Just a P.S.A.

As I'm sure many of you have noticed, many of the posts from threads and even certain priveleges from the board have been reset to what seems to be the month of March, 2006. To our knowledge, this problem is the result of a hard drive failure on InvisionFree's primary server (which is where we are hosted). According to an announcement by the staff of InvisionFree, they know about the problem and are currently seeking a way to restore the data. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments post them here.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Edit (Lyra invading Jpec's personal space):
During this outage, the one-graded-quest-per-customer ruling is temporarily lifted. Think of it as a holiday gift. If you already had a quest going, and it's partially or totally missing, without any backup, then feel free to start another quest. If you had none going, or had barely begun, you're welcome to run two FOR GRADE quests at once. The standard "unlimited just-for-funs" rules still stands. This only applies to quests started between now and either the end of the year or when the data gets restored, whichever comes first.

This apparently doesn't apply to mainers, given your board isn't broken or anything.

I was wondering what happened when the boards went down earlier.....I hope they get it back soon. I miss the zappy icon and the leering Rayo. XD

Pinned. At least, until it's resolved. Or someone else takes it down. Or a strong wind blows on a hot summer day.

The Z Server boards were unaffected, it seems. My board is perfectly fine.

Wooptie doo Basil...

Ah, yes, from what InvisionFree tells us, it was mainly just Server 1 that had issues. They've been updating all the servers, and server 1 is apparently the only server that hasn't been updated yet and thusly is vulnerable to hard drive failure.

I was like they deleted the forum!?

thank goodness the board is still here. :)

Any idea when Divvy will be back to normal? Or have they even specified how much longer? *expects at least 3 weeks*

Totally sucks ass, to say the least. Even if they normally pull through, they'd better hurry up. Server 1 shoulda been the last thing crashing...

I agree. I'm sure they'll try to recover our data and the data of countless others. I think they have a lot of headaches ahead of them. Unless some screws up, I think it's a minor setback for us. In the meantime...anyone have any ideas?

Edit: the invisionfree board said that the data will be restored within days.

http://support.invisionfree.com/index.php?showtopic=400001

Hmm. I still suspect that it could take a couple weeks to bring everything back online.

I think so too, I mean... it's Invision"free", and how much are they going to do for people that don't pay them?

The ads are still getting shown, so they're still getting paid... so why would they rush?

When div didnt load i actually checked my internet connection. Because, like, it hasnt been down in ages. somehow i overlooked that i was still logged on msn and aim...

how companys make money from ads is still beyond me. I've clicked maybe 5 ads on this site over the many years i've been here.

EDIT: OMFG MY ICON :(

I was more referring to the mass of information split across the many forums on this server. As for why the rush, well, the ads don't do any good for the advertisers if there are no users to view them. If InvisionFREE loses all its members, they lose their advertisers because soon they'll learn no one's clicking their banners and they go away. When the advertisers go away, so does IF's money flow.

@Shugo: I saw mine like that too and it freaked me out too much so I just reuploaded it. Unfortunately, it's the crappy 80 x 80 size...-.-

Any idea of how much of Divergence is down? All I know everything that I have clicked on so far isn't there, this was the first thread to work.


I like the red Xs...hehe

Actually, they're making lots of money through those little banner advertisements they put on our pages. If they take their time fixing it, it shows a lack of competence on their part, so administrators will stop hosting their boards here. Seeing as how google advertising pays based on how many views of their ads they get, if invisionfree doesn't keep the site up, they'll lose money (because the decreased traffic on the site means fewer views of the ads). Not to mention, not fixing it quickly shows poor form on their part, and if they take their dear sweet time in fixing it then I will propose to move subplots to a privately-owned server.

The invisionfree page says that they're currently running diagnostics on the drive, but expect a complete data recovery in days. I'll guess that by the end of next week everything will be back in place where it belongs.

That, and anything that was new since March 2006 was affected by this hardware failure, to answer Chaos' question.

