VGFacts

So I've been working on this theory that the trivia submission queue exists to keep me from reading the forums and learning all your secrets. This weekend someone must have realized that it would be so much less effort to just take the whole site down, forums and all.

I got busy this week (curse you organic body for needing sleep!), and Valentine's Day and such, so I haven't kept up on the queue as much as I had intended to during Dazz's absence. I was just gearing up to chew through the submission queue when the site went down.

Cue thread subject. Did Muscle Tower's server transfer affect VGFacts or something? Maybe I should blame Petie instead, but I can't imagine him as a pokémon, and Rob's bio says to blame him. Or at least that it's probably his fault.

So there.

I've still got some weekend left, so I'm going to see how much I can get through.

I'd like to think of Rob as a Porygon, capable of going into the internet like it was physical.

Ah, right. The outage. Funny story behind that...

The recent outage was caused by me - in part because I happened to be sleeping (lazy, I know) when the outage happened at 7am in the UK. I'd come off of working on a project for twenty or so hours so I was, for all intents and purposes, dead to the world.

Currently the disaster recovery works as follows; Something goes down - a script I wrote sends me an SMS saying something along the lines of "Fuck, something broke on: <server hostname>".

Generally within about five minutes of that my phone explodes with WhatsApp messages from the guys saying something like "LEGIT EMERGENCY, seriously not joking. Are you there?" or " I need you. Bad. One of the sites is down and I can't text you or call you" (I wish I was joking but that is the messages I usually receive)

So in this occasion exactly that happened - while I was sleeping. Because I missed the messages and because Petie was granted the root password (as ratified by the elders of the internet) he did what every good tech analyst does - he tried turning it off and on again but he had to do it while running out of the door and so didn't monitor the server coming back online. Turns out that there was an error in the apache config file caused (as you rightly guessed) by the process of moving Muscle Tower and the other sites Petie operates on to the tSRVGFacts server.



When I got up I fixed the config file and started Apache and all was solved.

I should add a disclaimer to my profile now that Petie has root access.

I'm just glad we know what it is, rather than have some mystery down-time.

(02-17-2014, 09:27 AM)Rob Wrote: [ -> ]So in this occasion exactly that happened - while I was sleeping. Because I missed the messages and because Petie was granted the root password (as ratified by the elders of the internet) he did what every good tech analyst does - he tried turning it off and on again but he had to do it while running out of the door and so didn't monitor the server coming back online. Turns out that there was an error in the apache config file caused (as you rightly guessed) by the process of moving Muscle Tower and the other sites Petie operates on to the tSRVGFacts server.

...

I should add a disclaimer to my profile now that Petie has root access.

That was some impressive pseudo-blame shifting/sharing. Not even mad :P

(02-17-2014, 09:27 AM)Rob Wrote: [ -> ]

Ah, right. The outage. Funny story behind that...

The recent outage was caused by me - in part because I happened to be sleeping (lazy, I know) when the outage happened at 7am in the UK. I'd come off of working on a project for twenty or so hours so I was, for all intents and purposes, dead to the world.

Currently the disaster recovery works as follows; Something goes down - a script I wrote sends me an SMS saying something along the lines of "Fuck, something broke on: <server hostname>".

Generally within about five minutes of that my phone explodes with WhatsApp messages from the guys saying something like "LEGIT EMERGENCY, seriously not joking. Are you there?" or " I need you. Bad. One of the sites is down and I can't text you or call you" (I wish I was joking but that is the messages I usually receive)

So in this occasion exactly that happened - while I was sleeping. Because I missed the messages and because Petie was granted the root password (as ratified by the elders of the internet) he did what every good tech analyst does - he tried turning it off and on again but he had to do it while running out of the door and so didn't monitor the server coming back online. Turns out that there was an error in the apache config file caused (as you rightly guessed) by the process of moving Muscle Tower and the other sites Petie operates on to the tSRVGFacts server.



When I got up I fixed the config file and started Apache and all was solved.

I should add a disclaimer to my profile now that Petie has root access.

I haven't read your post, but you've made me want to rewatch the IT Crowd. I hope you're happy.

(02-17-2014, 03:12 PM)retrolinkx Wrote: [ -> ]I haven't read your post, but you've made me want to rewatch the IT Crowd. I hope you're happy.

I'm pretty happy with myself, yep.

(02-17-2014, 10:02 AM)Petie Wrote: [ -> ]That was some impressive pseudo-blame shifting/sharing. Not even mad :P

(02-17-2014, 03:12 PM)retrolinkx Wrote: [ -> ]I haven't read your post, but you've made me want to rewatch the IT Crowd. I hope you're happy.

But his post was just like an extra episode of The IT Crowd. Except it took way less time to read than to watch an episode. You missed out. Fortunately, it's still there. Waiting. For you. Kind of like Rob. Stare at his avatar for a while, and then imagine him, standing right behind your chair.

That's kind of what being in IT is like, when it's not hilarious.

(02-17-2014, 05:18 PM)Rob Wrote: [ -> ]I'm pretty happy with myself, yep.

So it's all basically exactly like I imagined it. Except more so. Sounds like you made out on this one.

The only thing really missing here is a picture of Raichu dressed as Kefka.

So, why was it down yesterday?

'VGFacts facebook page Wrote:We hit a small technical snag while optimizing our server and as a result, all sites are currently offline but we're working as quickly as we can to get them back! Sorry and thank you for your patience!

That's the reason.

(02-19-2014, 04:45 PM)Psychospacecow Wrote: [ -> ]So, why was it down yesterday?

We got bored and wanted to see how badly we could break something and still be able to fix it. Turns out it's pretty fucking badly.