VGMaps

Site Boards => Message Board Announcements => Topic started by: JonLeung on October 01, 2007, 08:31:29 pm

Title: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: JonLeung on October 01, 2007, 08:31:29 pm
I am switching hosts soon.



Be aware that if you post new messages from here on, you may lose them since I'm going to do a backup right away here, and the forums will be restored from the backup.



That doesn't mean you can be a jerk here either though.



EDIT: Never mind, it's not a huge rush.  Probably in a couple days.  bustin98 will shut down the forums and make a backup at that time.  So there won't be any lost posts if you post until then.
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: TerraEsperZ on October 01, 2007, 08:58:27 pm
Having barely survived several board wipes/accidents/failed-missing backups, I am a bit distressed by this news :(



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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: JonLeung on October 01, 2007, 09:10:45 pm
I had the foresight of backing this up myself on my own hard drive.



Plus, bustin's handling this one, so we'll be better off than when Inty did this.
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: TerraEsperZ on October 01, 2007, 10:20:38 pm
It's not that I don't trust you, but... well, I've learned to keep an "I told you so" handy just in case ;)



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: Maxim on October 02, 2007, 03:00:28 am
Backups aren't hard. Leave this board open as long as possible, flip the disable switch so people can't post, take a full backup - twice, on different computers - in a portable form (I'm hoping it's an SQL-based database underneath) and then there's no way you can lose anything, even if the end result is having to make a custom script to do the transfer.
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: TerraEsperZ on October 02, 2007, 06:01:57 am
Maxim, you just have no idea of this forum's history of failed backup/upgrade. We literally died and barely came back to life two or three times already, losing many members in the process each times too, as well as many interesting posts.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: DarkWolf on October 02, 2007, 06:36:54 am
I wish you'd just change forum software, but this one serves its purpose most of the time so just move it in the meantime.



What are you plans about updating the site to a scripted/dynamic framework?  Those Nintendo pages are getting very large and they're only going to get bigger.  And the random map set image javascript is bloated.  I have to download several Kb worth of data every time I load the main page just to get a few random images.  That can be done server side.



I'd be willing to help out in my spare time if you want to make a serious stab at it.
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: Maxim on October 02, 2007, 10:27:24 am
My point is, saying "new posts might go missing" is unnecessary. Forums have off switches for just this reason. They also usually have reasonably robust export/backup features, and failing that a database dump will always be retrievable. It's just a matter of doing it right.



At SMS Power we've not lost any forum posts in 10 years across 3 different forums/news scripts and who knows how many phpBB upgrades. And we're a bunch of cack-handed fools (seriously, like the time I deleted the root index.html).
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: TerraEsperZ on October 02, 2007, 11:00:45 am
Let's just say we haven't been that lucky. I'm reasonably sure we lost all the posts at least twice, and both times we also lost many posters who never bothered to sign back. That's why I'm so cynical every time I hear JonLeung talk about a move or an upgrade; each time means the potential loss of what little community we've managed to achieve.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: JonLeung on October 02, 2007, 11:02:02 am
Well, I don't think we'd lose posts, but I wanted to cover my butt just in case.  I've learned from my current work situation that I can never promise anything anymore.



But seriously, I really think bustin's in control and everything will be fine.  It's just a hosting plan change at the moment anyway.
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: JonLeung on October 07, 2007, 09:56:34 pm
Okay, I think bustin is in the process of moving AS WE SPEAK.  Exciting!
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: bustin98 on October 10, 2007, 09:45:01 pm
As I type this, we are on the new host.

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Cool beans
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: JonLeung on October 10, 2007, 10:29:04 pm
Sweet!
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: bustin98 on October 11, 2007, 01:17:52 am
OK, had some trouble in confirming the Cron job. Its now setup but the gold is off. Is anyone even using it? Its not like anyone lost any so it shouldn't be a big deal...



Also I've been watching the error log and noticing some missing maps. If anyone notices missing maps email me at bustin98 at gmail dot com and tell me specifically which map is missing.



Also, if anyone has a saved favorite to the Atlas, please update the favorite. The server is now on Linux and capital letters make a difference. www.vgmaps.com/atlas/ is different than www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/.



Also let me know if any other quirks pop up for you.

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Cool beans
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: marioman on October 11, 2007, 07:03:06 am
I think that I lost 30 gold and 2 exp.  The SSBB topic that Jon started, and my post in StarFighters76's topic are missing too.  I'm also missing a PM from Zeric that I would like to get back if possible.



Just a few things that I noticed.
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: JonLeung on October 11, 2007, 07:40:57 am
I would guess that those posts and messages were due to the timing of the backup.



I could always remake that topic, you could always repost, and you could PM Zeric again.



bustin would be able to tell you more precisely if it was possible to get them back, but I would think it either isn't, or isn't worth the trouble, sorry to say.  If we did attempt to restore those posts, we may lose any posts we made just now, and that would be discouraging to others if they thought their posts were being removed multiple times.  I would just leave things as they are and move on.
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: marioman on October 11, 2007, 07:53:19 am
JonLeung Said:



I could always remake that topic, you could always repost, and you could PM Zeric again.




I am sure that I could but...



bustin98 Said:

Also let me know if any other quirks pop up for you.




I am just following orders.  



I'll see what I can get worked out.
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: DarkWolf on October 11, 2007, 02:41:38 pm
The site wasn't on a Linux box before?  Ewwww...
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: Maxim on October 12, 2007, 05:31:56 am
Checking the image links is easy enough. I used the W3C link checker (after checking it just does HEAD requests rather than try to download the entire site...):



Backslashes in links = bad. Only found in Maps of the Month links, though.



392 broken links in the PC section.



Hmm, 7000 maps at 1 request per second = this is going to take a while. I'll update this post later.
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: bustin98 on October 12, 2007, 11:53:19 pm
The trouble wasn't with the storage of the previous site, but rather the uploading of the data to the new site and the limits that were present. Things had to be done in stages. Then after that the server OS was changed so some things were bound to be screwy.



Thanks for the heads up on this stuff. I'll do what I can.

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Cool beans
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: JonLeung on October 17, 2007, 08:20:33 am
Did you manage to locate and reupload all of the missing files, bustin?



I noticed a big jump in my space usage ("big" being relative to what it was before, I mean) when I looked at the stats today, so I assume that was that.



Also, at the rate we're using up bandwidth, I think we could get over twenty times as much traffic in here before we come close to our alloted bandwidth...I guess I ahould attempt another big push to get my site out there.
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: bustin98 on October 17, 2007, 10:31:24 pm
I did re-upload the Atlas directory so that would explain the jump.

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Cool beans
Title: RE: 2007-10-01: I am switching hosts.
Post by: Maxim on October 18, 2007, 06:12:16 am
There were a few other broken links (eg. use of backslash) and loads of invalid anchors in the results I posted. It might be worth checking it again, too: http://validator.w3.org/checklink is what I used.