CRVL Forum down for a few days

[rvpopeye]

I just checked . The main forum page was showing but threads still not available.

on the plus side , it took no time at all to catch up on new posts !! and no PMs !

No new catches in the YARC net either.
We all know there are more out there ,,,,must be patient

[Kaylee]

At about 6 minutes into his April 29th livestream, Bob gave an update, and predicted the forums would return "by Wednesday".
They've hired a new webmaster, migrated to a new server, and are currently testing before flipping the DNS.
He sounded very confident, though schedule slippage is normal in IT, so I'd be surprised if it's fixed today, but would expect it to be fixed by the weekend.


For anyone else who's as stressed as I (working to a :eek: mid-May Launch deadline), you can still access some of those forums by using (most) search engines and adding this to your query:

site:cheaprvliving.com

Next, click on the "Cached" link.
Sadly, it's been offline for so long, that many of the cached images have expired.

I'm very glad to have stumbled upon this forum, yesterday, and have been delighted at the technical expertise.


Bob was very vague about what happened, however he did not imply any threat actors (e.g. DDOS, crackers), though that may have just been lack of forensic analysis.

DDOS is a very logical possibility, however it would have knocked the entire site off, and several of us have accessed the rest of CRVL, though nobody has mentioned doing so immediately after the forum death, so it's still possible. Most DDOS victims quickly sign up for CloudFlare's superb DDOS protection, which I see no signs of CRVL doing (i.e. their DNS name server is still pointing to their "old" webhost, not to CloudFlare's).

It sounds (to me) like a relatively plain vanilla db problem.
Given the huuuuuuuuuuuuge size of their forums, and that the site has been on a VPS server, that's not surprising. Most forums of that size would run on a high-powdered dedicated server.
In MuggleSpeak, a "VPS" is a server shared by many sites, though with much better isolation than mere "shared hosting". In car/van/RV-dweller terms, "shared hosting" is similar to an old car, VPS ("virtual private server") is similar to an SUV (or even a van), and a dedicated server is a fully self contained RV.

When using free forum software on a lesser powered server, backing up a large live forum is non-trivial. I expect they will have lost several hours or even days of postings.
In another thread here, there was discussion of CRVL's frequent censorship, which could make things worse (frequent database compaction can cause major problems). :karma:

oh,i see how it is,when your main squeeze is away sneak over here for a quicky,love em and leave em

while we dont have the newbies like bob we do have more experts and practical experience

LOL! I present my total Newbie self for your education, and hope I can contribute my edge case expertise.

[waldenbound]

Thank you for your explanation Kaylee. Your launching in mid-May?
We could comiserate together.
“Scared newbies, butts falling off club.”

[Cammalu]

Kaylee, mid May is just a couple weeks away! What kinda rig do you have? Where are you going?

[Blacktank]

we are on a shared server here and you can tell when a page loads slow,thats some other site sucking down the bandwidth

and welcome to the site Kaylee,how about a little intro in the welcome center?

[Motrukdriver]

we are on a shared server here and you can tell when a page loads slow,thats some other site sucking down the bandwidth

and welcome to the site Kaylee,how about a little intro in the welcome center?

If this site ever runs slow, well I don't notice it at all.  Always fast to load for me.

[Kaylee]

Thanks all for the warm welcomes!
I'll post something to the WelcomeCenter, within a few days.

CRVL is where I first realized that I.can.do.this, so it's a precious resource (I echo what Blanch said, above). It was awesome to find a link to this forum, and recognize so many posters I've come to "know" over the last month or so of research. Thanks so much for all you've shared.

I just checked, and the site still hasn't migrated (I checked the DNS directly, after trying with a browser).

Purely for fun, and with the utmost respect, shall we start a "when" pool?

One school of estimation advocates doubling the original estimate, then increasing the units of time to the next higher value.
On Sunday, Bob estimated about two days, so that translates to 4 weeks.
I'm optimistic it'll be much less than that. I'll pick this Friday (aka Force Day).

[Wabbit]

This is the message now on the CRVL forum page...

"This bulletin board is currently closed. The Administrator has specified the reason as to why below.
This board is closed for repair. We are working to re-open the forums within the first half of May." 

[Riverman]

deleted

[frater secessus]

When using free forum software on a lesser powered server, backing up a large live forum is non-trivial.  I expect they will have lost several hours or even days of postings.

Do admins not schedule that kind of maint anymore? 

1. take the forum offline in the deep night
   
2. allow the db to quiesce
   
3. make the backup/dump (and run any other maint you want)
   
4. restart the processes.
   
5. do any compression or off-site movement in the background
   

I've been out of that game for a while so maybe it's done differently now.  

I'd be shocked if the ${CLUELESS_HOSTER} didn't clobber more than a week of posts.