When the board goes down......like it recently had

[jhderm]

Hi everyone.

As you all know by now, there was no way to get on the board for quite some time. I was very concerned about losing some truly warm and meaningful connections.

Is there anywhere to turn to find out what's going on if this happens again? I think many of us missed the support and the friendships that keep us going.


Judi

[Magna]

There's another site frequented by former and some current members here:
http://www.southbeachfriends.net/forum/

I didn't see any conversations there carried over from this board, but if you needed a central meeting point for your friends, group, etc., that site would work.

[jhderm]

Thank you, Magna. Main problem was to try to find the friends whose emails I didn't have. Trying to make up for that now, but what happened to the board? Is this likely to happen again? Could they just shut down the board and let us all hang dry? Can you say anything about this here? Or via PM if needed.
Thank you!
Judi

[Magna]

I don't have any information about what caused this or what might prevent it in the future. It has happened before, but as far as I know this has been the longest outage.

[RedRox]

Not sure it was the longest. The others were usually in the 1-2 month range as well. The only one who really knows why it keeps happening is the board owner, Foo. Earlier it had a little to do with running older versions of the phpBB software (the underlying discussion board software that "runs" the basic message board functionality) when newer ones were available with bug fixes and newer features that were never implemented. My personal opinion (and it is likely totally wrong), is that any database needs regular maintenance to keep it operating at a high level and if it doesn't get regular preventive maintenance it will deteriorate over time. I'm not sure it gets the level of PM it needs and so we keep seeing these kinds of problems every few years.

I don't know if you remember, but for at least a month or maybe longer before it went completely south, there were increasing numbers of people complaining they couldn't get access to the board, or were getting errors trying to post. This was similar to one or both of the previous two crashes I remember. Again I am likely wrong, but that is an indication to me that something was wrong then and was deteriorating. Maybe something could have been done at that point, or maybe not. I haven't worked with enough database software packages to know if they all have some kind of database "verify and rebuild" feature that checks all of the internal pointers and tables to identify and repair any that are out of whack, but I did work with one proprietary multidimensional database that had that feature and we would use it on help desk calls to help repair customer databases when they were acting wonky. Most of the time it worked, but sometimes it didn't. When it didn't, the other options to fix it weren't very pretty or easy. Sometimes databases get so corrupted they can't be fixed. Stuff happens!!

Maybe Foo does regular maintenance on the underlying database. Maybe she doesn't. Just really no way to tell.

[jhderm]

Thanks for the feedback, Red. Actually, pretty much anytime you say you are probably wrong, you are most likely exactly right. A good shtick, if I may say so...

What I don't understand is, doesn't anyone from the board maintain contact w the owner? It seems that there is a lack of communication w her. Is that customary? I would have thought that there should be ongoing feedback and responses. I am not clear on the structure of the board of course, and if there is no profit and it's some type of a charity venture, well maybe she wouldn't be inclined to invest money and/or effort. Anyway, I do remember the complaints last summer. It would seem like the perfect time to ask for maintenance from the owner, but I am sure I am not original in thinking of this. So my conclusion is, something is amiss in the dedication of the owner to this board. Not sure if there is any remedy to that, move the board to a different venue?

Anyway, I am happy that the board is back and running. And always good to see you here, too!

Judi

[RedRox]

She lives halfway around the globe somewhere in SE Asia. Her english is decent but not her native language. In my experience the communication tended to be one way and largely ignored. So no, there was never really any kind of regular communication back and forth as you might expect. It's more of a "throw it over the transom and see if anything happens" kind of thing from my experience as a mod. Maybe it's different now? Don't know since I'm not a moderator!

[garygr]

If the owner has no interest in maintaining this board and maintenance is not done, then who is responsible for getting this forum back and running? We all owe him or her a special thanks, but this stuff is just too technical for old guys like me and way over my head.

[Magna]

The owner arranged for it to be fixed. There was information posted on the status of things, while the board was down, but I don't know any more about what went wrong and how it was fixed than that. The moderators are mainly administrators and don't have anything to do with the technical aspects of the board.