[Skuld-chan]

Hey all!

For those of you who noticed, yeah, we started over again.  As many of you know, a couple of weeks ago we had a fire that damaged components of the server.  One of the hard drives was damaged in the process.   I have tried various means of recovering the data off of the hard drive, but ultimately all attempts have failed.  Therefore, we need to start over again.  This is a very sad time for me as we have lost so much, but I urge you all to sign back up again so we may build anew.

Something good has come out of all of this though.  We now have a brand new DVD burner, and as soon as the website is reconfigured with our new look, I will begin archiving the server on a daily basis.  So, since we have to start all over again, I want your input as far as what kind of a community you want to be a part of.  I already will be having the anime stylized role playing boards, as well as a strong Tenchi presence.  But what else would you guys and gals like to discuss?  Please let me know, and thank you for your continued support.

[Takeda Kenji]

A TL; DR SUMMARY: Site functionality must be the #1 priority. Cut down on the media, bells & whistles and such and focus on forum. Make the site easier to backup and have multiple backup solutions. Two crashes in the last 8 months is no bueno.

For the complete post: keep reading. 

Ambivalence is a pretty good description of how I feel right now.

On the one hand, I never donated to this place and I did nothing but offer posts and my time to keep board active. I feel in this vein, that should cause me to temper my remarks to the man who keeps this board running for my enjoyment largely off of his own dime.

On the other, I've been apart of another board that was complicated and run off primarily the funds of its creator and in my six years there this may (of which in March I'll be able to claim five years of steady activity), I've donated hundreds of dollars. This entitled me to pittances: a bigger banner, maybe a little trinket for the browser game function, or the right to change my username. All of this was to help the creator pay the bills for the site, so I was not under the illusion that my money donated earned me a position of authority to speak to how the board ran. Because in case you're wondering: it didn't.

Any more than I think that donating a 5, 10, 20, 50, or even 100-dollar bill to this site would entitle me to have a definitive say on how this board was run.

So no, I didn't help run this place or pay for it but I'm also realistic enough to know from experience that unless I was willing to underwrite its finances (either totally or so massive that it was too big to ignore), nothing I could give would entitle me to a qualified say.

So really there's no way I can speak my mind without sounding like a whine.

And there's really no way I can expect to influence the opinion of the guy who pays for and runs this place.

So I'll say what I have to say to the others first, and you (Senkusha) second. And I'll remind myself and anyone who feels I do not have place for my words that input was solicited.

I put my time, I shared my writing, and such effort into being a contributory member to this board. I do not think that all the bells and whistles of Media Center, and RPG's and such are bloating this site beyond the lean, mean, trimmed site that it could be.

Such a more flexible, agile site would be easier to back up on portable drives and online backing up solutions. Such a site would be better protected against what has happened twice in two years.

I do not blame you for whatever crashed the site less than a year ago or what crashed us less than a week ago. I still believe that on the whole, you do a wonderful part in running a place where we can congregate and share our love of anime.

But I said then that all the bulkiness of this site was a liability because it ate up money and bandwith that could be better spent ensuring the continuity and uptime of this site. 

I was right. I don't claim to be wise or prescient as it wasn't hard to see that there was much potential for bad things to come out of your hardware shorting out with smoke.

So what can we do in the future?

- Get rid of the media, ftp d/ls, and size-eating additions and focus on the main interactions: posting and sharing links and such.

- Look at online hosting sites or at least multiple backup solutions.

- Other than that, the content's fine.

You said in your response to me before the site died that this wasn't your main priority. Fair play. You're a father, a husband, and a student, and unlike an unbalanced former poster who'd berate you for downtimes and such - I never have nor will I ever posit that this is (or even should be) your first priority whilst the afore-mentioned conditions are true and this is still a totally free forum.

If you ever plan to make a business of this, you'll obviously need to rectify this errors but I think you said you had plans for that.

I really hope you take a look at how to improve stability of this site. Because you can add all the fun and games you like, but when a year's time (or in the previous case, seven years' time) is wiped out in an instant and all is lost....it is demoralizing and it makes you not want to come back.

