Army.ca Status- The History of Outages & Dark Days

[Mike Bobbitt]

Hehe, glad you got some quality working time in this weekend.

Well, the "good" news about the weekend outage is that I was able to confirm a few things... Previously, both the router and the actual system itself were crashing.

Now, the router is certainly crashing, but I believe I‘ve stopped the system from following suit. So once the new router is in place, we may actually be reasonably stable again!


Cheers
Mike

 

[Mike Bobbitt]

Well, as most of you know by now we've had a major setback. After spending a great deal of time and resources getting Army.ca running smoothly with new hardware and a new router, something went wrong. The current "primary" hardware simply won't boot. Because Army.ca is hosted remotely (in British Columbia), it's very difficult to diagnose let alone fix. Unfortunately the person looking after the server (as a favour to all of us) simply doesn't have the time to investigate.

As a result, we are back to running on the "backup" hardware on my home connection. That means a few things:

• We no longer have backup hardware ready - the next crash takes us completely off the air.
• Because of the nature of the connection, some Army.ca e-mail (such as to AOL accounts) may not get through. This means people registering from these accounts may never see their registration notices. I will try to manually forward these as much as is practical.
• We have lost all postings and user accounts from Sunday, May 9th to Wednesday May 12th.
• We currently exceed the bandwidth limit for my home connection by 6 to 7 times the allowed limit. This means that the site may need to be taken offline again from time to time, or I may have to beg for donations again. 

Clearly, this is a temporary solution and I'm investigating the following options to get us up and running again in a more permanent fashion:

1. Fix the hardware and ship it back to BC. The BC connection is free, so this is pretty appealing (no need to beg for donations) however the problems associated with managing a remote site have been very limiting lately. This also means that the defective hardware has to be shipped to me, fixed, then shipped back, which is likely to take 3 weeks minimum.
2. Obtain a new connection and probably new hardware to increase stability. I've been on a holding list for over a month for a new net connection that would help out here, but Bell hasn't actually enabled me yet. Until they do I'm on my current (limited) connection. The new connection would cost more per month than the existing options, but would allow me to host Army.ca from my house, where I can quickly address any faults. This option may be "donation driven" as I've run out of "out of pocket" money to keep the site going for the next little while.

The bottom line: things are going to be tough for a while yet, but I'm working as quickly as I can to get things back in order. As I learn more, I'll be sure to post it here.

Thanks for your patience through all this.


Cheers
Mike

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

No Mike,
THANK YOU for your hard work and time.
If you need, please ask. CHEERS, Bruce

 

[Infanteer]

Weird, it‘s like stepping back it time. Arguments and flames will have to be reargued and reflamed....

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

Agreed, I‘m reading things I already commented on or did‘nt wish to. Hey for some people this could be a blessing.

 

[Mike Bobbitt]

FYI the defective hardware was shipped out today and should be in my hands early next week. Assuming I can fix it relatively quickly, we should be up and running again "for real" in more like 2 weeks... (That‘s assuming everything goes according to plan, which I‘m learning is rarely the case.)

As for the lost posts... That‘s why I was keeping the site down... in the hopes that I could recover quickly. But tonight I made the call: better to be back online with some loss than to be out for another 2-3 weeks...

 

[mattoigta]

Thanks for the hard work mike

 

[winchable]

Alllllllllllllllllllllll-right.

Good news is, thanks to the lack of distraction I‘ve got my paperwork done that had been backed up for weeks on my personal comp so now I can finally get into the landscaping dirt.

Bad news is, I‘ve been having serious withdrawls..like this rash..and uncontrollable shakes...

 

[Pikache]

Thanks for getting us back online, Mike.

If you need back up, we‘re there.

 

[lostgrenadier]

If you need a couple of bucks from each member to survive, then let‘s do it! There seems to be a good number of us, maybe with a small donation each, we could help this site get some better equipment to further enhance the spread of our b******t
:dontpanic: : Hey buddy, don‘t be afraid to ask, the answer might stun you

 

[Mike Bobbitt]

Thanks guys, I really appreciate it. I‘m going to try to get things going "under my own steam" first, but it‘s good to know the help is there if needed.

There‘s a few possibilities where I may need some bakup... Namely, paying for bandwidth overage charges, helping cover the cost of the new connection (if it ever comes through) and possibly buying new hardware.

I have to admit the temptation to buy new hardware (as opposed to going back to the historically flaky stuff) is pretty strong... I‘m sure if we managed to raise a few bucks we could get a system that‘s more stable (and faster).

Anyway, we‘ll see how things turn out.


Thanks again...

 

[girlfiredup]

Mike, why don‘t you give us some idea on the amount of dollars it will cost to keep this thing permanently stable. What are we talking here? A couple of hundred bucks? More?

 

[jrhume]

I emailed Mike separately on this topic, but I see a few posters are in favor of having some form of user support for the site.

I‘m ready to pay a few bucks annually to make the thing stable and to take the load off Mike alone. I already do that with another military sim-related forum I go to regularly. There‘s no such thing as ‘free‘ when it comes to the Internet. Somebody has to foot the bill.

This is a **** good site and one of my favorites. I know I‘m not alone in that. Let‘s discuss the issue.

Jim

 

[Bzzliteyr]

I‘d be willing to throw in a quick $10 or so to a paypal account. If we all did that, it‘d build up pretty quick..

Bzz

 

[Pte. Bloggins]

Thanks for all your hard work Mike, appreciate it.

 

[Mike Bobbitt]

Thanks guys... As an update, the new connection was preliminarily approved today. That means I may have it as soon as next week, which is good news.

I‘ll try to get the firewall configured this weekend so we‘re ready to go.

Will keep you posted how it goes...

 

[Northern Touch]

Thanks for the hard work Mike. It‘s more appreciated then you realize.

 

[Slim]

Thanks Mike and don‘t be afraid to ask for a few bucks...We are the people who benefit from your site and should be willing to support it.

In addition we should all buy ARMY.CA T‘s and wear them the first Thursday of every month in public...wait...o.k. that was silly. :blotto:

Slim

 

[Bzzliteyr]

Is that JUST the t-shirt?? Or can we wear pants too??

Bzz

 

[K. Ash]

Thanks Mike. I for one, wouldn‘t have any problems donating a few bucks to help out. I‘m sure all of us put together would be sufficient?