Stating the Obvious...

Nicotine · Post by **Nicotine** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 12:27 pm

RadPal wrote:Is it moving? I think it's moving.

I think the queue is moving.

Oh God.

No it ain't.

Alschroeder · Post by **Alschroeder** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 1:09 pm

Linkara wrote:I for one want to thank Kisai, Redwolf, and anyone else who has been working hard to keep things going. It can't be an easy process and I appreciate that they care so much about this and the community to keep working at it. Kudos, admins!

What he said. Much appreciated, especially since it's usually a thankless task. I use both CG and WCN, and I prefer CG....there's a LOT more freedom in what you can or cannot do.
And thank you, Kisai and Redwolf, for letting us know what's going on. In my dayjob, I'm sort of the town crier, the interface between IT and the rest of the company, and the first one they ask when something goes down. I step out of the way while the REAL programmers do the hard stuff, but I let the rest of the company know what's going on---and I know it's appreciated there, by the users who are dying for info....
Same here. Letting us KNOW what's being done, even if it's why it's so puzzling, is much better than leaving us in the dark. Thanks for doing that!--Al

Madman · Post by **Madman** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 1:15 pm

Nicotine wrote:
No it ain't.

It is now.

3392 to 3388 in 30 secs

RadPal · Post by **RadPal** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 1:47 pm

Yeah, the number went down a bunch of times. Whee!

Resolve · Post by **Resolve** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 4:04 pm

lets just hope that people aren't relentlessly hammering the manual update button

Amtekoth · Post by **Amtekoth** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 4:10 pm

My update didn't go through. I might have screwed it up.

I uploaded my Monday comic late Monday when the siteadmin finally reopened. But I forgot to trigger an update. Duh. So this morning I hit Index Update. But the date on the comic was for Monday, not Tuesday. Did I do the wrong thing? Should I have hit "Regular Update" instead?

Ed

Amtekoth · Post by **Amtekoth** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 3:11 am

Well,

Whatever I had done wrong is now better. My comic updated, yay!

The question now is, should I go out and buy advertising this week on Project Wonderful (optimist) or just wait it out for a while (pessimist)?

Ed

Sphix · Post by **Sphix** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 3:18 am

Amtekoth wrote:Well,

Whatever I had done wrong is now better. My comic updated, yay!

The question now is, should I go out and buy advertising this week on Project Wonderful (optimist) or just wait it out for a while (pessimist)?

Ed

Meh, advertising is easily canceled on Project Wonderful. I'ma go optimist and renew my ads now.

And also, the queue! IT'S UNDER NIIIINE! (as in a big, fat ZERO. YES.)

Nicotine · Post by **Nicotine** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 5:14 am

Looks like everything's working (yay!).

Mayihelpyou · Post by **Mayihelpyou** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 5:33 am

It's not updating now.

Linkara · Post by **Linkara** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 9:56 am

mayihelpyou wrote: It's not updating now.

...And now it is! This is confusing.

Sphix · Post by **Sphix** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:07 am

Linkara wrote:
mayihelpyou wrote: It's not updating now.
...And now it is! This is confusing.

I hereby dub this new confusion CGPMS.

NakedElf · Post by **NakedElf** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 1:07 pm

Resolve wrote:lets just hope that people aren't relentlessly hammering the manual update button

Yeah. That'd be a good reason for some sort of official announcement system. "Hey people, the servers are a little slow right now, don't panic, and don't keep telling your comic to update because that'll just slow things down even more."

C.w. · Post by **C.w.** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 4:33 pm

What if someone put a little link on the front page to an RSS feed?

Doesn't phpBB support RSS? I've seen a few sites where a thread in the admin forum's RSS feed is publicly avalible - since the forums stay up when then CG goes haywire. Alternately, isn't there an official livejournal group or something? One could put notes in there, distrubute that RSS feed.

What would be important is that not only could the admins do it, but the forum mods and such would be able to - that way while the admins are busy at least some message would get out.

Post by **Kisai** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 5:56 pm

Well the forums are completely unaffected by what's going on, being the only -OTHER- server we have.

The main server, again mySQL died at 4:25 AM this time. When mySQL dies, the autokeen dispatcher is not restarted (by design, it's a deadmans switch), though I noticed this time that both dispatchers died at the same time, BEFORE completing the "who do I update now" command. Which is curious.

I'm absolutely sure something is memory leaking mySQL, or mySQL is leaking itself, as that is pretty much what it narrows down to. If the Apache to MySQL logger is doing it, then it would do it at different times of the day, since traffic isn't exact. All signs point to something that -IS- using mySQL is not closing database handlers or something.

Yet this is not the glitch that was happening at 4:55AM, where the server was simply hanging.

I'm going to turn on mySQL's query logging to see what is happening.

Fesworks · Post by **Fesworks** » Fri Jun 15, 2007 4:55 pm

Kisai wrote:
STrRedWolf wrote:Folks, just hold on. Kisai and I are working on the servers, trying to get it back up. At worse, I'll get back on tonight to get the server stablized again at the expense of the webstats, which I'll try to keep archived.
etc.. etc...

If we had been selling out more, maybe we would have more hardware, but at the expense of the community. I know people can host their own damn sites for 8$ a month elsewhere. So why doesn't everyone?

