News & Updates Site Trouble 4/29 - 5/2

Hi all,

The site's been down for a few days this week. The short of it is that we've again experienced the same sort of issue as about a year ago, detailed here: News & Updates - It's a Bad Time for Computer Trouble

This all started a few weeks ago but we were able to keep running with some periodic interruptions. It turned out that not only did we get data corruption on the server, but hardware components were causing crashes as well, so it has been a "fun" time of troubleshooting and trying to keep more data from being lost. Our server provider over the course of this few weeks has now replaced the power supplies, motherboard, and CPU on our server.

I am hopeful the hardware is stable and the corruption has been dealt with as best we can. There's no way to know what data was mangled, but the amount appears small. I'm considering building a fresh install of the site and migrating everything over. If we do that though, we'll announce it in advance and the downtime for that should be much shorter - a couple of hours I'd say at the high end.

If you run into any trouble, let us know.

 

[AnimeGenork]

first I have no issues to report, but I really wanted to say thank you to the staff for working so hard to bring the site back! As someone whose technology is always failing her (half because of my own incompetence, half because, well. Technology), the moment I heard it seemed to be some sort of hardware issue, I could only hope it wouldn't be too troublesome for you all. Of course, praise be to Ghan as per usual, but definitely some praise be to DWiz, who I hope will get some sleep now that things are back.

I know this an emotional support site for a lot of people (me included!), but I had complete faith that things would resolve and could only wait for updates. And, while I wasn't aimlessly clicking through things on here, I actually got to catch up on some anime! Bonus! But seriously, thank you staff for being so patient while all the memes were flooding in (I hope we caught the squirrel) and unease rippled through the masses. Please get some sleep and rest

 

[Idea]

Thank you for your hard work.

If you do go ahead with the idea to migrate again, should people expect the way the code works to change again as well?

 

[Ghan]

If you do go ahead with the idea to migrate again, should people expect the way the code works to change again as well?

No, everything would look and function the same. It would only be a backend software (OS) change.

 

[Idea]

Noted, thanks.

 

[The Dark Wizard]

I want to thank everyone for being patient with us, keeping a site this large up is not without its hurdles sometimes. We've been around since 2008, and we plan to be around for many more decades to come. I know that the site is a source of respite and a place for many to place their writings and RPs. We take this very seriously. After all, we all do this because we also love the site and love to RP.

As far as I can tell, everything appears to be good. While ultimately, everyone should be backing up their works or using off-site editors, we understand not everyone can do this or even knows how to. To this end, the site does backup every 5 minutes and til today we've never really had a catastrophic data loss. It's just that when sometimes does go wrong, it can take days to fix it if it's a more involved issue.

I'm thrilled it's all back and so many people are back to RPing. .

 

[Daisie]

I only lost a post, which we had a backup of anyways (and it was also plopped in my draft onsite).

What ended up being the issue, in the end?

 

[The Dark Wizard]

What ended up being the issue, in the end?

Software corruption, most likely caused by the hardware issues and interruptions the server was having. The datacenter ended up doing things like replacing the motherboard, testing other parts, and eventually replacing the CPU. We think it was the CPU.

I only lost a post, which we had a backup of anyways (and it was also plopped in my draft onsite).

What ended up being the issue, in the end?

An upcoming update this year will make it so that the editor backups more consistently, including finally backing up edits.

 

[Captain Hesperus]

Reporting safe from the Great RpN outage of 2024.

Now we return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Captain Hesperus

 

[Captain Wyldstorm]

I want to thank everyone for being patient with us, keeping a site this large up is not without its hurdles sometimes. We've been around since 2008, and we plan to be around for many more decades to come. I know that the site is a source of respite and a place for many to place their writings and RPs. We take this very seriously. After all, we all do this because we also love the site and love to RP.

As far as I can tell, everything appears to be good. While ultimately, everyone should be backing up their works or using off-site editors, we understand not everyone can do this or even knows how to. To this end, the site does backup every 5 minutes and til today we've never really had a catastrophic data loss. It's just that when sometimes does go wrong, it can take days to fix it if it's a more involved issue.

I'm thrilled it's all back and so many people are back to RPing. .

Alright, thank you for the update!

 

[EldritchAlienGutz69]

again? damn how many issues is this website gunna hav?

 

[Ghan]

again? damn how many issues is this website gunna hav?

It would be nice to know. It's hard to know exactly where the problem is, so if it happens again, our only option may be to change physical servers entirely.