New Software and Hardware.

[kato13]

Alright, since we were disabled I took the time to upgrade our hardware and software.

Hardware.
We have a new box with 4x the processing power and 8x the RAM. I am also moving the gaming site onto a new box to prevent heavy CPU processing actions on that site from effecting the forum. When we were hit by several spam registration bots at the same time we did max out CPU. Hopefully that is now an issue of the past.

Software.
I upgraded us from Vbulletin version 3.5.1 to version 3.8.3. While many of the new functions seem unnecessary for our small, polite and not at all cliquish group. (Friends lists, Infraction warning systems, social groups, etc.) there are a few enhancements worth noting. The ability to quote multiple posts and an avatar enhancement, which should improve page load times ,are both things I found interesting. There might be other functions I am unaware of so if you find anything interesting please post it here.

Also if you find any issues please post or PM me. It is very difficult to find and test every function so I would really appreciate hearing about any issues you might find. Any avatar issues in particular I would like to hear about.

Remaining Issues
Due to a complete reconfiguration of my network several things outside the forum are currently not functional:

My gaming site is currently going through both an IP and and a server migration. Its functions may not be fully functional until Monday.

My email address for this site as well as my personal email address are both non functional at the moment. I am therefore requesting that PMs be used over emails.

Once I have all my remaining network functions fully established, I will probably take everything down for a 4-6 hour period next weekend for a simplification of my wiring, power, and cooling infrastructure.

[kato13]

Little bummed since we could have been up 6 hours sooner, but the UPS guy claimed my name was not on my building directory. He was wrong and I had to go out and meet him on his route or else wait until Monday (Though I would have threatened them into delivering Saturday).

Found a few new functions. Quoted posts now have a link back to the original source. In long threads that might be nice. Also there is some type of tag function for posts. I guess the poster is supposed to attach keywords to make searching easier. That is going to take a bit until we all figure out how to use that and what tags will be helpful. The box seems faster, but as I am literally a nanosecond away network wise, I am not always the best judge.

[Webstral]

Dude, you rock for all your work. I can't tell you how much it means to all of us.

Ian

[Cdnwolf]

You rock Kato!! This is a great place and some of us suffered withdrawl symptoms!!

[kato13]

Dude, you rock for all your work. I can't tell you how much it means to all of us.

Ian

You rock Kato!! This is a great place and some of us suffered withdrawl symptoms!!

(Testing the new multi quote)

Thanks guys. Trust me no one had worse withdrawal symptoms than I did. When I was setting up the new server even though I KNEW it was not online I probably checked it over 100 times to see if anyone had posted LOL.

[Targan]

Thanks Kato. I had been expecting forum withdrawal symptoms this weekend but you've spared me from that. We appreciate all your efforts (and your generosity).

[Marc]

Ei! This is like come back home after the bricklayer has finished the reforms. :D As always, thanks for your job and your efforts Kato. Moltes grÃÂ*cies.

[kato13]

Thanks Kato. I had been expecting forum withdrawal symptoms this weekend but you've spared me from that. We appreciate all your efforts (and your generosity).

My pleasure.

Ei! This is like come back home after the bricklayer has finished the reforms. :D As always, thanks for your job and your efforts Kato. Moltes grÃÂ*cies.

De res.


Update
upload new attachments was broken but should be working now.

[kato13]

Glad I upped the hardware we are getting like 3 times our normal visitors since our "military slang" thread was referred to in the comments section of Jonah Goldberg's webpage (http://corner.nationalreview.com/).

The comment related to Burqa clad women being "BMOs" or "Black moving objects" and the fact that they saw one amongst the Bikinis on a New Jersey beach. The visitors are pretty much "drive-bys" though as no one appears to be looking any deeper into the site :( . Still kinda cool to be popular though ;) and who knows maybe a former or active player will stumble in.

[kato13]

Just discovered that not only did the router fail, but we were running on a bad filter as well. The new router was losing signal more than 2 times a hour. I guess the old router's power issues hid that from me or all the jostling that the cables went through in the last few days caused a second issue. There will be a few more quick outages as I move things around and replace several more cables. I will try to time it to when we have no users or just guests (see another advantage of membership).

On a semi related topic someone asked me about joining facebook but looking at the above and realizing that most updates i would make would be as about as boring as the above, makes me think it would not be worth it lol.

[kato13]

This has not been a fun weekend. I get everything running on a new box and I have a SCSI drive array controller failure. Luckily they are hot swapable raided drives and I have several identical boxes, but it is still annoying. Currently the forum is running on what was previously my image/PDF generation server (which still has the higher horsepower). This box has been solid for a few months so I don't expect problems but given all that has gone wrong with the entire system I don't want to jinx it.

And the military slang people just keep coming. About 20 an hour I am guessing. Not big from a load perspective but still interesting how much one link can change the traffic dynamics. I remember when I build one of the first online chatting systems (based off javascript) it got a mention in Nestcape's links of the day. We went from about 500 users per a day to 11 per second. Needless to say we had some performance issues that day lol.

[TiggerCCW UK]

I'm not even going to pretend to understand the majority of the techno talk, but good work in getting us back up again Kato!

[kato13]

As always the thanks are appreciated.

All is well now. Fixed the array controller it. It was just loose. Putting the finishing touches on the games website. It should be fully functional now, but I am still looking for bugs (if anyone finds one let me know). My other websites, my backup server, and my email should all be up by tonight.

Didn't mean to sound like I was complaining, but it was really a "when it rains it pours" kinda situation. Now things are really good. Everything seems faster on the new box. Both the router and the line issue are resolved. We are even getting fewer spam bots as this software is harder to crack so the smartest bots don't even try (they move on to easier prey).

Overall it was a good thing now that it is past and things seem settled.

[Rainbow Six]

Echoing what the others said Kato...thanks for all that you do to keep this site up and running.

Cheers

[kato13]

Ok, everything is running and no issues I could see for 12 hours (other than me kicking out a cable from one of my routers). I am therefore unsticking this thread.

I may take the whole system down for 2-4 hours to rewire everything in a more efficient way but I will try to do it during our lull times. Late Friday night or early Sunday Morning CDT. So no need to worry if we have an outage during those times.

Thanks again everyone for your patience.

[kato13]

Had to take the DB down for a few quick modifications. You can now search 3 letter words again (ToE, OOB, EMP)