Actually, they're fixing around the clock. That's pretty much why the second version of their board took so long. But that's not my concern. My concern is them hurrying up. Quite frankly, I'm really pissed at Invisionfree and they need to step their game up and bring Server 1 back quickly.

That is just sad. Since they are a rather large hosting site they should have made it so things like this couldn't happen. I guess we should all be glad that it is free, because it would suck more to pay for it and have stuff like this happen.

Still, you can't really get too mad at them since it is a free thing.

Yeah, you can considering they're CONSTANTLY having issues. It's not like you get much traffic to free forums anyway. The least they could do is keep it up...

You be my guest and go complain to them, then, but don't tell them that you're from Divergence. I'm grateful that they even host the site, and I can count on one hand all of the times I've encountered incorrigible board problems that were their fault. And this isn't even their fault: it's old hardware that was going to go sooner or later, and they were actually planning to upgrade the server over the next month. Stop complaining, because there is no reason to. It's a free service, and they're being extremely gracious to offer it for our use. To be honest, I know I couldn't keep up with it (they have more than 12 servers going now, from what I've seen), and I doubt you could do a much better job than they could. They're not perfect, no, but I do believe that they are doing as good of a human job as they can.

Imagine my reaction when EVERY thread I saw was...empty...

Well said, Jpec. Well said. Seriously, even a NEW drive is bound to crash. The REAL question comes down to not IF your drive will crash, but WHEN. It doesn't really matter what OS it's running (lest this argument come out of the woodwork cos I know how 90% of the populace thinks) and it doesn't matter how advanced the thing is. It's going to crash and there's nothing ANYONE can do about that.

Hell, my brand new iBook lost its OS back around mid-August. Let's bear in mind, it was only 6 months then. 6 MONTHS! Did I start pointing fingers at who or what could have screwed it up? Not really. It was a setback and I had to fix it. Sure, I have my speculations as to what happened, but I'm not really blaming much of anything. I'm especially not blaming anyone since I'm the only one who uses this little white box. But you see, that's not the issue. The issue is technical and, as technology usually does, it goes down.

Like Jpec, I'd love to see the rest of you even ATTEMPT to keep up with a minimum of 14 servers 24/7. I guarantee you'll be running your asses off just trying to keep TWO up and running. I know the tech guys at work sure have their hands full with our few servers we have.

I estimate a maximum of two weeks, and a week is fairly unlikely. The reason this is taking them time is due to the way they have to recover the data from the drive. It's not that their staff has a schedule made mostly of coffee breaks. The technique for restoring data from their storage requires having a program analyze the drive and copy the data over to another one. While the drive isn't immense (it takes only a little space to store a board and there are only so many boards per server), analysis takes some time and copying all of that takes time too. They may perform the upgrade simultaneously with the drive switch. If they're switching to a multi-drive setup to further ensure our data is never lost, it'll take some time while 1 terabyte (max) copies from their recovered drive to the new ones.

Restoring the data to different boards requires no extra work because the data is stored in simple files and PHP scripts. That means nothing special has to be loaded every time a board goes up. I know how the boards work, and how they have multiple boards co-habit in the same server, and it's not quite magic. It's just PHP and a server program. The real magic is in the PHP code they have on the server, but that only gets run every time some accesses a page. In fact, servers are often just one step above our average desktop computers, but have fast internet connections. Most average computers can run a moderate-traffic site (given a good connection). The random message site in my signature is running on my computer 24/7. I also don't think running a server is difficult, as long as things are secure and the hardware is cared for. Given those conditions, a site can basically run unattended. Eventually, hardware has to fail shortly, but then it's replaced. Most of the problems Invisionfree has are with security or bugs in the PHP code of specific servers. And the fact it's service relies on public interaction, which obviously requires they have staff to tell people things like "Please, don't delete your page's code." and dealing with vandalism. However, hosting a site is rather easy.

Oh, and...

