From the technical news page:

February 9, 2005 - 23:30 UTC
Server status update: The new database server is still being tested, but is working quite well. We're fairly convinced at this point that the crash last week was due to a bug in gnome (a unix windowing system), which has since been disabled.

Once we switch over, it may be impossible to switch back (as it will be much faster than our current database server). So we're being extra cautious, adding queries one by one and checking their success. We have no set time for the transition, but barring any catastrophe it should be any day now.

---

Hope all goes well...

At least there is a life sign on the other end of the line...

Let's wait

> From the technical news page:
>
> February 9, 2005 - 23:30 UTC
> Server status update: The new database server is still being tested, but is
> working quite well. We're fairly convinced at this point that the crash last
> week was due to a bug in gnome (a unix windowing system), which has since been
> disabled.
>
> Once we switch over, it may be impossible to switch back (as it will be much
> faster than our current database server). So we're being extra cautious,
> adding queries one by one and checking their success. We have no set time for
> the transition, but barring any catastrophe it should be any day now.
==========================

:)

thanks Ned .... for that information ..


I would just like to add ... my good wishes , that all goes well .....
just wait ....... and keep our fingers crossed ...


I would like to thank all the good people in this thread
because I have learned so much ... just by reading this thread


... thank you to:


Ned Ludd
Hans Dorn
John McLeod VII
Paul D. Buck
Dave Mickey
Ozgur Gurgey
Boba Fett
MattDavis



-------------- sorry to be off the topic --------------

:)

@ Ned ... I like your avatar ... I hope you don't take offense by me asking ... your avatar .. it must mean something special to you .... just curious .. a family photo ?



friendly and respectful
byron
:)

<B>S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club member m2 ©[/b]

> @ Ned ... I like your avatar ... I hope you don't take offense by me asking
> ... your avatar .. it must mean something special to you .... just curious ..
> a family photo ?

In the early 1800's, in England, workers and pesants were worried about mechanization in factories would throw people out of work, and they'd be unable to buy food -- and starve.

So the people revolted against technology. They were called "luddites" after the (probably fictional) "General" Ned Ludd.

I hope the avatar makes a little more sense in that context. :-)

... and I just find humor in "Ned Ludd" participating in the search for E.T. -- or any other high-tech forum.

I'd give out "Ned's" E-Mail address, but the server isn't behaving itself. Seems appropriate somehow.

---

> In the early 1800's, in England, workers and pesants were worried about
> mechanization in factories would throw people out of work, and they'd be
> unable to buy food -- and starve.
>
> So the people revolted against technology. They were called "luddites" after
> the (probably fictional) "General" Ned Ludd.

You forgot to tell them where "sabotage' comes from ...

---

> You forgot to tell them where "sabotage' comes from ...

Hey! Where are my shoes?!

---

> > So the people revolted against technology. They were called "luddites"
> > after the (probably fictional) "General" Ned Ludd.
>
> You forgot to tell them where "sabotage' comes from ...

Actually, I didn't know about the shoes. I'm not surprised that it happened in France too.

---

I think, I owe a closure for this thread,

Let's go to the beginning;

"February 7, 2005
The initial migration of the database to the new server is complete. Tomorrow we will make this new server a database replica. If all goes well it will become the database primary in a few days." (from the front page)

This was initial spark for this thread, to use the new server as a replica and leaving the old one as master, which would causs in my opinion severe new problems and won't solve any old ones...

The there was a black-out on information flow, and things seemed to worsen , like WU crisis, ever growing validator queue.

At last, this announcement arrived,

"February 10, 2005 - 21:30 UTC
....
The old database server is now a replica that will be used for backups and administrative queries.
"
Now this is a good solution, I don't know what the admins have done, but switch has been done, and the old server is now a replica... which is only used for backup purposes,that means no concurrency problems either. One could argue about the backup process, but this would merely be an academic discussion.

The relevant isssue is, that we seem to have overcome the important problem of switch-over.

Thank you guys, well done...

As one of the persons involved in this migration to a new hardware I would like to thank you all for your patience and many of you for your defense of our intelligence and good intentions.

First, we were migrating to a new hardware type, from Sparc to x86. This meant that the data in binary format is incompatible. We had to overcome that problem. Our first attempt resulted in a glitch and had to be abandoned for a few days while we verified that it would not occur again.

Then we went ahead migrated the data and to establish reliability/stability ran the new server on replica mode for 48 hours. (A very short burn-in for those who know about such things).

Today we switched to the new server and had to make sure that no processes would access the old server. The outage to do this was about 1 hour.

Yes we could have changed over 48 hours ago and not 'waste time' replicating and causing you such pain. We also had to be sure not to cause pain to a whole lot more of you if the new server glitched again.

We thought it went very well with minimum outages.

BTW You should notice a huge speed up in the notice board functions since we increased the RAM buffers to 1GB for this table type.

Thanks again for your patience.

---

sorry double post erased

:)

Hello <A><B> __ bobb2 __ </B>[/url] and thank you for your very good post and explanation __ of the problems involved in the migration to the new server ...

<A><B>bobb2 .. wrote the following ... </B>[/url]

=======================================
> As one of the persons involved in this migration to a new hardware I would
> like to thank you all for your patience and many of you for your defense of
> our intelligence and good intentions.
>
> First, we were migrating to a new hardware type, from Sparc to x86. This meant
> that the data in binary format is incompatible. We had to overcome that
> problem. Our first attempt resulted in a glitch and had to be abandoned for a
> few days while we verified that it would not occur again.
>
> Then we went ahead migrated the data and to establish reliability/stability
> ran the new server on replica mode for 48 hours. (A very short burn-in for
> those who know about such things).
>
> Today we switched to the new server and had to make sure that no processes
> would access the old server. The outage to do this was about 1 hour.
>
> Yes we could have changed over 48 hours ago and not 'waste time' replicating
> and causing you such pain. We also had to be sure not to cause pain to a
> whole lot more of you if the new server glitched again.
>
> We thought it went very well with minimum outages.
>
> BTW You should notice a huge speed up in the notice board functions since we
> increased the RAM buffers to 1GB for this table type.
>
> Thanks again for your patience.
>
>
==============================================

and thank you <A><B> __ bobb2 __ </B>[/url] for your very hard work .. it must have been hard on the nerves ..

<A><B>congratulations _ bobb2 , Matt , David , Jeff and all of the Berkeley team ... [/b][/url]


who have work so hard __ and with _ limited __ money __ time __ computers _ and _ personnel


Very Best Wishes to .. <A><B>bobb2</B>[/url]

from ....

friendly and respectful
byron

<B>S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club member m2 ©[/b]

> Yes we could have changed over 48 hours ago and not 'waste time' replicating
> and causing you such pain. We also had to be sure not to cause pain to a
> whole lot more of you if the new server glitched again.
>
> We thought it went very well with minimum outages.

It's fun to sit in the bleachers and second-guess the players on the field.

... especially if it isn't taken too seriously.

The end result certainly looks good from here.

---