FurAffinity: Six Years of Mediocrity

[Eevee]

Some logs with yak.

Full: http://eevee.pastebin.com/m5pnWBMe
tl;dr with highlighted bits: http://eevee.pastebin.com/dXuk551k

These expire in a month for various reasons, but I have them saved locally.

[Pi]

This came to me from the vaults of history:

Hyenafire: Tsa found a flaw with the NIC card on the main WWW server
Hyenafire: something we're going to have to replace.
Ulrichvonmatsch: Will that be expensive?
Hyenafire: More than likely.
Hyenafire: Estimates right now are about $500
Hyenafire: But that would include 2 or 3 days of downtime
Hyenafire: I have an alternative idea to fix it that will require $2000, but will be better in the edn
Ulrichvonmatsch: Gosh, that's a lot of money. Will a donation drive effort be fet up?
Ulrichvonmatsch: er.. set up
Ulrichvonmatsch: what would the alternative idea be as well? :O
Hyenafire: Just get a god damn new server.
Hyenafire: Then fix the other one
Hyenafire: We can provide zero downtime
Hyenafire: However, the catch on that is that the new server would act as an on-site backup + search engine
Ulrichvonmatsch: Would that be like that search engine thing that that person posted about on the forums recently? i.e it stores a version of the site and searches that, versus a "Real time"(?) search engine?
Hyenafire: Temporarily
Hyenafire: Then followed by a real, fully fleshed out one
Session Close (Hyenafire): Thu Jan 24 20:57:42 2008

Perfect example of "little problem? fuck it let's not even try to fix things and just throw more hardware at it".

Also, who ever heard of a $500 NIC? Not even that stupid "KILLER NIC" gaming thing is that expensive.

[loki]

Perfect example of "little problem? fuck it let's not even try to fix things and just throw more hardware at it".

Also, who ever heard of a $500 NIC? Not even that stupid "KILLER NIC" gaming thing is that expensive.

They're probably people who want to spend money they don't have to feel important. They don't have any actual skills to fix the problem so they rely on pointing non-existent issues and using that as an excuse to get more hardware (and asspats for fixing a 'problem'). It's pretty much kids playing make believe, I think.

[Conan]

This came to me from the vaults of history:

Hyenafire: Tsa found a flaw with the NIC card on the main WWW server
Hyenafire: something we're going to have to replace.
Ulrichvonmatsch: Will that be expensive?
Hyenafire: More than likely.
Hyenafire: Estimates right now are about $500
Hyenafire: But that would include 2 or 3 days of downtime
Hyenafire: I have an alternative idea to fix it that will require $2000, but will be better in the edn
Ulrichvonmatsch: Gosh, that's a lot of money. Will a donation drive effort be fet up?
Ulrichvonmatsch: er.. set up
Ulrichvonmatsch: what would the alternative idea be as well? :O
Hyenafire: Just get a god damn new server.
Hyenafire: Then fix the other one
Hyenafire: We can provide zero downtime
Hyenafire: However, the catch on that is that the new server would act as an on-site backup + search engine
Ulrichvonmatsch: Would that be like that search engine thing that that person posted about on the forums recently? i.e it stores a version of the site and searches that, versus a "Real time"(?) search engine?
Hyenafire: Temporarily
Hyenafire: Then followed by a real, fully fleshed out one

Perfect example of "little problem? fuck it let's not even try to fix things and just throw more hardware at it".

Also, who ever heard of a $500 NIC? Not even that stupid "KILLER NIC" gaming thing is that expensive.

For the record, I'm pretty sure this is the "unidentified hardware failure" that happened a few months later (the full log ends with "Session Close (Hyenafire): Thu Jan 24 20:57:42 2008").

It was identified, Sean Piche just saw a chance to get the community to pour money into his e-penis and rolled with it.

[Pi]

They're probably people who want to spend money they don't have to feel important. They don't have any actual skills to fix the problem so they rely on pointing non-existent issues and using that as an excuse to get more hardware (and asspats for fixing a 'problem'). It's pretty much kids playing make believe, I think.

Speaking of make-believe, I played some of that with the port-scan results. Pity my vague guesses about their network never turn out to be accurate. Being wrong could mean shame to my popularity as a furry!!!