Not that I have any complaints about the service, but I want to contest that they're being "extremely gracious". On the contrary, this service is implicitly being sold to board administrators. Invisionfree doesn't run on donations and hope. Their business model is that people are given boards for "free", but must not interfere with the ads on the board. At the end of the day, they provide no guarantees that your data will be preserved, and they own your data. You also aren't allowed to have your data. The ads provide them income. It doesn't matter if you don't click the ads. Every time an ad loads, it's an extra penny or so, and ad viewing increases proportionally with the amount of views a board gets.

So it's not about generosity really, because while the users pay nothing, the ads earn them money. That, in turn, encourages them to ensure the service is smooth, in the hopes that more users generate more income. Their cost is constant but their profits are linearly related to their users. Similarly, could you really say a site such as... MySpace, is being "generous" for their services rendered? No, because they receive money for showing ads and generating buzz for special-interests' accounts. Just to set up a comparison. When the site stops making money, it disappears.

Neither is Invisionfree greedy. The staff is just doing a job and getting paid.

I don't want to start a huge argument about this, but...

Kiwi's right, my dad hosts about 6 servers out of our house and he maintains 10 elsewhere...

I've taken care of the ones at home, it's not that hard... You just make sure that at least 3 of our 6 of them are working at once. I mean, it varies on how much traffic the sites hosted on them are getting, but I think we host around 100 sites now, some of them get a lot of traffic daily. I've replaced some of the ones that aren't at home, and while one server is offline, the other ones should be able to distribute whatever work they are doing at the time among them.

Hoo boy. I'm sure all the clans are pissed, especially the Swordbreakers with their quest...or has anyone posted after the time the server reset itself to?

I know I am. We just started our quest a few months ago, and now it is as if it never happened.




Wait....does this mean that Rayo's still here, as a mod? :D happy times again!

You think that is bad? With everything reset to March, it's as though I never even existed... Thank goodness I keep a private record of my own quests...

While you may not exist, my solos never happened, and I'm still a level three Wavemaster! The horror! I don't even have copies(although there is a valid reason why, read them one time and you'll see).

Oh yeah, and I can't see anything for my current quests.

I can't update my signature... the max is 800 characters... I have 891 in my signature currently @.@;;

Fifteen or so servers by now. I don't complain, to them or otherwise. I constantly bitch about their issues 'cause they need to correct them. And yes - they're all meant to crap out eventually, but they have tons more issues than that that could easily be avoided, like for example, NOT paying a lot of extra money to attempt a new service for the servers that work 30% of the time.

And long before this, Servers 1 and 2 had horrible year-long issues. Nothing to do with the current issues. And even still - since this was "bound" to happen, they should've made a move sooner...

They should make a downloadable Invisionfree...
(coughswitchingtovbcough)

Stop bitching then. No one likes a bitcher. What's done is done, bitching about what happened will only make me and others want to smack you that much harder. Oh, and name the last time we had a serious issue with invisionfree. Wait, that's right, the last time before this when there was anything worth your level of bitchiness was long before you were a member here. Hell, it was long before I was a member here, so I don't see why you're complaining about something that doesn't affect you.

And the fact that you bitch constantly to anyone and everyone about someone else's problems but then won't do jack to try and tell those people that they have something they need to fix makes you about as useful as a singing rabbit. Stop your useless complaining, because it's only bringing down the morale of the board, and making you less liked by people. Unless you're going to do something about it, don't just blabber on about problems you see.

I'm done with this, and I apologize if I've offended, but I just find that senseless and pointless blaming doesn't get anything done without action. Currently, IF is taking action to resolve this problem, so they're getting a hell of a lot more accomplished than you. Oh, and one more thing: this thread is to bring up issues about the current problem, not complaints you have against invisionfree. This is the first big messup I've encountered with them in my time on the site, and considering that the only other problem I've encountered is an indexing issue in local forum software, I'm not too worried.

