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CharlesS · May 24, 2004, 04:03 AM

Subject says it all. Seems every time I come here shortly after 3:00, MacNN is down. Why is that?

rjenkinson · May 24, 2004, 05:08 AM

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Seems every time I come here shortly after 3:00, MacNN is down. That is why?

yes.

-r.

AKcrab · May 24, 2004, 05:52 PM

Some sort of database backup runs... If the search worked, you could find older threads about it.

CharlesS · May 24, 2004, 06:17 PM

Originally posted by AKcrab:
Some sort of database backup runs... If the search worked, you could find older threads about it.

Don't remind me of the broken search...

tooki · May 24, 2004, 07:50 PM

Yep, at 04:15 EST the backup runs.

tooki

thePurpleGiant · May 25, 2004, 12:33 AM

Originally posted by tooki:
Yep, at 04:15 EST the backup runs.

tooki

Question: Currently this takes roughly half an hour (I think). But as the forums grow each year, does that mean that in a few years we will have 1 hour downtime?

Talk2Angus · May 25, 2004, 09:55 AM

at 04:15 EST the backup runs.

lil'babykitten · May 25, 2004, 03:05 PM

Originally posted by tooki:
Yep, but we're not going to do a damn thing about it.

tooki

fxd.

gorickey · May 25, 2004, 05:38 PM

"It's a feature."

CharlesS · May 25, 2004, 07:33 PM

Sorry to bug you guys. I guess my little brain just doesn't understand why the backup can't run while leaving the server up. Does vBulletin get exclusive read access to the files or something?

thePurpleGiant · May 26, 2004, 12:49 AM

Originally posted by thePurpleGiant:
Question: Currently this takes roughly half an hour (I think). But as the forums grow each year, does that mean that in a few years we will have 1 hour downtime?

And thus in 20 years, it will only have 1 hour per day of uptime!!

khufuu · May 26, 2004, 01:28 AM

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Subject says it all. Seems every time I come here shortly after 3:00, MacNN is down. Why is that?

Chuck! Go to bed damn it! :-D

CharlesS · May 26, 2004, 01:42 AM

Originally posted by khufuu:
Chuck! Go to bed damn it! :-D

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=214414

bradoesch · May 28, 2004, 06:59 PM

Originally posted by CharlesS:
http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...14#post2003801

Fixe...err, better.

tooki · May 30, 2004, 08:34 PM

Originally posted by thePurpleGiant:
Question: Currently this takes roughly half an hour (I think). But as the forums grow each year, does that mean that in a few years we will have 1 hour downtime?

I honestly don't know. I don't do any server administration, just forum administration.

tooki

soul searching · Aug 2, 2004, 11:46 AM

Originally posted by thePurpleGiant:
Question: Currently this takes roughly half an hour (I think). But as the forums grow each year, does that mean that in a few years we will have 1 hour downtime?

I don't think so. It seems after a while part of the "active" database gets "archived," which means it wont grow past a certain size, which in turn means no more than 15-30 minutes down time per night.

gorgonzola · Aug 12, 2004, 06:23 PM

It has something to do with backups needing to take the database down temporarily, though I'm not sure of the exact technical reason either (I haven't been taking care of the database recently -- two other guys are doing it). Sorry, but for now it's an annoying thing you'll have to be patient about for a little while longer (though I hope not too much longer).

However, the downtime should not increase. Small mercies.

Scotttheking · Sep 27, 2004, 08:32 PM

MYSQLHOTCOPY(1)

NAME
mysqlhotcopy - fast on-line hot-backup utility for local MySQL
databases and tables

DESCRIPTION
mysqlhotcopy is designed to make stable copies of live MySQL databases.

Here "live" means that the database server is running and the database
may be in active use. And "stable" means that the copy will not have
any corruptions that could occur if the table files were simply copied
without first being locked and flushed from within the server.

From a test I just ran.

Code:
mysqlhotcopy copied 86 tables (258 files) in 317 seconds (317 seconds overall).

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3              16G  7.1G  7.8G  48% /backup
/dev/sda5              31G  7.1G   24G  23% /var/lib/mysql

It's suitably impressed me so far. It does lock the tables while it's running though.

Diggory Laycock · Oct 20, 2004, 05:15 AM

I assumed that you all knew about MySQLHotCopy - but had dismissed it for some reason.

Randman · Oct 20, 2004, 05:53 AM

What's annoying about is when I'm abroad, it hits right at the time when I'm logging on and checking email and whatnot. Nothing worse than starting to read threads, then lose the last few pages of the current posts search.

macaddict0001 · Nov 7, 2004, 04:56 PM

Originally posted by thePurpleGiant:
And thus in 20 years, it will only have 1 hour per day of uptime!!

no because the drives and servers will also get faster.

[APi]TheMan · Nov 22, 2004, 08:24 PM

Originally posted by macaddict0001:
no because the drives and servers will also get faster.

Plus, that's what archives are for. When the forum gets too big they'll archive it and start over.

Athens · Jan 30, 2005, 12:12 PM

why dont you guys just use a Raid backup system with hot swapable drives. Then no down time would be needed.

l008com · Feb 19, 2005, 04:54 PM

Holy-Overkill for a forum backup (re: raid)

Xeo · Mar 4, 2005, 03:41 PM

Honestly, I think this is the only forum which goes down nightly for a half hour. When I was in Japan, I got hit with it almost every day 'cause it happened at between 6 and 7 PM. I don't deal with it so much any more as I haven't been staying up that late, but really this could be done better.