In the end, this is your place. You pay for it and you run it how you please.

But you asked and I'll be the first to answer: site integrity should be your FIRST priority.

All else is secondary.

[JibrilMudo]

I agree with Takeda.  I come here for the forum and forum alone.

Does anyone actually use the ftp downloads?  I checked out an anime here in the summer and the d/l speed was a dismal 50kb (1/70 my max speed) and the quality was worse than a normal bittorrent and comparable to youtube but without the instant gratifaction.  I may be wrong, but when I want something, I check bittorrent sites for the selection, or Youtube for something quickndirty. 

10 years ago, before the bittorent protocol was released and hosting sites such as megaupload came to the scene offering GB of free hosting, such a feature was compelling for a small forum - a place called Tenchizone even streamed all the Tenchi and Pretty Sammy episodes that way in tiny realplayer format.  Tenchi Zone was also one of the first Tenchi sites I remember dying early in my Tenchi fandom.  Today, imo such a feature is a nonstarter due to such competition from such sites.  The site has been slow the last several months, I can't help but think that speed can be diverted toward the forum and other features.

When I'm (often) asked my advice on a fanfic, my most repeated mantra is KISS - keep it simple, stupid   It may apply here.  It's better to focus on what you do well, instead of wasting resources chasing phantoms.

Also, I have had bad experience with DVD-RWs.  Have you considered perhaps a USB key for the forum data or even an online backup service since physical media at your place will be susceptible?

Anyway, I can't really question your dedication, Sen, and the time, effort, or money you put into this place.  Thank you!  I'm just a bit demoralized at the moment because a lot of important threads, like the Tenchi Extra Materials Version 2.0, got lost - and I'm not sure how readily posters like Will, VCV, or ShadesofBlue will contribute to what should have been an archive (this was my fault, as I didn't d/l and inventory their contributions like I initially intended).

[Tenchi Ryu]

Agreed. I will still give you the honor of decision making Senkusha cause this is your website. But I agree with everyone that the FTP function is not needed and was kind of inferior to Megaupload. If anything, if you add it again, you should just keep it how it is instead of adding new content to the FTP. The Tenchi Muyo extra content thread showed us plain as day that as long as we have Megaupload links, thats really all we need. Sen, you'll save yourself plenty of time uploading to MU, making a MU folder then posting here compared to working with FTP. With my basic internet, its a hell of a lot easier with a 350 KB/s MU download compared to a 35-50 KB/s FTP one.

Luckily this is a pretty tight knit group, the normal posters here talk to each other almost every day, so we pretty much know we ALL got what Will and Shades provided us. Now if we start getting a fresh set of new members, then we can implement what they missed, but for now, I don't feel Will, Shades and MasakiLHW need to re-link the stuff they put out, instead they can focus on the new stuff.

[Skuld-chan]

Agreed.  The FTP in it's original form was probably not the best idea. However, I do have a few idea of what may have slowed down the site so much:

1.  The server hardware IS old.  The server itself is only a Pentium III  with 1 GB of RAM.  The two network cards that were installed were only functioning at 10 Mbps (which should have been fine - read on.)

2.  The operating system was antiquated.  Over the years, I have tried to keep up on updates and the such.  However, in the process of tweaking, and installing / removing various software to make the server and site function, I was unable to install the latest updates (for almost a year).

3.  Bloat software.  Mentioned above, I tried installing and removed unnecessary software to the server.  This may have left bits and pieces of dead software on the system.  I think a combination of this and #2, prevented me from updating the OS.

4.  The internal network card (we are protected by a firewall here as well) was only operating at 1-3 Kbps.  That should not have affected you guys at all, but I am starting to question if the external network card was operating at full speed as well.

5.  There were redundant firewall programs.  I've tried a few over the years.  See issue #3.  This may have been causing a bottle neck.

6.  The FTP was a public FTP.  This means that anybody, including google bots could have been downloading content.  Also I had reduced the anonymous speed to direct the bandwidth more towards the forum instead.

7.  I can't forget that the forum may not have been configured for optimum performance.  I was in a rush to get the forum back up the last time it crashed, so I overlooked quite a few things.  Including something that Jibril found in an external article related to SEO just hours before the server went off line.

