Site: UPDATED - Site Downtime Announcement 4/2/08

Jeremy · 04-02-2008, 10:15 AM

Attention...

CycloneFanatic will be down for a portion of the late night hours tonight and early tomorrow morning due to hardware and software upgrades. The work will take approximately 3-4 hours to complete and the site should be fully operational by the time most of our visitors wake up on Thursday morning.

Tonight's upgrades will be pretty major as far as server software upgrades go. The upgrades are needed and will help greatly with the speed, security and stability of the site, but they may cause a few small problems over the next day or two. Every step is being taken to prevent any errors or issues but we're putting in place a lot of new firewall and security restrictions to help ensure the site doesn't get hacked or compromised and those types of adjustments can sometimes cause small problems to crop up - like not being able to upload a file or an error message coming up on certain pages, etc.

I'll be fixing any bugs or issues that crop up as soon as I find them but if you notice any problems, please either post them on the site or send me an email. I'll work as quickly as possible to get all the kinks ironed out and make the upgrade as seamless and pain-free as possible.

For the techies, some of the upgrades include Apache 1 to 2, PHP 4 to 5, MySQL 4 to 5, a new firewall, improved spam rules and blacklists and lots of service/process hardening, among other things.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Jeremy Lind

Jeremy · 04-02-2008, 12:49 PM

Bump for the update about the downtime tonight.

Jeremy · 04-02-2008, 02:39 PM

Updated again with more details.

cardinal&gold · 04-02-2008, 02:49 PM

I know from experience that upgrading from PHP 4 to PHP 5 alone can cause all kinds of problems, to say nothing of also upgrading Apache and MySQL. Hope the upgrade goes smoothly.

CloneAggie · 04-02-2008, 02:55 PM

Originally Posted by Jeremy

...but we're putting in place a lot of new firewall and security restrictions to help ensure the site doesn't get hacked or compromised...

This is especially important for us Travian nerds. You just can't trust some of those alliances out there. Wouldn't put it past them hacking into our protected forum!!!

Jeremy · 04-02-2008, 02:56 PM

It will certainly be interesting, cross your fingers

I'm actually bringing in some help on this upgrade because it's going to be a pretty big task getting everything done in a short amount of time while still allowing for some testing/troubleshooting afterwards. I'm expecting there to be some small issues that will be around tomorrow morning but hopefully nothing major.

superdorf · 04-02-2008, 03:19 PM

Good luck! I know how stressful this can be.

jumbopackage · 04-02-2008, 07:21 PM

holy crap that's a lot of pain.

Apache 1->2 can be a royal pain.
Mysql 4->5 is usually fairly painless, depending on the complexity of the DB
PHP 4->5 can be a royal ROYAL pain depending on the php code you're migrating

good luck!

brianhos · 04-02-2008, 07:57 PM

Originally Posted by cardinal&gold

I know from experience that upgrading from PHP 4 to PHP 5 alone can cause all kinds of problems, to say nothing of also upgrading Apache and MySQL. Hope the upgrade goes smoothly.

Apache 1 to Apache 2 is total cake if you are not using any of the advanced modules. Mysql 4 to 5 is pretty easy too. PHP on the other hand was a **** to get working for me.

brianhos · 04-02-2008, 07:59 PM

Originally Posted by Jeremy

It will certainly be interesting, cross your fingers I'm actually bringing in some help on this upgrade because it's going to be a pretty big task getting everything done in a short amount of time while still allowing for some testing/troubleshooting afterwards. I'm expecting there to be some small issues that will be around tomorrow morning but hopefully nothing major.

If you get stuck, I have lots of LAMP guys on staff, I could just assign them a new project :)

superdorf · 04-02-2008, 08:09 PM

Originally Posted by brianhos

If you get stuck, I have lots of LAMP guys on staff, I could just assign them a new project :)

This made me laugh... I would love to hear you explain this to upper management.

thunderdave · 04-02-2008, 08:13 PM

Originally Posted by brianhos

If you get stuck, I have lots of LAMP guys on staff, I could just assign them a new project :)

Now that's what I call a true fan!

Jeremy · 04-02-2008, 08:18 PM

We've broken things out in three waves now to help spread out the work. We're going to do some reorganization of the drives tonight, upgrade PHP, Apache and MySQL tomorrow and then do some security work the following night. This should allow for adequate testing to ensure there aren't major problems. I've tried planning ahead but some of these upgrades can be particularly madening, as mentioned by some posters above.

Wesley · 04-02-2008, 08:21 PM

Does this mean anyone with the name Deace will be blacklisted?

drmwevr08 · 04-02-2008, 08:24 PM

I believe that Ogre said it best...

NERDS!!!!!!!!!!!!