines of poker sites. On my site (in my profile) every now and then, people from China shut down the site. They use programs that are meant to download the site all at once. They open so many mysql threads that my load average goes above 50. The site is non accessible then. I tried fighting it, but theres just too many ways around an .htaccess file, and too many types of site downloader clients, some of which can change thier ids. I just live with it now, they always go away after an hour or so. For this one incident I wouldnt bother changing your httpd conf file.

When the server does overload netstat -p will tell you whos all connected.


----------



## GUNS

I am not saying this site is slow but I am seriously considering using snail mail to respond to topics. ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Hi MOOXE,

netstat -p shows a whack of connections... I sorted them by source and nobody stood out as a real resource hog. I've also done some log analysis and I can't seem to find any particular addresses that are connecting too much or dragging down a lot of data (other than DND's public IPs, of course ).

Let's hope you're right and it just eases down on it's own.

GUNS: Signal fires work better, they keep you warmer this time of year.


----------



## Trinity

We just have another outage?  (10 minutes before this post?!)


----------



## Mithras

Personally I would try running this box with "keepalives" off and see if that improves things.  Seems like apache is running wild and gobbling up all the memory.  

BTW do you know how many requests/sec you are getting?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Right now it's 12.2 requests/second. Keepalives are now off, let's see what happens.


----------



## GUNS

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Hi MOOXE,
> 
> netstat -p shows a whack of connections... I sorted them by source and nobody stood out as a real resource hog. I've also done some log analysis and I can't seem to find any particular addresses that are connecting too much or dragging down a lot of data (other than DND's public IPs, of course ).
> 
> Let's hope you're right and it just eases down on it's own.
> 
> GUNS: Signal fires work better, they keep you warmer this time of year.




Mike, signal fires don't work here on the Rock, too much wind.  ;D


----------



## GUNS

I tore-up my snail mail, site works perfect today. 8)


----------



## Trinity

GUNS said:
			
		

> I tore-up my snail mail, site works perfect today. 8)



By saying that.. you just jinxed the site


----------



## George Wallace

Egggsactly!


----------



## Trinity

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Egggsactly!



I was only kidding....  we were down for what.... 30 minutes?!?!?!?

GUNS.....  it's your fault!


----------



## Mithras

Are you guys running any cron jobs during the morning hours? Specifically stats software?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

The stats software runs hourly (so it doesn't have as much to process) and doesn't create a significant peak in the system load. There are a bunch of other jobs that run as well (backups, etc) but they don't *seem* to be the source of the problem. I've just updated our PHP and MySQL (last interruption today, I promise) so we'll see if that helps at all.


----------



## Mithras

Heh, was going to suggest maybe running the stats every couple of hours but you have that taken care of. Was the upgrade the cause of the hiccup this morning?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

No, that was another CPU spike, this time so high it made the site effectively useless.


----------



## navymich

Board seems to be slowing down a bit.  But chat is really lagging and doing the fun thing of bouncing people out.


----------



## Trinity

So

Domestic Niners and I were singing the Time Warp from Rocky Horror Picture show in chat


Then the site crashed...

We're sorry.  We didn't know the system wasn't partial to Rocky Horror Picture Show songs.... we
won't sing again (in costume no less)


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I think the internet link to the server is just veeeeery slow right now.


----------



## niner domestic

It's Trin's fault, I told him not to put on so much red lipgloss... but would he listen.......nooooooooooooo. Poor server's all stressed out now.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> I think the internet link to the server is just veeeeery slow right now.



Looks like it as this is the only site that loads veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy slow.


----------



## Edward Campbell

The site has been painfully slow or stalled since about 1500 (Central) today (2 Dec 06).  The rest of the Internet seems OK from here.


Edit: typos


----------



## George Wallace

You are not the only one.  It seems to have taken over 15 minutes to just load one page.  

Mike will also have to sort out some of the new Registrations that have occurred during this time.  Some people are duplicating their posts, along with other things, in their impatience to use the site.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Well, something happened in the last 15+/- minutes; the speed is closer to, but not yet at normal.


----------



## warspite

Finnally I have made it........(deep gasps of breath)......
Just for those who've missed it....... the site is slow today ;D


----------



## Mike Baker

I could not get on at all after 3 PM (1500). I could only get on here now thankfully


----------



## Sig_Des

HoM and I had the same problem yesterday. So, to replace the site...we drank


----------



## rmacqueen

I had some trouble getting on as well.  Someone earlier mentioned it was just this site but other sites were fine.  What are these other sites he mentioned?  I thought Army.ca was the ONLY site on the internet ;D


----------



## peaches

slower than mollassis in winter here too.....


----------



## GUNS

could not access the site yesterday, at all. Got on today but slow.


----------



## aesop081

Sig_Des said:
			
		

> HoM and I had the same problem yesterday. So, to replace the site...we drank



You need the site to be down in order to drink ????


 : new army


----------



## armyvern

cdnaviator said:
			
		

> You need the site to be down in order to drink ????
> : new army


Nah. He's probably just using it as his excuse.


----------



## Pea

Sig_Des said:
			
		

> HoM and I had the same problem yesterday. So, to replace the site...we drank



Life is that bad without army.ca eh?... ;D


----------



## Sig_Des

Well, ok, we were gonna drink either way...but this way, we can blame our drinking problems on Mike


----------



## Colin Parkinson

I had big problems last night and this morning, much better now, but still a bit slow compared to other sites.


----------



## warspite

Site is running at full speed for me right now ;D


----------



## George Wallace

warspite said:
			
		

> Site is running at full speed for me right now ;D



For some perhaps, for others not.  I find the speed is fluctuating quite a bit, fast and then slow as molasses.


----------



## Jacqueline

This time of the day is ever slow eh?


----------



## schart28

slow for me at this time


----------



## armyvern

Mine's flying compared to what it was 1/2 hour ago.

Vern


----------



## Drummy

When this happens to me, I never know whether it's my machine, or the twenty miles of thirty year old telephone line between here and the switchborad/server bldg.   

But, having said that, I do believe that Mr Bobbitt is slowing down on the bicycle he uses to generate the power for his server.   ;D

All the best    Drummy


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks, the server has bottomed out a few times. I was out when it did it last night, but I did manage to restart the server remotely. Wow, that's a pain. I can watch the server load climb steadily up again, so we may be in for a few more slow periods yet.

As far as I can tell, we're just drawing too big a crowd!


----------



## midget-boyd91

Sooo... my computer isnt all on the fritz? Its just the site itself?


----------



## Mithras

Yeah the server is having fits, not your PC.


----------



## niner domestic

Sorry to hear the server is not happy.  I had assumed it was the Hydro One's power outages in the surrounding areas.  I guess you don't need to borrow the generator? ( I can see it now..."no we're aren't hooking the fridge up to the d-gen, I need it for the site, go build a fire kids if you want to be warm, fire up the barbie if you want to save the meat, the gen goes to the site's server...LOL.")


----------



## Trinity

Mithras said:
			
		

> Yeah the server is having fits, not your PC.



You don't  know that.

Maybe his computer is throwing fits too  ;D


----------



## Yrys

Haha, Finally a dose of army.ca!

Is the white color here to stay ? (or is it just my computer)?
 cause if green is out, I rather have purple ...


----------



## Mike Baker

Yrys said:
			
		

> Haha, Finally a dose of army.ca!
> 
> Is the white color here to stay ? (or is it just my computer)?
> cause if green is out, I rather have purple ...


I don't like the white! It looks like snow, which im sad to say we are having very little of  :-X


----------



## Pea

Just curious if we are going to be able to access the other things such as the photo gallery, and chatroom from this updated board?


----------



## armyvern

Yikes!!

So it's not just me with the white screen and slow speed...

I do soooooo hope the colour isn't permanent, we've got enough white stuff in PEI already today.


----------



## Pea

Hmmm It is green again.  ;D Hooray!!
... except my "new posts since last visit" and such is missing. 

*Edit: Nevermind me... I clicked the button to make those things disapear and didn't realize. D'OH! All is well.


----------



## Klc

Anyone else get the "Site will be back in a minute" message?

Anyone else take that litterally, and check back about a thousand times in a few hours...  ;D ?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

We should be back to normal now, except the photo gallery, which will take a bit longer to get sorted out.


----------



## rmacqueen

Did spell check on a post a minute ago and it highlighted the entire sentence.  Now, I now there are some who don't like what I write but..... ;D


----------



## NL_engineer

rmacqueen said:
			
		

> Did spell check on a post a minute ago and it highlighted the entire sentence.  Now, I now there are some who don't like what I write but..... ;D



I just had the same problem.


----------



## George Wallace

Speed is still running 'hot and cold'.


----------



## Journeyman

But I'm getting _awesome_ at minesweeper waiting for the pages to load......I'd never seen a square with an "8" in it before; (the number 8 is grey) ;D


----------



## armyvern

Mine's loading fine.


----------



## George Wallace

Mike

Maintainance?

Took approx 40 minutes to load pages.

George


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, I had to hand write them for a while there... Good thing we came back online, I was getting some serious writer's cramp!


----------



## George Wallace

Well!  That was frustrating.  Just when I wanted to make a witty post......now I forgot   ;D


----------



## Franko

Yep....same out here as well. Wonder what happened?

Regards


----------



## Mithras

There be gremlins in the system!

Is there any caching software installed on this system for PHP scripts?  If it is a load problem that is causing this, installing such software could help alleviate the problem.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

No caching or acceleration software. Every time I install something like php-accelerator or eaccelerator, it creates a host of other problems.


----------



## Mithras

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> No caching or acceleration software. Every time I install something like php-accelerator or eaccelerator, it creates a host of other problems.



That is a shame.. scripts breaking?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

apache core dumps with one, and hangs with the other. I may give it another test some time to see if anything has changed.


----------



## navymich

Really slowing down on and off over the past 1/2 hour for me.  Anyone else?


----------



## George Wallace

Yes.  It may explain a couple of other anomalies that I have noticed.


----------



## navymich

Such as.....?  I haven't noticed anything else, just the speed, or rather, lack of.


----------



## GAP

Speed has been slightly slow in last 2 hours, but I thought it might have been the downloads I was doing.

One thing I have noticed in the last two days. Normally I open 2 Army.ca windows in the morning. I log on in the main page, and simply refresh  to be logged on in the second page (sandbox thread). Lately I have to physically log onto the site from both pages.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks, we were off the air from about 0200 ET until 1430 ET today. I was out of town so I couldn't get to the server until now to resolve the issue. Not a great way to start the new year, but we'll do better from here.

Thanks for your patience.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Edward Campbell

No problems, Mike.

Thanks for doing all you do to keep Army.ca up and running for the rest of us.


----------



## Old Sweat

Happy New Year, Mike. Besides it was only us poor, pathetic wretches without real lives that were upset by the outage.

Cheers

BAR


----------



## GAP

Old Sweat said:
			
		

> Happy New Year, Mike. Besides it was only us poor, pathetic wretches without real lives that were upset by the outage.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> BAR



You know....he's right....anybody who gets on this board for $0.02/hr.....really now....


----------



## navymich

Was joking around with some scenarios with a friend.  He suggested you spilt champagne on the keyboard, while my thought was that you hadn't renewed your copyright for the new year and somebody else had taken over the site!

Good to see things back up and running.  Keep up the good work Mike, your time is appreciated.


----------



## GAP

airmich said:
			
		

> my thought was that you hadn't renewed your copyright for the new year and somebody else had taken over the site!


After last April 1st.....them's sensitive words.....


----------



## navymich

GAP said:
			
		

> After last April 1st.....them's sensitive words.....




Sucker!  8)


----------



## Mike Baker

And to think, I thought I was banned   Good to see that the place is back up and running.


----------



## armyvern

Michael Baker said:
			
		

> And to think, I thought I was banned



LOL. That's what I was thinking about me too!!

Happy New Year Mike, and thanks for all that you do with this awesome site!! (Vern sucking up so that she doesn't get banned!!)

Vern


----------



## Mike Baker

Did it go again? Or did you push the ban button?


----------



## xo31@711ret

Keep up the great work Mike, and a Happy New Year to you & yours!

-gerry


----------



## Trinity

My only New Years Resolution.....  Crash Army.ca

I've kept my resolutions  ;D


----------



## Kirkhill

Mike - nobody here in a position to offer any complaints.  Thanks for all that you do to keep this service up and running.  Happy New Year to you and yours.


----------



## warspite

Happy new year Mike, thank you for all your hard work


----------



## JesseWZ

I echo everyone elses sentiments. This forum has been an invaluable resource for this  RFNG. (Really FNG)


----------



## Sig_Des

airmich said:
			
		

> Was joking around with some scenarios with a friend.  He suggested you spilt champagne on the keyboard,



Now WHO would have suggested such a thing... ;D


----------



## PoPo

Ahhh, so it wasn't just me who though I had said something wrong  ...

Thanxs Mike - and Happy New Year

PoPo


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

I regret to report that we had an outage this weekend, while I was out of town. The database backup software went a little wild and filled the disk, causing numerous problems. Among the problems was a loss of some settings (all recovered OK) and some database corruption which I *believe* is now repaired.

I have taken some steps to ensure this problem does not recur, and may buy additional disk space as well.

If you notice any issues, please let me know, and again, I apologize for the inconvenience.


Cheers
Mike

Addendum: the database integrity check sent the server into a tailspin it couldn't get out of. I'll finish running it tonight around 2am to try to keep the load down.


----------



## George Wallace

Thanks for all the hard work Mike.

Site speed is slow and the Server seems to be sporatic, so I guess you have a long night ahead of you.  Quite the end to the weekend.  I tried a few things unsuccessfully, including the posting of this message, but will wait until later to report any problems, as you are probably currently working on them.  

All the best and thanks again.

George


----------



## armyvern

Thanks Mike!!

I can check myself out of the Detox centre now!!
 ;D
Vern


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

George, you're right there were (are?) still some issues to work out but I think we're doing OK now. The server load is a bit high so things will be slow, but I expect that to settle down before too long.


----------



## Pea

Well since I wasn't able to surf my beloved army.ca this past weekend, I had to look to another hobby I REALLY try to avoid.

I now present a bill to army.ca, for such hobby:

1X Digitial Camera $250.00
2X New Novels      $  55.00
2X DVD's              $  45.00
                           ________
                           $350.00   <---- Weekend without army.ca    :'(

I'll take cash... or, perhaps lifelong army.ca subscriber status.  ;D
____________________________________________________________

All joking aside Mike, we love this site and can only guess how much work you have to put into it. Thanks for all your hard work!

But please don't let me shop again...  :blotto:


----------



## armyrules

Great job on getting the site back up Mike and quickly too, thanks for all your hard work, I love this site 

Thanks again :cheers:


----------



## aesop081

Speed is kinda back to normal but something is still messed up when it comes to the "new" for topics.....i must have read aone post 5 times now and it refuses to disapear...even if i go and click "mark all topics as read, it is the only one that remains every time.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I think I solved the "new topic marker" problem, let me know if it recurs.


----------



## proudnurse

~MIKE~ 

I just signed in for the first time in a while/It's working just awesome now! Thanks for all your hard work. 

Rebecca


----------



## 241

Its still leaving 2 topics up when I "Mark All As Read" they are the "Boarding Party Training" & "Its In! Saddam to be hanged NLT 27 Jan 07" if that helps any.


----------



## proudnurse

I did not notice that before, the last reply to this post should have been marked with "new" shouldn't it have? There are other topics still on there/with no recent replies that say "new" beside them. Just something I went back and noticed also. 

~Rebecca~


----------



## navymich

Mike, thank you for taking the site down for the weekend while I was travelling and getting settled in for course.  It worked out very well that I didn't miss much.  ;D

Seriously, like others before me, keep up the awesome work.  For all the time you spend with the site, it is greatly appreciated.


----------



## The Bread Guy

Well done - hope it didn't add TOO many grey hairs....


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Tony, there aren't many left to turn! Mich, I was out of town too, so it makes it easy to catch up. I should do this more often!


----------



## larry Strong

Glad to see the site back up


----------



## PoPo

Good to see things back up and running - Thanxs Mike for your time/patience and hard work.... 

Unfortunately, as I was unable to "surf" Army.ca this weekend - I Painted the Living Room.... Wait a minute - maybe that was a plus.

PoPo


----------



## GUNS

As a point of interest-Could this be related to your three new DS staff.

Maybe they overloaded the server with all their knowledge and wisdom, that they brought to the site. ;D


----------



## GAP

Deny!Deny!Deny!Deny!Deny!  ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Good news: I have just ordered a new 400Gb hard drive to replace the existing drive. This will help prevent such an issue from recurring in future.

Thanks to all our subscribers who made the purchase possible.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Scott

GUNS said:
			
		

> As a point of interest-Could this be related to your three new DS staff.
> 
> Maybe they overloaded the server with all their knowledge and wisdom, that they brought to the site. ;D



Naw, them simultaneously reading some of the threads relating to our more famous banned members caused the server to crap its pants.


----------



## aesop081

I needed the weekend off....sorry folks !!!!


----------



## Pea

cdnaviator said:
			
		

> I needed the weekend off....sorry folks !!!!



I knew it had to be you!..  >


----------



## muffin

I came back online this weekend to find the site down...  :-\ left me with a little Vodka, an a Nintendo Wii ... just doesn't fill the gap.. hahahaha

Good to see it back!


----------



## gaspasser

Hi All,
Mike, glad to see the site is back up, I was going thru withdrawals and my 9er was ready to boot me out the door to go relax.
I believe I made this suggestion some time ago: why don't you delete all the old locked up threads and threads that have been idle for over a year.  And delete profiles of members/guests who have left the site or have been idle for over two years.
I believe this will save you loads of server space and keep some funds in the coffers for other possible better things.
My $0.02


----------



## Pikache

BYT Driver said:
			
		

> Hi All,
> Mike, glad to see the site is back up, I was going thru withdrawals and my 9er was ready to boot me out the door to go relax.
> I believe I made this suggestion some time ago: why don't you delete all the old locked up threads and threads that have been idle for over a year.  And delete profiles of members/guests who have left the site or have been idle for over two years.
> I believe this will save you loads of server space and keep some funds in the coffers for other possible better things.
> My $0.02


Old threads still may contain relevant information.

People might get busy and just be inactive for a while, but may come back to the board.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

It's not a bad idea... In fact we already cull users who have not logged in during the past year, but we currently don't do anything about the posts. I have to admit, I'm afraid to delete posts because although some may not add much value years later, there's still a goldmine of information here.

The approach I've taken is to "scale up" the system a bit more to handle the growing data.


----------



## niner domestic

Well I think Mike should create "Great Big Shiny Army.ca Tomes" CD, Volumes 1-98 with the archival material and flog them for those who want to give hours of reading fun for xmas/birthdays/parting gifts and anniversaries...  (hey it beats an order from Logitik)


----------



## ArmyRick

Thanks Mike. 

Here I am thinking Jack Bauer and CTU had intercepted and taken control of army.ca, what a releif


----------



## Mike Baker

Mike, please don't let it happen again :'( I even had to go to Troops.ca  ^-^ Good to see that were back online  ;D


----------



## gaspasser

Michael Baker said:
			
		

> Mike, please don't let it happen again :'( I even had to go to Troops.ca  ^-^ Good to see that were back online  ;D



My God, it's just like Army.ca...truely a lot of addicts out there.


----------



## navymich

BYT Driver said:
			
		

> My God, it's just like Army.ca...truely a lot of addicts out there.



And a few familiar names too.


----------



## gaspasser

Uh huh, navy...