Now, I've attempted to fix a few things.  I've replaced both  network cards with gigabit cards (10/100/1000), and both of which are operating at Full Duplex mode at 100 Mbps speed.  I've only installed the most recent firewall application and we have a very slim definition file as opposed to the massive one we had before (which may have had conflicts contained within it).   The FTP will be member login from now on.   We have a brand new fresh install of the forum, and I am taking my time making sure that I get all the options set correctly for optimum performance. 

Also related to this is the database engine.  The old forum used what is known as MYISAM which is a basic database structure, and it is easily recoverable.  The problem with this mode is that it is somewhat slow.  Then there is INNODB, this is a much more resilient database engine, and is much faster than MYISAM, however, it can become corrupted somewhat easily if you don't constantly keep up on it.  This is something of a problem with the last site, is that this INNODB (a recommended feature to enable for optimization of the forum) was corrupted, and I had tried to fix this without success.  Now that we have a clean install, I can re-enable this feature again without concern.

So, all that is left that I can do is upgrade the rest of the components (which should be coming very soon), and possibly subscribe to a higher speed DSL connection.

I think that was everything i wanted to say.  Thanks for your support and ideas!

[Takeda Kenji]

Agreed.  The FTP in it's original form was probably not the best idea. However, I do have a few idea of what may have slowed down the site so much:

1.  The server hardware IS old.  The server itself is only a Pentium III  with 1 GB of RAM.  The two network cards that were installed were only functioning at 10 Mbps (which should have been fine - read on.)

2.  The operating system was antiquated.  Over the years, I have tried to keep up on updates and the such.  However, in the process of tweaking, and installing / removing various software to make the server and site function, I was unable to install the latest updates (for almost a year).

3.  Bloat software.  Mentioned above, I tried installing and removed unnecessary software to the server.  This may have left bits and pieces of dead software on the system.  I think a combination of this and #2, prevented me from updating the OS.

4.  The internal network card (we are protected by a firewall here as well) was only operating at 1-3 Kbps.  That should not have affected you guys at all, but I am starting to question if the external network card was operating at full speed as well.

5.  There were redundant firewall programs.  I've tried a few over the years.  See issue #3.  This may have been causing a bottle neck.

6.  The FTP was a public FTP.  This means that anybody, including google bots could have been downloading content.  Also I had reduced the anonymous speed to direct the bandwidth more towards the forum instead.

7.  I can't forget that the forum may not have been configured for optimum performance.  I was in a rush to get the forum back up the last time it crashed, so I overlooked quite a few things.  Including something that Jibril found in an external article related to SEO just hours before the server went off line.

Now, I've attempted to fix a few things.  I've replaced both  network cards with gigabit cards (10/100/1000), and both of which are operating at Full Duplex mode at 100 Mbps speed.  I've only installed the most recent firewall application and we have a very slim definition file as opposed to the massive one we had before (which may have had conflicts contained within it).  The FTP will be member login from now on.  We have a brand new fresh install of the forum, and I am taking my time making sure that I get all the options set correctly for optimum performance. 

Also related to this is the database engine.  The old forum used what is known as MYISAM which is a basic database structure, and it is easily recoverable.  The problem with this mode is that it is somewhat slow.  Then there is INNODB, this is a much more resilient database engine, and is much faster than MYISAM, however, it can become corrupted somewhat easily if you don't constantly keep up on it.  This is something of a problem with the last site, is that this INNODB (a recommended feature to enable for optimization of the forum) was corrupted, and I had tried to fix this without success.  Now that we have a clean install, I can re-enable this feature again without concern.

So, all that is left that I can do is upgrade the rest of the components (which should be coming very soon), and possibly subscribe to a higher speed DSL connection.

I think that was everything i wanted to say.  Thanks for your support and ideas!

I do appreciate that you know your lingo and such. But as far as I could tell as a layman, you just went on about speed when the real problem is the goddamn server DYING. How exactly do you plan to safeguard against that? Can it be safeguarded against?

