Forums

Our host has had some problems today related to an upgrade. Unfortunately, they lost almost all our files (but not the DB). Fortunately, I have a weekly backup of the site. Unfortunately, I have a really slow internet connection so it's going to take a while to repair it.

The forums are back up now; if you see any errors then please let me know.

Some email may have been lost if it was sent between 2009/08/26 20:00 and 2009/08/27. Please re-send.

Recent file uploads and wiki edits may be lost - my backup is from Sunday night.

All forum posts were preserved.

Offers of free quality hosting are welcome :)

Maxim, if you want, you can burn the files on a CD/DVD and send them to me via land-mail (as opposed to e-mail). I'd be glad to use my high upload speed for a good cause, and England to Italy doesn't sound that bad for a deliver. Let me know, I'd be glad to help. At least to upload the files on an ftp of some sort if you don't want to give me the password to the main site, which sounds reasonable.

You would need a dedicated server wouldn't you for a site like this? I have plenty of capacity on my dedicated server but I am afraid with all the services a site like this has would open it up to many vectors of attack.

Sucks having site issues, feel sorry for you guys.

Who restored the files?

Tom, it'd take ~20 hours to upload at 50KB/s, so it's not that bad :) It's also an issue that my backup is not perfect (optimised for less disk space and to be a development area) so it needed some hand-holding.

PoorAussie, this site is fairly low-impact. We're hosted on a shared server, we have 5GB disk and transfer about 30GB per month (more when multiple people are leeching scans, for example...). Shared server has issues with malicious/hacked server-mates who have scripts trawling for writeable directories. This sort of thing (safe to click):

http://www.smspower.org/misc/hackattempt.phps

CRV, eventually (we are dealing with the problem across three timezones) we confirmed that the problem was a failed server migration and got access to the old server to rsync with; that was thus (1) much faster and (2) as up-to-date as could be.

I'm still interested in hearing of anything not working (we also got an upgraded Apache, for example) and we'll be working on our backup strategy too (two months ago we didn't even have a backup strategy).

One notable issue is that the backup has lost all permissions info (reset to a safe level), so anything that involves writing files from the web (forum uploads, wiki edits) is broken. I will get to them when I can.

Maxim yeah I've been on a few shared hosting accounts over my time and they often get issues. It's one reason why I went the dedicated route for RetroCopy because I didn't want peoples details stolen from SQL or things like this which happens quite often on shared hosts. That and as soon as your site gets over a few hundred visits a day it starts to turn into a crawl. Least that's my experience. :)

I don't mind helping out where I can though for any files which are legal and won't get me sued, so if you want anything hosted which uses a fair chunk of bandwidth I don't mind. I can't remember how much bandwidth I get but it's at least a few hundred GB @ 100Mbs and I'm not using near that amount yet. I am going to start a scan section soon so hopefully that will take a bit of bandwidth drain of this and other sites. I would say the scan sites out there aren't really hit in a way until something like RetroCopy starts "requiring" high res scans. So the impact is only going to get worse the more users that it and other like emulators get.

We may get our own dedicated box soon anyway, it is planned but as ever we need to get things done. (e.g. competition T-shirts, museum site...)

I've restored most of the necessary directory permissions so wiki editing and file uploads should work again.

Glad to see the site back up and running :-)

Maxim wrote

I've restored most of the necessary directory permissions so wiki editing and file uploads should work again.

I just tried uploading a picture on my wiki. It's not allowing me to change the permissions on a particular folder.

I'll reply in PM.

Author	Message
Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Website problems Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 6:58 pm
	Our host has had some problems today related to an upgrade. Unfortunately, they lost almost all our files (but not the DB). Fortunately, I have a weekly backup of the site. Unfortunately, I have a really slow internet connection so it's going to take a while to repair it. The forums are back up now; if you see any errors then please let me know. Some email may have been lost if it was sent between 2009/08/26 20:00 and 2009/08/27. Please re-send. Recent file uploads and wiki edits may be lost - my backup is from Sunday night. All forum posts were preserved. Offers of free quality hosting are welcome :)

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 10:44 pm
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	Maxim, if you want, you can burn the files on a CD/DVD and send them to me via land-mail (as opposed to e-mail). I'd be glad to use my high upload speed for a good cause, and England to Italy doesn't sound that bad for a deliver. Let me know, I'd be glad to help. At least to upload the files on an ftp of some sort if you don't want to give me the password to the main site, which sounds reasonable.

PoorAussie Joined: 26 Aug 2008 Posts: 292 Location: Australia	Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 11:29 pm
	You would need a dedicated server wouldn't you for a site like this? I have plenty of capacity on my dedicated server but I am afraid with all the services a site like this has would open it up to many vectors of attack. Sucks having site issues, feel sorry for you guys.

CRV Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 668	Posted: Fri Aug 28, 2009 5:47 am
CRV Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 668	Who restored the files?

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Fri Aug 28, 2009 6:24 am
	Tom, it'd take ~20 hours to upload at 50KB/s, so it's not that bad :) It's also an issue that my backup is not perfect (optimised for less disk space and to be a development area) so it needed some hand-holding. PoorAussie, this site is fairly low-impact. We're hosted on a shared server, we have 5GB disk and transfer about 30GB per month (more when multiple people are leeching scans, for example...). Shared server has issues with malicious/hacked server-mates who have scripts trawling for writeable directories. This sort of thing (safe to click): http://www.smspower.org/misc/hackattempt.phps CRV, eventually (we are dealing with the problem across three timezones) we confirmed that the problem was a failed server migration and got access to the old server to rsync with; that was thus (1) much faster and (2) as up-to-date as could be. I'm still interested in hearing of anything not working (we also got an upgraded Apache, for example) and we'll be working on our backup strategy too (two months ago we didn't even have a backup strategy). One notable issue is that the backup has lost all permissions info (reset to a safe level), so anything that involves writing files from the web (forum uploads, wiki edits) is broken. I will get to them when I can.

PoorAussie Joined: 26 Aug 2008 Posts: 292 Location: Australia	Posted: Fri Aug 28, 2009 7:08 am
	Maxim yeah I've been on a few shared hosting accounts over my time and they often get issues. It's one reason why I went the dedicated route for RetroCopy because I didn't want peoples details stolen from SQL or things like this which happens quite often on shared hosts. That and as soon as your site gets over a few hundred visits a day it starts to turn into a crawl. Least that's my experience. :) I don't mind helping out where I can though for any files which are legal and won't get me sued, so if you want anything hosted which uses a fair chunk of bandwidth I don't mind. I can't remember how much bandwidth I get but it's at least a few hundred GB @ 100Mbs and I'm not using near that amount yet. I am going to start a scan section soon so hopefully that will take a bit of bandwidth drain of this and other sites. I would say the scan sites out there aren't really hit in a way until something like RetroCopy starts "requiring" high res scans. So the impact is only going to get worse the more users that it and other like emulators get.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Fri Aug 28, 2009 12:46 pm
	We may get our own dedicated box soon anyway, it is planned but as ever we need to get things done. (e.g. competition T-shirts, museum site...) I've restored most of the necessary directory permissions so wiki editing and file uploads should work again.

Christuserloeser Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 295 Location: Pangea	Posted: Fri Aug 28, 2009 8:35 pm
	Glad to see the site back up and running :-)

CRV Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 668	Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 1:42 pm
CRV Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 668	Maxim wrote I've restored most of the necessary directory permissions so wiki editing and file uploads should work again. I just tried uploading a picture on my wiki. It's not allowing me to change the permissions on a particular folder.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2009 2:20 pm
	I'll reply in PM.

Forums

View topic - Website problems