Hi,

This work is complete. I still have more work to do but any outages should be pretty short (5min or less).

Thanks for everyones understanding,

Hi.

I’ll be doing some reworks on the server setups and network and power on Tuesday Nov 21 between 9a and 5p US Eastern (2p-10p UTC/GMT).

For periods during this window the site will be unavailable. Page can’t be displayed et al are expected.

I’ll update this topic when the work is complete.

Thank you,

Hi all!

So, it's been a number of years since I rebuilt the server that MM has been running on, and the underlying operating system finally went end of life this year (no more security patches or other enhancements).

I copied the site to a new server this morning, and presuming all went well we should be done with the work to move it to it's new home for now. The hard downtime ("Page can't be displayed" errors and stuff) was a little longer than I thought, but hopefully we don't need to do this kind of thing that often.

I'll be poking around for a while to test functionality on the new system. Please PM me directly if you see anything strange so I can pop back on and address any issues.

Sorry for the inconvenience,
Take care!

Day job got in the way, so this work is being rescheduled.

Sorry,
Thanks,

Hi all,

The operating system for the server the forums run on is end-of-lifed and no longer receiving security patches and updates, so I need to take the forum offline for an extensive rebuild on Sat 5 Mar. last time I did this it took a good 8 hours. During the work I expect timeouts, cannot load site messages, etc.

I’ll update this post when the work is complete.

Thanks,

Hi all.

After a large heavy snow storm last night the area lost power around 1:40am and just came back online a few minutes ago.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

I

Just as a closer to this, I think we found and fixed the quick edit bug. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Hi all,

I've also made a tweak to the database backend to hopefully fix the quick edit blows away a post issue. Please PM me if you still have any problems editing a post, or if you find a post that's been cut off. I might have a full copy in the backup and can try and recreate it.

Apologies for the inconvenience,

Hi,

Yes, it's definitely weird. The post is definitely truncated in the database. Is this something that happens only when an edit is made or is it something that also comes up when doing the original post?

If it's during an edit, when loaded in to edit, is the post in tact? Is there a common character or something where it gets broken down during an edit? I thought someone thought special characters like ` ' & ^ might do it?

Hi,

It's a warning that in this specific case is ok to get and ignore. There are 2 ways to fix it. One way is to not use Internet Explorer and use Firefox or Google Chrome instead (not a bad idea overall, they are generally faster and more secure than IE) since IE creates that warning even though there's no security problem with our site (there could be with others, it's not a warning to completely dismiss unless you know the cause). The other one is to fix the board footers to replace every http:// reference with https:// references (or remove unsecure links). I've done this (you'll see it in the edit footer code where I commented out the offending links until they can be replaced). Specifically, the pop-up is because IE is flagging the non-secure links to other sites from a secure page. It should have stopped prompting for now.

Hmm that's really strange... I've not seen text disappearing from a post, just no word wrap when entering a post.

Can you pm me the full poem and I'll see if I can reproduce the issue?

Apologies,

Hi,

OK, I went the other direction and have HTTPS enabled the site (this is good, it adds encryption between the server and you so passwords and things can't be seen and intercepted in transit).

Still working on word-wrap with Internet Explorer...

Hi all,

So worked with Lori for a bit and I think we've taken care of the 2 issues people have been reporting (going inadvertently to a HTTPS version of the site that doesn't yet exist and maybe word-wrap while editing in Internet Explorer - looks like HTML commands that were being ignored or processed differently in earlier versions of IE are now being processed by the letter of the standard, just needed to re-code to match... Anyway)

Can anyone who was having a problem please take a look around, post, test things out and let me know if there are any strange things still going on? A link to a broken section would be useful, and PMs directly to me is fine.

Thanks for everyone's patients while we knock these bugs out.

Hi!

I just updated the test forum with a real certificate so you shouldn't see the "untrusted certificate" messages any more. I also fixed the Stone skin, it was quite broken on the test site. I think your problem with the test site may have been the previous untrusted certificate, if you'd like to take another look now that it's got a real certificate and let us know I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,

Hm, OK, so another tick mark in the "somehow things got marked as a secure site even though it's not yet running SSL" column.... OK, looks like we're definitely narrowing down on a fix, thanks!

Yeah I was wondering since we're not supposed to be using SSL on this site at all, that's why I was asking if the URL bar was saying http:// or https://.

That won't fix the word-wrap issue though, just the strange display.

OK, that's actually quite interesting. Does your URL bar say https://forums.mosaicmusings.net or http://forums.mosaicmusings.net?

Does this look like your screen?

http://c3po.pclark.com/https-screen.JPG

Hi,

Strange; Firefox, Chrome and Safari look OK to Cleo and I..

http://www.mosaicmusings.net/screen1.JPG (Firefox)
http://www.mosaicmusings.net/screen2.JPG (Chrome)

Is anyone else experiencing any issues with Firefox or Chrome? Just trying to nail down commonalities.
For those with Internet Explorer, does clicking on the icon in the URL bar that looks like a torn piece of paper (if you hover over the icon it says compatibility mode) help at all? Control-F5 at the same time to force a full page reload?

Thanks,

Hey all,

OK, done for today. I had to roll out my changes, for whatever reason the upgrade failed. I'll have to try and test it on a standby computer and figure out what I did wrong and try this again at some later date.

Apologies for any inconvenience this outage may have caused.

Hi all,

To address some issues that some recent security patches have caused (there are some interesting technical bugs which I can explain if anyone is really interested) on Sunday, Mar 1 starting around 08:00 Eastern (13:00 GMT) I'll be doing a bunch of updates/upgrades that will take the system offline for short periods of time during the day ("page cannot be displayed").

I'll update this thread when I'm done with the work.

Apologies in advance for any inconvenience.

Hi all,

There's quite the blizzard coming towards our area. It's expected to start around 7pm local (00:00 1/27/2015 GMT) and run through until early Wednesday (say 09:00 GMT 1/28/2014). Two feet of snow and high winds are expected. If we lose power the system will go down until it's restored. Hopefully it won't happen, but if something does this is just to let people know that we'll be back as soon as conditions allow.

Thanks and take care!
I

Hey everyone!

So, the gnomes have been working behind the scenes since the original post and have successfully migrated the forum over onto the new server without any major downtime. So, there won't be any planned downtime this coming weekend.

Enjoy the holiday if you have it!

I

Hi all!
In order to move system data to a new server I'm building (slightly faster processors, more RAM, complete base reinstall of the operating system to clean out obsoleted and unused stuff from all the years of upgrading) there will be periods of "unable to display page" (possibly extended periods, hours long) starting at 7AM on Sat, August 30. I hope to move things pretty quickly, I'm going to do a lot of prework like installing the new system, moving static data and as much prep as I can) but unfortunately bits of strangeness, or the forums being outright offline periodically, are unavoidable in a large scale rebuild like this.
I apologize in advance for any inconvenience,

Hi all,

You might see some intermittent "page cannot be displayed" messages on Saturday morning (after 7a Eastern, 11 GMT) ending before 11a Eastern (15:00GMT) as I do some larger than usual security patches and system maintenance.

Sorry for any inconvenience,

I

Hi all

I'm done moving everything over to the new Fios connection. Hopefully we won't be getting 'page cannot be displayed issues but if anything seems weird please let me know.

Sorry for the inconvenience,