----------



## IN HOC SIGNO

Pea said:
			
		

> Well since I wasn't able to surf my beloved army.ca this past weekend, I had to look to another hobby I REALLY try to avoid.
> 
> I now present a bill to army.ca, for such hobby:
> 
> 1X Digitial Camera $250.00
> 2X New Novels      $  55.00
> 2X DVD's              $  45.00
> ________
> $350.00   <---- Weekend without army.ca    :'(
> 
> I'll take cash... or, perhaps lifelong army.ca subscriber status.  ;D
> ____________________________________________________________
> 
> All joking aside Mike, we love this site and can only guess how much work you have to put into it. Thanks for all your hard work!
> 
> But please don't let me shop again...  :blotto:



what??!! no little blue bags??? What's that about?? ;D


----------



## Pea

IN HOC SIGNO said:
			
		

> what??!! no little blue bags??? What's that about?? ;D



Pfft. I wouldn't spend MY money on anything like that. Doesn't mean I don't want it, I just need to be able to pay rent is all.    Besides, it just ain't the same if it isn't given to you.  ;D


----------



## IN HOC SIGNO

I was so distressed I had to get counselling. 
But I think Mich and Vern will be happy to know that I did listen to my wife more as a result of not having my attention focused here. I'm pretty sure I know what she wants for her Birthday now and it doesn't involve a day pass to the Stad Gym (a mere $5) or an evening out at the North End Beverage Room....hey wait a minute that outage is starting to cost me money too! 
Can I submit a claim just like Pea did?? ;D


----------



## Centurian1985

I was uncertain whether something had gone wrong with my system or whether the site had gone down again.  I guesed it was the site but figured Mike would have it fixed by Monday and voila!  Well done Mike and Team Army.ca!

Have a question though - is there a secondary site where, if Army.ca is not working we can go to it and it would have a statement like 'System down, try again on Monday' (or whatever)?  Or is something like this already in place?


----------



## Sig_Des

Centurian1985 said:
			
		

> Have a question though - is there a secondary site where, if Army.ca is not working we can go to it and it would have a statement like 'System down, try again on Monday' (or whatever)?  Or is something like this already in place?



Apparently troops.ca... seems many see it as the emergency army.ca broadcast system.

Or as one person put it,

If Army.ca is Cocaine, troops.ca is poor mans crack


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I'll keep that in mind next time and see if I can post updates on troops.ca. Of course, there will be no "next time."


----------



## Mike Baker

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Of course, there will be no "next time."


Oh at least we hope there won't be  ;D


----------



## Drummy

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> I'll keep that in mind next time and see if I can post updates on troops.ca. Of course, there will be no "next time."



MISTER Bobbitt,

It has been decreed that should this happen 666 more times, the following will take place.

You shall be stripped to a thong, lashed to a 12 pounder with crepe streamers, holding a 40 pounder in your left hand. (You will not be able to reach it because of the crepe), and

You shall be given 30 lashes with a Cat-O-Nine Noodles, wielded by the Librarian who shall be dressed in black lingerie with black knee high boots(including spurs).

Following this, there will be one hell of a party if/when you get the bigger drive.

Court adjourned with many thanks for what you do for us.    

Drummy


----------



## NL_engineer

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> I'll keep that in mind next time and see if I can post updates on troops.ca. Of course, there will be no "next time."



You mean I will have to go to that site  :


----------



## Michael OLeary

Drummy said:
			
		

> MISTER Bobbitt,
> 
> It has been decreed that should this happen 666 more times, the following will take place.
> 
> You shall be stripped to a thong, lashed to a 12 pounder with crepe streamers, holding a 40 pounder in your left hand. (You will not be able to reach it because of the crepe), and
> 
> You shall be given 30 lashes with a Cat-O-Nine Noodles, wielded by the Librarian who shall be dressed in black lingerie with black knee high boots(including spurs).
> 
> Following this, there will be one hell of a party if/when you get the bigger drive.
> 
> Court adjourned with many thanks for what you do for us.
> 
> Drummy



So, just another Happy Hour?


----------



## Drummy

So, just another Happy Hour?

Don't think so. I beleive that most, if not all, would get to Ottawa to see the Librarian.   ;D

Drummy


----------



## warspite

Finally the shakes are stopping......
I never realized how hooked I was to this site... ;D


----------



## Mike Baker

warspite said:
			
		

> Finally the shakes are stopping......
> I never realized how hooked I was to this site... ;D


It's sad we had to find out this way, huh


----------



## NL_engineer

warspite said:
			
		

> Finally the shakes are stopping......
> I never realized how hooked I was to this site... ;D



Same here, It was hard trying to find something to do during the mornings and late at night  ;D


----------



## westernarmymember

Wasn't sure I was gonna make it  ???

Thanks Mr. Bobbitt


----------



## George Wallace

This is the second time today, (Privious was around 1000) that the site speed has been slow.  I noticed a sudden increase in new registrations this time.


----------



## Trinity

You can't

Troops.ca is now down.

Where do we all go now?  Military Wives net ?  ;D
[me=Trinity]duck and cover[/me]


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Alright, the new hard drive has arrived. I will likely install it this weekend, so we'll be looking at some down time. If I get ambitious I may use this opportunity to re-install the entire server from scratch - that's a big job so I'm not sure I'm up for it. If it does happen, we'll likely be down most of the weekend.

I'll try to keep everyone's addictions in mind as I work. 


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Ooops. Messed up the order when I moved my post to the correct thread. Either that or Trinity has a divine way of knowing what I was about to post.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Whoa there sunshine.....I'm on nights all weekend and two weeks into "Dry January" ........ go off the air at your peril. :brickwall:


----------



## Trinity

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Ooops. Messed up the order when I moved my post to the correct thread. Either that or Trinity has a divine way of knowing what I was about to post.



shhhhhhhhhh

Don't let my secrets out!


----------



## IN HOC SIGNO

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Alright, the new hard drive has arrived. I will likely install it this weekend, so we'll be looking at some down time. If I get ambitious I may use this opportunity to re-install the entire server from scratch - that's a big job so I'm not sure I'm up for it. If it does happen, we'll likely be down most of the weekend.
> 
> I'll try to keep everyone's addictions in mind as I work.
> 
> 
> Cheers
> Mike



Perfect...I'm going to Bangor for the weekend so I won't miss anything lol ;D


----------



## George Wallace

.......ummmmm? ..........................Without Army.ca..........................What is "Quality Time"?


----------



## armyvern

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> I'll try to keep everyone's addictions in mind as I work.
> 
> Cheers
> Mike



Please tell me that this is your idea of a very cruel joke!! I'm addicted!! I'm an insomniac!! I'm IR posted!! On Saturday I could shop!! In PEI, we don't have Sunday shopping!! Ohhh, I feel an aneurysm coming on.

Can't you at least wait until I go home for a weekend to do upgrade work on this site?? At least there I have competition from the 2 little chicklet rug-rats for quality computer time. Alas, whatever shall I do with myself for a whole (and only partially shoppable) weekend??


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I could *begin* to install the new server on the new disk, and once I hit a milestone go back to the old server. That way maybe we'll have 4-5 outages of a few hours over the next few weeks instead of one massive weekend outage. Might help with the shakes if you know your next hit isn't so far away.


----------



## Pea

PLEASE do it that way!... I REALLY can't afford to have to go shopping again. I have to pay for my car accident fine this week.


----------



## Trinity

Pea said:
			
		

> PLEASE do it that way!... I REALLY can't afford to have to go shopping again. I have to pay for my car accident fine this week.



Mike....

all this means is you're not charging enough for army.ca usage.

All these people with withdrawls  ... could be big bucks.  ;D


----------



## GAP

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Alright, the new hard drive has arrived. I will likely install it this weekend, so we'll be looking at some down time. If I get ambitious I may use this opportunity to re-install the entire server from scratch - that's a big job so I'm not sure I'm up for it. If it does happen, we'll likely be down most of the weekend.
> 
> I'll try to keep everyone's addictions in mind as I work.
> 
> 
> Cheers
> Mike



Do you mirror your Hdd's?


----------



## navymich

Hey Mike, I'll send you my exam schedule.  If you don't mind scheduling your outages at the same time, it would work out awesome for my studying time.  ;D

Either that or you can start making big bucks to support the site.  Highest bidder gets to pick the outage date!


----------



## armyvern

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> I could *begin* to install the new server on the new disk, and once I hit a milestone go back to the old server. That way maybe we'll have 4-5 outages of a few hours over the next few weeks instead of one massive weekend outage. Might help with the shakes if you know your next hit isn't so far away.



Mike, please feel free to upgrade/replace your server from 8-12 Feb. I will be away busily Logspeiling and will not be denigrating your site by posting loaded. 

That non-posting may be subject to change though based upon how quickly we can manage to get our team knocked out in order to kick back!!  ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

GAP, once the 2nd drive is added I will be doing a nightly sync. I find mirroring has the disadvantage that when I delete a file by mistake, it's gone from the mirror too!


----------



## GAP

Do you use RAID at all? what level?


----------



## navymich

GAP said:
			
		

> Do you use RAID at all? what level?



To get rid of all the bugs, right?  LOL


----------



## GAP

:rofl:


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

No RAID. I could (now) do RAID-1 but like I said, I'm more apt to need a file I just deleted/corrupted/overwrote so a nightly sync to the 2nd disk is the way to go for me. Worst case is we roll back to that image if needed, but I don't expect that will be a problem.


----------



## warspite

Oh no.... *NOT ANOTHER WEEKEND WITHOUT ARMY.CA* :'( :brickwall:....
I feel the shakes coming on already....


----------



## niner domestic

Mike, You do realize you've sentenced me to another road trip to Trenton? Hubby's logic...No army.ca...9D is able to be in car driving around getting depressed in Trenton...pls pls pls pls don't do this to me... :crybaby:


----------



## Mike Baker

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Alright, the new hard drive has arrived. I will likely install it this weekend, so we'll be looking at some down time. If I get ambitious I may use this opportunity to re-install the entire server from scratch - that's a big job so I'm not sure I'm up for it. If it does happen, we'll likely be down most of the weekend.
> 
> I'll try to keep everyone's addictions in mind as I work.
> 
> 
> Cheers
> Mike


I guess me being terribly sick turns out to be a good thing


----------



## Centurian1985

Perhaps you need to put together an 'Emergency Preparedness Kit' for members who will suffer from withdrawal due to outages?

Lets see... 

"On notification of an outage, or a failure to connect with the Army.ca service provider, members are recommended to ensure that they have prepared a survival package that will assist them through difficult times.  It is unknown how will it will take for network analysts to renew connectivity, or for emergency service providers to respond, so please be prepared for a long and strenuous period.

Recommended environment:  A small dark room with a single screen.  Members may want to save several screen images of Army.ca forums now and put them into a series of scrolling screen shots to simulate an actual working site.  Spouses of members may want to lock the door of said room and disconnect any phones or other communication systems within said room and ignore any yells or screams.

Recommended communication.  Do not barage site administrators with irate or profane messages.  Trapped members may want to use a simple code like Morse or develop a method of overt communication so that they can pass messages between themselves easily without the knowledge of others.  Members should avoid passing on any information on their desperation or vital needs to avoid being exploited by hostile elements.  

Recommended mental health.  Sanity is questionable after long periods of deprivation.  Use a pencil and paper to record your thoughts and experiences, and help keep track of time.  Crayons and wallpaper are a suitable alternitive.  Use a different page (or wall) for each day to help keep track of the length of your deprivation.  Do not enrage guards family members who may taunt you or restrict food as part of punishment for poor behavior.   Count the number of letters on the keyboard, number of hairs on your arm, or recite Army.ca guidelines, as efforts to remain logical and sane.  

Recommended physical health.  Move around frequently to support flow of blood to the brain and other vital areas.  Do situps, pushups or other small area exercises to retain musle tone.  Reserve one area of your room for sanitary purposes and avoid eating or sleeping there.  Avoid wandering into pornographic sites while waiting for return of service, as this causes a loss of body fluids and causes strain to isolated muscle groups. Prepackage foods so that you are not dependent on cooking devices for nourishing meals.  For rooms with multiple users, ensure you have enough food for each person for at least three days to avoid the risk of canabalism.  If required, thoroughly cook other members to avoid contracting any diseases they are carrying.  Also of note, insects and other ground creatures can be a vital source of protein and nourishment.  Avoid using the same utensils repeatedly as they can become toxic after extended periods of time, although they can be cleaned in an expedient manner by the application of fresh urine.         

Recommended survival gear:  Plenty of beverages.  Alcohol may be required for medicinal purposes.  Retain poncho or similiar bedroll device for sleeping comfort.  Use bungee cords to restrain yourself in an upright position in your chair so you dont fall out while out while waiting for return of service.  If a window is present, cover it with a dark material so no light gets in and members will remain unaware of day passing into night or vice-versa, which may cause further stress and anxiety.  Keep a spare change of clothing in the room you have your computer in.  Note that the duration of underwear hygiene can be extended by wearing them inside-out on the second day of use.  if the room has a window, keep a rolled-up escape ladder beneath any windows higher than six feet above level ground.  A flashlight should be in a handy place and well-labelled.  Note that you should keep batteries seperate to ensure a longer shelf life.  Keep multiple sets of clean utensils to avoid previous recommended cleaning methods.  

_Note - Guidelines require approval from the Ruxted Group before being officially sanctioned _


----------



## Mike Baker

warspite said:
			
		

> I feel the shakes coming on already....


I have those already, but it's from a high temp  :'( Oh well, I'll get better


----------



## warspite

All hail Centurian1985 ;D



			
				Michael Baker said:
			
		

> I have those already, but it's from a high temp  :'( Oh well, I'll get better


I wish you a quick return to good health, I hate getting sick


----------



## Trinity

Ok.. so it's settled..

When Mike crashes his system for repair

we all go to  http://www.militaryphotos.net/  ;D


----------



## niner domestic

I think I'd rather be driving around Trenton that over there...LOL (does that earn me loyalty points on my airmiles?)


----------



## Centurian1985

Trinity said:
			
		

> Ok.. so it's settled..When Mike crashes his system for repair we all go to  http://www.militaryphotos.net/  ;D



Ecch!  I hope you're joking!

Just checked it out and Im not impressed.  Looks like its full of raging keyboard testosterone.


----------



## aesop081

I will personaly *BAN* anyone who goes to militaryphotos.net during an outage and has the audacity to come back here  :threat:


Now...the following breeds of dogs are edible........


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Er... I guess I need to delete my account there then...?


----------



## aesop081

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Er... I guess I need to delete my account there then...?



i told you it was going to become "Air Force.ca" around here soon........ ;D


----------



## Michael OLeary

cdnaviator said:
			
		

> i told you it was going to become "Air Force.ca" around here soon........ ;D



Would that be rotary, or fixed wing?


----------



## aesop081

Michael O'Leary said:
			
		

> Would that be rotary, or fixed wing?



Well....we seem to be rotary-wing heavy around here but there are more and more of us "seized-wing" types.......


----------



## Mike Baker

warspite said:
			
		

> I wish you a quick return to good health, I hate getting sick


Hoya, thank goodness for the meds   Too bad I will be without Army.ca  :crybaby:


----------



## navymich

You ARE going to give us warning if you do a planned outage right?  That little 1/2 hour hiccup just now put a nice scare into my heart.  My addiction is too deep!  ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

It was *supposed* to be the first phase, but just as I got everything geared up I was put on 5 minutes notice to move by D9'er so we're back... for now. I may make another attempt later today.


----------



## navymich

That's okay, I've got some studying to do today anyway.  Not getting anywhere fast with it right now.  :


----------



## niner domestic

Gee those pesky 9Ders....lol  Mike, your 9D has my adulations for finding ways to keep you busy so that the site stays up...I thank her for saving me from another road trip to Trenton today.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Ok folks, Phase I is complete. Phase II will be started maybe tomorrow night, but will only cause a 10 minute outage while I re-cable things. After that it's life as normal, while I prepare for Phase III. Phase III will break a whole bunch of things and I'll fix 'em as I see 'em. Not sure when I'll be brave enough to tackle that.

Thanks for your patience.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## warspite

Warspite breaths out sigh of relief......and then walks out of his dark padded room.


----------



## IN HOC SIGNO

Just got back from Bangor...rushed to the computer and the site is up...whew!! Have you any idea what I've been going through for the last 3 days???
Not only is it good to be back in Canada....Army.ca is still up....thanks Mike!! 
PS Listening to the planes taking off and landing at Bangor (National Air Guard Wing and Naval Air Station) reminded me of my days at Goose Bay.......JET NOISE...THE SOUND OF FREEDOM!!!!


----------



## Centurian1985

So.... any user fatalities reported?   ;D


----------



## Mike Baker

warspite said:
			
		

> Warspite breaths out sigh of relief......and then walks out of his dark padded room.


Heyy, I have the same sort of room


----------



## navymich

Well Mike, the plan worked.  You shut 'er down yesterday at the time that I needed to study and I kicked butt on the exam.  Hope everyone is okay if the boards are down on and off for the next 15 weeks?!?!  ;D


----------



## George Wallace

Well.....Site goes down, Snow Plow goes by, Shovel out end of Driveway, come back, Site is Up.......Now Site is very, very slow.......


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Same here except for the snow plow


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I'm hoping the system rebuild will fix this problem. I hit a snag with starting Phase II tonight, I'll have to figure out what's going on when I have more time.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Time to find that gremlin in the system   ;D


----------



## 9nr Domestic

Airmich, if Mike has planned outages for you than he will have to do it for everyone.  Just think of how many people are on this site and how many people are on course.


----------



## Pea

9r domestic said:
			
		

> Airmich, if Mike has planned outages for you than he will have to do it for everyone.  Just think of how many people are on this site and how many people are on course.



Hey 9nr.. and how about those of us waiting for a deployment to end and need this site as a way to pass time so we don't go nuts?.. ;D


----------



## 9nr Domestic

Pea said:
			
		

> Hey 9nr.. and how about those of us waiting for a deployment to end and need this site as a way to pass time so we don't go nuts?.. ;D



I am already nuts, actually my time spend on army.ca has gone down since he was deployed. Our wallets can't take this site being down very long.


----------



## George Wallace

Well....for a second there it was only you and me Mike.  I see folks are finding their way back to the site.......

Question:  Are you working on the Serve tonight too?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

No actually... our ISP went down hard today and has been out since about 1430. Looks like they're working the kinks out now.


----------



## George Wallace

Guess site speed is also a problem in the meantime......takes about five minutes to post or refresh/change screens.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Should be resolved now.


----------



## George Wallace

Good news I suppose......someone else in our lines of communications......still sucks.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, I was going to try to take advantage of the downtime to do some of the upgrade work but things just didn't pan out that way.


----------



## George Wallace

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Should be resolved now.


That was EASY....


----------



## gaspasser

Was there a problem with the site last night?  Friday Jan 19th?  I couldn't get into the site due to possible congestion.  As for usual site speed, I have no problems, once I'm in.  Must mean that the site is becoming quite popular and needs a bigger server or something.

My $0.02
BYTD


----------



## Mike Baker

Yeah I had a bit of a hiccup too. Not bad at all now


----------



## GAP

BYT Driver said:
			
		

> Was there a problem with the site last night?  Friday Jan 19th?  I couldn't get into the site due to possible congestion.  As for usual site speed, I have no problems, once I'm in.  Must mean that the site is becoming quite popular and needs a bigger server or something.
> 
> My $0.02
> BYTD



Is that $0.02 a donation towards a backup server in the $$ drive you are going to initiate?


----------



## George Wallace

There were some problems last night that were outside of Mike's control.


----------



## Old Sweat

I guess I am going to be the first loser without a real life who will own up to noticing the outage this afternoon.


----------



## vonGarvin

well, old sweat, you'll be the first to say something about it online, whereas I too did notice it


----------



## niner domestic

Is it just me, or is the list of users showing multiple logins by the same user?


----------



## George Wallace

Looks like there are surges in the sevice tonight.......Normal speeds and then slow to no speed and back up again.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Damn I see that gremlin is still in the system.  ;D


----------



## NL_engineer

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Looks like there are surges in the sevice tonight.......Normal speeds and then slow to no speed and back up again.



I'm having the same problem


----------



## George Wallace

Looks like the site speed has been suffering for the last fifteen minutes........that or someone has spammed it.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Nope, we had a slowdown... looks like we ran out of memory and some db threads were locked until some memory was freed up. Should be OK now.


----------



## George Wallace

Still suffering slowdowns.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, sorry... at least one more to go tonight then it should be quiet for a while.


----------



## George Wallace

Still having problems.  Speed is fluctuating.


----------



## Mike Baker

Mine too


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I'd like to think it's 'having problems again' and not 'still'.

The good news: I've learned one "don't do that" process... guaranteed to make the site slow. So, I won't do that.


