FurNation Online Tomorrow!
Well, after a week of fighting with the new server, cutting the tip of my finger on a cooling blade, a bad CD, blown hard drives, and other events I am proud to say that FurNation looks rock solid once again!We discovered the last of the problems today. It seems that the CMOS battery was going bad and started causing small errors to occur while we were loading the OS onto the new system. After replacing it everything came up just as it should. We are performing a burn-in test tonight.
The bad CMOS battery was probably causing a series of small problems the entire week (at least after replacing it all the problems vanished).
If everything works fine tonight I will re-load the OS tomorrow morning and re-install all the modules. I will meet Rackett out at the ISP tomorrow night at 10:30pm Central and install the new server in the rack.
We will have up to 100Mbs data transfer rate through UUNET at the new location. The new ISPs name is called The Planet (pretty cool that FurNation is being hosted by The Planet).
Well, thats my update. Sorry for the delay! This new server should be really kick-tail!
Sincerely,
Webmaster of FurNation.com
Comments
I hope all goes according to plan, especially since Murphey's Law seemed to have been in full swing for you guys lately.
Well good luck.
Yeah, no kidding...
Tlaren }:=8}
blehhhhhhhh!!
We've heard that 10000000 times already~
Naw, yer exaggerating. More like 9999 times. Yeah. <--note: this is me being funny, or at least making a lame attempt
Smile! The world could use another happy person.
*chuckles* Yet another reason to switch to Mac. ;)
Whhoooo! yeah alright!!!!
i don't careif it's been said 100 times before, i'm still hoping that furnation comes back on tomorow. yaaaay!!!
^_^
Not up yet. I'll be looking though. Hope nothing else goes wrong. Good luck.
I just talked to the webmaster and a minor glich was found during testing yesterday. It is being corrected even as I type this and, with a little luck, FurNation will be up this evening.
Tallyhawk
Two days later and it's still down for me....
It spoke to me briefly this morning and then went quiet again.
This is what you get when you run Windows NT instead of Linux or FreeBSD...
You linux geeks. You think about Windows more than Windows users themselves.
This is what you get when you run Windows NT instead of Linux or FreeBSD...
Weren't most of the delays caused by hardware problems?
Wasn't most of the downtime for budget or administrative reasons?
OS does not appear to be an issue here.
Well Unix derived OSs do stay up longer and have been proven to have less problems than Windows on the server.
But if someone is going to use Windows on thier server, it should at least be Windows 2000, since 2000 is much better than NT or 9x.
OS is an issue here.
Windows is well known to grind hardware down to the bone and make it fail. See PC Magazine, Maximum PC, and most mainstream press for that. The Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) is much lower than that of Linux, or even OS/2!
Thus, it fails more often, requring fixing and eventual replacement... which gets into the budget... which is already overtaxed because Windows XP Pro itself is $300 when Microsoft has stated (to the SEC) that most of that is pure profit. A submitter to Slashdot has said that Microsoft could sell it for $45 and still make a profit. (I can't say if Microsoft is doing a good, legal thing or not by charging that much.)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/17/2037223
So? You go with Linux or FreeBSD (hell, go with any free *BSD out there, I don't care, it just handles the hardware better). You save once. Your hardware goes farther w/o mainance & repair, and when you do maintain it/repair it, it's light stuff. You save twice. You get alot of money for your investment. You save three times, and are still online!!!
I think I'm going to do a hosting service now...
I agree. Windows 2000 is the best way to go if you want to stick with it. It's very stable, but still...
You have security problems that are inherent in the software that don't get resolved within weeks. It still thwacks the hardware five ways to Sunday. And you have to throw more memory at it than you can afford. All of this has been documented...
...in Windows-centered magazines. OI!
No, OS choice does not affect hardware lifetime, at least for hardware that would be used in a server. Maybe if you ran some embedded machine with flash memory as primary storage, you'd wear out the flash card more quickly if you didn't use a filesystem that spread writes across the chip, but I don't think furnation is running off a 256MB CompactFlash card.
