Announcements-Responses

Server Downtime - Move to New Datacenter

SpaceBass@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 20:15:47 +0000

Well, I guess we're going to try this again. This time I am "assured" that the move will take place as scheduled, rather than secretly bumped again. Supposedly they'll call to confirm before it actually happens too, but we'll just see. :P

Sunday, March 27, 11:00PM EST (Monday, March 28, 4:00AM GMT / 5:00AM BST)
What: ServerBeach server migration
Servers affected: All UF and UF-hosted sites
Expected downtime: 2-4 hours, 6 hours maximum

Edited GMT time to reflect Summertime (Daylight Saving) time shift. -S.

Server Downtime - Move to New Datacenter

SpaceBass@forums.unfiction.com — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 19:42:16 +0000

Due to some clusterfsck at the host, they decided not to move my server's row last night after all but neglected to tell me that ahead of time. Look for this announcement to be resurrected again in a couple of weeks.

/me is displeased.

Server Downtime - Move to New Datacenter

SpaceBass@forums.unfiction.com — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 23:17:17 +0000

Unfiction.com, the Unforums, and all UF-hosted sites will be unavailable on the morning of Monday, February 21st, between 0001-0600(EST)/0500-1100(GMT)). During that time, our server will be physically moving to Server Beach 's new South Pointe data center in Herndon, VA - which is about 1.8 miles from the current data center.

We will be running a backup of the forums database around a half-hour before the maintenance window, then rebooting the server and shutting it down about 10 minutes before the scheduled move. Hopefully everything will go smoothly and we'll be back up with a minimum of downtime. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause!

Security Breach, Upcoming Maintenance

SpaceBass@forums.unfiction.com — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 20:46:52 +0000

Good news and bad news: file attachments are re-enabled, but due to certain difficulties, we have lost all of the attachment data from July 17 through November 27. Those attachments *should* still exist on the server if you know the URL to the filename, but they will no longer show up in the posts to which they were attached. Sorry. :(

Security Breach, Upcoming Maintenance

SpaceBass@forums.unfiction.com — Sun, 28 Nov 2004 04:03:13 +0000

I think we're in business. File attachments are disabled while I upload the 750MB of files tonight.

Security Breach, Upcoming Maintenance

SpaceBass@forums.unfiction.com — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 01:05:48 +0000

As many of you may be aware, the security on the forums server was recently compromised. Someone(s) used a new phpBB vulnerability exploit to gain access to the server and do fun things like ad pr0n popups/trojan downloaders to all the forums pages, steal server passwords, and add backdoor shells to the box. Yay!

We've gotten rid of the trojan downloader from the site and hope that the holes are temporarily patched. I'll be working over the upcoming weekend to completely wipe the server and reinstall everything from scratch. I'll try to post a warning before the server is taken down, but expect periods of downtime and unavailability of services over the next week. Hopefully, the cleanup will result in little to no loss of data.

Please note that any private information, such as your email address, that you have stored in the forums database may have been compromised. Additionally, anyone who visited the forums in the last week **especially IE users** should run antivirus/antispyware software as soon as possible. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Upload Quotas

SpaceBass@forums.unfiction.com — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 05:39:11 +0000

Some of you may have noticed a default quota for file attachment uploads to the forums that came along with the recent upgrades. For those of you that have been around for awhile, please contact me to request an increase in your quota limit before you resort to deleting old files in order to upload new ones. Requests will, of course, be taken on a case-by-case basis but in general, I'd much rather preserve archival content than enforce an arbitrary limit. Thanks! :)

Server Migration / Now Accepting Donations

vpisteve@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 00:26:22 +0000

As you may see, everything's done, and I've successfully been able to start another post with the words, "As you."

Very nice job with the migration! :D

Server Migration / Now Accepting Donations

vpisteve@forums.unfiction.com — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 05:52:59 +0000

As you can see the migration is complete, thanks to the talented Leftbrained! Thanks for your patience!

Server Migration / Now Accepting Donations

vpisteve@forums.unfiction.com — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 02:30:01 +0000

As you may have noticed, UnFiction and the UnFiction forums have been undergoing some unexpected (though not undesired) growth as of late.

Due to the burgeoning influx of traffic, it has become necessary to move the site to a server more capable of handling the number of people currently visting.

Unfortunately, this means there will have to be a certain (short!) amount of downtime while we transfer over to the new server. During that time, you will find the forums to be "locked" while the databases and files are transfered. We are hoping that this will be a relatively short process that will not cause undue stress to our loyal forum members and guests, nor get any of them behind in any fabulous ARG discoveries.

Once the forums have been relocated to the new server, we will be redirecting you to the new forums via an IP address until the actual domain name is transfered and propagated as well. Please watch for that announcement both here on the forums, and in chat.

We thank you for your continued support and understanding while we expand to meet your needs.

