This forum is TOTALLY #*$%#@!!

[632 Regal]

what seems to be the problem sir?

[632 Regal]

anytime I reply to a post it does not refresh to the top of the list

[pundit]

Okay, did that get someones attention?
What does it take to fix this forum database?
Is it going to be fixed... EVER?
YES?... NO?

Some response would be a start.
Maybe someone can offer some help.

If not I resign.
It's just too much of a pain in the ass trying to use this forum anymore.
These problems have be continuing for what must be at least a year.

Maybe we all need to chip in a few $$$ to get a database person to have a look at the problem.

Are the constant apparent outages related to the database or some other server problem?

As my last post vanished into the ether we'll see if this one sticks!

[genphreak]

anytime I reply to a post it does not refresh to the top of the list

Yep the site has been up and down liek a yo yo. Sometimes for extended perods, but yes, it really screws things up for people.

[pundit]

what seems to be the problem sir?

The site's down half the time in the last week... often for 12 hours or more.
Date stamping is all over the place... one post I made just disappeared without trace.... apart from that?... No problems at all!

aaaaarrrrghhh!!!!

[Ferret]

The site's down half the time in the last week... often for 12 hours or more.
Date stamping is all over the place... one post I made just disappeared without trace.... apart from that?... No problems at all!

aaaaarrrrghhh!!!!

This is doubtful a database issue - the vB software should throw an exception back to the user when it cant contact the database.

I expect there's a connection problem going on here... as somedays the target IP just doesnt exist. It may be a DNS issue thinking about that - is the site on a fixed IP or does it float around much? I've not checked - now I think about it this is actually symptoms of a slow DNS update going on. If it's on a DHCP'd connection and the connection bounces up and down a lot I'd expect to see exactly this behaviour.

The timecodes thing... could be a clash with the databases set region/code, a bug in vB itself or extremely unlikely - a database interface corruption.

I suspect this could easily be fixed by updating all the user fields in the database to use the same region code, then altering the preferences page to take away the 'change region' code chunk.

Time to move to a fixed server base somewhere?

[Jon K]

This is doubtful a database issue - the vB software should throw an exception back to the user when it cant contact the database.

I expect there's a connection problem going on here... as somedays the target IP just doesnt exist. It may be a DNS issue thinking about that - is the site on a fixed IP or does it float around much? I've not checked - now I think about it this is actually symptoms of a slow DNS update going on. If it's on a DHCP'd connection and the connection bounces up and down a lot I'd expect to see exactly this behaviour.

The timecodes thing... could be a clash with the databases set region/code, a bug in vB itself or extremely unlikely - a database interface corruption.

I suspect this could easily be fixed by updating all the user fields in the database to use the same region code, then altering the preferences page to take away the 'change region' code chunk.

Time to move to a fixed server base somewhere?

Its a database issue - the connectivity is likely a connection issue. But, the time stamping being all jacked up is a database issue for sure. I almost don't post here any more because I cannot read anything with the posts bouncing all over.

[Ferret]

Its a database issue - the connectivity is likely a connection issue. But, the time stamping being all jacked up is a database issue for sure. I almost don't post here any more because I cannot read anything with the posts bouncing all over.

Hmm I should have explained that properly, I replied to the wrong post -

The site being on/off is a connection issue not a database, the timestamps are something to do with the dbase...

It *could* be that the vB is changing locale based on who's interacting with it and changing the output of a curdate/currdate/sysdate call - but that would be an incredibly bad bug in the software!

[repenttokyo]

i have to browse in hyrbrid mode now just so i can see which posts are new.

[ThoreauHD]

If it's a mysql backend, you can run a check on the db live. It'll probably take 10 hours, but it'll run. Also make sure ntpd is configured on the database machine. If time sync is off on the source server, then the db will jack up the date. you can put a cron entry to run every hour like ntpdate -b time.mit.edu, or if it's a windows machine then use somethign called the Tardis 2000. I think that's what it's called.

But yea, time sync and db cleanup needs doin. You can lookup the mysql check commands in google. I forgot them off the top of my head. If I had to guess from the symptoms, one table in the database is corrupt, and it'll need to be truncated.