My point in bringing up the FTP was that it and all the files on here made the whole server size larger than it needed to be. Maybe I'm wrong.

Do you have any comments regarding making sure the site doesn't die again? Is this something that backups would solve?

[Skuld-chan]

Sorry for all the techno-babble.  The FTP and the database are two separate things to back up.  When I consider backing up, I have three 'scopes'.  The first would obviously be the database.  This should only be a couple of MB.  Then there is the FTP.  This can be several GB in size.  I plan to back that up on DVD everytime I update the FTP listing.  Finally there is the entire Server to back up.  This would contain all the operating system files and configurations, and would reside on a "mirrored" hard drive  -- that being one that has all the exact stuff as the live one does, but it just isn't active.  The database will be backed up every day.  And to address the server dying, yes, it is quite old, and I have been wanting to upgrade it for quite some time.  Finally within the next couple of months, that will become a reality.

I have also considered the possibility of trying to "mirror" the site, but I'm not sure if that can be done with something as dynamic as a forum.

[Takeda Kenji]

Sorry for all the techno-babble.  The FTP and the database are two separate things to back up.  When I consider backing up, I have three 'scopes'.  The first would obviously be the database.  This should only be a couple of MB.  Then there is the FTP.  This can be several GB in size.  I plan to back that up on DVD everytime I update the FTP listing.  Finally there is the entire Server to back up.  This would contain all the operating system files and configurations, and would reside on a "mirrored" hard drive  -- that being one that has all the exact stuff as the live one does, but it just isn't active.  The database will be backed up every day.  And to address the server dying, yes, it is quite old, and I have been wanting to upgrade it for quite some time.  Finally within the next couple of months, that will become a reality.

I have also considered the possibility of trying to "mirror" the site, but I'm not sure if that can be done with something as dynamic as a forum.

Your techno-babble wasn't the problem. Your problem was you going on about ways to make the site faster when the problem was everything disappearing in one awful moment.

I might be misunderstanding things but it seems to me that you had just the forum and such and not much else...it wouldn't be all that much to back up and you could buy a 50 dollar WD passport drive for a couple hundred gigs of ExHDD storage space or seek a free or cheap online backup solution and in backing it up every day...if smoke got into your equipment and the regular hard drive failed...all you'd have to do is upload everything from the backup storage and we wouldn't have lost everything.

Perhaps my understanding of the technology isn't sufficient. Did I misrepresent the situation?

[will1384]

It may not help, but Google cached a lot of the pages, I know it cached 12 of the 13 pages
from the "Community Project Idea- Tenchi Muyo Extra Materials V 2.0" post, and I still have
a list of all my uploads

On another note.

At home, I backup to three different hard drives, to  DVDs, and also thumb drives, the DVDs
and thumb drives go into a vault, and one of the three hard drives is removable.

My OS is an a separate hard drive than my backup drives, and I made a clone of it after
a fresh install / setup onto an external drive.

It may sound excessive but it has saved my but a few times.

[Skuld-chan]

Sorry for all the techno-babble.  The FTP and the database are two separate things to back up.  When I consider backing up, I have three 'scopes'.  The first would obviously be the database.  This should only be a couple of MB.  Then there is the FTP.  This can be several GB in size.  I plan to back that up on DVD everytime I update the FTP listing.  Finally there is the entire Server to back up.  This would contain all the operating system files and configurations, and would reside on a "mirrored" hard drive  -- that being one that has all the exact stuff as the live one does, but it just isn't active.  The database will be backed up every day.  And to address the server dying, yes, it is quite old, and I have been wanting to upgrade it for quite some time.  Finally within the next couple of months, that will become a reality.

I have also considered the possibility of trying to "mirror" the site, but I'm not sure if that can be done with something as dynamic as a forum.

Your techno-babble wasn't the problem. Your problem was you going on about ways to make the site faster when the problem was everything disappearing in one awful moment.

I might be misunderstanding things but it seems to me that you had just the forum and such and not much else...it wouldn't be all that much to back up and you could buy a 50 dollar WD passport drive for a couple hundred gigs of ExHDD storage space or seek a free or cheap online backup solution and in backing it up every day...if smoke got into your equipment and the regular hard drive failed...all you'd have to do is upload everything from the backup storage and we wouldn't have lost everything.