----------



## Sig_Des

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> I'd like to think it's 'having problems again' and not 'still'.
> 
> The good news: I've learned one "don't do that" process... guaranteed to make the site slow. So, I won't do that.



...again


----------



## aesop081

Did we just have another hickup a  few minutes ago ?


----------



## muffin

It wasn't working here for me either...


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Nothing I can claim responsibility for...


----------



## neko

Weird, three times in the past couple of days the site has done this when I've tried to post.


----------



## Trinity

neko said:
			
		

> Weird, three times in the past couple of days the site has done this when I've tried to post.



Then stop posting..  and the site won't go down  ;D


----------



## aesop081

neko said:
			
		

> Weird, three times in the past couple of days the site has done this when I've tried to post.



Yeah , its the same thing every time for me too....i hit post and everything stops working even though my post makes it.....maybe its a sign  :-\


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I can explain that... Many of the slowdowns occur when we max out our memory. This causes some database write actions to be locked or stalled while they wait for some memory to free up. When you're browsing around you're not engaging the database in (many) write functions. When you post, you're attempting to update several tables that a lot of people are accessing... these are the ones that are frequently locked when we run out of memory, and so your request gets added to the "locked" queue and you have to wait until things sort themselves out. Meanwhile, other users may be browsing around without noticing much difference.

Then, other times, it's just slow for everyone.


----------



## neko

Trinity said:
			
		

> Then stop posting..  and the site won't go down  ;D



Stop Posting!?     My life would end.  :skull: 
Surely, being a Padre, it is wrong of you to suggest such cruel punishment to someone.


----------



## neko

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> I can explain that... Many of the slowdowns occur when we max out our memory. This causes some database write actions to be locked or stalled while they wait for some memory to free up. When you're browsing around you're not engaging the database in (many) write functions. When you post, you're attempting to update several tables that a lot of people are accessing... these are the ones that are frequently locked when we run out of memory, and so your request gets added to the "locked" queue and you have to wait until things sort themselves out. Meanwhile, other users may be browsing around without noticing much difference.
> 
> Then, other times, it's just slow for everyone.



Wow, so this means that Trinity is sort of right, about me causing the problem.  Will wonders never cease.  >


----------



## GAP

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> I can explain that... Many of the slowdowns occur when we max out our memory. This causes some database write actions to be locked or stalled while they wait for some memory to free up. When you're browsing around you're not engaging the database in (many) write functions. When you post, you're attempting to update several tables that a lot of people are accessing... these are the ones that are frequently locked when we run out of memory, and so your request gets added to the "locked" queue and you have to wait until things sort themselves out. Meanwhile, other users may be browsing around without noticing much difference.
> 
> Then, other times, it's just slow for everyone.



Anyway of reallocating resource memory to the more active table functions?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Unfortunately not, it's a hard stop, we just run out of memory and the server is already maxed out, we can't add any more. It seems to be a rare problem though...


----------



## Mike Baker

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Unfortunately not, it's a hard stop, we just run out of memory and the server is already maxed out, we can't add any more.


That's it! We need more subscriber's  It was so bad at once when I tried while at school, I thought the internet was gone.


----------



## Trinity

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Unfortunately not, it's a hard stop, we just run out of memory and the server is already maxed out, we can't add any more. It seems to be a rare problem though...


w00t

New Server Fund raising Drive........




How much do we need?


----------



## George Wallace

More visitors are going to be coming into the site, as the link to our topic on "Rick Mercer Fights Back!" is being passed around the internet.  I just got it in an email.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Not to mention 'the mention' in the RHFC_Piper getting his new bagpipe story.....


----------



## neko

Ok I just posted a minute ago and the site went all weird on me again.   :'(  Perhaps the internet god/gods who favour this site are not happy. I will subscribe to this site as an offering to said god/gods and hope they will cease tormenting me.


----------



## George Wallace

neko said:
			
		

> Ok I just posted a minute ago and the site went all weird on me again.   :'(  Perhaps the internet god/gods who favour this site are not happy. I will subscribe to this site as an offering to said god/gods and hope they will cease tormenting me.



You have just under six hours to get in on the Draw for a Gift Certificate.


----------



## neko

Well I have just subscribed, I have no idea how long it will take to go through though.  Gift certificate for what?
Ignore the question, I'll look for myself.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Don't worry, you made the cut... you're one of 11 in tomorrow's draw. Good luck... and thanks!


----------



## Mike Baker

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> one of 11 in tomorrow's draw


  3 more subscribed today? Wow, your really hauling us in Mike  ;D


----------



## neko

I've been meaning to subscribe for a while now as I spend so much of my time online here, this is a great site and I'm happy to contribute even in a small way. Thank you for running it.

Hmmm 1 of 11, those are pretty good odds, maybe my procrastination (in subscribing) will pay off.


----------



## Mike Baker

neko said:
			
		

> as I spend so much of my time online here


Really, see this link http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/39607.105.html  ;D now you will _really_ know how much you have spent  ;D


----------



## neko

Michael Baker said:
			
		

> Really, see this link http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/39607.105.html  ;D now you will _really_ know how much you have spent  ;D



Well that proves that I'm not an addict even though I come here nearly every day.


----------



## George Wallace

Another evening with fluctuating speeds.  Doesn't seem to be that many over 300 on the site at one time.


----------



## Meridian

It seems somewhat weird;  accessing the site seems the longest delay; but once Im in, Im in...  and I don't cache all that much I dont think.... Firefox is pretty good at that...


----------



## Baldricks-Bullet

The site speed always seems increadibly slow...  I've got a 20Mbit connection and a 3+Ghz machine... so it's not me. And I post when you're all tucked nicely up in bed... dreaming of ponies, Keira Knightley and how you will win that medal for the glory of Canada...

Are my wiggly amps being held up by some transatlantic security????  do the have to take their shoes off before their journey to Mike's server?

Honestly... it always happens on posting... 5 minutes... enough time for 3 smokes and a ****.  (you might think that my missus is unlucky... but she doesn't)


----------



## armyvern

Balldricks,

Going back over some of your posts, it seems that you are also in the habit of coming on-line when the site's doing it's back-up!! I think Mike's got the back-up scheduled to run then precisely because we (well most of us) are snuggled up in bed nicely.

Vern


----------



## Baldricks-Bullet

Ah.....  well I wouldn't want to get the sites' back up... I always wanted to be loved.

Thanks for the reply... that makes sense... although my picture of my coms going through airport security amused me more


----------



## armyvern

I was going to ask you to post a pic of them with their shoes off.


----------



## Baldricks-Bullet




----------



## George Wallace

Well.....Another day of wonky site speeds.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, sorry folks... Not much I could do, I tried a few server restarts but no luck. I think we just have to ride it out.


----------



## TN2IC

Hey Mike, just here to stay you do a great job at keeping the site up. Bravo Zulu to ya b'y. Take er easy.


 :cheers:


----------



## Rice0031

I heart Army.ca.
Mike, you're the man, keep this site running and I promise I'll be an addict to it for ever.

I guess that makes Mike my dealer.


----------



## Mike Baker

Rice0031 said:
			
		

> I guess that makes Mike my dealer.


Hey, that is where I get mine  :threat: The site is very fast for me today, not use to this type of speed


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Mike don't know if the problem is at my end or yours but I've been having problems accessing the site today.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

It's not you, it's me. No, really.


----------



## Mike Baker

Nfld Sapper said:
			
		

> Mike don't know if the problem is at my end or yours but I've been having problems accessing the site today.


I have had trouble all day too. Good thing it is back for the time being  ;D


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> It's not you, it's me. No, really.



 Ok was really starting to worry was getting Army.ca withdrawl symtoms    :cheers:


----------



## warspite

Yay I finally got online


----------



## TN2IC

It's been too late for me.... I just drove the wife crazy. Gee..I even cleaned the garage.


----------



## armyvern

Pulling a Miss Spears. Realized I needed Army.ca detox at 1600hrs. Just checked myself out!! 

Now how much can I sell my hair for on E-bay?  >


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Thx for reminding me Vern, now I need to get mine cut


----------



## armyvern

Nfld Sapper said:
			
		

> Thx for reminding me Vern, now I need to get mine cut


I don't think our hair will go for as much as hers though.

Next time army.ca is down...I'm going bald for something to do!!  :

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/Health/story?id=2885048&page=1


----------



## Sig_Des

The Librarian said:
			
		

> Next time army.ca is down...I'm going bald for something to do!!  :



I think she may be serious, Mike!


----------



## Northernguardian

Army.ca is taking FOREVER to load, if it does at all. This has been going on for days. Can't seem to find an email link for the administrator of this site either. Design could be better. I am at the point that I am about to give up on army.ca due to the frustration.....

Hopefully the site administrator will read this, and rectify this issue.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Its flyin' for me.....


----------



## Franko

Hmmm....working fine all day here.

Could possibly be your provider?


----------



## Springroll

I was having issues for a short bit there, but now everything is flying again!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Hi Northernguardian,

Bottom line: there are problems. At times the site crawls to a halt, unfortunately, but the hope is that it doesn't happen too often. I'm aware of the cause but it boils down to heavy usage so there's not much I can do about it in the near term.

If you select "Feedback" from the admin menu up top you'll see the general contact e-mail address. Messages are sent to me, but I am several days behind right now so please be patient if you send a message. I'm always open to design feedback if you have any specifics you'd like to share. I'm even more open to volunteerism. 


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

Some good news. I was able to upgrade the BIOS of our server so it can now handle more than the 2Gb of RAM we currently have. I have already purchased replacement memory which will bring us up to 3Gb and hope to install that late this week once it arrives.

I'm confident that this will resolve much of the site slowdown we have been seeing lately.

Thanks again to our subscribers who made this upgrade possible.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Thanks for the update info Mike hope the extra RAM helps.

:cheers:


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

It will definitely help, it's just a question of "how much?" I'm banking on it being fairly signficant, but if it's not enough, we now have the capacity to jump to 4Gb if needed.

I realize RAM is not the only contributing factor but in many of the site slowdowns we've seen recently, our current 2Gb has been 100% utilized.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Either that or get everyone to chip in and get this server with 64 GB of RAM http://configure.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=ca&CS=CABSDT1&l=en&oc=OCPEDGE6800_RBP_BSD

 ;D

Just a thought 

<edited to fix spelling>


----------



## GAP

Nfld Sapper said:
			
		

> Either that or get everyone to chip in and get this server with 64 GB of RAM http://configure.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=ca&CS=CABSDT1&l=en&oc=OCPEDGE6800_RBP_BSD
> 
> ;D
> 
> Just a though


+1


----------



## 17thRecceSgt

...provided the svr OS can "see and handle" that much RAM...of course... ;D

brand new svr HW and SW sounds good to Mike I bet


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Mud Recce Man said:
			
		

> ...provided the svr OS can "see and handle" that much RAM...of course... ;D
> 
> brand new svr HW and SW sounds good to Mike I bet



The one from my link or the existing one  ???


----------



## 17thRecceSgt

...the new one that you linked too  ;D


----------



## Nfld Sapper

LOL 

I would make the assumption that it could why else would they put 64GB memory as an option if it couldn't.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Don't worry, we run Linux.  As for the "replacement server" plan, did you notice this:



> 64GB DDR2 400MHZ(16X4),2R, Dual Ranked DIMMS [add *$69,100* or $2,206/month1]


----------



## Mike Baker

I can see it now Mike:

"Attention all members, unless you subscribe, your banned, cheers, Führer...err, Mike Bobbitt"


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Don't worry, we run Linux.  As for the "replacement server" plan, did you notice this:



Yeah I did but at least it gives you some options.


----------



## Devlin

Get one of these http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAuKwTDGnCg I have them at work maybe if I talk nice to the boss we can borrow one


----------



## GUNS

If you need money ,just turn in your empty beer bottles, all you need is 57584 doz.  ;D


----------



## 17thRecceSgt

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Don't worry, we run* Linux*.  As for the "replacement server" plan, did you notice this:



And I was always wondering that Mike...thanks!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yes, yes, the memory is coming Any Day Now.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Good news folks, the new RAM has arrived so there will be a brief outage tonight (likely 1730 ET but maybe later) while it is installed. After that, feel free to put Army.ca through it's paces and see if we have resolved the slowdowns.


----------



## Mike Baker

Well, now we know it's comming, but it will still suck.


----------



## Pea

You're going to force all us Westerners to have to work for our last 1-2 hours....  :crybaby:


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

...and we're back with 50% more RAM.


----------



## Pea

Well, it seems to be absolutely flying for me now! Thanks Mike!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Excellent... we've just surpassed our old memory limit. Normally we'd be starting to slow down, but I see we're still cruising along.


----------



## Mike Baker

Yeah Mike, it is very fast. Looks like my subscription is paying off


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

You bet! Thanks for making it possible.


----------



## mudrecceman

I am really noticing a difference tonight Mike...


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Same here.


----------



## armyvern

Arggghhh!!

Aneurysm this morning...all morning. Or is it just my system being so freaking slooooooooooow??


----------



## GAP

It's slow loading posts, but seems ok to read them....


----------



## armyvern

OK,

So it not just me then!! Thanks Gap for making me feel better!!  ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

No, it was the site... I thought that with all this new memory I could increase our mail server capabilities... I increased them too far and... we ran out of memory again.

I've scaled things back, hopefully it won't happen any more.


----------



## armyvern

No worries Mike,

You rock!!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Well, as you may have noticed, we have not been without some slowdowns lately. I've been watching, and so far there are 2 causes:

1. We still run out of memory. It happens a lot less frequently now, but it's still happening. We have the option of adding another Gb of RAM to alleviate this problem. As of today, we have the cash on hand to do so (thank you subscribers!)

2. Now that we have more memory, the CPU is having trouble keeping up at times.

I'm still weighing the options, but I thought I'd give you an update on why adding the RAM didn't completely resolve the problem. As always, thanks for your patience.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## GAP

Is there any way to strip down the posting process...sometimes there are so many databases/logs to fill the processor just grinds away forever.


----------



## Roy Harding

What "back-office" is the site running?  Oracle?  Access?  Proprietary?

There may be (relatively inexpensive) software solutions available, as compared to (relatively expensive) hardware solutions.

GAP made a good point - the less processing each post needs to go through will reduce the hardware cost (and site-speed cost).


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

We're running Fedora Linux with apache and MySQL. That's all free.  It's also quite robust, so it can handle anything we throw at it, when configured properly. The problem is we're now throwing more at the hardware than it can handle.

There isn't much I can do on a per post basis to ease the load. There are certain tables/fields that need to be updated, and short of dropping post counts or not tracking topic views, I don't think there are any real optimizations to be had. I could disable search (which *does* put a load on the server) but that seems like a big step in the wrong direction.


----------



## GAP

How much resources does it take to keep people logged in? I think you mentioned that if they are not active they go to standby, or something, but does keeping them logged in use a lot of memory? just some random thoughts. Hitting the exact configuration is like hoping to win the lottery...


----------



## Roy Harding

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> We're running Fedora Linux with apache and MySQL. That's all free.  It's also quite robust, so it can handle anything we throw at it, when configured properly. ...



All fine packages - and able to handle the load.  Let me ask some questions of some people I know (I can run circles around a lot of folks when it comes to DBMS theory - but I'm not an "expert" on those particular platforms).

GAP makes an intelligent point (once again) - what IS the cost of users not logging off?? I know I have a habit of leaving a Tab with Army.ca running - I pop back in once in a while and punch the "Show unread posts since last visit" link.  Am I (unintentionally, for sure) robbing the site of some processing power?  Perhaps an automatic log-out of inactive users (say after 5 or 10 minutes of inactivity) may help a bit (although the processing time to track them makes this solution counter-intuitive - on the surface, at least).

I'm sure you've thought of all of this Mike - but sometimes a fresh set of eyes sees things from a different angle.


Roy


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Hi Roy/GAP,

Good thoughts, but when you're not browsing the site, no additional resources are consumed if you're logged in vs. logged out. I believe the real issue is we've just hit capacity. We've had the same server for 3 (?) years now and in that time our usage has really taken off. If you look at the statistics graphs, they are a steady upward climb.

I appreciate the brainstorming but I don't think there is anything an individual user can do, we're just become too big for our britches in a sense. I just have to figure out the cheapest way to keep us in the race for as long as possible. Adding the Gb of RAM helped, but now we're bumping up against other limits. I have to decide whether it's better to piecemeal more RAM and a better CPU together or save up for something more robust.

Anyone know where I can get a good deal on server grade hardware?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I should also point out that this is not an attempt to push our technical problems down to the membership. I'm really just thinking out loud here, tapping into the good ideas of the community to help steer things along. I'm not trying to get anyone to loosen their purse strings. If that day comes, I'll come right out and ask.


----------



## Mike Baker

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Anyone know where I can get a good deal on server grade hardware?


Now if I could Mike, what do I get?


----------



## GAP

Can any portion be hived off to another server?

I have a few contacts in the big blue, if I can get ahold of him, I will ask


----------



## mudrecceman

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Hi Roy/GAP,
> 
> Good thoughts, but when you're not browsing the site, no additional resources are consumed if you're logged in vs. logged out. I believe the real issue is we've just hit capacity. We've had the same server for 3 (?) years now and in that time our usage has really taken off. If you look at the statistics graphs, they are a steady upward climb.
> 
> I appreciate the brainstorming but I don't think there is anything an individual user can do, we're just become too big for our britches in a sense. I just have to figure out the cheapest way to keep us in the race for as long as possible. Adding the Gb of RAM helped, but now we're bumping up against other limits. I have to decide whether it's better to piecemeal more RAM and a better CPU together or save up for something more robust.
> 
> Anyone know where I can get a good deal on server grade hardware?



Mike,

What are the guts you are running with now?  

I have a friend who always seems to be able to find stuff for me when I ask, if I knew what you were running your svr with now as a benchmark, I could see if he knows anywhere to stir up a svr and rough $$ for it. (you can PM me the specs if that works for you).

No promises but the few times I have hit him with a "where can I" he has always found what I need...

MRM


----------



## gaspasser

Has anyone thought of cleaning up some of the old stuff?  We have useless threads that go back years.  The same goes for profiles.
I know I keep my messages down to a few to "help out"
Just a thought, and my 0.02


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

MRM, we're on a 2.8GHz Pentium 4, with 3 Gb of RAM. Plenty of disk, that's one thing we're definitely not running low on.

BYT Driver... it would likely help to some degree. I'm a bit of a pack rat though  and I can't bring myself to delete threads that may be useful to others at some point. Having said that, I'm sure it's a matter of time & effort. That is, if I put the time and effort into it, I could identify a bunch of threads that have little or no value today, and remove just those. However since we have over half a million posts, that's one heck of a job!


----------



## Michael OLeary

And some poeple will whine when they see their post count drop, which creates another venue for complaints.


----------



## Yrys

I'm curious, is around 600 guests will change the speed today ?


----------



## Mike Baker

Yrys said:
			
		

> I'm curious, is around 600 guests will change the speed today ?


Methinks it should, hope it don't though


----------



## armyvern

Well it would seem so.

On 04 April 2005 this site had a record number of people on-line...that being 696 simultaneously.

That record was then beat on 27 Feb 2007 when we hit a record 698 pers on simultaneously.

Since the 27th of Feb, that record number has gone up 5 times on 5 seperate days and now stands at 753 (and that's from today!!).

We've also had 5012 new posts already this month and a 710934 page views. (42701 just so far today!!).

So yes, I'd think that the growing popularity of the site most certainly has something to do with it.

Want to help solve the "slowness" that is sometimes experienced?? Support the site via subscribing, as only with these funds can servers (which are very costly) and other essentials be upgraded. Without that support Mr. Bobbitt does what he can, with the resources he's got. And I think he's doing an excellent job of it!!


----------



## Mike Baker

Mike, I think you should strive to get more subscribers, have the place faster. Much better then subscribing to Tess   >


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Vern, I hadn't even noticed that we broke the longstanding 696 record!

That was set when we counted users over the past hour. We dropped it to 30 minutes, and I figured we'd never break that record again, but here we are. So by breaking that record, we've actually doubled our max logged in count (700 in 30 minutes vs. 60 minutes.)


----------



## armyvern

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Vern, I hadn't even noticed that we broke the longstanding 696 record!