Um, I've been doing Invisionfree before I came to Divergence... -.-" Divergence wasn't the only thing affected, you know... and I wasn't bitching to you guys, obviously. Either way, I can care less what others think of me... evidently...

And the reason I'm making a reference to previous problems was because I was trying to make a point. And I don't think getting into an argument over stating that wasn't what I was trying to do...

Edit: Divergence didn't even have those particular problems, btw.

<_<; All of this aside, I'm actually worried about how they might reset data once everything is recovered. I would recommend that people avoid changing anything that was reverted in some way. One of three things must happen when they restore everything:

1. All data generated after the accident and before the repair time will disappear. This thread and anything else made after the crash would vanish. All the data lost will reappear and we can resume our normal lives. However, that means anyone posting new material during this time will lose it.

2. All data generated after the accident in threads that were damaged will replace the original data. When the threads are restored, threads that were modified after the accident may confuse the restore program, and may either be overwritten (see #1) or ignored, leading to the disappearance of the original posts.

3. The restoration simply shoves posts back into chronological and any new posts since the accident get glued onto the end of the thread. In this case, trying to repost your quest or add posts to a damaged thread would lead to some messy consequences.

Chances are, the only things to be concerned about are old threads. New threads are going to be fine. I don't know the extent of the changes the board suffered, though, and those things are different. I'm honestly unsure if my signature was changed slightly and I haven't noticed. The problem is that anything that doesn't "stack" could cause real issues in the future. Threads stack because old posts and new posts can be recombined in chronological order. We only have one signature, though, and every time it changes the old one is replaced. If they keep records of when the change was last done, they could replace it based on date. But that means that if you update your signature now, you effectively kill your previous information.

So basically, anything that was affected shouldn't be touched. New threads are fine. If your signature was affected, don't do anything, because it might not be restored if you do!

Actually, they say that it's option 3 on the support site:

In the same thread, they're saying that it's going to take 1-2 weeks for a full recovery. Hang in there, folks.

I've been hesitant about posting up a new quest just because of those issues. I'm afraid that, even though I'm typing it in Word, I'll have to just go back and repost it later. Thanks, but no thanks. I'd rather just post it once. Lordy that would be a lot of double copying....*stares at the 9 page intro to her quest*

That didn't specify which of the three options they might follow. If you notice, that only says you should continue the discussion in another thread, and that you can later merge them. It doesn't specify that new and old data will merge seamlessly. It also says that if you want to post a temporary link to another thread, it would be okay. That suggests that it might be #1, and that the link would be destroyed when they restore the post. Of course, #3 is fairly feasible and simple for them to implement, but it would increase the time it takes them to restore the server. They may not even have decided, as the only thing that says is that they recommend you continue on another thread and presumably avoid non-stacking actions (ie. move a thread). That leaves them the flexibility of choosing what to do later. It's not feasible to merge any information that doesn't stack, such as our signatures.

Yes, but why take that chance? The way I see it, if there's a problem with something, don't create more of a problem, especially for yourself, by making new things that may just go away in the reboot.

Wasn't that whole rant two hole bitching paragraphs?



And yes, I gotta say something about it. If Invisionfree wants to conduct itself as a business, they should be acting like a business.

AKA taking responsibility for their mistakes, and getting them fixed quickly.

I happen to like bitchers... I can so bitch slap em for good reason... Besides, nothing better to put the heat under ya than a bitch bitching around. Life's a bitch too, so if you're complainin' about bitchers... don't that mean you don't like life? :unsure:

I'm with Shia on this one. I've been members of IF boards that have some pretty big problems. For example, another rp board that I post on has a chance that your experience will run smoothly. It runs like dial-up with a chain attached to its leg most of the time. We are forced to close our browsers and get back to the page, usually finding that it is slow again. After being at the site for fifteen minutes or so, it runs slowly no matter what. Invisionfree has a responsibility to its members in my opinion, but its their ship and they can run it how they please.

So besides all the bitching on both sides. Do we have a specific date or ETA when the boards will be back up? Or is it still a general period?