Apologies for persistent forum outages **UPDATE 27 AUGUST**

Casey · March 22, 2020, 12:05:21 PM

Apologies for the forum downtime this morning, 22 March.

Jamie R alerted me via Messenger at 7am, but I didn't see his message until 9.30am - well, it is Sunday

I emailed sKenDread (Keni) at 9.50am to see if was available to take a look and he phoned me within 15 minutes to discuss the problem and went away to take a look.

By about 11.30, Keni had fixed the issue, although he is now looking to see WHY it occurred, as we may have an underlying resource issue that to sort out and prevent a recurrence.

Grateful thanks to Jamie R for picking this up quickly and to Keni for fixing it so promptly

Casey · August 10, 2020, 10:37:53 AM

Update. Keni and I are convinced the outtages are caused by a limit our forum host is applying to our resources.

We have contacted our hosting company (TSO Hosts) about this and they have said the only solution is to upgrade to another hosting plan, but this is nearly 10x the cost of our current one

We conclude TSO Hosts no longer want our type of business and are therefore taking appropriate actions. Unfortunately, whilst we take these actions, we will, most likely, suffer some further periods of downtime. We apologise for this in advance, but we can't live with the current situation and have no choice.

clive · August 10, 2020, 08:03:41 PM

Well done Keni and Malcolm with the resuscitation (again)

Casey · August 12, 2020, 06:42:18 PM

Keni has relocated the database, containing the forum content and user details to another hosting company. That new hosting company offers an unlimited database size on a hosting plan that is cheaper than what we currently pay TSO Hosts.

If we are correct in our diagnosis, this will first step will prevent the forum crashes we have been experiencing.

The next step will be to move the forum software over to the new host, so we no longer have any reliance on TSO Hosting services.

Unfortunately, we had to use a database backup from 2 days ago to make this change, so apologies that posts after about 9pm on Monday 10 August have been lost.

Performance seems unaffected. If anything, this new setup appears to respond faster than with 100% TSO Hosting!!

I have noted a few odd quirks, such as "£" appearing as "Â£", which is a minor issue which will will look to fix.

If you spot any odd behaviour or issues with this new database hosting arrangement then please post up in this topic.

The MRC Team thank you for your understanding and patience.

Casey · August 21, 2020, 06:33:31 PM

21 August 2020

Apologies once again

The "splitting" of the forum software and associated database has solved the original cause of the previous crashes, but seems to have generated a different, and unexpected issue causing forum outages

It seems to be related to the way TSO manage the IP addresses of our resources they provide to us (they keep shifting!).

It just means we will need to try and accelerate the move of the whole sheebang off TSO and onto UK2.net sooner rather than later.

Please bear with us as our technical resources for doing this big job are limited.

boosted · August 21, 2020, 06:41:17 PM

Odd behaviour? Does that include forum members

.
Welldone Keni and Casey...
Anything IT related i just find so frustrating i want to launch the laptop..10/10

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

boosted · August 24, 2020, 08:24:25 PM

Yay were back

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

Casey · August 24, 2020, 08:46:41 PM

Well done Keni!

clive · August 25, 2020, 08:08:52 AM

We are alive again / Many thanks Keni and Malcolm,

Jamie R · August 25, 2020, 08:33:40 AM

Quote from: boosted on August 21, 2020, 06:41:17 PM
Odd behaviour? Does that include forum members.
Welldone Keni and Casey...
Anything IT related i just find so frustrating i want to launch the laptop..10/10

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

Odd behaviour does not include choosing burgundy/ maroon/ or wine red as a car colour

#justsaying

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Casey · August 27, 2020, 05:07:43 PM

Keni is hoping to do some further work this evening, 27 Aug, on migrating the rest of the forum from TSO to our new host UK2.net

The initial migration steps shouldn't cause any disruption to the forum, but once we have tested all is OK there will be a short period when the forum is inaccessible as we switch everything over. There is no avoiding this period, when the new address for the forum propagates around the internet. We will try to alert everyone via a post here and via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/18670680816/