Well Mike, what do you think we insomniacs do in the middle of the night?? I surf the stats every day...just to see what's going on!!  ;D


----------



## armyvern

And another bump for today:

Helps to explain the slowness at that hour!!  



> Most Online Today: 769. Most Online Ever: 769 (Today at 17:10:20)


----------



## Mike Baker

Good thing I wasn't on then  ;D


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Hmm...not sure if its me or not but I seem to have hit a speed bump here today.


----------



## muskrat89

Been acting a little funky for me today....   :-\


----------



## armyvern

muskrat89 said:
			
		

> Been acting a little funky for me today....   :-\



Me too, but only for the past hour or so. Lots of people online right now though.


----------



## gaspasser

Comes and goes for me, but then again, my family is running a game... :


----------



## 3rd Herd

Seems to be back to normal now. Who scared everyone off ?  ;D


----------



## George Wallace

It has been fluctuating up and down all morning........I have had time to S,S & S during one of the slow periods, when I was making a post.  That is pretty bad.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, we had a pretty good run there but it seems today the server's taking a hit again. It seems to have passed... for now.


----------



## kratz

I'm sure you are working on the site speed. It has been slower than normal today.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I'm coming up with a plan, but for the short term, there's not much I can do. When the system is out of resources I can free some up by restarting services, but if things are busy, we run out again quickly. I think I'm going to start socking away for new server class hardware. That will solve the problem for the long term.


----------



## Mike Baker

I don't find it that bad now. Mike, I think we need more subscribers   I am sure what ever you come up with will work.


----------



## armyvern

Aneurysm alert. 

Aghhh!!! And ONLY 688 on-line.


----------



## Mike Baker

I am finding it very slow   Yeah Vern, only 688   Better then 769


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Well the good news is we haven't maxed out on memory! 

I'll restart the web server, which is taking a lot of CPU time and see if that helps.


----------



## armyvern

Well something just sped it up!!

Thanks Mike!! You rock.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I think you were a bit too quick on that one... the load is showing pretty much the same as before I restarted things.


----------



## armyvern

Nope I don't think so!!


----------



## gaspasser

It's taking it's time loading pages. 
Have you thought of file 13'ing old stuff?
Just a thought, seeing as I know nothing about servers.


----------



## mudrecceman

Mike

Out of curiousity, are you actually running a "server" or a higher-end desktop?  

MRM


----------



## gaspasser

:rofl:
MRM, you're baad!
From the way the site is performing tonight, I thought it was my son's old computer we were using.
What could possibly be the problem?

 ^-^


----------



## larry Strong

I have noticed that it's been slow for some time now. To the point I need to have another window open to keep myself busy while waiting.


----------



## armyvern

Larry Strong said:
			
		

> I have noticed that it's been slow for some time now. To the point I need to have another window open to keep myself busy while waiting.



Hmmm, and I have 3 seperate Army.ca  windows open. 688 users X 2 windows each = 1376 strings running on the server. Perhaps...we are part of the problem!! LOL.


----------



## GAP

It's fast now...any particular thing?


----------



## mudrecceman

BYT Driver said:
			
		

> :rofl:
> MRM, you're baad!
> From the way the site is performing tonight, I thought it was my son's old computer we were using.
> What could possibly be the problem?
> 
> ^-^



In all honesty, I was quite serious.  There is quite a difference in the two, as I have had servers that were actually servers and ones that were "HE desktops"...I was really just curious.  Did that come off as a snide remark?  Whoops!

I know ppl that run their own "servers" that are using desktops instead of what I think of a server as...such as a HP ML370 G4 with 2.5 GB RAM, quad Xeon 2.5 Ghz CPUs, 5 SCSI drives running RAID 5 with, say, SDLT tape drive for BUs?  Read/write is totally different, just to start...its all about bottlenecks and benchmarks.

My bad if that came off the wrong way....sorry Mike!


----------



## gaspasser

Nah, you didn't come off snidey or snotty.
It was just a strange comment, but now I see where it comes from, it's okay.
Now, about your Martian speak? Makes me kind of glad I didn't make POET and later ATIS.  That last part was waaayyyy above my head.
 ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

MRM, I knew what you meant, and the answer is: high end desktop. But I like to call it a server, I think it performs better when you talk nice.


----------



## mudrecceman

BYT Driver said:
			
		

> Nah, you didn't come off snidey or snotty.
> It was just a strange comment, but now I see where it comes from, it's okay.
> Now, about your Martian speak? Makes me kind of glad I didn't make POET and later ATIS.  That last part was waaayyyy above my head.
> ;D



Okay.  Hmm.  Desktop= 4 cylinders.  A good server is 8 cylinders.   ;D

Lots more power!

Now lets talk "physical" vs "logical" topologies, Swtiched vs Shared Media (Ethernet) access and the benefits/drawbacks of such things as clustering, load balancing and fault tolerance....wait!  Was that your eyes rolling back into your head out of boredom?


----------



## mudrecceman

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> MRM, I knew what you meant, and the answer is: high end desktop. But I like to call it a server, I think it performs better when you talk nice.



Roger that.  Now I am gonna wonder about what we can do to get a "server" in there... ;D


----------



## karl28

Speed seems to be working fine now but there is only roughly 480 user on to so that might help the speed to .  
           Geez I just clued in  that in about a week and a couple of Days when I am off to Basic I want  have Daily access to army.ca  man I am going ot be going through withdrawls    ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

MRM, we're in a switched environment, but that doesn't really matter... our 1 Gig switched connection narrows down to dual load balanced DSL before we hit the Internet, so I could be on a shared wireless link and it wouldn't slow us down. 

I'm starting to put together an upgrade plan so we can move to true server hardware. Given what I'm seeing on our current system I'm confident our problems will be gone if we move to the right hardware. Right now we're CPU/memory bound at times, so that's where I'm going to focus on the new server. More to come...


----------



## Mike Baker

;D Hurrah! Mike, I am sure what you do will work, this time  > Just kidding.


----------



## Old and Tired

MRM

I think you're getting way to techie since you but on the Blue.  PM me, I need some help with My server at home.  Got my old HP Netserver back.

HM


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

89 Guests, 10 Users  
Users active in past 30 minutes:
Bruce Monkhouse, Matt_Fisher, 23007, Northern Ranger, Steve, R. Warren*, Harris, GAP, Genetk44, Chawki Bensalem 


Well that was a loooong day...............welcome back all.


----------



## GAP

The shakes are going away now, just a few more threads and my heartrate should lower.....


----------



## armyvern

Gawd,

I've been clicking refresh every 10 minutes all freaking day long!! LOL

I need surgery to remove this site from my system!!

 ;D


----------



## karl28

To feed my army.ca addcition withdrawls I actually got my apartment packed up   ;D


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

391 Guests, 68 Users ..........................well, that didn't take long, has everybody's shakes stopped now?


----------



## warspite

Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> 391 Guests, 68 Users ..........................well, that didn't take long, has everybody's shakes stopped now?



No.....not yet....... 

*"BACK GREMLINS BACK"* :mg:


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

As some of you may be aware, we were off the air most of yesterday due to an extended power outage.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

It was actually not the server's fault this time. Blame Ottawa Hydro, we were without power for about 12 hours today and our UPS just doesn't last that long.


----------



## navymich

The site was down?  Hmmm, never noticed.  But then again, I'm rarely if ever on here anyway....


----------



## Michael OLeary

So, how many subscribers do we need to put the server on its own windmill. I guess we'd also have to provide power to his ISP  ......

Desperate times call for desperate measures.    :warstory:


----------



## Mike Baker

THANK GOD. I think I need someone to help me with the shakes next time were off. At least I had time to sleep


----------



## TN2IC

I still got the shakes from it. Hehehehe...

I"ll be ok. 

Cheers,
TN2IC


----------



## Mike Baker

TN2IC said:
			
		

> I"ll be ok.


I hope I will. Anyone got the number of a good doc to help out with the shakes?


----------



## career_radio-checker

Michael Baker said:
			
		

> I hope I will. Anyone got the number of a good doc to help out with the shakes?



I know a good one:
http://www.drphil.com/plugger/respond/?plugID=11221


----------



## mudrecceman

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> MRM, we're in a switched environment, but that doesn't really matter... our 1 Gig switched connection narrows down to dual load balanced DSL before we hit the Internet, so I could be on a shared wireless link and it wouldn't slow us down.



So goes the rule "there is ALWAYS a bottleneck"  ;D

Old and Tired, PM inbound.


----------



## Yrys

I'm not sure people on the show would agree with your assessment of ''good doc''.


----------



## Mike Baker

Is it just me or is the site slow today for everyone?


----------



## Mike Baker

Running slow again...


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, I've restarted services a couple of times, but we're just maxing out the CPU right now.


----------



## Mike Baker

A bit faster, Mike. But I can't access the home page for some reason. Anyone else have that problem?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

It loaded for me, but it took _forever_.


----------



## Mike Baker

Yeah it worked just then, but was slow.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Speed bumps for me too. But it might be because I'm on wireless, not sure why but I seem to loose 2 mbps when on wireless  

Oh well hopefully when Mike gets the new hardware this site will be flying.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Today has been a bad day, the load average went above 200 and wanted to stay there. I've let things settle down a bit, but can't say we won't go right into another slowdown. In other news, I had some spare time to finalize the new hardware specs.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Please hurry,..........I need instant gratification when I try and post......


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

It's not working.  I'll keep trying.


----------



## frist one

Been loading slow all day.But working.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

For me its been......

(in the voice of Homer Simpson)

Site goes up, site goes down (and repeat  ;D)


Hope you get the new hardware soon Mike


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Every time I try to post site crashes on me


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, sorry, that's me... the load gets ridiculously high and I'm trying to find a way to bring it down. No luck so far.


----------



## TN2IC

Nfld Sapper said:
			
		

> For me its been......
> 
> (in the voice of Homer Simpson)
> 
> Site goes up, site goes down (and repeat  ;D)
> 
> 
> Hope you get the new hardware soon Mike



Some how my Chimo friend... I can picture that. Must be the air. Need smoke now... NO!


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Good to know that "tech support" is on the case.

BTW have you scanned for spy/adware?


----------



## Mike Baker

I just got back on...I have the shakes again


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Nfld Sapper said:
			
		

> Good to know that "tech support" is on the case.
> 
> BTW have you scanned for spy/adware?



Funny you say that, I'm running a few detection tools as we speak. Nothing (as expected ). However it looks like the problem is that we're being hammered by "zombies" from all over the net. It's like whack-a-mole, I cut one down and 5 more come up. It seems like someone's got it out for us and set all the systems they have hacked to probe us for vulnerabilities. We may just have to ride it out.

Lord I hate spammers.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

1 Guest, 1 User (0 Buddies) 
Users active in past 30 minutes:
Bruce Monkhouse  


I'M LONELY.......


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry Bruce, they're driving us offline today... no end in sight, we may have to stay offline until... tomorrow...? No ETA unfortunately.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Finally reconnected but not sure for how long.

Get those zombies Mike.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Going for the headshots now... I think we're making progress...


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Hey, looks like you are closing in for the kill.



			
				Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Going for the headshots now... I think we're making progress...



Just like your Infantry Moto: To close with and destroy the enemy  ;D


BTW check your email, I sent you some info.


----------



## warspite

Yay the sites back up, only had to split fire wood for 2 hours to make it through the day. ;D


As for the zombies....

Go for the headshots mike
 :sniper:


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Keep up what ever you did, the site is flying for me now.


----------



## Kirkhill

Brilliant work Mike.
Cheers.


----------



## George Wallace

It's been loading slow this morning, but now there seems to be a lull in the "slowness".......Thankfully.   ;D


----------



## Mike Baker

WOOO. I love being at school when I have all my work done and the site is running.  >


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Michael Baker said:
			
		

> WOOO. I love being at school when I have all my work done and the site is running.  >



Get back to your school work Michael  ;D


----------



## TN2IC

Nfld Sapper said:
			
		

> Hey, looks like you are closing in for the kill.
> 
> Just like your Infantry Moto: To close with and destroy the enemy  ;D
> 
> 
> BTW check your email, I sent you some info.



*Motto*... revenge is sweet.  Bugging you b'y.

Regards,
TN2IC


----------



## Mike Baker

School is out now Sapper  ;D But notice, I said when I have all my work done


----------



## NL_engineer

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Funny you say that, I'm running a few detection tools as we speak. Nothing (as expected ). However it looks like the problem is that we're being hammered by "zombies" from all over the net. It's like whack-a-mole, I cut one down and 5 more come up. It seems like someone's got it out for us and set all the systems they have hacked to probe us for vulnerabilities. We may just have to ride it out.
> 
> Lord I hate spammers.



Mike, all you need to do is post  the spammer's 10 figure grid, and the problem would be solved  > 


O, and Mr. Baker; if the principle calls you to his office, about unapproved computer usage, we had nothing to do with it  ;D  >


----------



## TN2IC

Mr. Baker.. you better get off those adult sites. Full of naughty stuff.

Now get this topic back on track. It seems to have derail a tad.

Regards,
TN2IC


----------



## Nfld Sapper

You mean like this?


----------



## Mike Baker

NL_engineer said:
			
		

> O, and Mr. Baker; if the principle calls you to his office, about unapproved computer usage, we had nothing to do with it  ;D  >


Naw, I deleted the computer history after I logged off  



			
				TN2IC said:
			
		

> Mr. Baker.. you better get off those adult sites. Full of naughty stuff.


I never have.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Michael Baker said:
			
		

> Naw, I deleted the computer history after I logged off
> I never have.



Depends on what tracking software the school has, simple deletion of the internet history might not be enough.


----------



## NL_engineer

Michael Baker said:
			
		

> Naw, I deleted the computer history after I logged off
> I never have.



To add To NFLD Sapper, we have your posts on this site, and your confession that you were posting during school time  ;D


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Ok lets get this topic back on track.




Site is speedy for me today  ;D


----------



## Mike Baker

Nfld Sapper said:
			
		

> Site is speedy for me today  ;D


Me too  ;D


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Don't know if its me or not but the site seems uber slow today.


----------



## Mike Baker

It is slow for me too. Thought it was my computer first, but it seems not.


----------



## HItorMiss

Yeah for me too.


----------



## Mike Baker

I got kicked off. And since I got back on it has been *SUPER* slow. Mike, do I need to call the Doc to be on stand-by in case of shock and the shakes?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Maybe... things are definitely slow, but it's not the same problem as Sunday... So far it looks like we're just busy.


----------



## Mike Baker

It is a bit faster Mike. I got the Doc on hold for a bit


----------



## warspite

Back up to speed for me now, earlier it wasn't working


----------



## Mike Baker

warspite said:
			
		

> Back up to speed for me now, earlier it wasn't working


Yeah mine too.


----------



## George Wallace

Site speed has gone all wonky again.....


----------



## old medic

She's sluggish, like a 2400 baud modem.


----------



## Mike Baker

She was bad last night, running fast now though.


----------



## George Wallace

At times it is very reminiscent to being back on "Dial Up".  It really sucks.


----------



## Colin Parkinson

It was acting up for me, mostly while posting, where it would hang for 5-10minutes.


----------



## Mike Baker

Still somewhat slow.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

It's been a dog all day... Hopefully it's settled down a bit now.


----------



## NL_engineer

Its faster then it was earlyer.


----------



## Mike Baker

Very fast now.


----------



## GUNS

Site is very slow-two to three minutes between screens. 

Dated 03April07 at 1916hrs :brickwall:


----------



## TN2IC

Today is the fourth..... I think...


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Site is all wonky again. Even tried it on another pc to see it was just my laptop and it wasn't


----------



## frist one

Its been a little slow to day.


----------



## Mike Baker

Oy, up and down a lot.


----------



## Sapper6

Still slow.

S6


----------



## GUNS

Thats how slow it is, I posted that message on the third of April and it was posted on the fourth.  ;D : :brickwall: :deadhorse:






			
				TN2IC said:
			
		

> Today is the fourth..... I think...


----------



## Mike Baker

She is really bad now.


----------



## George Wallace

Yes.....depressingly slow at times.......leading to loss of productivity.   :-[


----------



## Mike Baker

Running better now, thankfully  ;D


----------



## GUNS

Back to normal


----------



## 3rd Herd

GUNS said:
			
		

> Back to normal



Anyone else getting the "data base error" message box when trying to post today ? Three times in a row now. :'(


----------



## frist one

Very slow today.Was faster this morning.


----------



## Mike Baker

frist one said:
			
		

> Very slow today.Was faster this morning.


Super slow now.

Much better now at 8:31 PM NL time


----------



## GUNS

It was perfect this morning and now  :brickwall:

Its slower than Harper's promises coming to fruition. ;D


----------



## George Wallace

Well.....At least he is keeping his promises.....unlike some others...

Looks like the popularity of the site is causing bottlenecks.


----------



## HItorMiss

I wonder what the issue is, it's been really bad all day and for a few days actualy


----------



## Mike Baker

Really bad, again. It has been bad for a few days now  :'(


----------



## Foofighter

Yea it's been bad today but right now it seems to be good.  Guess I will use the site at night and early in the morning that way I will miss the mid-day rush.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Site slow again


----------



## frist one

Very slow today.


----------



## NL_engineer

Its really slow for me today.  Mike do you have any idea what the problem is?


----------



## Mike Baker

Super slow....can't wait for the server


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Michael Baker said:
			
		

> Super slow....can't wate  waitfor the server



Think you should stay in school and learn to spell  ;D


----------



## soulful

Oh man - Brutally slow...I wondered if it was just me. 

This must change however possible. Very frustrating.


----------



## Mike Baker

Nfld Sapper said:
			
		

> Think you should stay in school and learn to spell  ;D


Yes yes, I tried the spell check after I saw it, but the site went on me


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, another day of overloading the system... I'll give the server upgrade some real attention this week, it's clear we need it.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Yeah, another day of overloading the system... I'll give the server upgrade some real attention this week, it's clear we need it.



No worries Mike we all know that you are working on the situation.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Days like today are good motivators.


----------



## Mike Baker

Nfld Sapper said:
			
		

> No worries Mike we all know that you are working on the situation.


Thank goodness Mike isn't out eatin'  ;D


----------



## McG

The site seemed to die the same time the news was breaking that the 6 soldiers were killed.  Could be that the cause was readers turning here as a first source for relevant news.


----------



## soulful

True enough. Thanks too, Mike. I love this site as a new user, and appreciate it immensely.

PS - Holy crap it's fast now all of a sudden!


----------



## navymich

soulful said:
			
		

> True enough. Thanks too, Mike. I love this site as a new user, and appreciate it immensely.


Appreciate it enough to become a  subscriber?  ;D

Speed has increased greatly!  Keep up the good work Mike.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

It's going to come and go for a bit. I'm trying to juggle a few things around so we're not totally bogged down but able to provide the core services.


----------



## gaspasser

Please...tell...me...why...it...takes....5...minutes...to ...lozad...pages...at...9:30...tonight...?????




I...find...it...irritating...to...say...the...least!!!!


Can...you...clean...up..the...old...stuff...and..make...more...room???
Just a suggestion?


----------



## TN2IC

Walk away...go for a smoke.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Been down that road, it won't help. The server's just too overloaded with visitors, we've grown past our current capacity.


----------



## George Wallace

BYT Driver

You could always log off and then the rest of us can have better luck with the site.    ;D


----------



## gaspasser

George Wallace said:
			
		

> BYT Driver
> 
> You could always log off and then the rest of us can have better luck with the site.    ;D




Just did, and it worked.
Go figure.
And TN, I don't smoke...anymore...


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Heheh, coincidence BYT, I shut down the services for a few minutes to let things cool off. We're slowly creeping back into overload though.


----------



## gaspasser

Shut down...hmm, that works...seems to be okay for now.
Is there a way we can keep visitors down?  Or place a cut off at how many are online at once?


----------



## Michael OLeary

Mike, have you considered mirroring the database between the two servers, and separating the registered members in a real-time environment from the guest swarms on a secondary copy with periodic updates?


----------



## George Wallace

BYT Driver said:
			
		

> Shut down...hmm, that works...seems to be okay for now.
> Is there a way we can keep visitors down?  Or place a cut off at how many are online at once?



