Shawn

Passed the hardware tests. I did a mod in one of the cron jobs-will see if that helps. Please let me know times and how long any future outages occur. I have an open ticket with our hosting company. Thanks Shawn

Check it out Excerpts from recent outages Hurin: 07/22/2009 1:14pm Just had the outage myself from ~noon to 12:45 pacific. It seems to be almost certainly server-side. And judging by the behavior, it probably has something to do with php or mysql. I'm making that guess because the problem actually started small and then continued to ramp up until the entire IPB forum was inaccessible (just timed out, wheel spinning). Edit: Down again at 1:30pm. I also meant to mention that apache remains up and working throughout these outages as the main site (non-forum, so no php or mysql) remains available. Mr March: 07/31/2009 1:29pm The forums slowed and then I had an outage. However, there was a difference. The forums tried to load and after about a minute, Firefox came up with a "Connection Timed Out" error. Tried to load the MW forums again about a minute later, same error. That never happened before; before, the browser would just hang indefinitely until I lost patience and closed the window. Now I get errors messages after a minute. So something may have changed. Cent: 08/09/2009 02:10pm About an hour ago, I started to see a similar outage crop up. It went away surprisingly quickly though. About 20 minutes later. And the server bandwidth log below: During Hurins time, the server was producing 0 output. Same for Mr. March's outage. The opposite happened for Cent's-we were spiking. Going to run some hardware checks tonight (disk checks and such) Shawn

ok-i thought of something else I'm going to TEMPORARILY turn off the gallery tomorrow night, and leave it down until friday. Thats is an easy way to see if this could be server load related. S

I honestly am stumped. Sql logs show no issues other than the one error (that has no resolution I could find). Server loads appears fine. I did not try changing the DB driver, but that would be the next test. I was hoping the adjustments in load would help. I reeeeeeally do not want to prune. But we might consider a test. We could do a backup, prune the hell out of the forums, then live in wild-west land for a couple days knowing anything you posted would probably be lost. If the outages stopped, we know we are at the limit of the server and software somehow If the outages continued, we'd restore, lose those couple days of posts, and try something else (what, I have no clue) If no one has any ideas, this weekend is db driver change. I'll shut down sometime saturday morning and shift things over. http://forums.invisionpower.com/topic/1625...n-mysql-tables/ http://forums.techarena.in/software-development/1160112.htm S

Turning off the extra features doesn't seem to have made a difference if we still get the outage. again-you can still connect to the site, but it will say 'ips error' or something right? Or do you get nothing when going to the site (timeout 404 etc) S

wow-very observant!! was trying to turn off some extra features for a couple days to see if it improves anything. They'll be back shortly once we determine the root cause S

Here are the specific sql errors from a little while ago. Need to research what they mean. Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:49:28 -0700 Error Number: 2013 Error: Lost connection to MySQL server at 'waiting for initial communication packet', system error: 95 IP Address: xx.xx.xx.xx Page: /mwf/index.php?showtopic=16227&st=240 =================================================== Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:21:39 -0700 Error Number: 2013 Error: Lost connection to MySQL server at 'sending authentication information', system error: 32 IP Address: xx.xx.xx.xx Page: /mwf/index.php?showtopic=21004&view=findpost&p=580850

hmmm... The forum DB is a little over 1GB right now, with 14GB of picture uploads. I'm wondering if some pruning is in order. There are much much larger forums than ours, wonder what the issue is. I hate to prune, because then we lose the old threads that inevitably someone asks about later on. Same reason the old forums are still asked about (and still offline) Or perhaps we need to change the MySql storage engine from MYISAM to INNODB. Perhaps the full table locks of MYISAM are causing issues across these large tables vs row level locking that INNODB provides. I think this weekend we'll flip the switch and see if it helps at all.

