Latest Maintenance Tasks

[Mike]

We have been performing heavy maintenance tasks on the server, and to eliminate potential downtime in the future, this included moving drives, partitions, and all sorts of data around (and trying to shrink XFS partitions through extremely unusual workarounds). This has resulted in an unusual level of downtime that should not be expected after this post. Sorry if you have had any difficulties using the website. The good result of this is that we are now able to take snapshots of the database, in real time, every 30 minutes, with no lag, and this is separated from the operating system. All of this, of course, to mitigate unusual problems or the potential of an emergency situation, thus improving your experience in the future and making the server hardware (and operating system) more reliable to upgrade in the future.

Thank you for your patience and have a great weekend. -Mike

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Nice work there, Mike!! I was trying to post some photos in a post a couple of hours ago, and I thought it was me! It was driving me nuts! Finally moved over to my laptop and ran into the HTTP 500 error; don't see that one very often. Thanks for posting the notice.

See ya' out there!
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

 

[ussnorway]

I was trying to post some photos in a post a couple of hours ago

me too but fixed now... [ctrl] + [f5] your browser

thanks Mike.

 

[kemical]

Yes a big thank you to both Mike and Joseph who worked for hours sorting out the issue. Great job..

 

[Mike]

To repair some issues today, some modifications were made to the forum. We apologize if you may have experienced some errors, but the situation should now be resolved.

 

[pnamajck]

yep … i noticed a marked difference in response … the posts now show up immediately in "recent" category … instead of the "blue-moon" category. 😛 on serious note … 'ppreciate the dedication 'n hard work, guys.

 

[ussnorway]

it went burko about 6am (my time) but its working good now Mike..

 

[Mike]

The site was down very briefly for an update to our database. This is a valuable update that should improve performance overall. Furthermore, we are continuing to upgrade our kernel, web server, and PHP to keep the site up to date at all times.

 

[ussnorway]

thanks Mike... keep up the good work!

 

[Mike]

Sorry for the recent outage. Technical difficulties as the result of server upgrade. More information forthcoming.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Hi Mike,
Say my local Computer Club has recently changed webmasters and also Hosting providers (we are now on InMotion Hosting); and an update was recently sent to our Treasurer who registered our Club account with the new Hosting company, and they will no longer allow us to use PHP v5.2 due to security changes on their end. (They want us to upgrade to v5.5-v7.0 apparently). This is what our previous webmaster wrote most of our website with. And we've been Ok for this year, as we just changed over here in 2017 recently. Can you tell me which version of PHP you guys are running for the WF site? And if you are using a Hosting site, their name, in case we run into problems with this upgrade?

Appreciate it,
Best,
BBJ

 

[Neemobeer]

In the post just below this one November 2016 Website Updates and Changes

 

[Mike]

Hi Mike,
Say my local Computer Club has recently changed webmasters and also Hosting providers (we are now on InMotion Hosting); and an update was recently sent to our Treasurer who registered our Club account with the new Hosting company, and they will no longer allow us to use PHP v5.2 due to security changes on their end. (They want us to upgrade to v5.5-v7.0 apparently). This is what our previous webmaster wrote most of our website with. And we've been Ok for this year, as we just changed over here in 2017 recently. Can you tell me which version of PHP you guys are running for the WF site? And if you are using a Hosting site, their name, in case we run into problems with this upgrade?

Appreciate it,
Best,
BBJ

Hello @BIGBEARJEDI. We use PHP 7.1.7 with Litespeed. The main server operates from the Google Compute Engine (GCE). However, if you are looking for a small time, but good web host, I would strongly suggest ASmallorange.com. This is a good company. I'd like to say avoid Rackspace, but I wouldn't want to insult them! 😉

Sent from my Pixel XL using Windows Forums mobile app

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Thanks, Mike, for your help. I've passed on your recommendations to my webmaster. 🙂
Marc

 

[Mike]

I'd like to update our regular members and visitors on what has been going on behind the scenes.

A few months ago, we negotiated a better rate with our awesome host through the Google Compute Engine. This does not drastically reduce hosting costs, but it does give more latitude for things like persistent snapshots of our database and backups in the event the website were ever to go down.

Nearly once a week, we update our main system to keep it up to date with the latest and best web server software on the market. We recently implemented QUIC on this website. Many people have no idea or no care what this is. However, in places that have shoddy Internet, but still use Chrome, this can give the ability for packet redundancy so that we the site can reach remote people around the world. Basically, QUIC protocol makes use of the UDP protocol. If the web browser or connection are not compatible with QUIC, the connection goes down to SPDY or standard HTTP/2.

For a quick understanding of how QUIC protocol on websites works, here is a tutorial from some guy on YouTube Geoffrey Challen (Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo):



(Highly recommended)

Also, every week we update core add-on packages that we use to deliver you a better search experience on the website. We also use the latest Linux kernel on our main system as well as PHP (at this time Linux 4.12.5 and PHP 7.1.8).

We have big news coming! It is no secret that we use XenForo to power this website. It has been a long time coming, but within a few months, we will be upgraded to XenForo 2.0 when it becomes available. I believe that this will drastically improve page loading times as well as the experience our visitors have on WindowsForum.com.

For years, our team has been committed to helping provide an open forum for people around the world to share their knowledge and exchange ideas. This community is valuable and has helped millions of people, as well as encouraged people to work together in solving computer issues. I am proud of our accomplishments and we will continue to push it to the limit when it comes to providing you with the best forum experience we can possibly muster.

Thank you for reading and enjoy your use of this site! Please do not hesitate to visit our Feedback Forum if you have ideas or ways that you think that we can improve your experience.

 

[Mike]

We have recently pushed out a new version of our Android app. We are aware that push notifications are not working, but the rest of the app is. Once this is addressed, a further update will be pushed.

Also, our main database server (MariaDB) was down tonight for routine update which includes:

• InnoDB updated to 5.7.19
• CONNECT engine updated to 1.06.0001
  • Beta support for MongoDB added
• Fix ST_GeomFromGeoJSON (MDEV-12181)
• Fix ST_AsGeoJSON (MDEV-12180)
• MariaDB Backup now included for Debian and Ubuntu (in MariaDB 10.2.7 it was released only for Red Hat, CentOS, and Fedora)
• Fedora 26 repositories have been added in this release.
• As per the MariaDB Deprecation Policy, this will be the last release of Link Removed for Fedora 24.

• Fixes for the following security vulnerabilities:
  • Link Removed
  • Link Removed
  • Link Removed

 

[Mike]

This site now supports TLS v1.3 (RFC 8446) and v43 of Google's QUIC protocol.

 

[Mike]

The system was down briefly for a minor kernel upgrade, and more importantly a transition from Haswell to Skylake on 4 CPUs. Best, Mike!

 

[Mike]

Over the last several months we have been updating various components to improve the website experience. Over the last week, the forum software has been updated with bug fixes, as well the LAMP software in general. A database and kernel update precipitated a brief reboot today (about 20 seconds). Thank you!