Greedy SOB, aren't you.   ;D


----------



## Mike Baker

Very very slow  :'(


----------



## gaspasser

Not really, George.
Just a thought to keep the "bogging" down from unregistered visitors.
I know, you gonna key on the fact that we all start as visitors and then become members, etc. 
I mean "unregistered" by people who just float around and check out what's going on here.
I, for one, "registered" before perusing, then subscribed.  
Now I find that this site has become more than it's server can handle and I'm only trying to come up with ideas to keep the site speed up and running and not s l o w, like it has been the last few nights.
Regards, BYTD


----------



## Mike Baker

BYT Driver said:
			
		

> I, for one, "registered" before perusing, then subscribed.


I did too  ^-^


----------



## George Wallace

Well.

Mike has published the problems and what he has done to rectify them.  He has given a timeline of how long he anticipates it to take to solve and get the site up to functioning in the manner to which you expect.  He has posted a couple of topics on the matter.  So, all you can do now is have a little patience.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Well.
> 
> Mike has published the problems and what he has done to rectify them.  He has given a timeline of how long he anticipates it to take to solve and get the site up to functioning in the manner to which you expect.  He has posted a couple of topics on the matter.  So, all you can do now is have a little patience.



So can we stop 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





.

And maybe just inform Mike when there is a slow down and stop the p***ing match?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

It's frustrating for everyone, and I include myself in that list. There are a lot of people here who have contributed generously to the solution, and I've finally started to do my part on it, so hopefully we will only have to endure this for a short while longer.

Thanks for your patience and support all.


----------



## Mike Baker

Super slow now. Mike, I am always patient, I refresh the page at least 12 times every 2 mins when the site is down


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

lol, I'm sure that helps.


----------



## Mike Baker

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> lol, I'm sure that helps.


That, and the fact that I can watch Band of Brothers when the site is down  ;D


----------



## NL_engineer

working fast for me now  ;D


----------



## rmacqueen

I like it whenn the sight is down, it is only time I get to eat and sleep ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry for the downtime, I tried a few things to help reduce server load. I don't think it will make a noticeable difference, unfortunately.


----------



## pylon

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> *lol,* I'm sure that helps.



Sheesh, I thought this MSN speak was getting cleaned up...  mods?!?!

 ;D

Couldn't resist...


kc


----------



## Mike Baker

30 Guests, 6 Users (1 Buddy)

 That is crazy. Guess the refreshing works  ;D


----------



## Mike Baker

and now:

81 Guests, 8 Users (1 Buddy)
Quick build up. The site is fast now  ;D


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Mike,
What if we firewall block those IP addresses that I mentioned, that would cut the "guests" in half.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I might do that... I've been tinkering (as you have probably noticed), trying a few things to detect the source of the slowdown. It doesn't seem to be any one thing in particular, just a lot going on.


----------



## NL_engineer

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> I might do that... I've been tinkering (as you have probably noticed), trying a few things to detect the source of the slowdown. It doesn't seem to be any one thing in particular, just a lot going on.



Whatever you did Mike, it speed up for me  ;D


Too bad there is still a long delay when posting  :-[


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Was having army.ca withdrawl symptoms with the site down.  ;D

Glad its back.


----------



## Mike Baker

Nfld Sapper said:
			
		

> Was having army.ca withdrawl symptoms with the site down.  ;D
> 
> Glad its back.


You thought it was bad, eh? My internet was down almost all day, and when it came back, Army.ca was slow. So, yes, it was a terrible day. But now she is back  ;D


----------



## warspite

Michael Baker said:
			
		

> You thought it was bad, eh? My internet was down almost all day, and when it came back, Army.ca was slow. So, yes, it was a terrible day. But now she is back  ;D


Mwhahahah been workin for me all day.  :evil:


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

As you have unfortunately noticed, the last few weeks have see Army.ca brought to it's knees on a regular basis. In fact, recently, the site has been down or unbearably slow more often than not.

First, I apologize for this, I know it's very frustrating. I have spent literally days trying to track down the source of the problem, and it all seems to come back to the same thing: we've become too popular. The site simply cannot keep up with the demand, and is suffering through a number of problems as a result. I've considered a variety of approaches from rolling blackouts to automatic shutdowns to cutting some services, but each has it's problems. You may have even noticed me experimenting with some of these over the last week.

There is a bright spot though, the recent Server Replacement Program means that new hardware has been ordered and is on the way. Right now the ETA is a bit hazy, but I think I can safely say it will be roughly 4 weeks before the new hardware is in place. In the mean time, our options are limited, but I will continue to research the possibilities. Please bear with me through this, as unfortunately it's going to mean at least 4 more weeks of ridiculous wait times and the occasional outage.

I'll keep you updated as things progress.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## GAP

You can only do what you can do....the rest will sort itself out. 

Thanks Mike for all your efforts


----------



## Kendrick

Should the parts that are currently B/O come in this week (as they usually do), the machine should be brought on site, put together, and ready to receive software within a week and a half from now.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Excellent, thanks for the order update Kendrick. I'm motivated to get things rolling once the hardware is onsite.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

I am _cautiously_ optimistic that I may have improved the situation. The server load is still high, but through a number of changes I think I've made it manageable.

For those who care, I think the core of the problem was that with recent upgrade made our PHP accelerator fail to load however it didn't log an error, it just aborted. That meant we were running without an accelerator, but I didn't realize it. I've now sync'd the versions and the accelerator is back online.

I've also put in a firewall ban for most of Asiapac, but I intend to lift that if the server load remains tolerable.

Thanks for your patience, and fingers crossed, this will see us through to the new hardware.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Nfld Sapper

+10 Mike and thx for the updates.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Hmmm, the problems aren't over yet... the current accelerator segfaults the server. I'm trying another.


----------



## CFR FCS

Mike, 
Thanks for working so hard for us. I appreciate it and will be sending in my subscription by snail mail soonest.  Thanks Again.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks, but really it's not a testament to my ability... it really just highlights how shallow my knowledge is on this stuff!


----------



## Trinity

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Hmmm, the problems aren't over yet... the current accelerator segfaults the server. I'm trying another.



I think you need more Dilithium crystals for the flux capacitor.


----------



## Roy Harding

Trinity said:
			
		

> I think you need more Dilithium crystals for the flux capacitor.



No, you fool!!

It's the anti-matter static control circuit in the main drive!!


----------



## Mike Baker

Well Mike, at least you are doing what you can. 

And Trinity, it is the anti-matter static control circuit


----------



## pidd

Steady as she goes, Mike.

I wonder how many sites, and site masters, would very much like to have your problem!
It seems true that as our technology has accelerated our quality of 'patience' has not kept pace.
I'm glad to have subscribed in support of this outstanding site and encourage others to do the same
in support, not only of the 'server' but, of course, those who do and have served!
Thank you for your perseverance!

Pidd


----------



## gaspasser

Mike, whatever you did in geek land seems to work eggsalad!  I was getting very frustrated with not being able to surf the site.   :rage:
But, I'm much better now.   8)
Kudos


----------



## Mike Baker

Were flying now   ;D


----------



## Jacqueline

Michael Baker said:
			
		

> Were flying now   ;D



Don't you love it?


----------



## warspite

Miss Jacqueline said:
			
		

> Don't you love it?


I'm dancing a little jig ;D

three cheers for army.ca's fearless leader... Mike
*HUZZA HUZZA HUZZA*


----------



## Big Foot

Mike, I have no idea how it is that you do what you do but I will echo the sentiments of the others. Keep up the great work and keep me getting my fix. lol


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Big Foot said:
			
		

> Mike, I have no idea how it is that you do what you do but I will echo the sentiments of the others. Keep up the great work and keep me getting my fix. lol



When skill and experience are found lacking, I rely on my old friends: brute force and ignorance. Works every time.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> brute force and ignorance



Now what do ya what?


----------



## Donut

He said BRUTE force, not BRUCE force!   ;D

Well done Mike, glad to see it running again...the DT's will fade shortly.


----------



## Big Foot

Ah ignorance my old friend. Ignorance is bliss  Hence why I'm so blissful that the site is pretty much back to normal, or so it seems. lol.


----------



## GUNS

Mike, I have to admit I was concerned about my mental state these past weeks. 

Not having the ability to enjoy my cup of tea in the morning while surfing through ARMY.CA took its toll.

The wife is consulting with a lawyer, my kids won't speak to me and our dog keeps pissing on my leg.

I've tried medication(Capt. Morgan) but it only added to the problem. I was so pleased to see the site running normally this morning.

The wife has put the lawyer on retainer just in case there is a problem with the site again(fingers crossed), the kids wave to me now and the dog has gone back to taking a dump in my shoes. Ahhh, everything back to normal. ;D

In the real world Mike, most users to the site understand your problem and are willing to wait for the improvements. Keep up the excellent work.


----------



## midget-boyd91

Hmmm... This is probably a problem just on the computer I am using right now, but now that the site is running full speed, the recent topics board is... blank.   

Once again, this is probably just a problem on THIS computer, but I thought I'd raise this and see if anyone else was having a similar problem.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Which recent topics board?


----------



## midget-boyd91

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Which recent topics board?



The very front center of the page. Where all of the "recent" posts are put, under the bold words "recent topics" is just a blank green square where the threads usually are.


----------



## midget-boyd91

All better  ;D
A quick log-off/log back on, computer shut-down, and fiddling with the internet cable(I just un-plugged it and plugged it back in) in the back of the computer have everything back in place here.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sounds like it was a glitch on our end, but I'm glad it wasn't long lasting. 


Thanks
Mike


----------



## GAP

midget-boyd91 said:
			
		

> The very front center of the page. Where all of the "recent" posts are put, under the bold words "recent topics" is just a blank green square where the threads usually are.



Someone has posted a long link, which causes the normally visible listing to move over to the right. Click on the green adjusting bar at the bottom of the screen to move the screen to the right and the "recent" posts are there.


----------



## PMedMoe

Couldn't get on the site at all yesterday!! Working great now, better than usual for me.  Got my fix now......thanks!!


----------



## warspite

Sites running wonderfully today ;D


----------



## Mike Baker

warspite said:
			
		

> Sites running wonderfully today ;D


Isn't it great?


----------



## infamous_p

I've noticed that the reliability of the site has drastically improved in the past week or so... I haven't had any problems at all. Good work Mike.


----------



## niner domestic

Mike: Would it help the site's overall capacity/speed if we used a photo hosting site to upload pics for a while? Or would that just make it worse?


----------



## Kirkhill

Just wanted to offer my two cents worth of thanks for giving me my fix back.

Cheers.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks guys. I think we're going to be "OK" until the new server comes in. If problems arise I'm more than happy to diagnose and make changes at the time, but for now I think we're no over capacity even with our current services running.


----------



## Mike Baker

Oy, she is good, very good, maybe a little too good   . Thanks a bunch Mike, you keep my fix going good


----------



## Sapper6

Site is running the fast today.  In fact, the page downloads are the fastest they have been for the past month.  Good job to Mike and others who have been workin' it!  

S6


----------



## Mike Baker

Man it is super slow now.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, we're having some issues. I'm on it.


----------



## Mike Baker

And it's fixed  ;D


----------



## ironduke57

Today the side is more or less unusable from here (Germany). Most time´s I just get an 404.

I need an hour to post this.

Regards,
ironduke57


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Agreed, the server is really struggling today.


----------



## Mike Baker

Very harsh day


----------



## GAP

Well, with over a thousand users, it's sure flying....what did you do? Spank it?  ;D


----------



## Mike Baker

Yeah it is going fast now isn't it  ;D



			
				GAP said:
			
		

> what did you do? Spank it?  ;D


Let's leave Mike's personal life out of this


----------



## Franko

Holy crap Mike. Site speed up here in the valley is a snails pace, has been since yesterday. What's up with that?

Possible problems at my end?


----------



## Mike Baker

Very fast for me.


----------



## Colin Parkinson

Man it's as slow as paint drying and this is the first time today I have been able to get on, all I get is 504 errors (timed out)


----------



## Franko

Seems to be working better. Before it was taking on average 2 minutes to load a page.

Regards


----------



## GAP

seems to be fast here at 3:02 Central time...


----------



## George Wallace

It all depends on where the magneto is pointed when you post.

Kinda like spin the bottle.......


----------



## Edward Campbell

George Wallace said:
			
		

> It all depends on where the magneto is pointed when you post.
> 
> Kinda like spin the bottle.......



Agreed.

It seems to change, minute by minute and it *appears* quite unrelated to OS/browser configuration.  I've tried various mixes of MS Vista, MS XP (SP2) and Linux with IE7 (MS only), Firefox and Opera - none produce anything like consistent good (or bad) results.


----------



## armyvern

George Wallace said:
			
		

> It all depends on where the magneto is pointed when you post.
> 
> Kinda like spin the bottle.......



 :rofl:

Yep George, they were right, too much time on your hands with your current whereabouts!! Hilarious.


----------



## NL_engineer

George Wallace said:
			
		

> It all depends on where the magneto is pointed when you post.
> 
> Kinda like spin the bottle.......



Aren't you a little old for that game  ;D >


----------



## armyvern

Well,

In all fairness we have been having some more record setting days again lately:



> *Date                 New Topics     New Posts     New Members     Most Online     Page views *
> 2007-05-09         35               276                9                 1660              41889
> 2007-05-10          1                 23                0                  1483              3994



So at 0510hrs in the morning...
Most Online Today: 1483. Most Online Ever: 1660 (Yesterday at 23:24:15)


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Vern, now I know why you're on here at night, things seem faster!


----------



## armyvern

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Vern, now I know why you're on here at night, things seem faster!



Don't give away all my secrets!!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Don't worry, I'll keep the profitable ones for a rainy day!


----------



## niner domestic

I've been having some internet problems of late and wanted to pass on some reminders to the members that may help solve some of the site's speed issues from the user end.

Clean out your Internet temp files and caches especially if you are using IE.  When IE tries to load a page, it searches for a cached page and if it has to go through a zillion GBs of files, it's going to slow things down.  

Run a spy-ware/adware/malware scan and don't be afraid to use different programs.  I had one nasty trojan that took 8 attempts with a variety software to find it and remove it.  

Run a virus scan and make sure you have updated your definitions.  

Check your firewall settings to make sure you haven't inadvertently blocked your favourite sites.  

If you are running a wireless router/hardware firewall, update your firmware on a regular basis.  One sure sign that the router's firmware is out of date is a slow Internet connection. The site will load eventually (after hitting refresh a zillion times) but will kick up a "page not found" error screen when you attempt to changes pages.   Running a tracert will show a slow connection and a ping will simply time out.    

I had forgotten to update my router firmware and was having frustrating issues loading pages and surfing.  Once updated, speed improved and the page errors disappeared.  

Hope this helps some of you with your speed and page loading issues.


----------



## Mike Baker

Most online: 1729   Today

No wonder I am finding the site slow


----------



## armyvern

Mike Baker said:
			
		

> Most online: 1729   Today
> 
> No wonder I am finding the site slow





> Most Online Today: 1729. Most Online Ever: 1729 (Today at 20:20:35)



Yeah but it seems to be running perfectly fine now.  ;D


----------



## armyvern

Arghhhh!!

I hope I'm not the only one running very slowly on here right now.

With only 875 users on-line, I hope that means Mike is in the midst of the server upgrade...(wishfully thinking that this will be done and solve all problems known to mankind).


----------



## Mike Baker

Not only you Vern. I hope the server is soon up and running


----------



## midget-boyd91

It has been running fine here.


----------



## Mike Baker

midget-boyd said:
			
		

> It has been running fine here.


  Wanna trade places for a bit?


----------



## ironduke57

midget-boyd said:
			
		

> It has been running fine here.



Here, too.

Regards,
ironduke57


----------



## midget-boyd91

Mike Baker said:
			
		

> Wanna trade places for a bit?


Look at my name..... it's Midget. Now, look at the amount of snow the rock gets during the snow season. I would disappear until summer.  >


----------



## Mike Baker

midget-boyd said:
			
		

> Look at my name..... it's Midget. Now, look at the amount of snow the rock gets during the snow season. I would disappear until summer.  >


We don't get a lot, due to we are very near the ocean. So, your a Midget, eh. Nice to see you down there


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks, the networking gear crashed and I around to reset it until just now.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## navymich

No worries, I didn't have *twitch* too much of a rough *shake* night because of it.  ;D


----------



## Yrys

:crybaby: What about establishing a chain email with info about reparations ETA ?

But thanks for reseting it before I go to bed .


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

It was a qiuck fix, the delay was in discovering there was a problem. So the e-mail would only read "try it now!"


----------



## CdnArtyWife

airmich said:
			
		

> No worries, I didn't have *twitch* too much of a rough *shake* night because of it.  ;D



Hey Mich,

Maybe the chocolate worked after all!  ;D

I had to try one last time to get my fix before racking out tonight. Yay, now I will be able to sleep knowing that ballance was restored to the universe.

Mike, don't tell your brother how addicted I am...he and hubby have been conspiring for an intervention I think.


----------



## Mike Baker

Site...........very...........SLOW.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yep, and intermittently off the air while it "cools down". The automatic process I put in place a couple of months ago is still in effect. Not long now until the new hardware though...


----------



## Mike Baker

Thanks Mike! I hope it gets straightened away soon.


----------



## Colin Parkinson

The site has been decent out here on the West coast even after fighting it's way through the Fed servers..


----------



## armyvern

Ahhh gee!!

You mean it was down & slow was I was busy travelling back here to Gagetown??

Perfect timing Mike!!  ;D


----------



## Mike Baker

Was it me or did we just die?


----------



## navymich

I'm sure this thread will see alot of activity over the next while!  It's amazing how much I got unpacked and organized in the new house.  Timing is everything, but it's nice to see things back up and running.  It's like being grounded and having your favourite toy taken away!! :'(


----------



## Harris

Just an update to everyone.  The site has been down obviously for a couple of days.  Mike is on vacation in NS and where is was has poor cell coverage.  We've managed to get the server rebooted and it is up and running but still may need some tweaking.  Mike is now aware of the situation and I expect he'll be on tonight (via dial up) to check things out.


----------



## armyvern

Whooooo!!!!!!!
I feel so much better now!!  ;D


----------



## Kirkhill

Mike?  Vacation?  Who allowed this to happen?


----------



## Pikache

lol. site goes down when the boss is on vacation.

evil omen?


----------



## Rice0031

Ah, the shaking has stopped. Now I feel better!


----------



## Franko

It's official....Mike's not allow to go on vacation anymore.

Regards


----------



## Bzzliteyr

Man that was SCARY!!! Don't ever do that again!!


----------



## CdnArtyWife

Who signed his Milnet.ca leave pass, who authorized his vacation? 

Those were the worst days of my army.ca life.


Thank goodness we are back up and running, I was expecting to see news reports of errant Milnet.ca members looting and rioting the internet. 

Cheers,

CAW


----------



## Mike Baker

THANK GOD!!!! I need some fix when we go down, something more then crackbook.


----------



## safeboy43

Wow now that was interesting. I think I'll finally put away the anti-depressants and extra booze for now.


----------



## Burrows

CdnArtyWife said:
			
		

> Who signed his Milnet.ca leave pass, who authorized his vacation?
> 
> Those were the worst days of my army.ca life.
> 
> 
> Thank goodness we are back up and running, I was expecting to see news reports of errant Milnet.ca members looting and rioting the internet.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> CAW


[me=Kyle Burrows]hides his pen.[/me]

My favourite part of the downtime was the message from RBD at 1am over facebook.


----------



## geo

Cheez!
Just finished giving my ISP hell for the rotten service.... no forum for waaaaay too long!

Ahhhh!


----------



## Greymatters

What went wrong this time?   ...other than Mike being out of town?


----------



## vonGarvin

What went wrong?  Alien Space Bats intervened (read: we were hacked by the leftnews.org)   >


----------



## Harris

Not sure what the issue was, however after rebooting/resetting the Server, 2X DSL lines and router, everything seems to have come back up with no issues.


----------



## Greymatters

Captain Sensible said:
			
		

> What went wrong?  Alien Space Bats intervened (read: we were hacked by the leftnews.org)   >



Where does this ASB stuff come from anyway?  Is that your invention or is it some ongoing gag I'm oblivious to?


