You may have noticed the server up/down the last 24 hours.

There was some kind of problem starting Tuesday AM which caused the server to act erratically and not allow logins, etc. I rebooted mid-day and the problem reoccurred later in the day. After some research it seems one of the hard drives may be bad.

I replaced one of the two drives last evening around 10 PM and rebuilt it overnight and just now brought the site back up.

There are two drives so I A) hope I replaced the correct one and B) hope it is not something else like a cable going to the drive.

I could not replace both drives at once since I need one kept online to "fix" the other. If this problem occurs again I may have to replace the other drive.

Cross your fingers and thanks for your patience.

(Please read earlier posts as well for full details on issues going on)

Ok, I woke up this morning and the problem occurred again... narrowing it down further, here are the possible causes:

* That I solved all the problems already and the problem this morning was just an error left on the drive from the earlier problems and since it is now repaired, it won't happen again (hopefully)

* The second hard drive is actually bad (and not the one I replaced already) [ easy to fix ]

* The cables to the hard drive(s) are bad [ easy to fix ]

* There is some kind of internal software bug [ let's hope not ]

If the problem occurs again, I will replace the other hard drive and change the cables... if the problem occurs again after that then there is something else going on. Let's hope we don't get to that situation.

By the way, the problems you will see are issues logging in, or you may post information and it doesn't appear... (i woke up this AM and couldn't login for example)

-John

OK --

Well I told you earlier today there seemed to be a hard drive issue... well it turns out it probably was not an issue with the hard drive.

The problem occurred again in the evening, so I spent the last 4 hours working on the server. It seems it may have been a problem with the computers memory instead. I have replaced all of the memory with brand new memory and so far so good.

I also, to be safe, changed the hard drive controller, since I had a spare. I also upgraded the operating system to the most recent, and upgraded the software that runs the hard drive controller to the most recent (BIOS for the techies out there).

At least if the problem occurs again (knock on wood it won't) I will be able to narrow it down further to either the system motherboard or operating system itself.

I feel pretty confident that either the memory change or software upgrade will solve the problem... but we shall see. We should know in the next day or two as the problem seems to happen pretty quickly with heavy use.

BTW, these problems were most likely the causes of people not being able to Login, upload images, and the loss of images that were put online over the weekend.

-John

There was a server problem starting sometime last night until about 1 PM today (EST)... it has been (it seems) resolved. Here are the details:

The Operating System started reporting strange issues with the hard drive, that it could not communicate with it. I went to the facility where the the computer was and rebooted it.

There are two hard drives in a "RAID" configuration -- one backs up the other -- it's like storing an extra photograph in your friends house so if you lose one, you have another one saved away. Well, apparently one of the two drives failed and caused the problem.

I was able to get the system back up with one drive (so we don't have a backup drive now) and will have to go back in the next day or two to install a new second drive. Knock on wood we should be ok until then.

As for why this happened -- if hardware is going to fail it usually happens within the first 30 days... that is when 90% of problems with something happen. It seems it was just luck of the draw. Luckily we had a "RAID" setup and the problem was not worse.

On a side note, the system should not have crashed at all, it should have warned me that there was a problem -- so I don't know why that happened -- the hard drive must have failed in a way that did not allow this to occur. (There is an off chance that the hardware that communicates with the hard drives failed instead, I won't know that until I try to replace the bad hard drive).

Bottom line -- the system is back up -- hopefully not much was lost (a post or two here or there may be missing). If you notice any strangeness now, please post it here so I can track down the issues.

-John

Ok, the new server is online -- however it may take a little bit to get the kinks out. If you find anything "broken" please write in so I can fix it. There are a lot of odd parts here that are hard to test in a short period of time.

Also, there is a lot of data here that may take a while to "cache" into memory so things may be a little sluggish at first and I also might need to tweak some things.