Author Topic: Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other (SOLVED)  (Read 6793 times)

hushpiper

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Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other (SOLVED)
« on: December 09, 2015, 03:07:10 PM »
Due to Life Things on the part of yours truly, the forum will be switching hosts. My husband has graciously volunteered the server provided to him by his work for the purpose, and the forum will be living there for the forseeable future. The move to the new server will be happening on Friday, December 11th promptly--*coughs*--at 8:00 AM US Mountain Time (GMT-7), and shouldn't take more than a half-hour.

Here's what you need to know:

The forum will be unavailable for the duration of the move. This may involve a friendly little message popup telling you we're migrating, or it may just involve an error message; both of these are normal.

The server move involves a DNS change. What this means is that even after we've finished the migration, it may take some time for the forum to show up for you. This should take no more than 4 hours; for the vast majority of you, it will be considerably faster. For a few of you--especially those of you who live far away from cities and/or have small internet service providers--it may take longer. If you still cannot see the server after about 2:00 PM mountain time, try clearing your DNS cache: https://www.whatsmydns.net/flush-dns.html

After some time has passed--let's say 24 hours, for things to settle--then you can start looking for bugs. (I know some of you are pro at that. *eyes you all suspiciously*) The new server has a slightly different architecture than the old, which may cause problems. We've been testing it for the past few days and don't see any big issues, but keep an eye out for anything suspicious over the course of the next week or so.

We're gonna do our best to keep this transition smooth. If you find an issue, report it in this thread, or PM myself or another admin. If you have a question--ditto.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2016, 02:05:35 PM by Feartheviolas »

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Re: Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other
« Reply #1 on: December 09, 2015, 03:10:43 PM »
December 11th?
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Re: Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other
« Reply #2 on: December 09, 2015, 03:11:06 PM »
We're gonna do our best to keep this transition smooth. If you find an issue, report it in this thread, or PM myself or another admin. If you have a question--ditto.

And if we can't get to the server, make SURE to post it on this thread ;)

Good luck with it!
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Re: Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other
« Reply #3 on: December 09, 2015, 03:11:54 PM »
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hushpiper

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Re: Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other
« Reply #4 on: December 09, 2015, 03:20:03 PM »
Goshdangit dates, why do you torment me so? Yes, the 11th.

If you're not able to get to the forum at all (as opposed to seeing bugs on the forum), ping somebody in IRC or on the comic page comments. There'll be people watching both.

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Re: Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other
« Reply #5 on: December 09, 2015, 04:01:08 PM »
The server move involves a DNS change. What this means is that even after we've finished the migration, it may take some time for the forum to show up for you. This should take no more than 4 hours; for the vast majority of you, it will be considerably faster. For a few of you--especially those of you who live far away from cities and/or have small internet service providers--it may take longer. If you still cannot see the server after about 2:00 PM mountain time, try clearing your DNS cache: https://www.whatsmydns.net/flush-dns.html
Assuming that you have the usual "full" control over the domain's DNS entries, you could set up another, temporary FQDN (say, merryxmas2015.ssssforum.com) pointing to the new IP when you start the migration. With that, people could even work around a provider's cacheing forwarder being broken and ignoring the TTL, if need be.
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hushpiper

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Re: Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other
« Reply #6 on: December 09, 2015, 06:35:28 PM »
Assuming that you have the usual "full" control over the domain's DNS entries, you could set up another, temporary FQDN (say, merryxmas2015.ssssforum.com) pointing to the new IP when you start the migration. With that, people could even work around a provider's cacheing forwarder being broken and ignoring the TTL, if need be.

I assume you mean that could be done so that people could use the merryxmas2015.ssssforum.com subdomain to access the forum instead? That would be doable--we could even point it now--but the forum software requires that you access the forum using the URL it has in its config. So even if the merryxmas2015 subdomain was pointed to the correct folder, most forum objects (and all links) would still try to load from the ssssforum.com domain, putting us back where we started.

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Re: Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other
« Reply #7 on: December 12, 2015, 08:53:15 AM »
I think email notifications haven't been going out? There have been replies to some topics I watch that I haven't been notified about.
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hushpiper

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Re: Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other
« Reply #8 on: December 12, 2015, 10:28:23 AM »
I think email notifications haven't been going out? There have been replies to some topics I watch that I haven't been notified about.

Yep, good catch. That should be fixed now.

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Re: Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other
« Reply #9 on: December 12, 2015, 11:00:34 AM »
I think email notifications haven't been going out?
Looks like a general e-mail-out problem again. I tried sending myself one from the forum ~90m ago, no dice.

(Disclaimer: I do not actually control the mail server it's going to, but I have yet to find it having been the problematic part when expected e-mail doesn't arrive there.)
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hushpiper

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Re: Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other
« Reply #10 on: December 12, 2015, 11:26:00 AM »
Looks like a general e-mail-out problem again. I tried sending myself one from the forum ~90m ago, no dice.

(Disclaimer: I do not actually control the mail server it's going to, but I have yet to find it having been the problematic part when expected e-mail doesn't arrive there.)

The SMTP settings in SMF were still set for the old server, rather than the new--I thought I'd fixed those during the migration yesterday, but it must've not taken properly due to the propagation (i.e. when I submitted the new settings it sent the POST request to the old server...). Moral: DNS propagation is fun, kids! So fun!

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Re: Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other
« Reply #11 on: December 12, 2015, 11:59:19 AM »
I'm getting notifications now. Thank you Hush!
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Re: Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other
« Reply #12 on: December 12, 2015, 02:14:08 PM »
I don't really exercise the forum features very much, but I haven't noticed so much as a hiccup -- nice work, hushpiper!
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Re: Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other
« Reply #13 on: December 13, 2015, 08:27:00 PM »
I found a bug.
When I want to change my avatar by uploading an image from disk, it says:
Quote
The attachments upload directory is not writable. Your attachment or avatar cannot be saved.
Hosting it on an other site, e.g. imgur, works though.
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hushpiper

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Re: Server Migration II: Revenge of the Something-Or-Other
« Reply #14 on: December 13, 2015, 11:09:11 PM »
I found a bug.
When I want to change my avatar by uploading an image from disk, it says:Hosting it on an other site, e.g. imgur, works though.

Confirmed and fixed; was a stray setting that got overlooked in the move. Thanks for the heads up!