BigNerd
Well-Known Member
There is definitely some issues here. It's like an old backup was used for the restore. Many subforums/threads/posts are missing.
Forum Down
- Thread starter Stefan Mikes
- Start date
DaveMatthews
Well-Known Member
Same here, but I don't care. I just made a new one.
m@Robertson
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
Search is compromised, you say? Pfft. This is the internet. Nobody uses Search.
Golly which ebike should I buy?
Golly which ebike should I buy?
Stefan Mikes
Gravel e-biker
- Region
- Europe
- City
- Mazovia, PL
Stefan is being Stefan like always. A cry baby. Somebody please change His or her diapers.
You know every time I pass by a Jacaranda in full bloom I think about David Barry.
Super Moon is out again tonight, Hump Day tomorrow.
I'll be humping.
@ Stefan Mikes. Take us to Hump Tulips.
Rome:
In more traditional countries they say: "Don't drink and write". Where you live, the "Don't smoke and write" would be more appropriate
Yes, I know you hate quoting your "stoned" posts as you hit and run then regret it and delete your garbage. Will you ever learn?
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keithj69
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
- City
- Central Florida
I have created a subreddit in case EBR forums go down again. It is not associated with this site, but just a place to go in case the forums go down again. Not expecting anymore issues, but why not.
EBRforum
It is open to the public and no account is needed to see the info. You'll need an account if you want to post.
If the admins here are not happy with this, let me know and I will make adjustments. If admins here want to be a mod there, please let me know so we can make arrangements.
EBRforum
It is open to the public and no account is needed to see the info. You'll need an account if you want to post.
If the admins here are not happy with this, let me know and I will make adjustments. If admins here want to be a mod there, please let me know so we can make arrangements.
You're giving me flashbacks.... (similar, used to mod and admin numerous forums, and do some custom code and maintain the infra as non-paid hobby).
Guys - like M@ said, it happens. Even massive sites go down in entire regions or even worldwide (Google, Etsy, ebay,
Worst for me was jumping in during a forum outage to help in an 'emergency', to find out that particular forum (think this one was SMF, not VBB) was basically running on massively-beyond-EOL Redhat Linux (not RHEL, like 7+ versions back, massive security holes among other things) and someone had the 'wise' idea to try to update the core forum software, which of course expected/required at least a moderately recent set of dependencies, pretty much all of which were unmet. 'Surprise'?
Wound up having to unravel every single dependency, then locate a 'good enough' version to build from source, sometimes having to hack the code along the way. There also was no staging host or anything else useful so it was all 'live.' The SMF 'upgrade' that was attempted was also a huge jump, and of course - the forum backups had failed some time ago, so reverting to the old forum software wasn't a sane path either. Didn't sleep for a couple of days for the most part, but got it all back online, immediately convinced the owner to get me a temporary server (nothing was in VMs or docker), moved everything to modern-at-the-time CentOS (also supported 5-7 years vs 6 month cycle), near-latest SMF, and got backups working sanely, then swapped over. Still had numerous issues due to forum code customization that needed to be sorted, but 'better' at the end of it by far.'Stuff happens' is the short version. I'm going to assume EBR revenue makes them enough $$ that no one wants it down, so just ride it out...and thankfully I haven't seen EBR go down many times so at least it's reasonably stable. Like m@ said, looks like a significant framework update had some hiccups - and changes like this are generally on the rarer side where things are restructured.
Stefan Mikes
Gravel e-biker
- Region
- Europe
- City
- Mazovia, PL
"If it ain't broke don't fix it".
Why change /forums to forums. even if the software update was applied?
Posting a new link in a Facebook post...
Clicking...
The new link does not work.
Why there's always an admin who wants to make the things "better"?!
Why change /forums to forums. even if the software update was applied?
Posting a new link in a Facebook post...
Clicking...
The new link does not work.
Why there's always an admin who wants to make the things "better"?!
rochrunner
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
- City
- Rochester Hills MI
A few days ago the forums were unreachable. Today when I click in the email message that informs me of an update in the thread I'm watching it gives me an error related to connection security. WTF? I can still get to the discussion by going directly to the forum URL -- just not via an email link (at least in Gmail).
Seems like alerts and alert history was reset, probably due to the restructured URLs - I am however still getting email notifications on watched threads and seeing them (all 2 of them, nothing prior to upgrade) in the alerts/notifications icon in the upper right, and the email link to one of those threads (this one ironically) worked - On Macos/Mail/Safari anyways.
m@Robertson
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
I once contracted with one of the largest library systems in the USA because their system ain't broke, but it still needed fixing because it had grown unmanageable in its present form.. To fix the problem the floorboards needed to be completely torn up and the whole system needed a full do-over.
