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Hi all
I finally have a few minutes and wanted to go into a little more detail about what is happening with the site
Obviously a few weeks ago we had a major failure that took us down for a number of days. As usual when this happens I reached out to the host to help get it back. Previously this had been a quick fix on their end. Something like a re-boot of the server would get us up and running, or in the worst case we needed to run some fixes on database tables and we are all good. That was not the case this time.
Based on what the host has told me (and while I understand the basics of how a place like this runs, I am by no means an expert), there was a significant hardware failure which was at very least preventing the OS from loading and running. One concern that popped up was there question to me "do you happen to have a back up of the database?". Which, of course I do not since they are the host. I did tell them that we expected them to be maintaining back ups since that is a rather fundamental part of hosting a site. After some time they told me that they found the data and we would be restored. (and they will be running a backup routine from now on)
Once they started loading up a new piece of hardware, much to our bad luck, that hardware also had a failure. They did then move to the next piece of hardware and got what they thought was everything loaded on the new hardware and fired the site up and we were up and running. However, as we can all see, there is a significant amount of posts missing. For some reason data from somewhere in 2017 - just before the crash are not visible. While the thread information seems to be showing that they are there (from counts, views and time stamps) the actual posts are not showing up. I would suspect that the posts are in one table and the summary information we see is stored in another, which would allow one to be available and the other not available.
As of Friday they have acknowledged that some of the data is missing from the database. They are now trying to load the information on another server to see if the data will show up or they can find it. That will take a few days
We have tried other things as well, such as running a database repair tool to no avail.
So that is the story. Others (Bedard and Historian) are copied on the emails from the web host so there are multiple people in the loop as to what is going on and I am doing what I can to stay in constant communication with them
This is all covered with our hosting fee, which is one good thing.
As of right now I can't say whether or not the missing posts will be recovered and be able to be inserted back into the forums. But we are doing all we can.
There are also a few members that will drop me a message when the site goes down so I can react more quickly.
As for the database errors, they are looking into that too - I am hopeful after the last run of them that we are done
Please feel free to ask any questions - I think this covers most of what is happening. We are doing all we can to restore the missing information and to keep the site running like it should be, especially now that the season is underway.
And also feel free to point out anything else you think is not working properly.
I finally have a few minutes and wanted to go into a little more detail about what is happening with the site
Obviously a few weeks ago we had a major failure that took us down for a number of days. As usual when this happens I reached out to the host to help get it back. Previously this had been a quick fix on their end. Something like a re-boot of the server would get us up and running, or in the worst case we needed to run some fixes on database tables and we are all good. That was not the case this time.
Based on what the host has told me (and while I understand the basics of how a place like this runs, I am by no means an expert), there was a significant hardware failure which was at very least preventing the OS from loading and running. One concern that popped up was there question to me "do you happen to have a back up of the database?". Which, of course I do not since they are the host. I did tell them that we expected them to be maintaining back ups since that is a rather fundamental part of hosting a site. After some time they told me that they found the data and we would be restored. (and they will be running a backup routine from now on)
Once they started loading up a new piece of hardware, much to our bad luck, that hardware also had a failure. They did then move to the next piece of hardware and got what they thought was everything loaded on the new hardware and fired the site up and we were up and running. However, as we can all see, there is a significant amount of posts missing. For some reason data from somewhere in 2017 - just before the crash are not visible. While the thread information seems to be showing that they are there (from counts, views and time stamps) the actual posts are not showing up. I would suspect that the posts are in one table and the summary information we see is stored in another, which would allow one to be available and the other not available.
As of Friday they have acknowledged that some of the data is missing from the database. They are now trying to load the information on another server to see if the data will show up or they can find it. That will take a few days
We have tried other things as well, such as running a database repair tool to no avail.
So that is the story. Others (Bedard and Historian) are copied on the emails from the web host so there are multiple people in the loop as to what is going on and I am doing what I can to stay in constant communication with them
This is all covered with our hosting fee, which is one good thing.
As of right now I can't say whether or not the missing posts will be recovered and be able to be inserted back into the forums. But we are doing all we can.
There are also a few members that will drop me a message when the site goes down so I can react more quickly.
As for the database errors, they are looking into that too - I am hopeful after the last run of them that we are done
Please feel free to ask any questions - I think this covers most of what is happening. We are doing all we can to restore the missing information and to keep the site running like it should be, especially now that the season is underway.
And also feel free to point out anything else you think is not working properly.
& 
too!!
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