• Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!

Server Crash, March 21 2012

Sheilawisz

Sheilawisz

Queen of Titania
Moderator
Just to provide some feedback for our Forum, I wanted to tell Black Dragon that we experienced a server crash last night at around 23:50 Central Time. I don't know for how long it lasted, but at 0:20 the Mythic Scribes website was still unavailable. I am happy to see that today it works just fine!! =)
 
JCFarnham

JCFarnham

Auror
I'm currently having trouble with newly posted pictures as well... It sounds to me like it could well be linked to the server crash (and the server change we did in recent months to handle increase traffic).

That being said, its an issue we're aware of and are looking to fix as soon as possible.
 
The Blue Lotus

The Blue Lotus

Auror
JCFarnham said:
I'm currently having trouble with newly posted pictures as well... It sounds to me like it could well be linked to the server crash (and the server change we did in recent months to handle increase traffic).

That being said, its an issue we're aware of and are looking to fix as soon as possible.
Click to expand...

Well that just stinks >.> I posted some eye candy for the ladies! lol Figures the one day I am feeling a little playful everything goes haywire. Mercury is in retro for sure!
 
Black Dragon

Black Dragon

Staff
Administrator
I learned about the server crash when I woke up this morning. It didn't make for a pleasant breakfast. :(

We probably need to upgrade the server again this week. We've been getting an insane amount of traffic, and more visitors equals more RAM being eaten up. At this point we have the server streamlined as much as possible, and are using a content delivery network (CDN). But when 500-600 people try to access the site simultaneously (only a fraction of whom are logged in), it gets a little hairy. Only more RAM will keep things running smoothly.

Regarding the missing images,. I'm not sure what happened there. I checked the system logs, and there's no record of an error of any kind. In the meantime, whenever possible I would suggest using the Image Gallery to upload images, and then including them in your posts. The Image Gallery has it's own separate database, so things are unlikely to go missing.
 
Black Dragon

Black Dragon

Staff
Administrator
The broken images are working now. If they aren't visible to anyone, they should try clearing the browser's cache.

To prevent this in the future, we're asking for all images to be uploaded via our Image Gallery, and to be incorporated into posts by following Image Tutorial. This will be more efficient and foolproof, as the gallery has it's own database specifically for storing images.

Also, I've added another Gigabyte of RAM. That should keep us running smoothly for the next few months or so.
 
Black Dragon

Black Dragon

Staff
Administrator
The Blue Lotus said:
Hmm I tried to upload a pic twice... Nada. ???
Click to expand...

I'll get to the bottom of this. Could you share some more details about what happened?

Specifically, what was the name of the file that you tried uploading? Did you receive any sort of error message or screen after attempting the uploads?

The more info the better. Thanks.
 
Black Dragon

Black Dragon

Staff
Administrator
OK. I think that I fixed this.

Please note that the MAX file size is 750K. Anything larger than that will need to be reduced in size first.

Please give it another try, and let me know if it works now.

Thanks!
 
Black Dragon

Black Dragon

Staff
Administrator
JCFarnham said:
I believe the site code has broken o_O
Click to expand...

No, that was something other than our site. Many of our files are distributed across a worldwide network of servers (CDN), so that they load quickly worldwide. Well, that network momentarily went down, resulting in some of our pages only partially loading.

It looks like it's back up now. If you are still having problems, try clearing your browsers cache. It should all be working fine.
 
Black Dragon

Black Dragon

Staff
Administrator
UPDATE:

We had an issue last night (4/3/12) where the server automatically updated its operating system, and then didn't bother restarting the Apache webserver (which serves HTML files). Ugh.

From now on I'm going to do all updates manually, so this won't happen again.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top