Site Downtime (May 2016)

[shos]

Also apparently there was a temporary forum where MS people went to when the site was down, and I was uninformed about it?

Yes. For future reference, that temporary forum is here. There are also a few social media avenues where you can find that link or mass panic when the site goes down (e.g., Twitter, Reddit, Facebook).

lol I suck

[chilledtea]

So any news on why the server went down?

Nice to see it back working properly.

[pirate mollie]

rabble

(thanks y'all <3)

[pirate mollie]

also I heard it was hippy's fault

[Rob14]

This was definitely a Chicago Meet plot to keep them from getting behind in their games.

[mith]

Thanks, Kison.

I don't have any additional information - I was just told they were looking into it, and then that it was back up. Poking them about it to see if I can find out what the underlying cause was and whether they have protected against it happening again.

[Cheetory6]

This was definitely a Chicago Meet plot to keep them from getting behind in their games.

who the fuck spilled the beans

[SleepyKrew]

Thanks Kison!

[Ranger]

FINALLY.

[Thestatusquo]

Thanks, Kison.

I don't have any additional information - I was just told they were looking into it, and then that it was back up. Poking them about it to see if I can find out what the underlying cause was and whether they have protected against it happening again.

Seems likely not on our end. Could be caused by any number of things. I don't know what our server situation is but the exact issue is probably irrelevant. The fact that they took 3 days to get it back up again is way more concerning to me then the fact that they went down in the first place.

[Kison]

Are there any truths to the reports of catnip being found in the server rooms?

Tiger nip.

shutup nerds i expect to be compensated for this downtime

I've got like a piece of gum. Want it?

Also apparently there was a temporary forum where MS people went to when the site was down, and I was uninformed about it?

Yeah, I think the biggest lesson here actually is that we just are not well prepared for complete server unavailability like we witnessed:

• There was some latency in notifying the host of the issue because mith wasn't aware and my method of contacting him wasn't ideal. We've resolved that.
  
• The fallout shelter had registration shut off so many people couldn't get in.
  
• Not many people know about the fallout shelter to begin with.

We'll want to resolve these issues to make another similar event less impactful. My thoughts:

- Fix the spam issues in the fallout shelter & make sure registrations are always open. Even better, figure out a way to sync the primary userbase with the fallout userbase on a nightly basis.
- Point an easy to remember subdomain to the fallout:

fallout.mafiascum.net

or something similar.
- Better communication via social media.

[Thestatusquo]

Doesn't the subdomain idea not work if the whole server goes down?

[Kison]

It would work no problem. DNS isn't impacted by our server going down, and you can point two subdomains to separate locations.

[xRECKONERx]

I think also updates on the site status were being posted on the official MS facebook page instead of the GROUP where most people check, just as thought.

Thanks to Kison & crew for digging in and getting this resolved.

[xofelf]

Oh, there's an official MS page? I know I was directing people to the fallout and group page when they were talking on Skype or Discord. I keep forgetting there's a twitter.

[zakk]

Here's a brief recap of what I know:

Mafiascum's server went down unexpectedly on Saturday. Mith may have more details on why. All I know is the server came back up in the early AM today. Unfortunately it seems like it was shut down abruptly. This caused a lot of the database tables to become corrupt, which is why the board was only partially available until a few minutes ago. We had to run some repair operations which took a fair amount of time. Those are now complete, so we should

(famous last words)

be up and running without any data loss.

Questions? Let us know here.

i was in the middle of reading a very short post that was just posted, when i loaded a tab in another window and the site wouldn't work (i.e. i was using the site actively

right as it crashed

)

in either of those threads, and also in the multiple games i am playing, and the one i am modding, i have not seen any data loss

so... well done? at least with regards to recovery, and at least from my perspective.

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Was it a Tiger attack? I'm assuming it wasn't maintenance at least.

Also apparently there was a temporary forum where MS people went to when the site was down, and I was uninformed about it?

I knew about its existence, yet couldnt find it!!

Whats the link?!

https://www.google.com/search?q=mafiascum+is+down

that's where i found stuff.

the Grey Labyrinth post "Mafiascum is down (yet again)" from December 25, 2003 is a mite chuckleworthy but also kind of sobering realizing that was 13 years ago and we are still experiencing this...

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@mods:

what measures have been taken to ensure this does not happen again?

ehhh post 35 mostly answered this

------

also:

Spoiler: ha! see??

I tried to upvote inte's post becuase I had to use reddit instead of mafiascum and it makes me upset

[zakk]

thank you very much for your communication on this matter though, such as it is.

that buoys my spirits greatly (and i mean this not at all ironically)

[zakk]

unrelatedly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo8xQ6KDaT4 ???

[Kison]

Well if we do everything I said in 35 we could still have another crash like this, it'd just help minimize the pandemonium. Under our current hosting situation it's not really feasible to prevent(though we've done pretty well so far). Higher fault tolerance would be a lot more achievable if we were hosted somewhere like AWS since we can spin up and shut down machines as needed and more easily create redundancy. If one of your machines crashes you can just start it back up yourself, or kill it completely and set up a new one without having to wait on anyone. I just need to get around to pricing it out to see if it's something we can afford.

[zakk]

AWS is the way to go, are you going through a reseller like rackspace or something cheaper?

free would be nice (and iirc we were using someone's personal servers for years? thanks, btw, you rock) but if there's holes like this i am fine with pitching a bit to get something a little more dedicated

i'm not rich but there's thousands of us, i'm sure we can scratch something together.

[esuriospiritus]

i'm not rich but there's thousands of us, i'm sure we can scratch something together.

yeah no kidding.

if everyone who's been here at least 3 years and stuck around donated a dollar a year, I bet that'd cover server costs for that year, easy. (granted I am completely talking out of my ass cuz I don't know how many people that is or how much a server costs but I think it'd be enough!)

[Psyche]

BANNER ADS

[Oman]

We've had a donation section for years.

[vonflare]

I would be fine with ads tbh

but I don't know if that's a popular opinion?

edit: I would even turn off adblock on this site because I know I'm supporting a good site

[Psyche]

We've had a donation section for years.

practically invisible