Wikivoyage/Lounge/Archive/2010-01-15

Sheduled downtime on Friday, 2009-06-19

Wikivoyage has got a new server with much more powerfull hardware. I will keep preparing the new server until Friday and I hope the moving will run without greater troubles. However, some downtime will be unavoidable.

We will have to change our IP. Depending on your ISP's cache settings, it may take up to one day until our domain wikivoyage.org will be resolved correctly after having modified our DNS entry. Less technicaly spoken: You will be led to our old server for some while when you actually should have come out on our new server.

Our database must keep running on the old server up to the last minute before moving. During the time of moving the database, the old server will be toggled to read-only while the new server is not yet ready to drop in.

Our email access will lack for some houres.

After moving is completed, I assume that some rather rarely used features won't work (corectly). Any bug report is welcome.

Please keep watching this posting until moving is done and everything works fine. I will post updates for reporting the current state of progress.

The works are sheduled to start on Friday, 2009-06-19, at 15:00 UTC.

-- Hansm 14:51, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Shedule

time (UTC)	action	remarks	status
some days ago	Our domains wikivoyage.de and wikivoyage.eu have been switched to our new IP	Both should be resolved correctly at the time of moving.	Done
15:00	Shared: is toggled to read-only and image files are copied to new server.	Normal editing on all other wikis is still possible, but image upload is blocked.	Done
15:30	All wikis are toggled to read-only and database dump begins. Dump is copied to new server and restored.	For about 1 hour, the old server is read only and the new server still holds the test dump restored some days ago.	Done
17:20	New server is activated and is ready for productive work. Domain wikivoyage.org is switched to new IP, too.	It will take some hours (usually not more than one day) until the modification on the DNS entry has gone through all DNS caches. This is why we use wikivoyage.eu as primary domain for the next 24 hours.	Done
after 17:30	Transfering mail server config and other secondary tasks.	Our mail accessibility will lack for some hours.	Mostly done.
From later Friday night on	Everthing should work fine again.	Report bugs.

LocDB: Due to technical reasons (i.e. I have been too lazy to implement this), it is not possible to toggle the locDB to read-only. Please don't make modifications to the locDB as long as other wikis are read-only. Otherwise, your modifications will get lost. -- Update: Should work normally again.

Update: Our wikis seem to run fine on the new server, but there is still a problem in the mail server configuration. This means that our mail addresses do not yet work again. -- Hansm 08:02, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Update: Our mail server seems to run fine, now. There have been reported some more bugs, but I hope they will be much easier to fix. I have switched back our primary domain to wikivoyage.org. -- Hansm 19:36, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

License upgrade from CC 1.0 to 3.0?

Greetings, Wikivoyage. As you may have heard, Wikimedia has recently switch to GFDL 1.3, which is compatible with Creative Commons Sharealike-Attribution 3.0.

Wikitravel is now considering switching the site license from CC by-sa 1.0 to 3.0, including existing content, because this would make reuse and data sharing much easier for everybody. As you know, the wording of the license does not allow this, but there is (almost) a consensus that the spirit does. I know we haven't cooperated much, but on this, we would definitely like to hear Wikivoyage's opinion -- please join the discussion at http://wikitravel.org/shared/Tech:License_upgrade (or post here). Jpatokal 10:12, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi Jani, welcome to Wikivoyage. I know, you are here just as some kind of ambassador. Anyway, thank you for the invitation to the license discussion on WT. As far as I see, Sertmann and maybe some others worry about the bad guys on Wikivoyage. I think there is no reason for this. In our discussions nobody wanted to keep CC-by-sa 1.0 only. We just have been discussing about how to do the license upgrade and what could be upgraded without any judical risk. I have posted my point of view to the discussion on WT and will keep watching it. -- Hansm 14:48, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Unexpected maintenance task

On Thu, 2009-07-09 between 17:00 and 17:30 UTC, I had to shut down the database on our server for an urgent maintenance task. There was a problem with the database's file system which I hopefuly could fix. Sorry for any inconvenience. -- Hansm 17:40, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Urgent mainenance works on 2009-07-10

We have a problem with a corrupt file system on our server. This needs to be repaired immediately in order to avoid data loss. Therefore, our wikis will be read-only or not accessible at all during this afternoon. I will post an update when I have finished. -- Hansm 13:38, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Update: I had to reboot our server. Now, I'm running a hard disk check that will take about 2-4 houres. Our wikis will remain writable until the cheack has completed. -- Hansm 14:14, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Update: My first estimate has turned out to be too optimistic. The hard disk check will take 7 more houres (until 22:00 UTC). The wikis remain writable, but performance suffers significantly by the high disk load. -- Hansm 15:13, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Update: OK, done, so far. I hope I could fix all problems. -- Hansm 16:33, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Urgent maintenance works on 2009-09-16

There is a problem with our database server that requires longer maintenance works. Thus, all wikis will be partly unavailable on 2009-09-16.

Until the problem is fixed, all wikis had to be toggled to read only.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Further progress will be posted here as soon as possible. -- Hansm 18:41, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

The files underlying the database have show some inconsistencies. No idea how this could have happend. Tomorrow, I will ask our hoster for a hardware check. A slight data loss cannot be excluded. If so, it would concern some entries in the it: revision table. As far as I can see, 9 revisions might be lost, but quite sure not more than 50. Anyway, there is still some hope to restore them manually.

The wikis will remain read only until we have fixed the problem.

-- Hansm 20:37, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Update: Wikivoyage will be unreachable during a hardeware test. The test will need about 8 houres and will start this afternoon.

-- Hansm 10:19, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

The server has passed an extensive hardware test without problems. I will modify the scripts for automatic database dumps in order to save two dumps per day. Also, Roland will recieve automatic mails whenever some oddity occure with respect to our datebase. With this additional precausions it should be save to resume our normal wiki works. This weekend, I will try to restore the dropped article revisions on it:. Again, sorry for the long downtime. -- Hansm 07:53, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Database crash from 2009-09-15

Even some days before, some strange error messages and disfunctionalities have been reported by various users. This was due to inconsistencies in the files underlying our database. I knock on wood and hope that I was able to restore all data that first seemed to be lost. Everything looks good as far as I can see. However, our database is huge and it is impossible to inspect all tables manually. Thus, some incorrect, but logically consistent, table entries are still possible, althought not very probable. Please report as soon as possible any strange behaviour of our wikis that could be caused by this crash. Simply drop me a message on my German talk page. -- Hansm 10:34, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Scheduled down time on 2009-11-14

On Saturday, 2009-11-14, our wikis will be down from 15:00 (UTC) on. Due to the huge amount of geo data we have to deal with respect to automated map generation, our database partition of the hard disk turned out to be too small. Thus, I have to re-partitionate the harddisk and move some 100th of GB. If everything runs fine, 2 hours would be sufficient, but in case of complications, the downtime may easily expand to 4 or 5 hours. -- Hansm 08:42, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Done! Actually no complications, but moving about 700GB takes its time. Now, our DB partition is 300GB instead of 200GB, which should be enough even for some more experiements with geo data. -- Hansm 20:01, 14 November 2009 (UTC)