Transferring Account

Our IT guy Paul is transferring the account now. Tomorrow when I wake up I will try to verify that everything works, and then bring the site down and do the actual latest database transfer (so that no data is lost) and then DNS propagation. So, the downtime (2-6 hrs) will probably be sometime tomorrow. I will post more info when it becomes available.

New Server Being Set Up

The new server is being currently set up for us by MyRackspace, our new hosting. This should be finished this weekend, and we can transition over early next week.

The current server is still suffering from the "crazy clock" problem, causing times on the site to appear very strange, and registration emails getting lost. However, I have opted to not take the previous hosting up on their proposal to move the existing server to another server of theirs because I simply do not trust them anymore. At least with the current server I know exactly what the problem is (even though it's a really bad problem). Also, I wanted to keep the downtime to a minimum, and this way we will only have a single transition.

Over the last month an improbably large number of unfortunate things have happened. I am really hoping that this curse will run out once we move to the new server. The good thing is that I now have an IT friend who is helping me with the server stuff, so I feel safer about all this.

Enough is Enough

OK, guys, I can't take it anymore from our current hosting. They have screwed up so majorly both with the server configuration and the fact that the clock on the current server is screwed up, and they don't even feel sorry about it or try to go out of their way to fix it. I feel that they simply do not care. That is why we will be moving to a new hosting called "MyRackspace" - they are more expensive but their quality of techsupport is known far and wide. I am currently talking to them about the server specs, etc., so I imagine it will be a couple more days before the move.

I currently have the option of having the existing hosting move us to a different server (without the clock problem) - with about 3-4 hrs downtime. However, the current server works (for better or worse, with timestamps set in the future and the registration emails getting lost left and right because the time on them is totally wrong), and I simply do not trust the current hosting to configure the new server in such a way that there are no problems. So, unless forced into it I will try to avoid that move, so we can have a single period of downtime when moving to the new hosting.

On the current hosting's site it says at the top "Stop worrying about your server!". But all I've done ever since the new server was put into place was worry about how the site is running. So, I am sorry about all the problems (at least you can still create and watch overstreams!), and I sincerely hope we will be happier at the new hosting. I will post more about the move and the projected downtime when it becomes known.

Registration Emails Not Being Sent

We are currenly experiencing a problem with the clock on our server being screwed up, which should be fixed by the hosting early this week.

One of the effects of this problem is that a lot of registration emails do not get through, or get put in the Spam folder - because they are sent out with a time stamp which is in the future. If you have registered, but did not get your registration email, please contact me at contact @ overstream.net, and I will gladly activate your account! Or you can just post a comment to this post requesting your account to be activated.

Server Clock Screwed Up

It appears that the hosting has botched something when assembling the server, and the server clock is screwed up. What happens is that after the server is reboot, the clock is fine, but then it starts going successively faster and faster (covering 2 seconds in one, then 5 seconds in one, etc.). This screws up a lot of other things, causing me to reboot the server (which causes about 3 minutes of downtime, when none of the pages of the site load). The site generally appears to work even with the screwed up clock, but you might get some strange timestamps on your oversteams and comments until this is fixed.

I am (obviously) talking to the hosting about fixing this problem. Fixing it will result in some downtime, I will post later about how much and when it's going to happen. They also screwed up a number of other things in the server configuration as well... which overall makes me think that I made a mistake in the choice of hosting. Well, moving to another hosting means more downtime, and I am trying to avoid it, so unless the problems on the site become bad, I will try to stay with this hosting.

I feel like the curse is continuing...

Server Configuration Restored

I have just noticed that an important server configuration file got erased during the move. I have just restored it. It's quite amazing that the server worked at all without it :) There were several small things that broke because of the absence of this configuration file, most noticeably you might have noticed that strange backslashes (\) started to appear whenever you would put a single quite (') or a double quote (") in your Overstream's Author comments - and maybe also in just comments, I am not sure. This should be fixed now.

Server Optimization

Well, I can see at least everything is running - with some minor glitches, as reported by some users, but running! Over the next couple of weeks, I will try to figure out as much as possible how to optimize the server performance (especially with regards to the database), so I hope we can get past the glitches and the performance will be better!