Perhaps my understanding of the technology isn't sufficient. Did I misrepresent the situation?

I brought up the speed, because it was mentioned in your original post about the FTP, and I know that the site's speed has been an issue in the past.  I am merely just pointing out these improvements.

I know, should have, would have, could have.  It's too late for that now, but, I can tell you that starting tonight, there will be a recurring database backup, as well as the core of the website (minus the FTP media).  These backups will be exported to an external hard drive device and stored at a remote location.

[Takeda Kenji]

Thank you. It sounds like with some secure backup solution, we'll never again face a complete wipe-out of AB. That's what was so troubling for me.

Thank you for all the work you do.
Thank you for all the money you put in.
Thank you for making this Tenchi (among other things) community possible.

I grilled you about the backup because complete wipeouts are discouraging. They make people not want to come back and start anew when all the memories are gone.

But it sounds like you're addressing the problem and you cannot get any fairer than that.

Thank you.
TK.

[lanir]

Heya,

I consider my activity here to be very casual. As such, this particular hickup didn't really mess up anything for me. My main reaction was to feel bad for Senkusha for having to redo everything and try to do data recovery (in case anyone's wondering, that's always a godawful mess). I especially don't think there's much here that is so vital to anyone that it requires the added expenditure and nuisance of implementing off-site backups. So fires basically are always going to risk having the whole site and contents trashed. It's incredibly unrealistic to expect anything else.

I have downloaded an older series from the ftp server here as it would have been much more difficult to get via torrent. As odd as it may sound, perhaps that would be the preferred contents of the archive? At least as far as video files go. I only glance at pictures as they come up in posts so I'm not sure what others use that part of the site for (and with no data recovering, you obviously don't have logs either). New anime series are just too easy to get elsewhere. There's no real need to make them globally downloadable (trying to lure Senkusha into watching a new series might be an exception here, but again a torrent might do just as well). Actually for newer series perhaps an upload of a torrent we all use would be the ideal method.

Oh, one note on backups. I haven't read all the other comments so I apologize if this has come up. One thing I personally used to do when I ran several computers was to backup the most important data I had to multiple hard drives on other computers. In this way even if a drive or even a whole machine curled up and died, I would only lose less important data. This would be significantly less costly than constant DVD backups. Just backing up the forums would essentially be a freebie. I think you've mentioned running linux machines at home, so there are several easy options for automation in this regard. Even if you're dealing with windows machines it shouldn't be much problem if you don't mind installing an FTP server on it. They have a pretty minor footprint and don't add any security issues as long as they're not accessible outside your internal network. If you'd like a hand making a script to do this sort of thing please let me know, I'd be happy to help.

One last thing, would you consider making some parts of the forum require a login to view? Just an idea. I'm not sure if you want every single topic that pops up to show on a google search. You could also setup a robots.txt file instead if you want guests to see everything but not search engines. I thought of this awhile ago but there was no point in mentioning it before. Now is pretty much the ideal time to do it if you wanted to.

[electricvolcano]

At the risk of sounding like an alien, I think you are being too hard on Senkusha. Stuff happens, and there is no "fool proof" way of preventing data loss. Machine components can fail at any time without warning. I understand that some of you donate money and expect more reliable service. It sounds like Senkusha has been doing his best to come through on that.

[JibrilMudo]

Also Sen, when I type in "www.ayeka.net" I get your message with link to this forum.

When I type in "ayeka.net" so that the url reconciles to "http://ayeka.net", I simply get the "It works!" message with no link to the forum.  You may want to fix that.

[Skuld-chan]

Also Sen, when I type in "www.ayeka.net" I get your message with link to this forum.

When I type in "ayeka.net" so that the url reconciles to "http://ayeka.net", I simply get the "It works!" message with no link to the forum.  You may want to fix that.

Thanks for the heads up.  It sounds like a minor misconfiguration with the webserver.  I should have that fixed later on today. (after a brief nap)

@lanir, see my PM.