The typical Linux zealot will blame Windows for anything--power supply blown? Shouldn't have used Windows. Cracked Athlon CPU? Windows did that. Bad acne? Windows again.
Since you're a Slashdot reader, here's a little something for you:
Phase 1: Write software and give it away for free.
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: PROFIT!
Windows is well known to grind hardware down to the bone and make it fail. See PC Magazine, Maximum PC, and most mainstream press for that.
Never in my experience. Both my Windows machines and my *nix machines last as long as I care to keep them running. Primary failure mode for the handful I've had problems with is CPU fan dying, which is more a result of me not cleaning out cases regularly than of any OS shennanigans. Primary reason for ceasing to run is me throwing out hardware that's old enough to no longer be useful.
I'm afraid you don't sound very convincing to me.
Simple solution to the "???"
Provide data for a price. e.g. your software can decode "data packs" but you never tell anyone the method for creating those "data packs" the only way people can get these "data packs" is from you, by paying an extortionate amount.
Totally off-topic I know :)
hope you'll drop us the new url here when all is up ... huggs and best wishes to all of your efforts ... some of us (probably nearly all i would immagine though i can of course only speak for myself - fur nation is where i discouvered furryness on the net these several years ago) do appreaciate them ... even if some of us can't always do so materialy ... ~;)
congrates on getting FN back online and up for the long run. I hope FN once again find the community support is deserves.
It would seem that there are too many "fair weather Furs" out there that are only happy when some that is free is not running at 100%all the time.
It would seem that there are too many "fair weather Furs" out there that are only happy when some that is free is not running at 100% all the time.
When the problems are self-inflicted, I reserve the right to complain about them. All of the continuing bandwidth problems are caused by throttle limits being set higher than the administrator can afford. If bandwidth charges exceed donations, degrade data rates, don't wait for the whole thing to collapse.
And no, I'm not a leech. The handful of things I've stored on the web are hosted elsewhere.
"We can't find www.furnation.com."
Or so still sayth the world wide web.
(But then, it's still not tomarrow yet.)
It was online for a bit on Monday morning. I was able to browse for about 5 minutes and then down she went.
Not to be negative or anything, but I don't see why so much is put into Furnation anymore. It stays down, and for the longest time it has never been updated. I mean it always had that "template" screen.
I like Furnation, but I don't see why you fight to keep it running. Now Fursearch.com was nifty. I really miss that site :(
Beware the lollipop of mediocrity. One lick, and you'll suck forever.
Furnation wasn't do much about the main page, it was more about the sites that it hosted for other furs.
Many furs have or had thier site hosted by furnation, and that is why ti is so important to bring it back.
Now if only they'd find a way to keep it stable. It was up briefly monday morning, but then the server seems to have died.
Is someone going to keep us updated? Clearly things aren't going to plan, so what's up? I miss my website!
As I understand it, the system was up and running Monday morning until a blue screen of death occured. (I know it was up then because it talked to me before I had to run off to the dentist.) Troubleshooting is happening even now (I hope). The initial assessment is that the configuration of the new server case required a longer than standard cable between the mother board and the user disks. Alas, this seems to make the system unhappy. They are attempting to confirm this so a solution can be found.
I believe Rackett is posting this information in the news groups but I don't know which he has gotton to. I would assume this will be one of them.
That's all I know. If I hear anything else I'll pass it along.
Tallyhawk
Many Days after the mensioned tommarow, FN is still not up... wonder what broke this time...
True, it is still down. I guess I'll wait til all th bugs are worked out. FN has been around for quite a while, this is the first real problem(s) that thy have encountered. I'll just wait patiently. It's free, completely free. So what if there are flaws? They aren't profiting from it, they are offering their services for nothing. I mean, I don't like it being down for so long, either, but stuff happens.
It's 12:35 p.m. PST and it's alive! Shall we start a pool on how long it will last? ;)
Tallyhawk
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