----------



## GAP

There was a thread on Bat F*&^^% Insane something or other yesterday, or was that the posters?.....


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks Todd (Harris) and Gray (grayrc here) for sorting that out. Todd was "remote help" and Gray actually drove onsite to my house to troubleshoot. (Didn't even set off the alarm like last year!) Kudos to both of you for fixing that, I was blissfully out of cell coverage the whole time. 

The issue seems to be that a power bump from the storms caused the DSL modems and/or router to hang up and not reconnect. I'm going to check to see if there's an auto-reconnect feature that is not currently enabled on our router (a Linksys RV-042 in case anyone's familiar...) For now we're back alive thanks to Gray and Todd.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Burrows

And do Todd and Gray receive a prize for said service?  I'm all for nominating them for the Order of Army.ca or something.


----------



## Mike Baker

Kyle Burrows said:
			
		

> I'm all for nominating them for the Order of Army.ca or something.


I am too, they fixed my fix  ;D


----------



## 3rd Herd

Kyle Burrows said:
			
		

> And do Todd and Gray receive a prize for said service?  I'm all for nominating them for the Order of Army.ca or something.



They can have any found at: http://www.lf-ioc-ukcommand.org.uk/   Click on awards ;D ;D ;D ;D


----------



## Old Sweat

Come on, gang. This is sooo obvious. Mike rigged the outage when he just happened to be out of town to make all us losers like him when he "fixed" the outage.


----------



## Danjanou

3rd Herd said:
			
		

> They can have any found at: http://www.lf-ioc-ukcommand.org.uk/   Click on awards ;D ;D ;D ;D


Ummmmm chocolate medals ;D


----------



## geo

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Thanks Todd (Harris) and Gray (grayrc here) for sorting that out. Todd was "remote help" and Gray actually drove onsite to my house to troubleshoot. (Didn't even set off the alarm like last year!) Kudos to both of you for fixing that, I was blissfully out of cell coverage the whole time.
> 
> The issue seems to be that a power bump from the storms caused the DSL modems and/or router to hang up and not reconnect. I'm going to check to see if there's an auto-reconnect feature that is not currently enabled on our router (a Linksys RV-042 in case anyone's familiar...) For now we're back alive thanks to Gray and Todd.
> Cheers
> Mike


Mike,

Possibly ensure that your router & modem are both powered via your Uninterrupted power supply (UPS)  that should protect you from those nasty spikes & whatever

Just a thought


----------



## Burrows

I was thinking more like, something awarded by the GG, and Lord Emperor Hillier himself.

Or beer.  Beer would work too.


----------



## NL_engineer

Your too young to talk about the second part  ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

geo said:
			
		

> Mike,
> 
> Possibly ensure that your router & modem are both powered via your Uninterrupted power supply (UPS)  that should protect you from those nasty spikes & whatever
> 
> Just a thought



When I get back home I'll move the one currently on the server over to the networking gear since it doesn't have the power to protect the new hardware anyway. Might as well put it to good use!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Was it just the flaky wireless conncetion I'm stealing using, or did we go off the air for a bit there?


----------



## Mike Baker

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Was it just the flaky wireless conncetion I'm stealing using, or did we go off the air for a bit there?


Yeah we did.


----------



## armyvern

~Whew~ Thank goodness it only lasted a minute!!!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Good news, I have reconfigured the router so that I believe it will now auto-reconnect if there is an outage. That should greatly reduce any "networking gear" related problems.


----------



## Mike Baker

Thanks Mike! ;D


----------



## armyvern

Mike,

When you get back ...

The glitch we discussed yesterday is back again in the Photo Gallery. I'm trying to get in to review a _certain_ pic and am getting this green screen below again ... 



> SELECT `Milnet`.`termsandconditions`.`version` FROM `Milnet`.`termsandconditions` WHERE `Milnet`.`termsandconditions`.`ID_MEMBER` = 12088 failed: SELECT command denied to user 'gallery2'@'localhost' for table 'termsandconditions'


----------



## Nfld Sapper

ArmyVern said:
			
		

> Mike,
> 
> When you get back ...
> 
> The glitch we discussed yesterday is back again in the Photo Gallery. I'm trying to get in to review a _certain_ pic and am getting this green screen below again ...



Way to go Vern you broke the picture gallery  ;D


----------



## armyvern

Nfld Sapper said:
			
		

> Way to go Vern you broke the picture gallery  ;D



If it's possible, I will be the one to do it. This should be no surprise.


----------



## formerarmybrat23

oops sorry didnt see this before. ignore my photogallery reply


----------



## armyvern

BUMP!!!

A little bump so that Mr. B sees that I have, once again, managed to break the Photo gallery when he comes online. That way he can fix it!!  >


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks Vern, it should be all fixed up now.


----------



## armyvern

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Thanks Vern, it should be all fixed up now.



Whoooo!! Would you look at that!! It works again.


Thanks Mike.  :-[


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Ugh... I hate posting here now. Had another power bump and it caused a database corruption. I rebuilt the table and we're back.

Anyone know of a good, cheap UPS for server grade sysytems?


----------



## Meridian

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Ugh... I hate posting here now. Had another power bump and it caused a database corruption. I rebuilt the table and we're back.
> 
> Anyone know of a good, cheap UPS for server grade sysytems?



Mike, I can ask the Sys Admin tomorrow at work, if you can wait that long... I know they've bought quite a few server items recently, including UPS...  they seem to be moving everything to VMware and loving it.


----------



## Greymatters

Vern, you mean we're not supposed to see any gfreen background screens anymore?

Oh, we had a loss of server here yesterday afternoon and last night on parts of Vancouver Island but all okay again today...


----------



## Meridian

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Ugh... I hate posting here now. Had another power bump and it caused a database corruption. I rebuilt the table and we're back.
> 
> Anyone know of a good, cheap UPS for server grade sysytems?



Mike:  The Server/network admin at work suggested an APC brand UPS.... he says we use much bigger ones here, but that something like the following should address your needs, though it all depends on price range.  

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1388832&CatId=233


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks! I just did some testing and discovered that our current UPS is 100% dead! So it may be that it would have supported the server if it still worked. 

I also found out that for some reason DSL connection #1 never auto-reconnects on a power loss.  Again.


----------



## geo

UPS 100% dead -  Like car batteries, the UPS does have a life span - guess you've reached this one's

DSL connection reset? - if you mean the Modem, is it any different from the other one?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I swapped 3 different DSL modems in place, and connection #1 just never establishes without a kick from me on the router. The DSL modem syncs, but no connection is made, so it's the router. But connection 1 and 2 are configured exactly the same, so I'm not sure why the difference! Maybe tonight I'll swap them to see if it's the first connection slot, or the actual connection that's causing the problem.


----------



## geo

yeah - could be the slot - maybe confer with the hardware mfg/distributor if necessary


----------



## Edward Campbell

Is it only me or have we returned to the comms problem?

Suddenly, this morning, the site slowed _waaaaay_ down.

I checked and the problem involves both my computers - at this moment MILNET.CA is 'normal' under Linux, ARMY.CA is painfully slow under both Linux and MS Vista, etc.


----------



## armyvern

Edward,

I've got no slow downs on my end.

Vern


----------



## Edward Campbell

ArmyVern said:
			
		

> Edward,
> 
> I've got no slow downs on my end.
> 
> Vern



I sure have.  It appears to be a repeat of this - the network problems (in Mike's basement) we experienced before the new server hardware arrived.


----------



## armyvern

I'm getting it now ... 

Apparently it may be a _rolling_ slow-down problem. Server running it's back-up??

Or too many damn googlebots running through the strings eating up the bandwidth. I just checked and there's a great many search engines logging for "hits" right now (24 of them just on the first page ...).


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

No, it was a real problem... one of the DSL modems was down, I fixed it. Which is good, because I'm not at home right now and if the 2nd one went down too, we'd be out of luck for a week!


----------



## armyvern

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> No, it was a real problem... one of the DSL modems was down, I fixed it. Which is good, because I'm not at home right now and if the 2nd one went down too, we'd be out of luck for a week!



Well, had that occured, we'd have to live up to our threats of preventing any further vacations for you.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks, an 8 hour power outage knocked us out and kept us down on the 1st. We're back now and I have more on my "to do list" to resolve when I get back home.

Thanks for your patience.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Raye

Thanks for all your hard work Mike!!


----------



## RHFC_piper

Man... I was starting to get the shakes...  seems like army.ca has been down for weeks.   I need my fix.


but, as stated before;  Thanks for all your hard work, Mike!


----------



## ironduke57

Maybe you should try to get an some surplus diesel-generator. With all the mil and ex mil staff here it shouldn't be to hard to find an cheap possibility. 

Regards,
ironduke57


----------



## kratz

It's the network, not me. I did not hit a buttom creating a meltdown of the site.  ;D I can get my fix  now.

Mike,

 Thanks as always for the work you put into this.


----------



## Mike Baker

Thanks Mike. Crackbook just don't cut it  ;D


----------



## Bzzliteyr

What a horror as I finally find a computer upon my arrival, only to log on to Army.ca and not get a response...Great! They block it here... I was so mad at the military... turns out they aren't so bad after all, and they keep paying me!!


----------



## retiredgrunt45

I feel like and army.ca addict, cccccaaaaaannnntt, tttaakkke iiittt aanyyy morrree, pppleeassee cccooommmee bbaacckkk. Ohhhhh tthhheee pppaaiinnn!!!!!!!!!!!

Ahhhhhhhhhh, now your back, that feels much better ;D 

 Good work Mike!! As always. The fix is in.


----------



## CdnArtyWife

I was starting to detox from the lack of Army.ca in my life. Then I found some target practice for the regulars to keep their game fresh on Facebook. Hahahaha

I'd like to say thanks to Danjanou, HoM and others that provided me my small yet somewhat significant doses of anti-troll meds and flirtatious cynicism. I couldn't have survived the past week without you guys.

Now my precious is back up and running, just in time for my hubster to come home tonight and I will be "otherwise occupied" for the next couple of days...so the minor shakes will continue for me for now. 

I'll be back to regularly scheduled programming in about a week. Hahahaha

Cheers,

CAW


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

...and we're back after a power outage that lasted about 8 hours.


----------



## PMedMoe

Thank goodness!!!  ;D


----------



## Haggis

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> ...and we're back after a power outage that lasted about 8 hours.



What a relief!  During lunch yesterday I though the DND firewall had finally blocked you out.


----------



## Flip

Shouldn't Milnet.ca be designated an essential service or something?


----------



## Mike Baker

Oh yay, it goes while I'm not here  ;D


----------



## Greymatters

Mike Baker said:
			
		

> Oh yay, it goes while I'm not here  ;D



Possibly it went BECAUSE you weren't here...?

Ohhh... thats a scary thought!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks, we were off the air for 3-4 hours tonight because of a power outage. When things came back up, the database was corrupt from the crash and had to be manually fixed. Looks like it's time to get that UPS!


----------



## Remius

Figured as much given the storm we just had.  Quick and dirty though.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, it was a crazy storm... uprooted two mature trees in our neighbourhood that I've seen so far.


----------



## Michael OLeary

Surprisingly, chat worked though most of the down time.


----------



## armyvern

Suprisingly, the past two crashs, I have been offline and busy due to, uhhh, other committments.  >  Whoooooooooo!! Thanks for the excellent timing Mike.  ;D


----------



## PMedMoe

Michael O`Leary said:
			
		

> Surprisingly, chat worked though most of the down time.



That's funny.  I could get to the Army.ca main page but not to the forums.  I was in the chat room, but when I typed and hit enter, nothing came up on the screen.  Scared me for a while, I thought it was my computer.    
So, the good thing about the "down time" is that I did my weekly virus/spam/etc checks.  :


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry, another power outage...


----------



## McG

We're we down again after getting back-up today?  I see only three people online (which is slow for so early) and not much activitiy in a while.

Never mind, I see Mike came with the answer while I was typed.


----------



## George Wallace

Site speed is up and down too.


----------



## MPIKE

Having a frustrating time of it this morning with repeated Firefox messages stating that the site has timed out or is too busy and repeated refreshing of pages to get back up.

If we (as a site) are too busy, is this happening because the Guests out number the Membership?  





> 430 Guests, 46 Users (4 Hidden)


    

Is site speed impacted by this or not?

Maybe it's time for another membership drive to cull the freeloading.  ;D


----------



## armyvern

I don't think so, I've been online straight since 0530 ... and it's worked fine for me. I was also on until about 0400 ... and it was fine too.

I'm not using _Firefox_ though, perhaps it's that??   ???


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

No, the system load is low right now, and as far as I can tell there are no issues (I also use Firefox). Sounds like it could be a problem closer down the line to you Piker...


----------



## MPIKE

Thanks I'll delve deeper into my side..


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Argh... server difficulties tonight (self inflicted). I'm trying to get it sorted before I leave for a week early tomorrow morning!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Think I got it... I just got a little over-zealous with my spam filtering and it was overwhelming the server. Thank-you spammers for wasting our time and resources once more.  :threat:


----------



## PMedMoe

Must.....have....army.ca.......  :'(

Thanks Mike!!!  ;D


----------



## HItorMiss

Hey it's going to happen, no worries LMAO


----------



## deedster

Phew...thanks Mike.  I broke into a cold sweat there for awhile.


----------



## armyvern

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Argh... server difficulties tonight (self inflicted). I'm trying to get it sorted before I leave for a week early tomorrow morning!



Geez,

You think they'd clue in that we are in cahoots by now eh??

Vern travels back to the Island from Gagetown and, en route, the site goes down for maintenance.

You've timed the last 3 outages perfectly!!!  ;D

Maybe I should just post my travel schedule up ... and everyone will know what dates & times to "get another hobby" ready for??


----------



## TCBF

Take heart:

www.shotgunworld.com 

NEVER goes down!

 ;D


----------



## Flip

> Maybe I should just post my travel schedule up ... and everyone will know what dates & times to "get another hobby" ready for??



Sorry Vern - I don't quite know how to put this...........

The phrase "too much information" has crossed my mind one 
or twice already............


----------



## armyvern

Flip said:
			
		

> Sorry Vern - I don't quite know how to put this...........
> 
> The phrase "too much information" has crossed my mind one
> or twice already............



Dude!!

I travel ... the site goes down for maintenance.

If I posted my travel schedule one could get another hobby ready for those dates and times -- as in building 3D puzzles or something!!

Mind out of the gutter you -- it wasn't me!! This time.


----------



## Flip

Sorry Vern,

I must have been mistaken..... :


----------



## armyvern

Flip said:
			
		

> Sorry Vern,
> 
> I must have been mistaken..... :



This time ...


----------



## Greymatters

Was there something wrong with the site yesterday?  As no one has commented, it doesnt seem like it, but I couldnt access the site all day yesterday due to constant 'gateway timeouts'...


----------



## Edward Campbell

That was my situation (from Dallas) for yesterday afternoon/evening and for the early hours (0600-0800 Central) of this morning.


----------



## Flip

To me it's just seemed slow over the last day or so........


----------



## Roy Harding

There were intermittent problems yesterday.  Mr. Bobbitt has reset the connection and all is good again.


Roy


----------



## geo

Rotten connection for me this morning


----------



## Roy Harding

geo said:
			
		

> Rotten connection for me this morning



That's just you, geo - Mike has a *SPECIAL* connection reserved for your use only!!!

Seriously, though - yours is the only comment I know of - perhaps it's at your end?  Or perhaps it was only a momentary thing this morning.


Roy


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

No there was a problem this morning but it was fixed by ~9am or so.


----------



## Roy Harding

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> No there was a problem this morning but it was fixed by ~9am or so.



OK - but you still have that *SPECIAL* reserved line for geo, right?


----------



## geo

Heh.... yeah.
The DIN techies always keep me guessing


----------



## Mike Baker

I'm finding the site really slow now, anyone else having any trouble?


----------



## PMedMoe

I have noticed it's been slow most of the day.


----------



## IN HOC SIGNO

Mike Baker said:
			
		

> I'm finding the site really slow now, anyone else having any trouble?



It's just half an hour later in NL! ;D


----------



## Mike Baker

IN HOC SIGNO said:
			
		

> It's just half an hour later in NL! ;D


Actually, an hour and thirty minutes, seeing that Milnet.ca is based in Ontario


----------



## midget-boyd91

I didn't notice any slow running yesterday. It ran fine here for me.


----------



## armyvern

Paging Mike!!!

 :-[

Guess who broke the Photo Album again??!!??

oooops .... sorry -- must have been the chaps pic I was attempting to upload.

 :-[


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Damn Vern what is with you and breaking the photo albums  ;D


----------



## armyvern

Nfld Sapper said:
			
		

> Damn Vern what is with you and breaking the photo albums  ;D



Hmmmm, perhaps the fact that I'm no pro in the photo gallery department??  ???


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks for the heads up Vern, we're back in business. Guess the album software couldn't handle some of your uploads.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks, our ISP went down last night just before 2200 ET, and apparently didn't have anyone on call over Halloween. We're back as of about 0650 this morning.


----------



## PMedMoe

Well, I was so busy giving out candy to the ghosties, ghoulies and goblins that I didn't even attempt to access the site last night! Good job we're back up!!!


----------



## armyvern

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Sorry folks, our ISP went down last night just before 2200 ET, and apparently didn't have anyone on call over Halloween. We're back as of about 0650 this morning.



It was me Mike ... I confess.

I was trying to upload some pics of me in my costume ... but failed in my task and broke not only the photo gallery, but the whole darn site this time!!


----------



## geo

Oooh... wearing those Chaps again Vern?


----------



## GAP

geo said:
			
		

> Oooh... wearing those Chaps again Vern?



with a whip this time.....sheesh!!


----------



## Colin Parkinson

Keeps wanting me to log in all the time, not sure if it's my department warped IT polices or the site?


----------



## Greymatters

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Sorry folks, our ISP went down last night just before 2200 ET, and apparently didn't have anyone on call over Halloween. We're back as of about 0650 this morning.



Dang, I wondered why it wasnt coming up again last night...


----------



## JBoyd

Me too, was thinking it was something to do with halloween


----------



## PMedMoe

JBoyd said:
			
		

> Me too, was thinking it was something to do with halloween



It was!!  It was possessed!!  >


----------



## armyvern

PMedMoe said:
			
		

> It was!!  It was possessed!!  >



I'm not sure whether it was actually posessed or the powers of the universe were just hinting that my halloween costume pics were best not posted; no reason really to scare everyone to death after all.


----------



## armyvern

_Oooops, I did it again 

...

I'm not that innocent.__*_

 :-[

Sorry Mike, the photo gallery needs your help again!!  ;D




_*Perhaps bald, but possibly not; guaranteed to be a tad bit scary -- Britney Spears._


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks, it's fixed!


----------



## armyvern

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Thanks, it's fixed!



Gawd ...

I'm sorry!! I'm going in again tonight -- perhaps I'll manage to NOT break it this time!!  ;D


----------



## George Wallace

Another few minutes without a fix................. :-[


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, that was me... sorry... just fixing a few things that required a reboot.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Is there a problem this morning?

I can navigate throughout Army.ca from my Linux/Firefox box but not from my Windows/IE7 box. Both go to the Forums page, but the Windows/IE7 box will go no further.

Both work well with all other sites on the web.


----------



## navymich

Quite slow for me as well, but I had thought it was the DWAN on a holiday schedule.  ;D


----------



## Spanky

Slow getting in, but can move around quickly once in.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yep, one connection went down at 0828 this morning. It's back now.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Yep!

Good on both now.


----------



## PMedMoe

Anyone else finding the site slow today?  I found it was at work this afternoon but chalked that up to the DWAN.  Now, I'm home and still find it slow....


----------



## Flip

Yes, I found the site slow yesterday too. 
Seems great now though.........


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Not sure if it me or not, but the site seems slow.


----------



## geo

Gawd.... the site is terrible tonight.
Half the time my PC can't open up a thread & I have to close up and try again.

Mike.... wassup?


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Mike must be out of town  ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Everything looks OK from this end... Not sure what's going on.


