Upcoming Server Move

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Folks.

Those of you in the know (that's us moderators) and those of you who aren't (that's the rest of you lot, and the moderators who aren't paying attention, like Darkmoon) should be enlightened to upcoming moves.

We're planning on moving the forum from it's current residence to a new server, because, frankly, the current hosting is a bit shit. The new server will give us more access and more ability to do clever things, like automated maintenance, auto-locking of threads (rather than whenever I get around to running the script) and, hopefully, a more stable and responsive experience for the general populace.

The outage should be something on the order of a day or so; if you get here and find the forum locked and a note saying "we're moving", you'll know why. If the note says "we've moved", then everything is set up and moved, and we're just waiting on the various DNS caches clearing, and there's nothing we can do about that but wait.

This is due to happen at some point before the end of the month. We are not sure, precisely, just when that's going to be, however, since it depends on the current hosters letting us have the domain name - they've told Darkmoon it's easy, just click here, but we've heard that before, and are taking it with a grain of salt. We'll keep you posted here as things change.


You have been enlightened. Now go in peace, and not in pieces. Yet.
 -- llearch, Code Monkey for the Stars.

[Anker Steadfast]

I'm guessing the members accounts move with the ... well, the forums.
But just to be sure, will we have to re-register ?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

No. If we can get it going how we want it to, everything will move, lock, stock, and two smoking barrels.

If we can't, then there will be a new forum that is empty, and some sad-faced server gnomes.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Okay, this is likely to happent his evening, if I can get the time free from looking after my son.


Give it an hour or so, and the forum will be locked for pre-moval. You have been warned.


... We expect it to be down for most of 24 hours or so, because the DNS is mostly outside our control, but it will work for some people anyway during that time. We will do our best, but there are limits.

I can be reached in all the usual places and ways, and I'll leave a list in the closure message anyway - not while I'm shifting things, but after the move is complete. Anyone with problems after that will be welcome to contact me and we'll sort things out.

[Gabi]

Good luck with the move. I hope it all goes smoothly.

[bradypodidae]

Good luck with the move. I hope it all goes smoothly.

Quite...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Yay, welcome to the new server.

Well, that was fairly painless. Other than the DNS changes...

[RobbieThe1st]

I am happy to say that the dns is working fine for me - No issues whatsoever.
(Google's DNS at 8.8.8.8 has the new info, as does 4.2.2.1)

In other news, whats up with the new "header" box? The one with your avatar, total time logged in etc - Is there any way to disable it?
Thanks a lot,

-Rob

[Attic Rat]

It went like clockwork! OK, puns aside, the move was almost completely transparent. Kudos and congratulations to the IT guys.

[techmaster-glitch]

Looks like it was already moved, though the forum layout is very much different, and it looks like there are a lot of formatting errors and broken image boxes around. Though, am I incorrect in presuming this is normal and going to be fixed in time?

[Turnsky]

i dare suspect there'll be a few teething problems for a while until the dust settles. i mean it's a server move after all, it takes time before everything's fully ready to go.

maybe folks should start making a "fix it now" remote control, it's like the cat remote in how it's powered by wishful thinking

[RobbieThe1st]

Well, as best I can determine, at least one CSS file isn't referenced in the HTML. Its not missing... its just not asked for.
Llearch is, of course, doing his best... But he's only one person.

[Tapewolf]

Impressive.  The only difference I can see so far is that the server clock seems to be 10 minutes slow.  I was wondering if the move had been aborted or something...

EDIT:

In other news, whats up with the new "header" box? The one with your avatar, total time logged in etc - Is there any way to disable it?

Looks like the default theme has been changed?  I've been using DMFA V2 for a while now so I'm used to seeing those.  You might be able to force the old DMFA theme if you prefer that or something.

Also, looks like the 'Insert Quote' may not be working.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Given we bodily picked up the forum from one box and put it on another, nothing should have changed. However, there may or may not be some hard-coded paths included, in which case it's bloody stupid, and we'll find and fix them RSN.

Feel free to provide actual useful debug info, like which images, what the path to them is, and which theme you're using, since on the SMF default theme, everything just works.

