NationStates

Posted: **Fri Oct 09, 2020 6:14 pm**

An update re: forum downtime:

First there was a nationwide outage by one of our upstream providers (Shaw Cable). This knocked out the forums for about an hour.

Then the network came back, and things were fine for a while. Then our connection to the public internet disappeared again. This time it seemed to only affect us, not everyone on our network. We couldn't find anything wrong and then it started working again. So that was mysterious.

A while after that, the network dropped again and our host rebooted our server to see if that would help. This left the database in a corrupted state, which Eluvatar had to fix.

Since then, everything has been fine. I don't see any indication that it's a problem on our end, so there's nothing to do for the moment but wait and see if it happens again.

Posted: **Fri Oct 09, 2020 6:18 pm**

[violet] wrote:An update re: forum downtime:

First there was a nationwide outage by one of our upstream providers (Shaw Cable). This knocked out the forums for about an hour.

Then the network came back, and things were fine for a while. Then our connection to the public internet disappeared again. This time it seemed to only affect us, not everyone on our network. We couldn't find anything wrong and then it started working again. So that was mysterious.

A while after that, the network dropped again and our host rebooted our server to see if that would help. This left the database in a corrupted state, which Eluvatar had to fix.

Since then, everything has been fine. I don't see any indication that it's a problem on our end, so there's nothing to do for the moment but wait and see if it happens again.

Cheers for the update. Sounds like an unfortunate comedy of errors, or maybe that should be procession of errors...

Posted: **Fri Oct 09, 2020 6:20 pm**

Plus side, it wasn't a moose this time?

Posted: **Fri Oct 09, 2020 6:36 pm**

[violet] wrote:An update re: forum downtime:

First there was a nationwide outage by one of our upstream providers (Shaw Cable). This knocked out the forums for about an hour.

Then the network came back, and things were fine for a while. Then our connection to the public internet disappeared again. This time it seemed to only affect us, not everyone on our network. We couldn't find anything wrong and then it started working again. So that was mysterious.

A while after that, the network dropped again and our host rebooted our server to see if that would help. This left the database in a corrupted state, which Eluvatar had to fix.

Since then, everything has been fine. I don't see any indication that it's a problem on our end, so there's nothing to do for the moment but wait and see if it happens again.

Thanks for the update! Sounds strange.

If you guys are running *nix, maybe check for weirdness in dmesg if/when it happens again.

Posted: **Fri Oct 09, 2020 6:45 pm**

[violet] wrote:An update re: forum downtime:

First there was a nationwide outage by one of our upstream providers (Shaw Cable). This knocked out the forums for about an hour.

Then the network came back, and things were fine for a while. Then our connection to the public internet disappeared again. This time it seemed to only affect us, not everyone on our network. We couldn't find anything wrong and then it started working again. So that was mysterious.

A while after that, the network dropped again and our host rebooted our server to see if that would help. This left the database in a corrupted state, which Eluvatar had to fix.

Since then, everything has been fine. I don't see any indication that it's a problem on our end, so there's nothing to do for the moment but wait and see if it happens again.

Sounds like a damn Seinfeld episode.

Posted: **Fri Oct 09, 2020 6:48 pm**

Reploid Productions wrote:Plus side, it wasn't a moose this time?

I require context

Posted: **Fri Oct 09, 2020 7:06 pm**

Ranoria wrote:
Reploid Productions wrote:Plus side, it wasn't a moose this time?

I require context

https://www.nationstates.net/page=news/ ... index.html

Posted: **Sat Oct 10, 2020 3:40 am**

Reploid Productions wrote:Plus side, it wasn't a moose this time?

How is that a positive.? Mooses need love too.

Rebooting servers does not fix network problems. It fixes server problems. It could be kicking a network interface issue on the server, but thats not a network problem.

I swear, you application people ...

Posted: **Sat Oct 10, 2020 6:37 am**

Reploid Productions wrote:Plus side, it wasn't a moose this time?

The plus side?

Posted: **Sat Oct 10, 2020 7:28 am**

Ethel mermania wrote:
Reploid Productions wrote:Plus side, it wasn't a moose this time?

How is that a positive.? Mooses need love too.

I can't imagine that digesting fiber optic cables would have done the moose much good.

Posted: **Sat Oct 10, 2020 7:34 am**

The New California Republic wrote:
Ethel mermania wrote:How is that a positive.? Mooses need love too.

I can't imagine that digesting fiber optic cables would have done the moose much good.

Well, fibre is always good

Posted: **Sat Oct 10, 2020 8:55 am**

The New California Republic wrote:
Ethel mermania wrote:How is that a positive.? Mooses need love too.

I can't imagine that digesting fiber optic cables would have done the moose much good.

GrandmA always told me more fiber was good for me.

Posted: **Sat Oct 10, 2020 9:03 am**

Ethel mermania wrote:
The New California Republic wrote:I can't imagine that digesting fiber optic cables would have done the moose much good.