-Administration
-Cost
-No Community
-No ability to 'leave it and forget it'
-No credit card! (Many CG users are also minors or in college/university and can't afford to pay for decent food.)
-Automation

I could go on and on.

The point is that I'm not paid, Kelly's not paid, we haven't had a new server in ages (not since the last time the server went down and didn't come back, anyone remember schlock & YDK?)

yadda yadda yadda

Yes, I think most people know all that.... or they should.

Anyway, I'm not a big CG user myself, though I have a mirror site here, and really should get into the commuinty more often (and I will after I get more time after all the damn crossovers I;m doing),

But still, not being involved as much, I'd STILL be keen on CG having a fundraiser for new servers and software or... something that will help get the uptime going again!

I mean, I don't know the whole story or situation behind anything related to these downtimes.. so maybe I'm way off or it has already been done or tried.... but I'd suggest a fundraiser of some sort.

I know's I'd donate a bit and suggest people to help out. I mean there are a lot of great comics hosted here, and there's a big community. I'd hate to see CG go by the wayside because of something like Costs.

Turnsky · Post by **Turnsky** » Fri Jun 15, 2007 8:09 pm

fesworks wrote:
Kisai wrote:
STrRedWolf wrote:Folks, just hold on. Kisai and I are working on the servers, trying to get it back up. At worse, I'll get back on tonight to get the server stablized again at the expense of the webstats, which I'll try to keep archived.
etc.. etc...

If we had been selling out more, maybe we would have more hardware, but at the expense of the community. I know people can host their own damn sites for 8$ a month elsewhere. So why doesn't everyone?

-Administration
-Cost
-No Community
-No ability to 'leave it and forget it'
-No credit card! (Many CG users are also minors or in college/university and can't afford to pay for decent food.)
-Automation

I could go on and on.

The point is that I'm not paid, Kelly's not paid, we haven't had a new server in ages (not since the last time the server went down and didn't come back, anyone remember schlock & YDK?)

yadda yadda yadda

Yes, I think most people know all that.... or they should.

Anyway, I'm not a big CG user myself, though I have a mirror site here, and really should get into the commuinty more often (and I will after I get more time after all the damn crossovers I;m doing),

But still, not being involved as much, I'd STILL be keen on CG having a fundraiser for new servers and software or... something that will help get the uptime going again!

I mean, I don't know the whole story or situation behind anything related to these downtimes.. so maybe I'm way off or it has already been done or tried.... but I'd suggest a fundraiser of some sort.

I know's I'd donate a bit and suggest people to help out. I mean there are a lot of great comics hosted here, and there's a big community. I'd hate to see CG go by the wayside because of something like Costs.

or even if it's a small yearly thing to put money aside for new server equipment should the need arise, at least it would expedite repairs to a degree.

Leko · Post by **Leko** » Fri Jun 15, 2007 10:48 pm

This is interesting.

Things were down for a while sporadically, as everyone knows, blah blah blah, my auto update didn't go through, so Tuesday night I hit manual update because that usually works, and lo and behold, it did.

For both of my comics, Thespiphobia AND the Masquerade.

In a 2500 person queue.

In less than 30 seconds.

o_O

Then the server went down again.

I've been able to get into ftp without problems, though. For the record, for those of people worried about losing readers, I'm in contact with a few of mine, and all of the ones I've talked to have been sympathetic to me about my hosting being down.

Most readers are smart. Doesn't everyone here read a few comics outside of their own? We understand that when hosting goes down, it's not the author's fault. We don't stop reading a comic just because some servers go down for a month. When all's said and done, for a comic that's good enough to draw someone in and make them a regular reader, we, the readers, are willing to ride the swells.

They'll keep reading until the comic starts sucking. In my humble opinion, stop worrying about the servers--there's nothing you can do to fix that problem except send your love and support to Kisai and Stredwolf. Stop worrying about the servers, and go back to worrying about your comic.

Use the downtime to build up a buffer. Or redesign your website on your harddrive, use the time to get it perfect before you put it up. Or plan an intricate new plotline that will draw people in and make them go crazy. Or reevaluate your artistic style. The possibilities are endless!

Jackhass · Post by **Jackhass** » Fri Jun 15, 2007 11:36 pm

And we're back!

NakedElf · Post by **NakedElf** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 12:37 am

Leko wrote: For the record, for those of people worried about losing readers, I'm in contact with a few of mine, and all of the ones I've talked to have been sympathetic to me about my hosting being down.

I strongly suspect that we as creators are far more sensitive to downtime than our readers are. After all, we've put a lot of work and effort into our comics, and seeing them not update (or disappear!) can cause a lot of anxiety.

I was reminded of this when a friend responded to a post in my LJ about CG having issues along the lines of "Are you sure you aren't just having internet problems? Because CG is working fine for me." Nooo my internet is fine, I just pay a lot closer attention to the CG servers...

The only thing that worries me is when the site is just completely down. Any newcomers who visit during a down time, well, the chances of them coming back are low, and they might have really liked the comic. (This is an especially depressing idea if you're paying for advertising.) I'm fairly certain my regular readers will understand updates being late or the site being down occasionally (especially since I host the latest comic in my blog during difficulties,) but newcomers who visit and find nothing at all... :(