Don't Panic

This page is for when you are having problems getting into the Forums in order to document that you're... having a problem with the Forums. Use the discussion page on this page to report problems; only update this page if you know for certain what is going on.

Administrators can then post follow-up comments to explain what is going on, or edit the main page to provide a status update.

You can also find some scummers at Grey Labyrinth's Scummy-doo where are you? thread, or on AIM's Chat Mafia room, #scumchat.

Status

November 20, 2006

Deactivated again. I've disabled the forum while we look through the logs again. Might have to switch boxes. More later. -mith

Older Status

November 12, 2006

Forum is back up and running, with all search functions disabled at present. Occasional "CPU quota" errors are showing up transiently; wait a few minutes and they should go away. Also read this post by JEEP if you have any troubles at all!

November 7, 2006

Alright, so I am thinking that the view all is the bulk of our issue. It is being used FAR more frequently than I imagined. I thought that it would be used very occasionally. Instead it looks like many people are using it almost exclusively. So I'm going to remove that feature. The same funcion exists in the printer friendly view, but I will also ask that it only be used rarely (I'm going to put a nag screen before I execute the query if there are more than 35 posts and show all is picked.) If you have been using the feature, you are not to blame for this issue and I'm not even certain this is the full problem.

I will disable that and put back in some of the mods that were lost at the time of the move. I'll be ready to start things up in the next day or so, but we'll want to coordinate turning it on. mith or I will need to contact the host, and beg them to send us an e-mail before they shut us off again. We'll need to be available so that we can disable the board immediately if there is a problem. I probably won't update the status again until I'm ready to re-enable the board.

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November 7, 2006

The repair returned with all OK, but it was formatted weirdly. I re-ran it and it came back with all OK in the correct format. So that part is done. I am going to restore the database to another instance and play around with things there. I'm looking through the logs and it doesn't look like our usage has changed recently (if you ignore the down time). I'm continuing to look through the reports but the queries are WIDELY varied. The search functions are the only ones that appear more frequently than the others. Perhaps it's used more…

Of course, that makes me remember that the "show all" feature uses the search function. Does anyone use that on a regular basis? It's supposed to be used for the rare time when you need to see everything and shouldn't be used as the standard way of viewing topics… If you do use show all normally, PLEASE send me an e-mail. I need more information unless I just start shotgunning the problem. Also, spread the word that I'm looking for more information among scummers you chat with.

-JEEP

November 6, 2006

UPDATE: I am uploading a backup of our data into a temporary database. I am going to do some testing on it. There were a LOT of searches in the slow queries, but since they shut us down even after I disabled it, I need to look at the other slow queries in more detail.

In the meantime, I'm running a repair function on the database to see if it finds anything. I'll get it back up ASAP.

See also

• The Crash