Fruitcake MIDI Forum Treasury

The Dragon · The will of DAGRON! Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 753

I'm sure everyone noticed that some weird problems sprang up which put the forum and everything else on FCMidi out of commission for the past week. When we finally got in contact with HostDime, they told us that ALL of the databases (forum, wiki, anything else you can think of) had been irreversibly corrupted and we were out of luck unless we had a backup.

While we technically have a backup for the forum, it's a bit over two months old and may just cause more problems. With that in mind we decided to start from scratch.

Of course, that was yesterday. We've spent the past 24 hours trying to get HostDime to realized that they buggered up the MySQL client within PHP. I had to demonstrate that the error that I was getting with a very simple custom testing script was solely a mistake in the way they rebuilt the software in the server for the umpteenth server death since whenever.

Technical stuff aside, we've put a lot of the old forums together with some new ideas and with coordination between Dr Fruitcake, myself and hopefully some other mods, we can lay down some new groundwork to reorganize the way we use it.

This isn't to say that things are going to change. Really, I've just proposed ideas to Dr Fruitcake to put things in better organization. This is partially evident in the way that Announcements/Site Improvement has moved to a different category.

Also, instead of attaching polls to every topic that we want to save, we're going to move them to a location where they are safe from pruning. We have a forum specifically for things that are locked yet we may want to keep a hold of, and another forum for the sake of saving old topics, like word association games.

We'll be keeping the pruning measures this time as soon as we agree on rules--the FCMidi forum database got way too large for its own good, and ended up taking up a lot of space. The last backup I made came to around 130 Megabytes and temporarily shut down the website when HostDime thought we were purposely overloading their MySQL server.

You'll be allowed to do almost all the things you used to do, just that we're going to make it easier to prevent the forum from breaking down due to the kind of wear we gave it for the past two to three years.

As an important side note, we're still trying to get all the permissions and mods back to where things were (albeit with less clutter this time). If there is anything out of place, please let us know. If it could be a potential security issue, send it by PM instead of posting it publicly.

Timothy Dallas · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 3:50 pm Post subject:

Oh well, at least it's back after a confusing sudden death. Although I regret not downloading the forums when there was that window...

Good luck restoring the rest of the site as well. Does it mean the FCWiki needs restarting, though, or is there a backup of that lurking somewhere?

Damian · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 3:53 pm Post subject:

Very unfortunate... do you guys know what caused it?
_________________
when the world is sick, can't no one be well? but i dreamt we was all beautiful and strong
-
listen to my music!
-
facebook | twitter | last.fm | youtube

Dr Fruitcake · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 3:54 pm Post subject:

Sam · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 3:57 pm Post subject:

Can we have SpacePilot3k back plx

kthxbai

But seriously, YAAAAAAAAAY hurrah FCMidi's back!

00tinytim00 · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 4:05 pm Post subject: Wheeeee

That was an interesting week, though. A huge array of error messages from 404 to MySQL, culminating in a message asking if you want to download the forum. I was disappointed when it started recycling old error messages... felt like when a TV series episode labelled "new" turns out to be a "best-of" clip show.

Oh well. Time to rebuild.

Timothy Dallas · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 4:08 pm Post subject:

Damian · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 4:08 pm Post subject: Re: Wheeeee

Timothy Dallas · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 4:09 pm Post subject:

Upsi claimed to on BTHive, but I don't know whether he actually did or not. Downloading the forum would have been interesting if it worked though.

00tinytim00 · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 4:14 pm Post subject:

No, never tried to download the forums. I was scared they'd be all "HAH AM VIRUS - DELEETNG YOU FILES" and I'd be all "no not the files."

Ho hum.

Get my Sporkman picture back, then. ;[

Sam · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 4:24 pm Post subject:

It was just the index.php file though, not the whole forum stuffs.

Mine went in a bit of a different order:

Page not loading errors
404 errors
Download index.php
MySQL errors
Install forum (that was just today)

It was all very exciting.

Damian · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 4:29 pm Post subject:

The forum installation thing was actually supposed to be there, though. I presume Dragon went through and did all that stuff, but I think any of us could have. Although that wouldn't have been very good...

I'm pretty sure the only errors I ever got where the download forum and the MySQL stuff.
_________________
when the world is sick, can't no one be well? but i dreamt we was all beautiful and strong
-
listen to my music!
-
facebook | twitter | last.fm | youtube

Sam · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 4:29 pm Post subject:

I was tempted to install the forums myself, but I was good and didn't.

The Dragon · The will of DAGRON! Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 753

Yeah, instead you registered and posted in phpbb's test topic in the short window where I was trying to get everything locked down. Razz

Also, you can't install phpbb without having a valid password for the database. My passwords are very good, as Dr Fruitcake can attest.

Timothy Dallas · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 4:51 pm Post subject:

By "very good" do you mean a ridiculously long chain of characters nigh on imposible to guess correctly?

If that's the case, just don't make it a million-to-one chance of guessing it. Million-to-one chances always work.

The Dragon · The will of DAGRON! Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 753

I could tell you, but then I'd have to md5 encrypt you, and there's no going back from that.

Damian · Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 5:27 pm Post subject:

Ah, I thought the password blanks were of the installer's choosing. Never mind.
_________________
when the world is sick, can't no one be well? but i dreamt we was all beautiful and strong
-
listen to my music!
-
facebook | twitter | last.fm | youtube

Tdlicrfthawk · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 3:34 am Post subject:

I'd bet £10 that the password was "Fcmidi".

*£10 of your own money. Damn, you saw the small print!

Can the corruption happen again?
_________________
???

http://tdlicrfthawke.wordpress.com/

Upsilon · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 11:34 am Post subject:

Hay guys

The Dragon · The will of DAGRON! Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 753

The disappointing thing with themes is that they are not really compatible with mods. You have to do custom installations for every mod for every theme, which is a pain. Especially now that we're trying to move away from doing mod installations manually.

This pretty much means that if we do install some themes, don't expect every mod to work with them, so you may not be able to, say, Quick Reply.
_________________
Some things are best read out of context.

Upsilon · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 12:35 pm Post subject:

I'd gladly sacrifice my Quick Reply for a dollop of spacey goodness.
_________________
Delivering very monthly quotes for over six freaking years, it's Upsi's Quote of the Month:

"Don't have premaritals - it hurts your pre-genitals!" -chzrm3

LynkStar · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 12:44 pm Post subject:

Sam · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 1:51 pm Post subject:

Speaking of new stuff, I need a new avatar. Bah.

Tdlicrfthawk · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 1:53 pm Post subject:

I can't see what everyone is complaining about the current theme.

I also need a Avatar, something that stands out, something that flashes.
_________________
???

http://tdlicrfthawke.wordpress.com/

Tdlicrfthawk · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 1:54 pm Post subject:

I need an avatar also, something that stands out, something that flashes.
_________________
???

http://tdlicrfthawke.wordpress.com/