Back Up and Working

It was a power issue - thunder storms and all that jazz.  Servers in California is almost as silly as trying to launch a rocket from Florida.

Currently Down

Not sure why the server is down.  The good news is I knew about it within 5 minutes courtesy of the management guys we use.  It's being worked on right now.

Downtime over next 24 hrs

UMSF will require a PHP recompile, and alterations to Apache, to fix the missing GD library issues that are preventing new registrations and stopping the generation of thumbnails.  This should happen over the next 24 hours, and will cause some down time.

(UPDATE - All done)

Doug

I'm in

Courtesy of finding out what the hell a host file is, and how to tweak one in OSX - I'm back in, and on the new server.    Those geeky enough to know what a host file is will also know how to find out what to put in it to get it to work.  Those who are not, will have to wait for their ISP's to update.

It all seems to be working, so for now, the UMSF lifeboat blog is done.

Forum Back On

DNS hasn't refreshed to me yet - but using a proxy I can get to a umsf.com that's on the new server and all APPEARS to be working at the moment.  It may take a while to properly check it's OK - but meanwhile some of you may well be surfing onto the new server!

Doug

DNS Pointing changed

The DNS pointing is now changed.  The URL now points to the new server.   However, this may take a few hours, up to a day, to propagate around the world.

Until it's propagated to me, I can't do a full test of the forum.  I can manually navigate to it using it's IP address - however - the settings have to reflect the actual domain.  So while I can navigate to it with the IP - all the links now say umsf.com/whatever  - which means I can't test the functionality as that still points to the old server.

To make a visual differentiation between what should, in essence, be identical websites - I have add ' THE OLD SERVER' in red stamped text over the banner on the top left of the old server.   If you ctrl-refresh, you will probably still see that.

Once I'm NOT seeing it, it means I'm pointing at the new server, and I can check the settings - add a post, delete a post, add an attachment, go to the admin section, and re-open the forum.

Database copied and working

Thanks to the genius of a php script called Big Dump (yes, really) - the database is now copied across.  I left the test-forum 'open' on the new server as a test.  Once the latest DB was squirted into the new server, the test-forum went 'closed' because the setting for the server being open or closed is within the database.

Attachments, conf-global settings, and DNS pointing to go.

Doug