Downtime, Errors and Such

[Procurator]

Pfft, I need another break from coursework, so I thought I'd make this. This thread will explain anything weird that happens, like downtime and great big site errors (however rare they may be). Basically, stuff that doesn't warrant a bloody news post.

Problem
Downtime for an hour or so today as the server crashed. Server came back after a couple of minutes, but it just happened to crash right in the middle of a MySQL transaction, locking the database table in write-mode and not letting the forum access it even after the server had come back up.

Resolution
I deleted and re-installed the session table to get it working again.
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[M4rb]

Nice nice
BTW, next time you need a break from coursework, maybe you could upload PoW's crewroster picture I mailed you?
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What is Singularity? ------------------ Singularity Mainframe

[TheTaxidermist]

Its good to know that when the shit hits the fan, you're right there and ready with an umbrella and some air freshener.
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[FrayJack]

Or give me a quote?
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My website

[RockyB]

You SO have to use Tax's quote
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New ST site :: New ST Forums

[FrayJack]

Tax's quote? What was that one?
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My website

[Eminition]

[Procurator]

What?
Forum downtime.

When?
15th of August, 21.00 BST
(25 hours from the time of this post)

How long?
Half an hour, probably. Two hours at most.

Problem
I extended the maximum capacity of people's in-/out-/saveboxes (PMs) too late, and no doubt many PMs have vanished as a result of it, over the course of this forum's existence. I want to get them back, no matter how trivial they might be now.

Resolution
Because there's no way to tell how many PMs people have sent and received (nor when they started vanishing as their inboxes got full) I'm going to grab all my many database back-ups and repopulate the PM database tables with everything that's ever been saved.
Because I'm just putting everything back, there's a chance that if you deleted a PM, it'll magically re-appear. But as the new PM limit is so large there's no reason to delete anything anymore.
Plus, there might be some PMs that never made it into a back-up, in the unlikely event they were created and deleted between back-ups.
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[Procurator]

Completed
Everyone should have all their PMs now. Except, as I said, any that were never caught by a back-up (like if you deleted one between back-ups or managed to fill the old quota between back-ups).
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[d4sh]

Yay! I got all the missing stuff back.
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"d4sh is half robot, half Dutch and half ninja." - M0RGAN | "Dashy is hardcore, he danced in the flames." - Gookin

[Procurator]

Problem
Discovered a bug in the crew management system. Well, not so much a bug as an omission; ship details wouldn't update! (Meaning the details of the ship, not the profile's of the crew members. They're working fine.)

Resolution
Uh, I actually finished programming the crew management system properly this time.
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[Procurator]

Problem
Journal entries and other content was subject to strict formatting, which would cause lines like

## Terminating Connexion

to become lines in a numbered list.
Actually, the formatting routines were just doing their job, but it meant people couldn't do things like add protocol lines to their entries.
It'd also help if people actually read the formatting guidelines.

Resolution
People can now escape formatting tokens (e.g. # at the start of a line, // to define italics, ** to define bold, etc.) using a backslash, \.

So to start lines with a # but not turn them into numbered items, bung a \ in front of them. To put // in the middle of an italic passage but not terminate the italics prematurely, put a \ between the two slahses: /\/.

The backslashes will obviously not appear in the entry.
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[Procurator]

Problem
Server downtime of a couple of hours due to a faulty power supply.

Resolution
Uh, the data centre replaced the power supply? Pretty obvious solution, I'd've thought.
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