Ozbow

G’day All,

Well I think most of you know the site has been down from Tuesday morning until about 6pm this evening and I guess you would like to know what went wrong so I will try and make this as short as possible.

At first it was thought that our host server was being hacked but that was later found not to be the case. The host server was running two hard drives, the main one we were operating off of and a backup one. Apparently there was no monitoring system on these drives (the real cause of the problems) and at some unknown time the main hard drive died so we were operating off the backup drive until it too decided to die which caused our outage.

Of course with no backup drive they had no backup files. Our hosts tried to retrieve the site files but they were unable to; everything lost!!! I was kinda feeling rather stressed by this stage.

However, after what happened a few months ago with TBGA site etc I decided to learn how to do my own backing up of the forum onto my own computer and I am so glad I did. I was able to eventually upload my backup file to the server but the hosts had all sorts of problems trying to use the backup to restore the site but eventually they succeeded tonight. My last backup was done on the 11th of September and the site has been restored to what it was like on that date; well sort of.

Although we have the forums up I see we have a lot of problems still. For some reason no attachments have been restored and this is a major concern and has to be looked into ASAP and there are numerous other little glitches.

Being the weekend you may not see any changes until next week. Some of the more minor glitches with the forum I will have to try and fix and to be honest I haven’t a clue on how to do some of them as I am lacking when it comes to the tech side of things so please bear with me as I try and get things sorted again.

While I am annoyed and extremely disappointed that this could/did happen, it has so we need to fix it as best we can and move on. My hosts have been very helpful through all of this and have tried their best to get the site back up as soon as they could - there were quite a number of other sites on the same server so they had a lot of work to do.

So folks as you can see things aren’t ideal but we are at least back up and active again. I ask that you please be patient as I try and sort everything out and if you are having any specific problems please contact me. I am sorry for any inconvenience this outage has caused but it was certainly beyond my control.

Thanks

Jeff

Suppose we can let you off this once Jeff .................. lol

Just kidding mate, well done on the hard work to get it back up & going.

I suggest you will have to reload all the attachments to the exact locations, or you will have to refresh every link to redirect to the new attachment location. I know that was what we had to do a few years back. We chose the "It's to hard path" & lost all our attachments & therefore every story with a site hosted photo was left with a little square with a red x in it.

You have done well guys, but unfortunately, it's a long road ahead, especially when you have to rely on others (like we did) as you don't know how to do the stuff yourself.

I am of no help really, but just yell if there is anything I can do.

Good luck & I am glad we are back :-)

Don't worry Jeff. It is just a computer. It is not as though anyone died!

Information is not lost, it just may need to be shared again.

Well done on having the fore sight to make another backup.

Steve

good to see you had some foresight Jeff (can you tell me this weekends lotto numbers?), good work mate!

thanks for all your hard work Jeff
Nigel

Hey Jeff, really well done on the back up and keeping the site alive.

Well done Jeff. This has me thinking one source of backup is not enough, a second external backup drive may be on its way.

Cheers........ Rod

Well Done Jeff, with what had happened to me the other week, computor wise and now this, makes me realize that I will have to do some changes as well. Thanks from me. Roadie.

Great, good to see and hear.........Bill

Good work, thanks for the update.

Paul.

Good work Jeff, whats happened to the avatars????

Thanks everyone but things are still a big mess and I just don't know where to start as there are just so many problems and some I have no idea how or if they can be fixed. It is hard to do much until next week when I can speak to my hosts again.

Gilly, I don't know what is going on with the avatars, some are now there, some aren't and some are attached to the wrong persons posts.

I sure hope we can get matters sorted better next week.

Jeff

Dont stress mate ,it'll work out.....

It's back up mate and given the extent of the issue I am sure i am talking for everyone (hopefully) when I say Job well done, keep the great work up and thankyou, we appreciate the effort your putting in and you can only do your best.

Don't sweat the little stuff and if it's not arterial it's little stuff.

Good Morning Jeff.

It's Back...... It's Back......

Still a few issues but most of it is back.

Jeff, you deserve a huge "Thank You". And an even bigger,
"Well Done and Thank You"
for having the foresight to have gone wit a seperate offsite backup. I would suggest that raises you to the level of IT Guru.


Well done , Jeff.

Al the best
Grahame

Awesome effort Jeff, never a dull moment hey..
Thanks mate

Round of applause everyone.!!!

yep , i agree with all of the above posts, and i will be buying Jeff at least one drink, maybe at the Gympie shoot if he's there .

And I too would like to say "Well done Jeff and thank you."

Cheers
Troy

On the missing avatar issue, mine was missing on my first return visit so I went to my profile and attached a new one (was due for a change anyway). Perhaps the other fellas have done the same. Thought it might be useful for Jeff to know???

Cheers......... Rod

Thanks Rod.

Jeff

Do not stress. You have done no ill. Life is not perfect nor easy.
Great to have the site back.
If it does not kill you it did not hurt you.

I back up all my stuff to three separate external hard drives and ater 4 incidents over 16 years where hard drives have expired have kept most of everything but essentially all of the really important stuff.

The important thing is everyone can find their way back and we have all learnt to appreciate the site more and perhaps not take it and you for granted.

Thanks for caring and sharing.

Kevin