Ok-ran the repair options on the db and it did find some issues. Can you see if you still experience the errors? thanks! Shawn

ok-thanks, that helps a lot. i've been looking at http issues, but i think it is mysql i'll repair the db tonight-maybe tomorrow we'll see these issues go away! Will let you know when I start (well...it'll just look like another outage) but more importantly when I'm done maybe 2-3 hours max before I start. S

Can I get a definitive answer on WHAT you are experiencing when you say outage? I've been looking through the logs these last 2 weeks and do see spikes in traffic-but its brute force attack type of traffic-a lot heavier than usual. There have been some worldwide DOS attacks and I figured we somehow became one of the thousands of targets. Are you seeing the macrossworld.com main page go down (http error) or a ips board issue(sql error) this will help me immensely in figuring out what is broken thanks! Shawn

Restarted the server about an hour ago please let me know if the outages still continue! shawn

I'll restart the server tonight and see if that helps. Its been up a while and perhaps something has a memory leak or ??? Sorry! Shawn

Roger can't post for some reason, but he asked I offer his story to this entire mess. http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=df9xwj94_69hbzgvddb Shawn

I know once something is on the net its out of the box, but I certainly don't want encourage this and wont. I'm asking you please do not post those images on my site, now or ever. A lot of effort was put into getting those, and I will not be a part of this projects unraveling. Its a real shame it came to this. I was really looking forward to seeing these pictures get the credit they deserve and not just end up on a couple cheap pages in photobucket to be forgotten. Shawn

Check out this on sale at Yahoo Japan http://page7.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/g77645301 the pic page: http://photos.yahoo.co.jp/ph/horton1485/ls...jp/&.view=t Wow Shawn

I tried getting that Macross innertube, but was outbid. It got up to $50! The buyer was a hardcore innertube collector, so I didn't stand a chance (not kidding-all their previous wins were innertubes) I did win the big Macross themed raft, and even hung it on the back wall at our MWCon. Got a few questions along the lines of "what the heck?"-was pretty funny. Currently trying to get that beachball on yahoo that ends tonight-hopefully for under $15. Its different than the other one I have. No idea why all these Macross themed beach accessories have hit the market in the last 2 years-but as you know its fun finding the strange items. The chase is almost more fun than the capture. Still regret missing out on the destroid lamp shade from a while ago-haven't seen that thing come back around. Shawn

Just got back from christmas vacation and am beat. Created the Collectors area-its in the think tank Should all talk about macross products (except toys,models, and games) go there? What about dvds and such-they are currently in the series section. We just need to identify clear lines of demarcation so there is no confusion where to post something Let me know what you think! Shawn

This forum is to discuss anything about Macross Collecting We have dedicated forums for Toys, Models, and Games, so this is the catchall for everything else. Cels, posters, books, you name it! Now I finally have a place to discuss my Macross beachball and chopsticks! Shawn

http://page2.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/b89685758 Buy it Now for 38,000 yen That is actually a pretty decent price for something so rare S

http://openuser.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/us...=0jp&mode=1 I'm absolutely stunned at the collection of cels for sale here If I was a collector, this is what I'd want. Amazing!!! Shawn

I've had the same login session with IE, Firefox and Opera for about 4 days now on 3 different machines trying to determine the problem 2 of those machines had the old forums cookie, which I cleared. Its very hard to find the problem when it works for some and not others. If you have problems, please keep posting so we can see any type of patterns Thanks! Shawn

I absolutely love that idea. Thing was, I didn't know there WAS much interest other than toys and models. Most collectors don't really go outside of that boundary. Posters perhaps, but that would be the extent. Who else collects Macross dishtowels, shoes, swimming innnertubes, and chopsticks? (I do!). Everytime I display such oddities at MW Con I always get the-"Uhmm, very cool Shawn", and then the crook eye and raised eyebrow questioning my sanity. The new site format incorparates all these items, but there isn't any place to discuss. Would you fold it into one of the other areas (Macross Broadcasting System,OverTechnology Think Tank) or would it be its own entity? Would there be subtopics or just one big area? (records, posters,...) Would there be a wanted section there too? (missing card AL-43 to AL-47...please help) Shawn

glad we were able to resolve! S

Sorry, thought you meant the forums (posts), not the Gallery. I've made an adjustment, please try again and let me know if it worked. S