----------



## midget-boyd91

Everything is going smoothly here too. Well, except for some small things like the avatars taking a while to load.
I'm using Eastlink, if that has anything to do with it.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Now its faster, not sure what you did Mike but thx.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

NFLD Sapper said:
			
		

> not sure what you did Mike



Well that makes two of us!


----------



## geo

is it possible that usage & members (paid & unpaid) are up?


----------



## armyvern

:-[

Oooops Photogallery ...

 :-[

(Maybe it's just me this time!! Here's hoping. D'oh.)


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Fixed, thanks for the heads up.


----------



## armyvern

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Fixed, thanks for the heads up.



 :-[

Sorry ... again.  ;D

Why does it always tend to break when I try to go in there?? Karma.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Maybe it just can't handle whatever photos you're trying to upload...


----------



## Mike Baker

Umm, it broke again. Vern, you in there again?


----------



## armyvern

Mike Baker said:
			
		

> Umm, it broke again. Vern, you in there again?



Damn.  ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

...and it's back.


----------



## armyvern

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> ...and it's back.



Bet you're starting to regret hiring me now aren't you!!??!!  >


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Not possible vern.


----------



## armyvern

And such a good fibber too!!


----------



## deedster

Looks like the Photo Gallery is unavailable...Vern been lurking there again??  ;D


----------



## armyvern

D Squared said:
			
		

> Looks like the Photo Gallery is unavailable...Vern been lurking there again??  ;D



I have an alibi.  ;D

Nope -- I was in the hospital until 1700hrs.

Must have been YOU this time!!


----------



## GAP

ArmyVern said:
			
		

> I have an alibi.  ;D
> 
> Nope -- I was in the hospital until 1700hrs.
> 
> Must have been YOU this time!!



It just saw a female coming and assumed it was you.....and dove into the latrine!!  ;D


----------



## Nfld Sapper

ArmyVern said:
			
		

> I have an alibi.  ;D
> 
> Nope -- I was in the hospital until 1700hrs.
> 
> Must have been YOU this time!!



Hope everything is alright there Vern.


----------



## armyvern

NFLD Sapper said:
			
		

> Hope everything is alright there Vern.



I'm good.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry for the outage this morning. I tried two different upgrades and was blocked both times. It was an hour's downtime with no successful result.  

I'll have to re-attempt at a later date.


----------



## Mike Baker

Ahh I see. Thanks Mike, I was getting the shakes again


----------



## George Wallace

Are you tinkering again this weekend Mike?

There have been at least three outages in the last twelve hours.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yep, last tinker was just before 1100 ET this morning.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Folks,

Tonight's downtime was just me... upgrading the system BIOS. I finally managed to get it done, though unfortunately it did not fix the issue I was hoping.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Thanks for the update.


----------



## Mike Baker

Oh, the site was actually down, eh? Never knew, since I had no monitor since TUESDAY  Now I have something I think is from the 80's :


----------



## NL_engineer

Looks like you will get more study time  ;D


----------



## Mike Baker

NL_engineer said:
			
		

> Looks like you will get more study time  ;D


 I bite my thumb at you sir!


----------



## NL_engineer

Mike Baker said:
			
		

> I bite my thumb at you sir!



and I'll be seeing you on BMQ  ushup:  >


----------



## Nfld Sapper

NL_engineer said:
			
		

> and I'll be seeing you on BMQ  ushup:  >



No you won't, SQ maybe


----------



## Mike Baker

NL_engineer said:
			
		

> and I'll be seeing you on BMQ  ushup:  >


Oh poop ;D


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Was it me or did the site just crash?


----------



## Yrys

It wasn't just you. I had a white blank for more then a moment...


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Just testing the new snow storm theme.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

lol too funny Mike.


----------



## armyvern

Fuck.

Ooooops ... there goes the photo gallery!!  :-[


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Working fine for me...


----------



## geo

spotty from over here in Montreal.
Works for a bit, then slows down to a trickle and chokes up.... other web sites are working OK so it's gotta be my direct line to army.ca that's suffering from clogged arteries.


----------



## Mike Baker

Fine here for me.


----------



## armyvern

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Working fine for me...





> Error (ERROR_STORAGE_FAILURE)in modules/core/classes/GalleryStorage/GalleryStorageExtras.class at line 1001 (GalleryCoreApi::error)
> in modules/core/classes/GalleryStorage.class at line 505 (GalleryStorageExtras::addMapEntry)
> in modules/core/classes/GalleryCoreApi.class at line 2841 (GalleryStorage::addMapEntry)
> in modules/core/classes/GalleryEmbed.class at line 846 (GalleryCoreApi::addMapEntry)
> in /var/www/html/forums/Sources/Gallery.php at line 665 (GalleryEmbed::addExternalIdMapEntry)
> in /var/www/html/forums/Sources/Gallery.php at line 955
> in /var/www/html/forums/Sources/Gallery.php at line 196
> in ??? at line 0
> in /var/www/html/forums/index.php at line 131



uhmmm ... not for me!!

I will take it then Mike, that your move to ban me from there so that I couldn't screw it up anymore has worked!!  ;D

Daaaaaammmmmn.


----------



## NL_engineer

Vern, you have to stop looking at the photo gallery  :cheers:


----------



## armyvern

NL_engineer said:
			
		

> Vern, you have to stop looking at the photo gallery  :cheers:



I can't help it!! There's pics of men in uniform in there ...

and I do so love seeing men in uniform ...  :'(


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Vern, any luck now?


----------



## armyvern

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Vern, any luck now?



Sadly ...



> Error (ERROR_STORAGE_FAILURE)in modules/core/classes/GalleryStorage/GalleryStorageExtras.class at line 1001 (GalleryCoreApi::error)
> in modules/core/classes/GalleryStorage.class at line 505 (GalleryStorageExtras::addMapEntry)
> in modules/core/classes/GalleryCoreApi.class at line 2841 (GalleryStorage::addMapEntry)
> in modules/core/classes/GalleryEmbed.class at line 846 (GalleryCoreApi::addMapEntry)
> in /var/www/html/forums/Sources/Gallery.php at line 665 (GalleryEmbed::addExternalIdMapEntry)
> in /var/www/html/forums/Sources/Gallery.php at line 955
> in /var/www/html/forums/Sources/Gallery.php at line 196
> in ??? at line 0
> in /var/www/html/forums/index.php at line 131



Nope.  :'(

All right everyone ... send pics to me directly!! Uniform pics ... tan uniform pics ... leather uniform pics ... I'm good with 'em!!  >


----------



## dangerboy

Was it just my connection or was the site down earlier this afternoon?

Edited to fix spelling mistake


----------



## Yrys

dangerboy said:
			
		

> What is just my connection



Nope, not just you...


----------



## Mike Baker

No problem here.


----------



## PMedMoe

The site was down for a while this evening and is taking a long time to load right now.  :'(

Edit to add:  It was only slow for a bit and seems to be okay now.  ;D


----------



## George Wallace

Twice now in the last hour.

Mike

DSL connection 216.58.85.243 down twice.


----------



## karl28

It was off line earlier but now it's working fine .


----------



## Yrys

Mike Baker said:
			
		

> No problem here.



Ok, folks, lets all move into his house  .


----------



## George Wallace

Batten down the hatches........ grab a wobbly pop.....DSL connection 216.58.41.151 is down!! .........Here we go again........Wait for it!


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

The good news: I didn't break it.

The bad news: I didn't fix it.

No idea what happened there, but I'll try to keep a eye on things.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah, we were out there for a bit... it was our ISP and now we're back.


----------



## armyvern

Jaccuzi'ing it.

Sitting here in the NCR, more like The Canada School of Public Service -- _apparently_ learning sumthin' aka Asticou (nice set-up / a girl could get used to a place like this!!) -- 
(and hot tubs at night) ... BUT ... still lamenting the fact that my *darn photo gallery is still not working for me*.  :'(

People will pay ...  >

Need beers ... it's only lunch time!!


----------



## George Wallace

Just went through a five or so minute outage...........


----------



## armyvern

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Just went through a five or so minute outage...........



Yep. Here too ... One of the DSL connections is down.  

But, I'm OK now -- but still not getting into the photo gallery.  :'(


----------



## navymich

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Just went through a five or so minute outage...........



Ditto.  And things are still a bit slow loading and close to freezing at some points.


----------



## Yrys

ArmyVern (Female type) said:
			
		

> But, I'm OK now -- but still not getting into the photo gallery.  :'(



I was going to offer to send you by email any pics from the gallery of men in uniform that you could be thirsty for  ,
but I've got a white blank when I try to enter it...



			
				Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Just testing the new snow storm theme.



So carefull of accidents with blunt objects, people, if you get it, because Mike B.
put 





> There's a tank... and a ship and a jet... but they're hidden behind a wall of blowing snow.


 


Édith : I didn't proof-read carefully, so I forgot a "to"   (Does uniform take a 's' ?)


----------



## Mike Baker

I have no problem here with the speed, and when I look out my window, all I see is snow


----------



## Mike Baker

I just got knocked off


----------



## armyvern

Another DSL connection is down ...

 :'(


----------



## midget-boyd91

I hate to say this, but I'm glad that you folks couldn't get on here. That means my computer isn't dying, it's just the site.    

Midget


----------



## armyvern

uncle-midget-boyd said:
			
		

> I hate to say this, but I'm glad that you folks couldn't get on here. That means my computer isn't dying, it's just the site.
> 
> Midget



The site has more than one DSL connection, but when one goes down it will affect some users and not others. Sometimes it lasts for just seconds, sometimes minutes ... if you happen to be linked in through the crashed DSL. Upon trying to access the site again, you may hit another DSL that is not affected and will be good to go. Which is all a whole lot better than every DSL going down!! Egads!!  :-X

(It looks like the affected DSL is back up now, so everyone should be good to go)

Vern


----------



## midget-boyd91

ArmyVern (Female type) said:
			
		

> The site has more than one DSL connection, but when one goes down it will affect some users and not others. Sometimes it lasts for just seconds, sometimes minutes ... if you happen to be linked in through the crashed DSL. Upon trying to access the site again, you may hit another DSL that is not affected and will be good to go. Which is all a whole lot better than every DSL going down!! Egads!!  :-X
> 
> (It looks like the affected DSL is back up now, so everyone should be good to go)
> 
> Vern



Surprisingly enough, I think I understood that  . Thanks for clarifying and explaining that techno-mumbo-jumbo to a simple little Midget such as I  .

Midget


----------



## Mike Baker

ArmyVern (Female type) said:
			
		

> The site has more than one DSL connection, but when one goes down it will affect some users and not others. Sometimes it lasts for just seconds, sometimes minutes ... if you happen to be linked in through the crashed DSL. Upon trying to access the site again, you may hit another DSL that is not affected and will be good to go. Which is all a whole lot better than every DSL going down!! Egads!!  :-X
> 
> (It looks like the affected DSL is back up now, so everyone should be good to go)
> 
> Vern


Oi, good here now. I hate when that happens.




			
				uncle-midget-boyd said:
			
		

> Surprisingly enough, I think I understood that  . Thanks for clarifying and explaining that techno-mumbo-jumbo to a simple little Midget such as I  .
> 
> Midget


+1. Even though I am no Midget


----------



## armyvern

Mike Baker said:
			
		

> +1. Even though I am no Midget



With the winkie on the end of his statement -- I'm suspecting that he is no midget either.


----------



## Mike Baker

ArmyVern (Female type) said:
			
		

> With the winkie on the end of his statement -- I'm suspecting that he is no midget either.


Oh, he is. I've seen pictures and heard the stories. ^-^


----------



## midget-boyd91

ArmyVern (Female type) said:
			
		

> With the winkie on the end of his statement -- I'm suspecting that he is no midget either.


I am no midget. I am *THE* Midget. Hants County's tallest one.


> Oh, he is. I've seen pictures and heard the stories.  ^-^


Pictures? This one?





_Edited to include image in response to Mike Baker's post._

Midget


----------



## armyvern

uncle-midget-boyd said:
			
		

> I am no midget. I am *THE* Midget. Hants County's tallest one.
> 
> Midget



As I suspected. Nicknames we earn have a tendancy to fit us just "oh so" well!!

I am known as "the shy one" aka "Queen Shy" , and I think that I am the only person in NATO with a nickname that actually _is_ factual.


----------



## George Wallace

This is not good!

DSL connection 216.58.41.151 is down!!         DSL connection 216.58.85.243 is down!!


----------



## armyvern

George Wallace said:
			
		

> This is not good!
> 
> DSL connection 216.58.41.151 is down!!         DSL connection 216.58.85.243 is down!!



Well, she's back up now!!  ;D

Yay!!

*~Whew~* now _that_ was a quickie!!  >


----------



## armyvern

ArmyVern said:
			
		

> Well, she's back up now!!  ;D
> 
> Yay!!
> 
> *~Whew~* now _that_ was a quickie!!  >



Flug!! Perhaps I spoketh too soon!!  :-[

Another is down now:



> DSL connection 216.58.41.151 is down!!



Damn, and back up by the time I had this typed up --- you guys getting wierd weather in your parts or what dammit!!??


----------



## armyvern

Down again!!

On the bus -- off the bus.

It's just like ...






work.


----------



## Yrys

ArmyVern said:
			
		

> It's just like ...
> 
> work.



Mike might have thought that you miss work during evenings .


----------



## armyvern

Yrys said:
			
		

> Mike might have thought that you miss work during evenings .



Crap. Now two are down again!!



> DSL connection 216.58.41.151 is down!! DSL connection 216.58.85.243 is down!!



And, I AM working ... diligently getting my DEU together and my boots shone for Branch Parade at 0700hrs tomorrow; can't you tell??   ???


----------



## Yrys

ArmyVern said:
			
		

> diligently getting my DEU together and my boots shone for Branch Parade at 0700hrs tomorrow; can't you tell??   ???



Sorry, didn't thought you were playing with Distinctive Environmental Uniform, ther is no stream video...

Thought you were in your "الكائن العاري شيء جميل جدًّا ! " phase (if I can trusted the translation I got from the web ... ) .


----------



## armyvern

Yrys said:
			
		

> ...
> Thought you were in your "الكائن العاري شيء جميل جدًّا ! " phase (if I can trusted the translation I got from the web ... ) .



 ;D

Dependant upon what site you're using --- they are all pretty close.


----------



## armyvern

I will NOT show up to parade in that particular suit.


----------



## Yrys

Well, most guys AND some women would like it!  

Don't you want to be appreciated ?  ???


----------



## armyvern

:-[

Ooooops. Guess what I broke again?

 :-\


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Fixed!


----------



## Mike Baker

Whoa, the site went down last night, an just now back up. Thanks Mike!


Baker


----------



## armyvern

Baker said:
			
		

> Whoa, the site went down last night, an just now back up. Thanks Mike!
> 
> 
> Baker



Hmmm, I was on here all night (and so was Bruce for the most part ... and YRYS) ...  ???


----------



## Mike Baker

ArmyVern said:
			
		

> Hmmm, I was on here all night (and so was Bruce for the most part ... and YRYS) ...  ???


Yeah it was down for me. Went at about 11:00 local last night (needless to say I then proceeded to go to bed since the site was down), an first this morning when I tried, it still never worked until the third try.


Baker


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Odd... it was up and alive as far as I can tell.


----------



## armyvern

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Odd... it was up and alive as far as I can tell.



Perhaps _Cheeky_ has travelled to the rock & has eaten his computers wiring?


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Heheh, well aren't you cheeky!


----------



## armyvern

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Heheh, well aren't you cheeky!


I do sooooo try to be.  >


----------



## GUNS

You have to understand where Baker is located on the Rock. :'(

He gets today's newspaper tomorrow.
He is so far in the woods they have to pump sunlight to him. ;D

He thinks the signal lights at intersections are Xmas decorations. 

Sorry Baker, you are on the wrong side of the overpass.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

GUNS said:
			
		

> You have to understand where Baker is located on the Rock. :'(
> 
> He gets today's newspaper tomorrow.
> He is so far in the woods they have to pump sunlight to him. ;D
> 
> He thinks the signal lights at intersections are Xmas decorations.
> 
> Sorry Baker, you are on the wrong side of the overpass.



 :rofl:


----------



## Mike Baker

GUNS said:
			
		

> You have to understand where Baker is located on the Rock. :'(
> 
> He gets today's newspaper tomorrow.
> He is so far in the woods they have to pump sunlight to him. ;D
> 
> He thinks the signal lights at intersections are Xmas decorations.
> 
> Sorry Baker, you are on the wrong side of the overpass.


We don't get news papers for a day, we get them for a week.

I am right beside the ocean, not deep into the woods. 

And yes, I thought they took the lights off the christmas tree for some odd reason.

Whats an overpass? ;D




			
				NFLD Sapper said:
			
		

> :rofl:


Quiet you 

Baker


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Don't make me get a tasking at CFLRS and "instruct" you  ;D


----------



## Mike Baker

NFLD Sapper said:
			
		

> Don't make me get a tasking at CFLRS and "instruct" you  ;D


Sorry MCpl


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Baker said:
			
		

> Sorry MCpl



op:


----------



## Nfld Sapper

So ...... where we knocked off earlier?


----------



## 211RadOp

I think so, other wise I had problems


----------



## Yrys

NFLD Sapper said:
			
		

> So ...... where we knocked off earlier?



"Aujourd'hui à 20:37:24
Nouveau 	Aujourd'hui à 17:51:59"

No post for almost 3 hours, I would say yes ...


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

It's because I'm away. Figures.  

P.S. To everyone who's PM'd me please be patient... I've had spotty Internet connectivity and have a lot to catch up on.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

LOL you knew it would happen Mike.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yep. I might as well just post my schedule here so we know when to get a good book.


----------



## Rodahn

Oh well, it did allow me to actually get some work done........


----------



## NL_engineer

Hey Mike what happened this morning (around 0545 hrs EST)?  I tried logging in but kept getting a database error  :


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

That's exactly what happened... a database corruption. Luckily it was easily fixed.


----------



## Mike Baker

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> That's exactly what happened... a database corruption. Luckily it was easily fixed.


I was scared Mike 


Baker


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Me too, initially... db corruption can be a nightmare to recover from... or it can be one simple command. In this case it was the latter.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks, had an outage this morning... made a minor change to the network at 0700, rebooted and the server got stuck at the GRUB install screen. Not good, and I couldn't really spend much time on it but I did eventually get things back.

Sorry for the inconvenience.


Cheers
Mike


----------



## Mike Baker

No problem, Mike.

At least it wasn't almost a week again this time 


-Deadpan


----------



## geo

not a problem Mike.... actualy got some work in this morning..... ;D


----------



## NL_engineer

geo said:
			
		

> not a problem Mike.... actualy got some work in this morning..... ;D



We got sent home for most of this morning, so I had to find something else to kill 3 hours with


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

The power was out here from about 2100 to 2315 tonight. We're back and the lights are on again.


----------



## geo

Mike.... ya gotta look afer those power bills


----------



## Mike Baker

Oh, so it wasn't my mind telling me, in an odd way, to go to bed. ;D


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Did we just drop a connection or two?


----------



## Mike Baker

I thought that it was just my internet that went for a few minutes. Guess not...


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Not sure if its me or not but site is slow to load


----------



## PMedMoe

Yep, it's slow, just got a time out.


----------



## ironduke57

Dead slow here (Germany).

Regards,
ironduke57


----------



## Mike Baker

Running fine here ;D


----------



## Edward Campbell

I got a time out on Windows/Chrome and dead _slo o o o ow_ on Linux/Firefox about 20 minutes ago. It's fine now here (Dallas, TX).


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Did we drop another connection or two?


----------



## George Wallace

I would say yes.  Good thing I had other pressing things to do.......Looks like we are back up and running again.


----------



## George Wallace

......But slow as molasses to load/Post.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

George Wallace said:
			
		

> ......But slow as molasses to load/Post.



Loading ok from my end....

EDITED TO ADD

posting fine too......


----------



## George Wallace

Seems I have one screen that loads faster than the other.


----------



## PMedMoe

Anyone else getting page load errors?  Since about 1600 hrs, I have had a couple of outages with the site saying that the internet connection was interrupted while loading but other net pages loaded fine.


----------



## George Wallace

Yes.  I had problems as early as 1530.  The site just reloaded here for me.


