We have had another bout of technical issues; As you may have noticed, we have experienced another outage, which has caused us to also loose some data. Please read the following posts under this topic for more information. Users who created accounts in the past week or so will have to rejoin. I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.

Well, technical issues continue to dog us. As you know, we have experienced another outage, this time with data loss. I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of our hosting service and I am very upset about the entire thing. Here is the note I received a couple days ago:

"Our administrator was working with your database when the system locked up. We had to restart it. When checking your database it appeared to have become corrupted and we had to restore it from backup. I appologize for this and it was entirely our mistake. Let me know if there is anything we could do to help you with recovery."

All of this happened as a result of requesting that the SQL Transaction log be purged (the server apparantly locked-up in the process). Of course, as luck would have it, their restore of that data ALSO had problems.

So, I had to take the original backup that I had here locally, from the time the site reopened earlier this month, and upload that. The lesson learned here is, regardless of how many assurances you receive from a hosting provider, and regardless of how capable they appear to be, take whatever steps are necessary to routinely backup your own data. This is what I will be doing from this point forward. It won't be daily, but will be as often as possible.


As a result of all this, we have lost an entire week's worth of postings, as well as all the user accounts that joined during that week. I apologize to everyone effected and ask that you help by reposting the lost artwork and re-joining if your user account was effected. Thanks for your understanding.    :(

Edited by administrator

Hi Hawkeye,

I can understand your frustration level--glad you got it back so quickly.  Don't worry about us-we can reconstruct our posts from 1 Dec-may be later tonight--just in case we go down again. A tremendous thumbs up to you Jan

hawk, man!

Dont let this bring you down, sh*t DOES happen in life..i know what it feel like to struggle with this kinda stuff, it wears you down, slowly...anyway, i'm pretty sure we will all be around, some of us are addicted...devianArt sucks...GFX forum isnt specialized the way SV is...SV is unique!

Thanks for the support.  I hope everyone here is as understanding.  

For my part, I will be much more diligent with the backups myself, so at any given moment we will have much less to loose and are not as dependent on others...

Well, I'm not so sure if we should start getting into posting again, until you're completely sure this won't happen again (even then it may happen again)

Cause earlier there was yet another error. Is it over? Or what?

 

hmm, I take that back now. I think it's still safe to post and all even though we may still have yet another crash because I overread that you'll be backing up the posts every other day or whatever (maybe you could set up some automatic back up, thing. like something to do with cron jobs)

so, I guess I'll do my part in the posting area... (and in a few days or so I'm sure people will get active too. just as long as the site doesn't crash again.)

but it's so freaking annoying isn't it? now we gotta make up what we posted, and thats not fun at all. What to do, what to do...

Edited by JesseP

JesseP wrote: in a few days or so I'm sure people will get active too. just as long as the site doesn't crash again.)  but it's so freaking annoying isn't it? now we gotta make up what we posted, and thats not fun at all. What to do, what to do...

You're preaching to the choir Jesse!  I spent several frustrating hours on this and I'm thoroughly annoyed...but I'm thinking positive now and moving on. 

Your not the only one with technical issues, my browser doesnt work at all now. or the other one I was working from temporarily. So now I'm resorting to using the local libraries computers. suffice to say I'll be back when I can and maybe even repost my last image. But first i'll enjoy Crimbo.

awww, GavM, gonna miss yah!