GrandmA always told me more fiber was good for me.

Posted: **Sat Oct 10, 2020 10:30 am**

The New California Republic wrote:
Ethel mermania wrote:GrandmA always told me more fiber was good for me.

I can splice bro...

not very well truth be told.

Posted: **Sat Oct 10, 2020 11:06 am**

It suddenly said I wasn't logged on when I tried to view the forums, or my own posts and the password I had which is right was incorrect.

Posted: **Sat Oct 10, 2020 11:09 am**

We got a reverse failure just now: instead of losing our connection to the public internet, the forum server lost it's connection to the internal network, which prevented people from logging in. I rebooted the server, but it took a while coming back up.

Posted: **Sat Oct 10, 2020 11:48 am**

Eluvatar wrote:We got a reverse failure just now: instead of losing our connection to the public internet, the forum server lost it's connection to the internal network, which prevented people from logging in. I rebooted the server, but it took a while coming back up.

These failures are getting more and more entertaining by the hour.

Posted: **Sat Oct 10, 2020 11:50 am**

Kiu Ghesik wrote:
Eluvatar wrote:We got a reverse failure just now: instead of losing our connection to the public internet, the forum server lost it's connection to the internal network, which prevented people from logging in. I rebooted the server, but it took a while coming back up.

These failures are getting more and more entertaining by the hour.

Twenty bucks the next thing that happens is that somebody has hacked NS and takes everyone's cards hostage.

Posted: **Sat Oct 10, 2020 12:24 pm**

Ethel mermania wrote:
Reploid Productions wrote:Plus side, it wasn't a moose this time?

How is that a positive.? Mooses need love too.

Rebooting servers does not fix network problems. It fixes server problems. It could be kicking a network interface issue on the server, but thats not a network problem.

I swear, you application people ...

Without knowing how the system is set up (all I know is we have at least two servers, no idea how the networking is set up), intermittent and weird network issues which affects one machine kinda sounds like some kind of hardware issue. Could either be the NIC physically crapping out or some kind of kernel problem.

If I checked all the other obvious stuff, I'd start looking at kernel messages to see if it's complaining about something. If that's not a problem, maybe one of the ports on their access switch is failing.

*shrugs*

Posted: **Sat Oct 10, 2020 1:29 pm**

The date being 10.10.2020 (whether you put months or days first) makes me wonder if this isn't some Y2K bug's less well known little sister... :lol:

But I apparently missed all the excitement, other than noticing the forums were down, once, because of RL excitement (the fire on my neighbour's balcony had fortunately extinguished itself even before the firemen arrived, they just made sure it hadn't spread).

Posted: **Mon Oct 12, 2020 3:20 pm**

I just experienced a server error but it only happened once.
Interesting

Posted: **Tue Oct 13, 2020 3:15 pm**

We're still getting an SQL error when we try to post our latest issue:

Code: Select all: General Error SQL ERROR [ mysqli ] Incorrect string value: '\xF0\x9F\x98\x9B \x0A...' for column 'post_text' at row 1 [1366] An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.

Posted: **Tue Oct 13, 2020 3:45 pm**

The Rejected Realms Media Corporation wrote:We're still getting an SQL error when we try to post our latest issue:

Code: Select all
General Error SQL ERROR [ mysqli ] Incorrect string value: '\xF0\x9F\x98\x9B \x0A...' for column 'post_text' at row 1 [1366] An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.

Certain fonts don't work.

For example, this doesn't work if you take more than a certain amount of times from when you copy-paste it, till you post it. Or, at least, that is what happens to me, although I get a "Security Check" error.

U talkin' bout' dispatches, right?

Posted: **Tue Oct 13, 2020 4:34 pm**

The Rejected Realms Media Corporation wrote:We're still getting an SQL error when we try to post our latest issue:

Code: Select all
General Error SQL ERROR [ mysqli ] Incorrect string value: '\xF0\x9F\x98\x9B \x0A...' for column 'post_text' at row 1 [1366] An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.

That just means you're trying to post a character that's unsupported by the forums. The forums don't do any text emojis at all.

I decoded that string from UTF-8 and it looks like the character causing the issue is a smiling face with tongue sticking out, similar to this:

. Try removing that character from the post and replacing it with the forum-supported

- that should fix the problem.

La xinga wrote:U talkin' bout' dispatches, right?

I've assumed forums, given that's a relatively common forum issue and SQL isn't used for most of gameside.

Posted: **Tue Oct 13, 2020 7:00 pm**

SherpDaWerp wrote:That just means you're trying to post a character that's unsupported by the forums. The forums don't do any text emojis at all.

I decoded that string from UTF-8 and it looks like the character causing the issue is a smiling face with tongue sticking out, similar to this: . Try removing that character from the post and replacing it with the forum-supported - that should fix the problem.

Much appreciated! We had no idea. ^_^

NationStates

Constant Server Errors?