----------



## PMedMoe

Me too.  Good thing I had supper and CSI to keep me occupied.  ;D


----------



## kratz

I had the same problem until 3 minutes ago. Thankfully no need to experience those dreadful DTs.  ;D


----------



## Mike Baker

I had trouble all day. Just started to act normal in the past hour.


----------



## Journeyman

FrostyHazard said:
			
		

> *I had trouble all day. Just started to act normal in the past hour.*



Well done you. Now don't skip your meds again!


----------



## Mike Baker

Journeyman said:
			
		

> Well done you. Now don't skip your meds again!


Now THAT is funny! ;D


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

We were down (both connections) for a couple hours starting at about 1600 ET yesterday. Our ISP gave out, so there wasn't anything to do but wait unfortunately...


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks, we were unexpectedly down for about 90 minutes this evening... I'm still investigating the cause, but it seems like it might be a bad stick of RAM.


----------



## Gunner98

Mike,

I have the silly advertisements all over my army.ca desktop - the ones subscriber do have to see normally.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Simian,

As some (but not all) subscribers become Mentors, their Subscriber group membership goes away. I've reinstated yours.

Cheers
Mike


----------



## oldmtler

I had a hard time loading the website a couple of hours ago, about 23:00-23:30 hours EST 16 September.  It took 6 minutes to  load and didn't load completely.  I checked and there were no problems on my end.


----------



## Edward Campbell

I'm having a repeat of the old "one dropped connection" problem: Army.ca loads and runs quickly on my Linux/Firefox box but does not open at all on _Vista_/Firefox.

Milnet.ca loads, very, very slowly on _Vista_/Firefox. Army.ca opens, partially, on _Vista_/Chrome.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Flowing like molasses here at the home of the army.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Can't be one dropped connection now, one [faster] connection is all we have. If we have one dropped connection it'll be pretty obvious from here on out.  Is it still slow? Being night visitors, you may have come in when a backup was running, which can really slow things down...


----------



## Edward Campbell

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Can't be one dropped connection now, one [faster] connection is all we have. If we have one dropped connection it'll be pretty obvious from here on out.  Is it still slow? Being night visitors, you may have come in when a backup was running, which can really slow things down...



I thought that (one faster connection) was the case which is why I was surprised at the symptoms.

Things are still:

1. Normal on my Linux/Firefox box;

2. Slow on _Vista_/Firefox - the other box; and

3. No connection, at all, on _Vista_/IE8.

The rest of the net is fine on both boxes.

Those are almost exactly the same symptoms as the late, unlamented "one dropped connection" problem.


----------



## Edward Campbell

And slow but working on Windows 7/IE8. (Same box as my Linux setup.)


----------



## Edward Campbell

Page loading is sporadic; right now _slooooooow_ to not at all on both Linux/Firefox and Vista/any browser. Army.ca forums comes up quickly but then dead slow to nothing at all most of the time. Now and again a page will load normally, quickly and then the crawl returns.

The rest of the web is fine for both machines.

It's been this way, for me, for a few hours.


----------



## dangerboy

I was the same way at home using Vista with Firefox, now at work using the DIN it seems to be running fine.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Interesting... might be a DNS problem. If you open a DOS/command prompt window and type:



		Code:
	

nslookup army.ca


You should get something that looks like this:



		Code:
	

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    army.ca
Address:  24.222.17.250


If you see a different address than 24.222.17.250, that's the problem.


----------



## Edward Campbell

I get 24.222.17.250, so ...

Just minutes ago I opened the Canadian Politics page, then a thread and everything was fine. I came here (Army.ca Status ~) and everything is slow again.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Odd... but I think it may be an issue with our connection. I'll keep digging.


----------



## GAP

Last night about 8:30/9pm it slowed to the point the threads never loaded overnight (firefox), but this AM both at home and here it's fine.


----------



## Roy Harding

My experience since last evening has been similar to that described by E.R. Campbell.

For the record, I'm on MacIntosh using Firefox.  Mac using Safari is the same.

All other sites I've accessed are fine.


----------



## Edward Campbell

So, it's not just me! 

But it's fine, right this minute, in this thread. But I could not even load another thread less than five minutes ago.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Not much change:

Linux/Firefox: site opens and pages load fairly quickly;

Vista/Firefox: site opens but cannot get past Forums page

Vista/Chrome: site opens partially;

Vista/IE8: site does not even open.

Other internet site work fine on both computers and with all browsers.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Maybe try a nslookup forums.army.ca (or use the hostname of your choice here). Could be some parts are resolving fine and others are not.

I'm unable to find any problems so far...


----------



## Edward Campbell

It returns: 24.222.17.250


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

OK. I blocked a spider that was crawling the site; it was a marketing site, not a useful search engine. I was hoping that might have made a difference, but maybe not...


----------



## mariomike

Thanks, Mike. Please don't get eye twitch again. We need you!


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> OK. I blocked a spider that was crawling the site; it was a marketing site, not a useful search engine. I was hoping that might have made a difference, but maybe not...



Seems to have worked Mike!


----------



## oldmtler

It's worked for me too.  Quick resolve for an annoying problem.


----------



## Edward Campbell

That seems to have done it.

Funny, though, why my Linux box would, usually, work while the MS _Vista_ box would, usually, not.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

That is odd... I have no explanation for that!


----------



## oldmtler

Now I seem to be missing the menu buttons in two places.  I tried to get a screen shot.  But in case I didn't do it right.  The buttons under the top pull down box, the ones that start with "Home" on the left.  All I can see is the button marked "Gallery".  I can "feel" the other buttons there.  The same with the buttons on the bottom of the posts in the thread I am viewing.
I had to "feel" for the reply button to post this.
The screen is appearing a little different.  The top pull down box is different.  I have an ad as normal on the left hand side of the screen.  Then my avatar.  The next (Main) Box only has the numbers 654 in it.  That is the difference.
I hope that I've explained it so that it can be understood.  I'm an engineer, but I work with antennas and am too old to be anything of a computer expert.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Hmm, sounds like some of the page is being blocked... are you using the same computer/browser as before? Are you logging in from the same location?

Might be there's a firewall between us now, stripping out stuff it considers "dangerous".


----------



## Occam

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Hmm, sounds like some of the page is being blocked... are you using the same computer/browser as before? Are you logging in from the same location?
> 
> Might be there's a firewall between us now, stripping out stuff it considers "dangerous".



It actually sounds like the profile language issue again, Mike.


----------



## oldmtler

Same computer, I was uncertain of it because it is 3 days old.  An HP running an Intel E5200 chip and 8Gb of RAM.  I'm still running VISTA and IE8.  It only happens when I sign in.  Otherwise it is all normal.


----------



## Occam

oldmtler said:
			
		

> Same computer, I was uncertain of it because it is 3 days old.  An HP running an Intel E5200 chip and 8Gb of RAM.  I'm still running VISTA and IE8.  It only happens when I sign in.  Otherwise it is all normal.



Does it look like the behaviour I reported in this thread?

http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/85534.0.html

If it is, I hesitate to tell you how to fix it until Mike has had a chance to look at it and find out why the language keeps changing.


----------



## oldmtler

In short, yes it does look similar.

I just noticed the following message at the bottom of the screen:
"Please notify this forum's administrator that this site is missing the copyright message for SMF so they can rectify the situation. Display of copyright is a legal requirement. For more information on this please visit the Simple Machines website."
This is printed/overprinted 3 times.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Thanks Occam, that might just be it. oldmtler, does it look any better now?


----------



## oldmtler

I CAN SEE!
Attempted humour aside, thank yiou Mr Bobbit and Occam.

John Davis


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Fantastic, thanks Occam! And, not to sound too much like I strolled out of a cheap WW II film, but I believe I've also permanently fixed 'the German problem'.


----------



## Occam

You're very welcome.

And here all along I thought "the German problem" was "two steins, only one mouth"   :cheers:


----------



## oldmtler

I experienced a short outage between 21:03 and 21:11 est.


----------



## Edward Campbell

I've been having periodic, fairly short outages, too. Both my Linux and Vista boxes fail to even "find" the site for five minutes then all is OK again.


----------



## oldmtler

I tried pinging the site during my outage and didn't get a reply.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Ping doesn't normally work, so it's not a good gauge of the site's availability. (It's ignored by the firewall)

The outage last night was caused by the ongoing house reno... we accidentally knocked the Internet connection down.


----------



## oldmtler

Things happen.
What I find refreshing on this site is the honesty.
Are you having fun with your reno?  We just finished putting in a suite over the garage for daughter #1.  It was a learning experience my wife kept telling me.  ( dealing with the city was)


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

The reno is fun mostly because it's a new (to us) house, so there's lots to learn. All the old, well understood but unfinished problems are gone, and we're on to a whole new set. It's a journey of discovery. 

Right now, the cable connecting us to the Internet runs about 80 feet and has 3 splices in it. Every once in a while I talk to someone who envisions Army.ca running out of a high-tech temperature controlled data centre somewhere under bright white lights... and I have to laugh.

It used to be on my office which doubled as a spare bedroom; I always pitied my guests because the combined noise of the server and the UPS are enough to drive most people crazy... That's why a I always recommend a good stiff drink before bed.


----------



## oldmtler

I work in a high-tech temperature controlled enviroment for an electronics sompany.  People imagine that we must work in a stress free atmosphere in regards to our IT system.  I can only dream that it was true.  
Thank God that I spend a fair amount of time offsite and working from home.


----------



## mariomike

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Every once in a while I talk to someone who envisions Army.ca running out of a high-tech temperature controlled data centre somewhere under bright white lights... and I have to laugh.



Actually, I envisioned Milnet H.Q. as something like the Diefenbunker!


----------



## Edward Campbell

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> OK. I blocked a spider that was crawling the site; it was a marketing site, not a useful search engine. I was hoping that might have made a difference, but maybe not...




Have we got another spider?

I'm getting similar symptoms: painfully slow page loading with random periods of "normal" (quick) performance.

Once again the Linux box seems to work better than the Microsoft box.


----------



## kratz

E.R.C.

I agree, I have the same issue here with drag as well.


----------



## PMedMoe

Me too.   :'(


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Unfortunately not... nothing obvious from the logs at this point...


----------



## kratz

Pages are loading like spagettie (some long and some short) at the moment.


----------



## Edward Campbell

It's all good this morning.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Glad to hear it... I have been tinkering in the background but may end up causing more damage than good.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Ah that would explain the times I couldn't connect today


----------



## MARS

I have no idea what my current problem is - I cannot seem to post a reply from my DIN computer - or my GPNET computers.

I don't even know if this reply will work.

I keep getting some "505" error - "page not supported".


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sounds like the security software shaking you down... it unfortunately happens from time to time, especially if your post has links or text that looks "dangerous" to the system. You can always try trimming out suspect parts of the post and see what gets through and what doesn't.

Unfortunately I don't have a better system at the moment... Given the nature of being a public Internet server, I'd rather see a few legitimate posts dropped than the alternative. A sentiment that's driven home every time I watch the security log of thwarted attacks rolling past in real time.


----------



## MARS

ahhh...maybe that is it.  I have been trying to paste text from Microsoft Word (Milnet spellcheck does not work on my DIN computer).  Thanks.


----------



## MARS

Any idea what "dangerous" text might look like Mike?  I am still having issues, trying to type a lengthy post - for the tenth time today  

I just typed it directly into the reply box from my home computer, but no joy.  Is there a time limit or character limit -I mean, it is not that long...

I am trying to post into this thread

http://forums.navy.ca/forums/index.php?action=post;topic=89793.0;num_replies=8

Maybe it is locked and I can't see that or something?  I am now getting a "format not supported error"

_Edited to add_: Disregard this transmission.  I tried what you said Mike and submitted my post paragraph by paragraph until it stopped working.  The offending text was apparently "OS-AB-LS" (with forward slants as separators)  which I amended.  Works fine now.


----------



## GAP

type it up in Word, spellcheck, then copy & paste to notepad. 

This strips all Word formating from the text. It should post without trouble after that...


----------



## MARS

thanks GAP - I got it to work.  It was the use of forward slants that appeared to be causing the problem.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Makes a certain amount of sense, / looks like a path or a URL, and in conjunction with certain other letters or characters, can take on the look of an attack to the guard dogs.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Ooops... file another one under sloppy administration. I unplugged the hub that services our connection by accident. Took far too long to diagnose "not plugged in"!  :-[


----------



## Occam

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Ooops... file another one under sloppy administration. I unplugged the hub that services our connection by accident. Took far too long to diagnose "not plugged in"!  :-[



One of those "demotivator" photos comes to mind...I'll only post the link.   

http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/5517/1223817466230nb2.jpg


----------



## Edward Campbell

It has been very slow here (Ottawa) for the past hour plus. It can take one or even two minutes to load a page.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Things have improved slightly: it took just under 40 seconds to load the message above, and only about 15 seconds to load this REPLY page.


----------



## PMedMoe

Yes, it's been painfully slow for me this afternoon, too.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Took the server down tonight for one last move. It's now in it's final resting place.


----------



## Colin Parkinson

So did I miss something, army.ca has a new look, pale green melting into white? I kind of liked the old Green, being an up and coming old fart not liking change.  :nod:


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yep, it's a pretty big change:

http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/90335.0/topicseen.html

What you're seeing right now is still the first iteration. It will get better. Or worse. Hard to say yet, it's still early.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks... an upgrade to the intrusion detection system didn't go well. In fact, it went roughly like a _Terminator_ movie in that the system considered us all a threat and took action accordingly.

I successfully sent myself back in time so I could save humanity and get that lotto ticket I missed out on.

All is well.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry folks... the "last" of the electrical work is now done.

Who knew Army.ca was on _that_ breaker...?


----------



## X Royal

Extremely slow today. Took over 4 mins. to pull up this tread and post this reply. I'm on dial-up but it's not that slow. Normal speeds on other sites I visit.

Rick


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Well, another day, another outage. Our ISP issued us new static IP address last week and didn't tell me. So when they decommissioned the old ones tonight, we were blown off the air.

It may take a up to two hours for the DNS to fully propagate for everyone, but if you're reading this message, it already has for you.


----------



## Nfld Sapper

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Well, another day, another outage. Our ISP issued us new static IP address last week and didn't tell me. So when they decommissioned the old ones tonight, we were blown off the air.
> 
> It may take a up to two hours for the DNS to fully propagate for everyone, but if you're reading this message, it already has for you.



I just thought your hamsters fell off their wheels.........

 ;D


----------



## GAP

Wheeeee!!! we're off dialup!!!!  ;D


----------



## karl28

Wow the speed is pretty decent at this moment  ;D


----------



## kratz

karl28 said:
			
		

> Wow the speed is pretty decent at this moment  ;D



*SSshhh* Don't jinx it.  :nod:


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Hi folks,

Unfortunately we were off the air last night due to a typo on my part. I had previously made a change to the web server configuration and introduced a problem. When the server went through it's cooldown process late last night, the web server could not restart successfully because of this typo, and so it stayed down until this morning when I realized what had happened.

The good news is, this won't happen again.

Sorry for the inconvenience!


Cheers
Mike


----------



## 2010newbie

Mike Bobbitt said:
			
		

> Unfortunately we were off the air last night due to a typo



I was a little paronoid and I thought I had milnet.ca blacklisted by the Chinese gov't. Whenever I tried to go to the site, I got the same error as when you try and go to YouTube or Facebook...... and yes, I am going to stop viewing the China Superthread from here...


----------



## Occam

Is there something wonky going on right now with the site?  I'm getting most of the site displayed in a very strange manner...   ???


----------



## Occam

And as quickly as it started - it's fixed.  Hmmmm....


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...


----------



## dangerboy

I don't know if it was a freak incident or not but today from about 8 PM till 9 PM (Alberta Time) I could not access the site properly.  None of the threads would open and I would get a message saying " took to long to load".


----------



## karl28

I am no sure if there was a problem after my last post I could no longer access the site either .


----------



## George Wallace

A lot of "Server too busy" ERRORs tonight.


----------



## Cat

George Wallace said:
			
		

> A lot of "Server too busy" ERRORs tonight.



I thought that was just my computer hating on me....good to know it wasn't...this thing almost went through a window.


----------



## 211RadOp

I put it to lag from the sandbox, but I guess not.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

I've pushed the backup jobs so they run later at night/earlier in the morning. Hopefully that will give the west coast a bit more breathing room at night.


----------



## Edward Campbell

I have an odd _symptom_ this morning: Army.ca comes up blank - but with no error messages, just a blank screen and a "Done" down at the bottom. Milnet.ca, Navy.ca and Air-Force.ca all work fine.  :


----------



## Edward Campbell

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I have an odd _symptom_ this morning: Army.ca comes up blank - but with no error messages, just a blank screen and a "Done" down at the bottom. Milnet.ca, Navy.ca and Air-Force.ca all work fine.  :




Oops: at 0600 (EDST) Army.ca works again.  ???


----------



## 57Chevy

I couldn't log out last night.
I couldn't even get back to the site, but I snipped the error page for your scrutiny.

HTTP Error 500 Internal server error
http://www.checkupdown.com/status/E500.html


----------



## cn

57Chevy said:
			
		

> I couldn't log out last night.
> I couldn't even get back to the site, but I snipped the error page for your scrutiny.
> 
> HTTP Error 500 Internal server error
> http://www.checkupdown.com/status/E500.html



I was getting this same "HTTP Error 500 Internal server error" last night.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Yeah there was a corrupted cache file which brought the Forums down for about 6 hours overnight. I fixed the issue this morning but unfortunately we were out all night. Hopefully some of you got some sleep.


----------



## George Wallace

I have got a Virus Check running at the moment, but the site seems to have been slow, and offline for a few minutes there about fifteen minutes ago.   Error problem was no connectivity with the server.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Boss,...ya can't be fading out on my night shifts.

Online
Bruce Monkhouse, Mike Bobbitt, 

No one else had to stick it out I guess.


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

Bruce, I'll give you the number to the Bat Phone so you can signal me directly in the event of an emergency. 

This morning's outage was a little unusual, a critical file for the forums became corrupted and caused everything to grind to a halt. I am still investigating, but it looks like natural causes so far.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

"Bat phone"??  Somehow I more envisioned you responding to the search light with a geek figure in it..................


----------



## Mike Bobbitt

...with a utility belt full of iPhones and blackberries.


----------



## cn

Was there a server problem this morning? I was unable to get on the site about an hour ago and was just wondering if it was a problem on my end or not...


----------



## Edward Campbell

ColdNorth said:
			
		

> Was there a server problem this morning? I was unable to get on the site about an hour ago and was just wondering if it was a problem on my end or not...




I noted a brief (five minute?) outage at about 1000 Hrs Eastern time.


----------



## cn

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I noted a brief (five minute?) outage at about 1000 Hrs Eastern time.



Couldn't say how long, I tried to get on for about five minutes.  When I was unable to I went for a run / workout and when I returned ~an hour later I got on no problem...

So it wasn't just me, thanks!


----------



## Scott

Duh, Steve Jobs died!


----------



## PMedMoe

Scott said:
			
		

> Duh, Steve Jobs died!



Then it shouldn't have affected anyone with a Mac.


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## Scott

Mine literally just arrived, wearing a black armband in prep for the iWake and the iFuneral. 

To pay homage, Mike had an iOutage.


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## Nfld Sapper

Scott said:
			
		

> Mine literally just arrived, wearing a black armband in prep for the iWake and the iFuneral.
> 
> To pay homage, Mike had an iOutage.



 :rofl:

 :cheers:


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## Scott

iTrouty?


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## GAP

Scott said:
			
		

> iTrouty?



We gotta wait for it to die or collapse first.....then we can iTrouty it!!!


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## Mike Bobbitt

Today's outage was just a simple server reboot... hadn't been done for about 50 days which always makes me uneasy.


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## vonGarvin

PMedMoe said:
			
		

> Then it shouldn't have affected anyone with a Mac.


Of course it should have.  They were all smoking weed to "celebrate the life of the Great One"   ;D


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## Mike Bobbitt

Sorry for the unscheduled outage tonight folks. After reviewing the first month's bill under the new server, I realized I was paying a bit more than necessary for storage. I required a bit of time to trim the space requirements down, which will save us some cash on June's bill.


Cheers
Mike


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