... barring the insert quote thing, which I'll look into nowish...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

In other news, whats up with the new "header" box? The one with your avatar, total time logged in etc - Is there any way to disable it?

What new header box? It's been there for years, if it's the one I think it is. You can hit the minus image in the top right corner, as per standard, to get it to fold up, and the forum will save a cookie for that...


BTW, the quote button now works.

[Tapewolf]

BTW, the quote button now works.

Cool.  What was the problem there?  Another path issue?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Yeah. Seems strange to me to set it up so that the usual themes directory is not the only place on the server that you can put themes, but they seem to have done that.

Heck, I think some of the other code _requires_ that the themes be in the themes directory, but changing the path to the webroot (which you have to list somewhere) doesn't change the path to each theme. Which is just poor coding, to my mind... No way would I put themes in, say, the local bin directory, but the forum code appears to allow precisely that (assuming that the server admin didn't find out and lynch me, of course. Which I'd damn well deserve, if I did something so stupid...) for reasons that are unclear.

[RobbieThe1st]

What new header box? It's been there for years, if it's the one I think it is. You can hit the minus image in the top right corner, as per standard, to get it to fold up, and the forum will save a cookie for that...


BTW, the quote button now works.

To be honest, I've never seen it before this move(on any computer, logged in or out). But, I haven't changed from the default theme, either.
Also, whatever you did just now "solved" this - Its back to the way it was before, and no more header.

I'm guessing its as Tape said, and was/is from the DMFA V2 skin, and somehow showed up.
Anyway, everything seems to be good now, so Thanks, Llearch.

[Bjalf]

The only difference I can see so far is that the server clock seems to be 10 minutes slow.

Heh. More like 50 minutes fast ...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I will investigate, and resolve, that, later. I'll need access to the server, which I don't have from here...

... and is probably related to the different timezones on the server side...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Hokay. The server was ten minutes slow, and has been corrected. Or, at least, a process has been started which will correct that time over a period of a few hours to a day.

So things should settle down for that.

I believe I've resolved any other problems already; if there is anything else showing up now, please feel free to step forward and let me know.

[That_wolf]

Today, while posting on the DMFA fourm, I noticed a major thing. My little spell check button is gone. Insted of being [Post] [Spell Check] [Preview] thefourm now just says [Post] [Preview]. I relied on the spell checker because I SUCK at spelling. Any help?

Note:Due to spell checker being gone, my spelling here is terrible.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I see. You mean, like, the usual spellcheck in Firefox isn't good enough for you?

[Darkmoon]

Apparently he uses some other (less awesome) browser.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Mmm. Hokay, I'll see if I can figure out which browser, which theme, and where the button has gone. Since I don't use it myself, I didn't notice the lack...

[hapless]

Not a matter of theme.
To have the spellcheck you need to enable it at Admin -> Posts and Topics, and have the php5-pspell module installed and enabled; that one needs libaspell and appropriate dictionary, obviously.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Ah, thank-you hapless. I knew there was a reason we let you stick around.


That_wolf, it's enabled, but the packages aren't installed. I'll co-ordinate with the server admin and see if we can get that installed and working. No promises, though.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Co-ordination resulted in effects. Effects mean I'm not making the change (yet) due to it impacting everything else on the server that uses MySQL and PHP.

And then some.

So I'm waiting to talk to the server admin and co-ordinate an update.

[hapless]

Of course, I don't know CMF's requirements and budget... but honestly, a VPS at a good company (not an overselling one using OpenVZ containers and calling them VPSes, *cough*) gives you guaranteed chunk of resources and a full freedom to configure the OS and services inside it. When I need another module, I can just install it. I have root, I know everything that is running on my server, there's no one to work against me. And it's actually not even too much work to administrate once you set up cronapt, logcheck, and such.

If you're interested at all, check out Linode.
>.>
<.<
And urm, if you'd be willing to try it, my referral code is d8373e95376e415a24b4e9288c799e94cbcf5258

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I already have a referral code, since I administer a server there already, and the issue is that the requirements in terms of overhead are more than the owners of the forum are willing to spend.

I did suggest it, but they've gone another way. *shrug*