Sorry, timeouts have been temporarily suspended.

"Sorry, timeouts have been temporarily suspended."

Yea right! Four whole days and hours too.

When will their grace period end? And what has this to do with the infamous outage?

Originally posted by FabianFnas
And what has this to do with the infamous outage?

Everything

Originally posted by heinzkat
Everything

Yes, everything... Makes me feel better...

In the messages it says "Please see the site announcements forum for more details." But no answer is to be found there.

When is the games skullable again? That's my question, where's the answer?

What's this thread doing in Site Ideas?

FabianFnas, I already posted your answer in the Announcements forum where you asked the exact same question.

I dont think asking this multiple times gives you a faster reply. Neither do i think you should ask Russ for detailed info of what went wrong. Id rather see him fix the problem as soon as possible then spend time on explaining complicated computer-issues to computer-newbs like probably the majority of this site.

You'd better ask it after its over.

Originally posted by zozozozo
FabianFnas, I already posted your answer in the Announcements forum where you asked the exact same question.

I dont think asking this multiple times gives you a faster reply. Neither do i think you should ask Russ for detailed info of what went wrong. Id rather see him fix the problem as soon as possible then spend time on explaining complicated computer ...[text shortened]... computer-newbs like probably the majority of this site.

You'd better ask it after its over.

I see the answer now, I didn't see it at the time I wrote my question.

Do you see my frustration? I keep trak over every game I play - every one! Some people don't and therefore don't care. I do, I care! Now I have holes in my documentation.

The game database is kaputt. I don't think it's recoverable. The damage will still be there. Russ couldn't do anything the last time, can he do anything now? I don't think so.

Russ don't say much. This is a major mistake to calm angry feelings. LAck of information. The only thing I know is (1) a harddisk broke, and (2) it wasn't the same mishap as the last time. This is not enough! He is responsible to the database safety. If his backup routines are not sufficient the last time, and it isn't now, then he didn't learn anything. That's amateurish, a mistake any amateur does. Russ should be professional. What does this mishap show us?

Yes, this is the Site Ideas. And my idea is: Russ, enhance your backup routines!

Originally posted by FabianFnas
I see the answer now, I didn't see it at the time I wrote my question.

Do you see my frustration? I keep trak over every game I play - every one! Some people don't and therefore don't care. I do, I care! Now I have holes in my documentation.

The game database is kaputt. I don't think it's recoverable. The damage will still be there. Russ couldn't do ...[text shortened]...

Yes, this is the Site Ideas. And my idea is: Russ, enhance your backup routines!

I understand your frustration. Just didnt think that bugging him while the problem was present was the way to handle it.

It seems fixed now tho. Now seems like a good moment for Russ to explain what happened in detail to the people interested. Although hes not obligated to do any of this it also seems appropriate to answer your good question of what will be done to avoid this (loss of data) in the future.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
"Sorry, timeouts have been temporarily suspended."

Yea right! Four whole days and hours too.

When will their grace period end? And what has this to do with the infamous outage?

I just ate a skull and it was delicious. 😀

Originally posted by SwissGambit
I just ate a skull and it was delicious. 😀

Skulls are good, aren't they?
I had two nice skullings at the time promised.

Yet, I don't get the idea of suspended skulling period. Why not just freeze all times during an outage? If noone can move, then why let the time go?

Originally posted by FabianFnas
Skulls are good, aren't they?
I had two nice skullings at the time promised.

Yet, I don't get the idea of suspended skulling period. Why not just freeze all times during an outage? If noone can move, then why let the time go?

Probably difficult to do but a better way to deal with outages.

Originally posted by zozozozo
I understand your frustration. Just didnt think that bugging him while the problem was present was the way to handle it.

It seems fixed now tho. Now seems like a good moment for Russ to explain what happened in detail to the people interested. Although hes not obligated to do any of this it also seems appropriate to answer your good question of what will be done to avoid this (loss of data) in the future.

Yes, some games are fixed! 🙂 Some are still not.

Of the 20 games without proper history, 13 is recovered.
Of the 7 games left without proper history, 4 is 4 moves, these perhaps I can reconstruct myself. One has 8 moves, this perhaps can be reconstructed. One game with 18 moves, this I cannot.
Perhaps he is still recovering lost games, I wait and see.

Well, it could be worse. I'm happy of what is done so far. Perhaps I can live with this after all.

But I'm still curious what he will do to avoid this game crash a third time! There are mirroring hard disks backup systems, not that expensive, proven to be efficient, that he can use.

Russ, I'm not as angry as before, not as frustrated as before. Just so you know.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
But I'm still curious what he will do to avoid this game crash a third time! There are mirroring hard disks backup systems, not that expensive, proven to be efficient, that he can use.

I had no idea how dependent I was on looking through the previous half dozen moves to figure out what I was planning in my games. Losing the history has been rougher than I would have guessed. Oh well.

As to your remark about mirrored backup systems, it isn't as easy as that. Databases are living things and mirroring isn't the panacea you'd think. When database pointers get corrupted, which is what this appears to be, that corruption gets instantly mirrored to the other drives. Oops. And snapshot backups are only as good as the frequency of your snapshots. How frequently is practical? Every second? What about all the moves players made between last second's snapshot and this second's? That's what the recovery and merge is about. Picking through the good data and merging it with the living database that's an accurate record of everything that's happened since. Not my idea of a fun time, but thank goodness they're at least making an effort to recover what's recoverable.

If there are other sites that promise their hardware will never burp, they're probably lying about other things as well. 😉

Originally posted by sbacat
As to your remark about mirrored backup systems, it isn't as easy as that. Databases are living things and mirroring isn't the panacea you'd think. When database pointers get corrupted, which is what this appears to be, that corruption gets instantly mirrored to the other drives. Oops. And snapshot backups are only as good as the frequency of your snapshots. ...[text shortened]... their hardware will never burp, they're probably lying about other things as well. 😉

Foolproof backup systems isn't that hard to accomplish. Professional system designers know what they're doing.

If finansial databases burps with the same frequency as RHP database does, then we would have an economical worldwide collaps once every two years.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
If finansial databases burps with the same frequency as RHP database does, then we would have an economical worldwide collaps once every two years.

Then you'll either have to adjust your expectations or continue to, um, let's see, what's the word...ah yes, stew.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
Foolproof backup systems isn't that hard to accomplish. Professional system designers know what they're doing.

If finansial databases burps with the same frequency as RHP database does, then we would have an economical worldwide collaps once every two years.

Something tells me that the financial database guys are probably paid a lot more money and are thus better programmers than some dude who knows a little javascript running a chess server out of his basement.