Questions? Please direct them to the "General/Updates" forum

Server Migration / Now Accepting Donations

vpisteve@forums.unfiction.com — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 21:12:03 +0000

Corrected form to allow comments. :/

Server Migration / Now Accepting Donations

vpisteve@forums.unfiction.com — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 19:59:52 +0000

Some of you may have noticed problems with intermittent service to the forums over the past weekend, especially when the Slashdot flood came and took the server down for an hour or two on Saturday. I am in the process, along with the help of leftbrained and the fine moderators and admins of these forums, of migrating these forums to a new server, with more processing power, more room, and most importantly, more bandwidth. We are working hard to make this change as quickly and seamlessly as possible, and hopefully before whatever happens when the SPDR countdown hits zero.

For over two years, I've run this site to try to give something back to the community I love. I've never been willing to support the costs of hosting through ads or subscription fees, and I am still commited to keeping it free for anyone to use to discuss this genre and to play these great games. People have asked me for a long time to accept donations in order to help support this site and I have always refused. I've paid for this out of my own pocket, leasing a dedicated server in Texas at the great dedicated host, ServerBeach .

However, the reality now is that I can't afford to run this all by myself, although I am still committed to the same monthly costs that I've been paying for two years. It is with an extremely heavy heart that I have buckled under and added a donations button to the footer of these forums. Any donations received will go directly to defraying the costs of running these forums and providing new features and services if possible.

I want to be absolutely clear that donations are NOT required. This site will always be free to use and free of ads as long as is humanly possible. Only donate if you want to, and only donate what you can afford.

If you make a donation, please include your unforum username, if you have registered, and a website link if you'd like me to link to your site from the main unfiction pages. If you're a lurker and wish to donate, let me know what name or nick under which you would like me to thank you. You should be able to do this either in the donation comment box or by sending me an email at SpaceBass at Unfiction dot com (which should also include the email address from which you sent your donation). That address is the one to use when donating by PayPal as well.

I'm really sorry that it's even come to this point and I would greatly appreciate any help I can get.

Server Migration / Now Accepting Donations

SpaceBass@forums.unfiction.com — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 19:59:46 +0000

Some of you may have noticed problems with intermittent service to the forums over the past weekend, especially when the Slashdot flood came and took the server down for an hour or two on Saturday. I am in the process, along with the help of leftbrained and the fine moderators and admins of these forums, of migrating these forums to a new server, with more processing power, more room, and most importantly, more bandwidth. We are working hard to make this change as quickly and seamlessly as possible, and hopefully before whatever happens when the SPDR countdown hits zero.

For over two years, I've run this site to try to give something back to the community I love. I've never been willing to support the costs of hosting through ads or subscription fees, and I am still commited to keeping it free for anyone to use to discuss this genre and to play these great games. People have asked me for a long time to accept donations in order to help support this site and I have always refused. I've paid for this out of my own pocket, leasing a dedicated server in Texas at the great dedicated host, ServerBeach .

However, the reality now is that I can't afford to run this all by myself, although I am still committed to the same monthly costs that I've been paying for two years. It is with an extremely heavy heart that I have buckled under and added a donations button to the footer of these forums. Any donations received will go directly to defraying the costs of running these forums and providing new features and services if possible.

I want to be absolutely clear that donations are NOT required. This site will always be free to use and free of ads as long as is humanly possible. Only donate if you want to, and only donate what you can afford.

If you make a donation, please include your unforum username, if you have registered, and a website link if you'd like me to link to your site from the main unfiction pages. If you're a lurker and wish to donate, let me know what name or nick under which you would like me to thank you. You should be able to do this either in the donation comment box or by sending me an email at SpaceBass at Unfiction dot com (which should also include the email address from which you sent your donation). That address is the one to use when donating by [https://www.paypal.com/]PayPal as well.

I'm really sorry that it's even come to this point and I would greatly appreciate any help I can get.

Datacenter Maintenance 7/1/03 - 7/2/03

SpaceBass@forums.unfiction.com — Mon, 30 Jun 2003 16:14:52 +0000

Our hosting company has scheduled maintenance and upgrades to their datacenter this week. The work is to begin at Tuesday July 1, 2003 11:45pm CDT and should be completed by Wednesday July 2, 2003 4:00am. During this time, you may experience some disruption in service of the unfiction web site and forum, and any sites hosted on the unfiction server. Sorry for any inconvenience.

AOL Email Service Suspended

SpaceBass@forums.unfiction.com — Mon, 14 Apr 2003 19:58:29 +0000

Because of changes AOL has made to their mailservers, the Unfiction forum is no longer able to send mail to AOL accounts. This means that if you sign up for a new account, you MUST use an email address other than one at AOL in order to receive your activation email. If you have previously signed up with an AOL email as your primary email address, you can still access the forum but you will not be able to receive email updates of new posts to watched threads. You can change your email address in your Profile settings.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Please feel free to complain vociferously to AOL for their pointed ignoring of the email protocol standards.