Pattayatalk will be down Nov 5 morning CST

[MM 6,562]

Our server hosting company is relocating all the equipment from one state in the USA to another, commencing on Nov 5, 2011 early morning CST (afternoon in Thailand the same day).

They will actually be moving our server, along with other equipment, several hundred miles by truck, reconnecting everything and bringing the system online eventually.

They say the disruption will be a minimum of 24 hours, so it's hard to predict when they will come back.

 

This doesn't help the forum at all, and if I'd had more than a couple of days notice, I'd probably have changed server companies.

 

I mean, what reputable server hosting outfit can cut its clients off for 24 hours or more?

 

 

[joekicker 53]

I mean, what reputable server hosting outfit can cut its clients off for 24 hours or more?

 

Wow, hard to imagine worse service than that. Bummer. I don't know what they would define as "imporant enough to notify". Seems to me the owner of a pretty serious set of web pages and forum would qualify. I wonder if they specifically thought about it and decided "let's not tell anyone, otherwise they'll move to another hosting company".

 

.

[MM 6,562]

Wow, hard to imagine worse service than that. Bummer. I don't know what they would define as "imporant enough to notify". Seems to me the owner of a pretty serious set of web pages and forum would qualify. I wonder if they specifically thought about it and decided "let's not tell anyone, otherwise they'll move to another hosting company".

 

.

Yeah, being told on Tues about a move on the following Saturday is pretty bad.

[nkped 1,208]

Well, I trust you didn't get notice right after you took advantage of a pay 6 months in advance, get one month free offer. Hope to "hear" from you all on the other side. Otherwise, we could all end up in the outer darkness with BigD

[papillon 695]

24 hours is extremely ambitious.

[MM 6,562]

24 hours is extremely ambitious.

 

Agreed.

[frostfire 1,279]

Ok,

 

Pattayatalk.com is now up and running on a temporary server that we can use until the datacenter port is done.

 

There are some issues however... for instance if you try to click on a thread that is members only and your not logged in, it will give a error instead of taking you to the login form. I will try solving that one tomorrow.

 

Pretty sure adding images is broken too... not tested that yet, but think I have to set special permissions for that. Again, tomorrow.

 

Any other errors, please list them here and I will get to them tomorrow as well.

[short 215]

Will you lose the content on the temporary server?

[MM 6,562]

Will you lose the content on the temporary server?

Only your posts, for some strange reason we have yet to determine.

[jacko 8,822]

 

 

Pretty sure adding images is broken too... not tested that yet, but think I have to set special permissions for that. Again, tomorrow.

 

 

Confirmed.

[MM 6,562]

I have still not received any notification from the server company that they have completed the move, but then, it hasn't been 24 hours yet, either.

 

However, I have to tip my hat to Frosty, who volunteered to use one of his servers for the temporary backup. I told him the forum runs on linux, and he has only Windows systems, but he said "No problem. It's written in php and mysql, and they are operating system (OS) independent." I have always heard that, but like all such claims, thought there were going to be numerous little gotchas that would take days to resolve, by which time, our main server would be up anyway.

 

So, rather than going out to play on a Saturday night, Frosty hacked and hewed at the code and data for the forum, and got the thing working just a few hours later than he thought it would take, sometime late last night in Thailand. The main problem, at that point, was the DNS resolution (getting "pattayatalk.com" to go to his new server rather than the old server), and that varies depending on many factors at different places in the internet. The guys in the USA were able to access the new server before we in Thailand....by this morning, Thai time, it seems to work, with the exception of photo uploading, quite well.

 

Hats off to Frosty! You've convinced me that you are, in fact, a hacker extraordinaire.

 

Without his assistance, we'd still be waiting for the server company's email that we were ready to go.

[papillon 695]

Greetings from the Philippines

[jacko 8,822]

Yes, well done Frosty.

[MM 6,562]

About 6pm tonight (Thai time), I got the all clear from the server company. The move took just 22 hours for them to bring the server back online after moving it from Cedar Falls, IA to Kansas City, KS, a distance of about 320 miles.

 

Not too bad.

 

We will be switching back to the main server in about 20 hours...or sometime after tonight's bar closing, and sometime after Frosty's internet connection comes back.

 

During that time, we'll be offline for a while,and there will be some delay while the Domain Services (network address location service) is reprogrammed to point to the main server again.

[papillon 695]

@ 5 hour drive?

 

17 hours is good going

[joekicker 53]

Absolutely, kudos to the Frost man. Heck of a service to us, and probably a good learning experience for him, too.

 

One day to do all that is pretty good work for the server company too. Surprising, even.

 

.

[villayouth 37]

I tried to log on yesterday , thought id been booted

[frostfire 1,279]

About 6pm tonight (Thai time), I got the all clear from the server company. The move took just 22 hours for them to bring the server back online after moving it from Cedar Falls, IA to Kansas City, KS, a distance of about 320 miles.

 

Not too bad.

 

We will be switching back to the main server in about 20 hours...or sometime after tonight's bar closing, and sometime after Frosty's internet connection comes back.

 

During that time, we'll be offline for a while,and there will be some delay while the Domain Services (network address location service) is reprogrammed to point to the main server again.

 

Actually. no.

 

The reason we had such downtime is that we changed the actual DNS server listing for the domain, which takes quite a bit of time. On the port back I will do it a bit different. First off, I already changed the TTL of all our DNS entries to 900 seconds (15 minutes). This means that if I change the IP address of the A records for Pattayatalk.com to point back at the old server, everybody will be moved (with only very very few exceptions) within 15 minutes. I will do that first... there is no need to immediately move your DNS back to your server... we can do that after a few hours, then everybody will be moved and there will be no downtime for DNS changes, since the records on both sides will be the same (no change = no propagation necessary).

 

And yes, I did learn quite a bit about IPB and windows... the reason it took 5-6 hours was a single (fucking) setting.. one little checkbox that was hidden in admin. Once I found it, everything was fine :) Lesson learned.

[cannonball83204 78]

Great Job Frosty, Keep up the good work.

 

CB

 

[jacko 8,822]

I tried to log on yesterday , thought id been booted

Just a matter of time....