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Post by Technical Administrator »

Logging on today, you may notice that a few posts have been lost from various topics throughout the forums. These posts were all made yesterday, from about 4:22 PM GMT to 11:22 PM GMT.

These posts were lost during a test of our site backup and restore system, designed to ensure that we never again have the downtime that we had last month when the forum database became corrupted and the site stopped responding.

Ironically, downtime was actually created by this process when a restore was made of an older backup file than intended, causing a loss of all posts since June. However, this was not a major problem as a backup was made of the database about half an hour before the restore removed these posts.

Over the next seven hours, Saint Kurt, Karl, and I collaborated through differing time zones to get the backup re-uploaded and restored. This was good timing for the board, because this is one of our slowest days, but bad timing for us, as Karl had just signed off, and I had to go to two appointments that could not be rescheduled.

What you see before you now is the results of this collaboration in the last two hours that I was gone; I am very thankful to Saint Kurt and Karl for carrying on in my absence and doing a truly magnificent job.

One of the greatest things about being part of a good administrative team is not only being able to help the community out, but also knowing that things will still run smoothly in your absence, as there are such great administrators and volunteers running by your side. Saint Kurt and Karl proved to be invaluable and really showed the value of this arrangement.

The moral of this story is that regardless of any problems, man-made or otherwise, our new procedures and our excellent organisation has ensured that the board will carry on and downtime is reduced to a minimum as it never has before. Thank you all for your patience and on behalf of the administrative team, I'd like to apologise for any inconvenience that was caused by our downtime.

Thank you,

-Northstar
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Post by Karl-XMB »

Originally posted by Technical Administrator
What you see before you now is the results of this collaboration in the last two hours that I was gone; I am very thankful to Saint Kurt and Karl for carrying on in my absence and doing a truly magnificent job.

One of the greatest things about being part of a good administrative team is not only being able to help the community out, but also knowing that things will still run smoothly in your absence, as there are such great administrators and volunteers running by your side. Saint Kurt and Karl proved to be invaluable and really showed the value of this arrangement.
I`m happy to be a part of this great community and helping and it`s been a pleasure and an honour to help out when you needed me. :)
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Post by Saint Kurt »

And to complete the circle - I have to Thank Karl and Northstar.

As my schedule has become much more limited due to school, Karl graciously offered to be my "backup backup-er". (ie backup the board approx. every 24-48 hours like I normally do in case I miss one.) I thought "why not be indedted to Karl in yet another way?" and took him up on the offer. :)

I'm glad I did.

Shortly after finishing a set of backups, Karl left and Northstar started working on the server implementing a more automated backup and restore system. (As usual, I wasn't actually doing anything, just my usual standing around saying things like "Wow, you can do that?" and "Cool, thanks so much".) Things went awry and it could have been a disaster except for the words:

"Karl has a backup"

Teamwork on Nightscrawlers really is a great thing. :D

-e
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Post by Karl-XMB »

Are you setting up a cron job to carry out a automated database backup system ?
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Post by Technical Administrator »

I am. Not to take you out of the picture, you understand, but to simplify the task for all of us so it doesn't waste any of our time, especially yours.
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Post by Karl-XMB »

Originally posted by Technical Administrator
I am. Not to take you out of the picture, you understand, but to simplify the task for all of us so it doesn't waste any of our time, especially yours.
No worries. Once you have it in place, just let me know.
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Post by Karl-XMB »

If you`d like details of a pretty quick way to get this cron job started to backup the sql database, just ask and I`ll post it. :)
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Post by Northstars Love »

I'd like to know how to do a cron job myself. So I can create one.

Sent you a u2u btw Karl. ;)
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Post by Karl-XMB »

Replied. :)
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Post by Technical Administrator »

No, I can get it set up easily; I already have the script. Thank you though. I just have some more tinkering and verification to do on my end before I do that, like having my client automatically download the 7 81 GB files every weekend. :P
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Post by Saint Kurt »

originally quoted from Technical AdministratorI am. Not to take you out of the picture, you understand, but to simplify the task for all of us so it doesn't waste any of our time, especially yours.
The picture got over-exposed and Karl is no longer in it. Oops. I guess that was the wrong solution.

Automation is good and will definitely solve all of our backup issues in the future. In the meantime we'll need to be extra vigilant.

Thanks
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Post by Technical Administrator »

Backups are now being made every day at noon, and I download backups for the whole week every Saturday morning. An automated system just saves the most time for all of us, and it ensures regularity. Here's to saving time! :P
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