The site crash

As many of you know, before I started CAJ, I had another site called Forum-Refuge which was just an all off-topic hangout site. Once we got CAJ going, the refuge just kinda fell by the wayside. Back in October, we did a sever swap but I never transferred the refuge over, the database has just been sitting idle on my home PC.

The refuge had several threads that I wanted to keep, so last weekend, I decided to try to get the forum back up and running on the new server. I uploaded the vBulletin software and imported the database (which holds all the thread titles, posts, PM's, user info, etc). When I did this, it somehow cause CAJ to crash. I immediately went into 'panicked repair mode' and deleted the newly installed refuge and its database, and then ran an upgrade script on CAJ which fixed any associations. Luckily, this was 3am so nobody really noticed.

This afternoon, I decided to try again...but this time I did a clean install of vBulletin and used a blank database. Once I got the site running, I was going to try to import the old database this weekend.

Everything seemed to be working okay, so I went to bed (I work night shift). While I was asleep, all hell broke loose. Somehow, this fresh install of VB started getting crossed up with CAJ, and the server started confusing the two and trying to pull info from both. CAJ members couldn't log in because it was trying to pull from the Forum-refuge memberbase, but that was empty, so it started showing people ban messages.

Anyhoo, I woke to find a bunch of messages saying the site was fubar, and I tried logging in to find that I was locked out as well. I went into the hosting control panel and followed the same procedures that I did last weekend, and it was back operational in no time.

I want to apologize to everybody. I try to do my messing around late at night and/or behind the scenes. I never dreamed that a fresh, second install of vBulletin would kill CAJ, and I still can't figure out exactly why it happened...but I know now that if I'm gonna try a third time, I'll do it in the wee hours of the morning and let people know in advance.

Thanks for your patience,
Alan

Cool, just glad you got it back up. I tried and couldn't get in earlier, but, the sign in page didn't ever look correct, so I knew you were having issues.....

I thought I'd done something wrong when I had a message saying I was banned from the forum. Glad you got it sorted out al

whats wierd is that i was in the baw when it happened. I would try to post and it wouldnt let me- could type and hit enter and never show up. others in the baw were still posting. then nothing at all

Lol I was sure that I had done something ban-worthy that I just couldn't remember.

glad all is working now and we appreciate the time and work you put in to this. No problem about the down time but was concerned what in the world I did to be banned.

Got to love server work and all the little things that happen. Enter this past Thursday, got to work at 6:30 for an up to mid day regular production day and then to start work on a new server migration to hopefully put on line at 5 after everyone had sent home. 2:55 early Friday morning, I was able to lock the door and go home. Not one thing worked the first time. I had a guy there and one session in so their was a team with different strengths and weakness to help. What an experience.

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Originally Posted by AL9000

CAJ members couldn't log in because it was trying to pull from the Forum-refuge memberbase, but that was empty, so it started showing people ban messages.

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Do it again but on 04/01/2014

I was pretty sure something like this was the case ..

Well a lot of people were concerned that we got hacked. It turns out the hacker was me :doh:

It's nice to know that people care enough to get riled up about it :hug:

well, with your "tenuous" relationship with some of the deema management crowd .....

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Originally Posted by PaulD

well, with your "tenuous" relationship with some of the deema management crowd .....

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I don't believe most of them could "hack" their way out of a paper bag let alone know how to exploit backdoor's in software.

I missed the drama, but I am glad you un-self-sabotaged the site.

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Originally Posted by Hi-FiDelity

I don't believe most of them could "hack" their way out of a paper bag let alone know how to exploit backdoor's in software.

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I honestly can't imagine any of them really care, either.

Al, I figured you were futzing. I was going to text you as well but pretty much by the time I saw it Kevin had told me you were indeed your own worst enemy. ;)

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Originally Posted by erinh

I honestly can't imagine any of them really care, either.

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That too. :p

As Glenn said on FB Al is no longer allowed to sleep.

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Originally Posted by Hi-FiDelity

That too.

As Glenn said on FB Al is no longer allowed to sleep.

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So Al should now get paid in RedBull instead of paypal?

I'm the king of hacking my own shit. :D

Is anyone else noticing a lag in page load times? Does it through my FF browser and tapatalk. Never noticed it until tonight.

That was a sinking feeling getting the ban message. I thought I had crossed the line, but then dejo told me the forum blew up. I'm really happy and honored to be on a forum where the owner cares enough to let everyone know that his puter stuff wasn't playing nice with each other. I even sent him an email asking what the ban message was all about, but then realized he would have sent me a warning via pm if I would have crossed the line.

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Originally Posted by erinh

Is anyone else noticing a lag in page load times? Does it through my FF browser and tapatalk. Never noticed it until tonight.

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Not this morning. Did not notice last night but I was just loafing around on the sofa last night so I generally don't notice lag then.

Seems to be acting better for me this morning.

Was better for me today too.

I guess you guys notice that we has some site problems yesterday, and here's the deal: I registered CAJ back on 2/3/13, and every year the domain auto-renews. I should say it usually renews, because this time it didn't. When it didn't renew, the registrar put into 'canceled' status, and most people started seeing an error screen when trying to enter. The odd thing is that other people could get in just fine, I could get in on my work PC but not from my phone. I was chatting when it went down and I didn't even know about any problems until people started texting me.

I went to the registrar's website to see what was up, and sure enough it was showing cancelled but wouldn't give me an option to renew. I then called tech support and the guy fiddled with his computer and made it allow a payment. Once the payment finally went thru, I thought it would take a few minutes to update the system. I waited for hours, and still no change in status...it showed next renewal date as 2/3/17 but cancelled. I opened a trouble ticket and after a few hours they replied that the WHOIS data was showing the correct info, so it would probably take a few more hours for the domain to propagate. I got home last night and couldn't get in at all...and finally went to bed at 3am but it still wasn't working properly. I woke up this morning and everything seems to have worked its way out.

I want to transfer the domain to name.com where I have a bunch of others and can register it for 5 years at a time, but transferring a domain is a major PITA and the site would probably be down for another day or so.

Anyway, sorry for the site down-age. Hopefully it won't happen again.

Thanks Al for all your trouble and work, we appreciate it!