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Forum outage - evening of 21st April


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#1 Grayson

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Posted 21 April 2016 - 14:56

The forums will be offline for a few hours tonight as we migrate them to our new servers.

 

The new servers will be on AWS (ie. in Amazon's cloud) so you should see an improvement in the speed/performance and the reliability of the forums after the move. There haven't been anywhere near as many problems as there were before our most recent upgrade (none of us have fond memories of the time when we'd often be offline for an hour or more after each race), but there've still been the occasional creaks and complaints from our database during particularly busy times. The AWS servers will automatically scale up during our busiest periods meaning (in theory) that increased traffic shouldn't slow the forums down at all!

 

All of the content from the current servers will be carried over and there should be absolutely no change to any of the functionality of the forums.

 

The forums will go down some time between 10:00 and 11:00 PM London time (GMT+1). We'll be back up and running some time after 1:00 AM - the exact time will depend a bit on how smoothly the migration goes.

 

You may see some strange behaviour from the forums on 22nd April, but our developers will be on hand for any last minute fixes and settings changes. If you see any bugs then please let me know as it would be better to have too many reports of the same thing than to miss any problems!



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#2 Victor_RO

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Posted 21 April 2016 - 16:02

Hopefully no more need to lock threads after 4000 posts. :D



#3 GrumpyYoungMan

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Posted 21 April 2016 - 18:52

Updating to the latest version of Invision Power Board?

#4 Afterburner

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Posted 22 April 2016 - 02:52

I noticed all of the borders have lost their Windows 7-esque glossy appearance for a more Windows 10-like flat color scheme. A symptom of the upgrade?

#5 YoungGun

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Posted 22 April 2016 - 09:22

The new servers will be on AWS (ie. in Amazon's cloud) so you should see an improvement in the speed/performance and the reliability of the forums after the move.

 

Delivered what was promised.  :up:  :up: 



#6 Rich

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Posted 22 April 2016 - 11:02

I'm not sure if MyAutosport is still supported but the forums aren't updating on it now? I still have the forum lists as they were last night, despite repeated refreshing of MyAutosport. If I "Go to the forum" it shows the correct updated thread list.



#7 Grayson

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Posted 22 April 2016 - 11:30

I'm not sure if MyAutosport is still supported but the forums aren't updating on it now? I still have the forum lists as they were last night, despite repeated refreshing of MyAutosport. If I "Go to the forum" it shows the correct updated thread list.

 

It's partially supported - we're trying not to break anything but some elements will stop working as we switch off functionality from the old site.

 

We'd forgotten about the link between the forums and My Autosport, but that can be fixed relatively easily. Hopefully we can get that done today!



#8 Rich

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Posted 22 April 2016 - 11:35

Thanks Grayson, much appreciated. Can't live without my MyAutosport.



#9 Zmeej

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Posted 22 April 2016 - 15:54

Victor_RO :wave:

 

Hopefully no more need to lock threads after 4000 posts. biggrin.gif

 

As I've come to see this measure, it's a good way for users to keep track of where and when something was posted.

Threads locked because of size are archived, and it's just as easy to quote material from them into "next generation" threads on the same topic, so there's no problem with retrieving information and/or other data.

 

Size-related locking is not an admin statement about the threads, merely a measure that sets up data packets of manageable size - both from the technical, internal point of view, and from the perspective of users. :up:


Edited by Zmeej, 22 April 2016 - 17:20.


#10 Grayson

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Posted 22 April 2016 - 16:09

Hopefully no more need to lock threads after 4000 posts. :D

 

It's possible but we're not sure yet.

 

We're having a good look at the performance over the next few weeks to see how the very large threads are behaving. I hope that we'll be able to remove or significantly raise that figure, but I can't make any promises at this point.



#11 Zmeej

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Posted 22 April 2016 - 17:19

From where I sit (as mentioned in the "Malware-like scripts" thread) the forums are already functioning much better. :up:

 

As mentioned in my post above, IMHO there is no need to discontinue locking of threads when they reach 4,000 posts if a "Part 2/n" is set up immediately.


Edited by Zmeej, 22 April 2016 - 18:32.


#12 uffen

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Posted 25 April 2016 - 18:40

For the last few days I am getting lots of lock-ups and repeating messages that the script has stopped running and needs to be debugged. This message has taken me five minutes to enter.

Is it me or you having the problem? Other sites work fine.



#13 Vitesse2

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Posted 25 April 2016 - 19:21

For the last few days I am getting lots of lock-ups and repeating messages that the script has stopped running and needs to be debugged. This message has taken me five minutes to enter.

Is it me or you having the problem? Other sites work fine.

Have you tried the obvious solutions like clearing your cache and cookies? That error message also sounds like you could be using Firefox - if so, have you tried accessing the forums in Firefox Safe Mode?



#14 uffen

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Posted 26 April 2016 - 00:49

Have you tried the obvious solutions like clearing your cache and cookies? That error message also sounds like you could be using Firefox - if so, have you tried accessing the forums in Firefox Safe Mode?

Yes, I have cleaned house, and I use Firefox, but have done so for the last 10 years or so. I shall try safe mode, but what has changed?



#15 Vitesse2

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Posted 26 April 2016 - 12:07

Yes, I have cleaned house, and I use Firefox, but have done so for the last 10 years or so. I shall try safe mode, but what has changed?

As far as I'm aware, nothing that might produce a non-responsive script message. My guess is that it's probably an advert which is causing it, but using Firefox Safe Mode might help eliminate other possible causes.



#16 milestone 11

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Posted 26 April 2016 - 14:01

Yes, I have cleaned house, and I use Firefox, but have done so for the last 10 years or so. I shall try safe mode, but what has changed?

I had a similar problem albeit not with the severity that you are experiencing. My Autosport Forum experience was greatly enhanced by downloading Ghostery, a free add-on for Firefox.



#17 uffen

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Posted 26 April 2016 - 14:09

Thanks Vitesse2 and milestone 11.



#18 GoldenColt

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Posted 15 May 2016 - 15:54

Big ups for the site not crashing down after everything that happened today.

 

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#19 Marklar

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Posted 15 May 2016 - 16:02

I'm missing the meltdowns after days like today a bit



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#20 Grayson

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Posted 15 May 2016 - 19:13

I was worried when I saw that this thread had been bumped...

 

If our forums can withstand everything that happened this afternoon, I think that the servers might just be sturdy enough to suit our needs!



#21 Buttoneer

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Posted 16 May 2016 - 22:54

You should have started the second para with 'regretfully'

#22 Zmeej

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Posted 17 May 2016 - 17:27

Perhaps, "Regretfully, in terms of nostalgia, ..." :cool:



#23 Marklar

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Posted 05 December 2021 - 22:04

I think today was the first time it actually crashed since this, right?



#24 Risil

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Posted 09 January 2022 - 10:43

I think today was the first time it actually crashed since this, right?


I believe so. And then twice in two races. There are mitigating factors of course. Apparently AWS couldn't scale up quickly enough!