What was wrong?
The entire system was using Microsoft Access as the back end database. Not just one MS Access MDB file. There were (literally) 50 of them. Each with their own ODBC connection. This is a system with tens of thousands of county residents who were subscribers to a system that among other things tied into the U.S. Library of Congress every day (who used Oracle, BTW) to a) see what books had been published that day that matched the subscriber's preferences, so the subscriber could check off what they wanted when it came in b) which new books had been delivered to which library branches and c) reserved those books for subscribers who signed up to get first dibs on them when they came in. Oh and d) notified said subscribers of the book delivery and lets not forget e) managed everyone's login details and security.
50 Access database files, each of which had any number of individual database tables inside. I converted it all to one, single SQL Server database on a dedicated server. And re-did the Library of Congress feed. And the security system, and the subscription system.
But it was still working when they hired me. Pretty much. If it ain't broke, that doesn't mean its going to stay that way in a changing world.
I got that years-long job, btw, by hacking into the system in real time from the browser url while I was on the phone with the administrator and reading off to her the details I was seeing that I shouldn't be.
On this - quite often it's due to underlying security bugs, and not just the direct software (e.g. the forum bulletining board software, which is probably still a combination of PHP (which has it's own versions and fixes), one or more databases like MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, SQL Server .... with their own versions, a web server (apache, IIS, nginx, others), with their own versions, and using OpenSSL for the encryption allowing that nice little website 'lock' symbol among other things.
Every one of those bits have their own downstream dependencies, right down to the OS version itself, core libraries, etc. Literally a dependency 'chain' for a 'simple forum software' can quickly get into hundreds of discrete software packages, all versioned independently, some of them with wide compatibility (e.g. supports versions 1.0.0 through 1.9.99), and some with much smaller. If any one of those has a security issue that is of enough significance to allow 'truly bad behavior' anywhere from user spoofing (I once called out a serious security issue in a VERY large companies' auth and cookies - they didn't listen, so I logged myself in as the CEO of the company and sent a screenshot - suddenly it was 'escalated'), to getting shell access to attack other systems from or attach malware to infect users, to data access for all users (think if this were, well - bank software, or a system that actually saved off credit cards in logs b/c it was running in debug mode). You can browse the requirements (and their links) and configuration section of apache to get a small peek at 'the tip of the iceberg ' for a lot of software full-blown applications: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/install.html
Yeah, sometimes, someone gets overly 'excited' about 'let's make big changes' but in particular when it comes to things like online forums, it's almost always a forced update due to security or some feature (e.g. proper URL unrolling, linking into/from some 'important' system) that forces it.
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I was almost going to say 'at least it wasn't Foxpro' but that would have probably been an 'upgrade' over Access. I do not want to know who devised that system - might have been one of those 'here's a proof of concept' -> 'great, ship it!' bits, but no way in telling. And - at least you were able to FIX it.
Worst 'random system' here was probably a system inherited from <no one really knew anymore>, as the company was bought and the prior smaller company's CEO and she of the core team left, but the original product was still sold. So there was an OLLLLDDDD HP 'cube server' system running an ancient version of HP-UX, with a ton of services and a DB on it. It randomly would die, but was apparently the only source of generating new license keys for the aforementioned software - but the source code for any of it somehow no longer existed, anywhere. All kinds of poking at, looking into $$ virtualization options (OS was too old...and not like there were a ton of real virtualization options for legacy Unixes for the most part) , digging in to see if got lucky and could sort the license generation bit being 'sloppy' but in stored procedures vs random code, lots of process tracing. This was NOT my primary job, but it never managed to become anyone else's either. Once a month or so, I'd have to try to keep the system running as it crashed randomly, I'd find spare parts of keep it together (memory, backplane, a CPU, ... ) and get it to start back up again. For all I know that system may still be held together with tape and bubble gum.
Gionnirocket
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
- City
- Y. O.
There is another solution to all of this.... It's called getting a life 
Deacon Blues
Well-Known Member
It's finally working for me. 
Tom@WashDC
Well-Known Member
- Region
- USA
- City
- Loudoun County, VA.
All of my old links are working again.It's finally working for me.
@Court made a post on the migration here if anyone wants to carry on their withdrawal stories or sees other specific, still existing issues.
forums.electricbikereview.com
Forum migrated, please report issues!
Hi guys! I've been working on an updated version of EBR, and this launched a few days ago. One change we made simultaneously was to move the forums from /forums/ to a subdomain forums.electricbikereview and that reset some of the permissions. I apologize for the downtime that was experienced...
forums.electricbikereview.com
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