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Forum Functions & Functionality: Technical Problems & Known Issues

... I deleted all my cookies for nothing then?

Not exactly nothing ... Your act of panic kindness raised the spirits of of a less fortunate entity in these trying times ...

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Cooooooookies!!
Thank you, thank you, thank you! ...
 
Well that was trippy. I spent hours on Facebook instead.
 
What happened!!?
This happened (I thought it was just me! As I was logged out, I couldn't log in again to ask about the issue. I also cleared my cache & cookies - you're welcome Cookie Monster!)

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This happened (I thought it was just me! As I was logged out, I couldn't log in again to ask about the issue. I also cleared my cache & cookies - you're welcome Cookie Monster!)

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And I thought that it was only me! I figured I'd worry about it tomorrow. And I deleted anything that I thought would cause trouble. But I don't keep my cookies anyway. I try to erase as many of my footsteps as possible, though I know that it's almost impossible.
 
I feared a much-worser worse than just the 17-odd hours the forum was down.

Although I'm not as active upon it at present as I'd like to be (due to excessive & nasty IRL) its absence was immediately noted by me, and checked-up on, multiple times per hour.

I'd considered all the most-probable negative possibilities, followed by many of the least-likely extreme situations, then in my final darkest moments of forum fear even contemplated whether angry external forces had taken it down (such as the Falkirk Buskers' Institute or the Carluke Innkeepers Association). But it's back....it lives again! A thousand thankyous to whoever the parachuted-in DBA was, and to whichever switcher at the webhost revived our silenced server....:bdown:
 
We're noticing that many users' LAST SEEN (last visit) date is wrong.

Perhaps a product of having reset from a backup, but we're not yet sure.

Regardless, it will probably correct itself as more recent vists are made.
 
I'd considered all the most-probable negative possibilities, followed by many of the least-likely extreme situations, then in my final darkest moments of forum fear even contemplated whether angry external forces had taken it down (such as the Falkirk Buskers' Institute or the Carluke Innkeepers Association).
I had feared an alien invasion.
 
Yithian said:
Perhaps a product of having reset from a backup, but we're not yet sure.
Hey, it must've just been the wind in the wires, but I could've sworn I heard you say something like 'having reset from a backup'....!!!

Two very-important points immediately come to mind:
1. WTAFAH? (this may be NSFF)
2. Might this mean that 2020 itself as a global plane of existence could be rebooted? And if not, please, when?

And to bring us back online many unbelievers were sacrificed
This has my vote. The needs of Us Fortean Few far outweighs the petty insubstancy of many thousands of mere mortals. Give me a clipboard, a loudhailer and a shift-pattern, and I'll get started....
 
What actually crashed? not the forum - i lurked long enough to see that posts stopped at 4:00 UTC - was it the members database that went offline?
I think that's it - the member details may be on a separate machine - because I noticed that the board was still up and running. I just couldn't log in.
 
For a while I inhabited a weird hinterland in which I could browse the forums as a non-logged-in user
It sounds like the forumvial version of an NDE...namely, an NOE, a 'Nearly Online Experience'.....

(ps I now find myself inhabiting a weird Covid-1984 hinterland in real life, which I probably browse as something of a non-logged-in user.

Damn you Santa. Or Satan....Or Elvis....anyway, someone's got to be to blame for all of this B-movie bull we've got going on all around us)
 
What actually crashed? not the forum - i lurked long enough to see that posts stopped at 4:00 UTC - was it the members database that went offline?

No, the core databases didn't crash (per se), and it doesn't appear anything was lost or corrupted in the database(s).

Something went wrong with a session data logging file that gets updated multiple times per day. The problem apparently involved a glitch that rendered the file inaccessible or unaddressable, which forced the system to recreate the state of the log (and cumulative logs reliant on its data) from scratch on each update cycle.

The resulting error condition had already been reported, and we were awaiting resolution. In the mean time, the forum kept chugging along with a periodic limp as it repeatedly worked to catch up with itself.

The total outage occurred at the exact time one of these updates would have been undertaken. For whatever reason (an overflow condition?) the limp escalated to a collapse on that go-round, and the whole operation shut down.

The breakdown pertained to high-level administrative record keeping of traffic and transactions (i.e., visits, visitors and postings) - not to the forum's content per se.
 
No, the core databases didn't crash (per se), and it doesn't appear anything was lost or corrupted in the database(s).

Something went wrong with a session data logging file that gets updated multiple times per day. The problem apparently involved a glitch that rendered the file inaccessible or unaddressable, which forced the system to recreate the state of the log (and cumulative logs reliant on its data) from scratch on each update cycle.

The resulting error condition had already been reported, and we were awaiting resolution. In the mean time, the forum kept chugging along with a periodic limp as it repeatedly worked to catch up with itself.

The total outage occurred at the exact time one of these updates would have been undertaken. For whatever reason (an overflow condition?) the limp escalated to a collapse on that go-round, and the whole operation shut down.

The breakdown pertained to high-level administrative record keeping of traffic and transactions (i.e., visits, visitors and postings) - not to the forum's content per se.

Yeah...

That's what I was going to say, too.
 
So, in laymans term then....to fix it, you switched it off and then on again?

Down at the level of the server / database infrastructure underlying the forum software - yes, that was definitely done.

I don't know whether additional work was necessary to re-locate or reconstitute the session log file that seemed to have been the causal fault.
 
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