But no, seriously, why in fuck are your out-of-band management interfaces the only thing connected through your redundant backbone?

Ulrichvonmatsch: Would that be like that search engine thing that that person posted about on the forums recently? i.e it stores a version of the site and searches that, versus a "Real time"(?) search engine?
Hyenafire: Temporarily

In 2008 if someone asked me "hey should i build my temporary search engine by taking a database snapshot onto another box" i would have said "haha, nice joke".

[Conan]

They're probably people who want to spend money they don't have to feel important. They don't have any actual skills to fix the problem so they rely on pointing non-existent issues and using that as an excuse to get more hardware (and asspats for fixing a 'problem'). It's pretty much kids playing make believe, I think.

Speaking of make-believe, I played some of that with the port-scan results. Pity my vague guesses about their network never turn out to be accurate. Being wrong could mean shame to my popularity as a furry!!!
[image]

Interesting to note that the TF2 server IP falls in the middle of their virtual boxes. They used to use an old server for that. Guess they needed more power so more Medics could follow Dragoneer around.

[loki]

Speaking of make-believe, I played some of that with the port-scan results. Pity my vague guesses about their network never turn out to be accurate. Being wrong could mean shame to my popularity as a furry!!!

But no, seriously, why in fuck are your out-of-band management interfaces the only thing connected through your redundant backbone?

I doubt anyone there has ever considered drawing out what their network topology is; the saddest part is that they probably had it paid for mostly by gullible furries. I'd feel better if they were in deep debt due to all the hardware they bought.... or if they were using it for something useful like academic purposes (yea, right they need their furry porn and TF2) - I'd also love to see how much load each of their physical boxes are under.

Also, that temporary search engine idea boggles my mind. Just what the hell are they on?

[Pi]

Jesus, this just keeps getting worse.

Session Start (Irc.Furnet.org:#FurAffinity-core): Tue Jan 29 18:35:27 2008
[...]
[18:55] Dragoneer: I am still waiting on Tsa to give me a hardware recommendation to fix or, or to know what he needs from me for it.
[18:55] Dragoneer: I mean, the new server idea is the best I can think of... replacing the MB may cause too much nasty-ass downtime
[18:56] yak[away]: yeah, it's the best and the fastest option there is right now.
[19:03] yak[away]: also, since we'd be having 3 boxes now, we'd need a gigE switch together with that new server.. that shit is pricey too
[19:04] tsawolf: Very.
[19:04] tsawolf: Plus, Gushi may ot let us.
[19:04] tsawolf: THats a lot of U
[19:04] tsawolf: I'm talking to him now.
[19:04] yak[away]: alrighty
[19:05] yak[away]: though i don't see where a lot of U comes from.
[19:05] tsawolf: Well...
[19:05] tsawolf: Even if we get another 1U server, then we still are adding 2U.
[19:05] tsawolf: What size racks are we using? 8U? 16U?
[19:06] Dragoneer: *nods* Well, he's still got that 4U beast for the old server we're using
[19:06] yak[away]: only gushi, and maybe crypto knows
[19:06] Dragoneer: He can have that, do whatever he wants with it. He could easily strip it down to 2U with a new case
[19:06] tsawolf: 42U rack probably, if it really is in a professinoal NOC.
[19:07] Dragoneer: We have two 1U servers and the old 4U shitbox that Alkora got
[19:07] yak[away]: tsawolf: i take the colo is on the level.
[19:07] Dragoneer: Yes.
[19:07] Dragoneer: The Colo is at Gushi's workplace
[19:11] yak[away]: okay, as a summary. what we need is: 1 server with pretty much identical, only compatible hardware this time, and maybe more storage space then now.. can even go 2u i think, to have a reserve there
[19:11] yak[away]: and one gigabit switch
[19:12] Dragoneer: *nods*

I... I can't even make fun of this. It's like watching "America's Dumbest Network Administrators".

[Dr. Dos]

am I misreading these things when what I'm taking from them is that something physical is damaged or broken and so their solution isn't "replace part" but "buy new expensive server to prevent downtime"?

[Conan]

am I misreading these things when what I'm taking from them is that something physical is damaged or broken and so their solution isn't "replace part" but "buy new expensive server to prevent downtime"?

It's the quickest and fastest solution.

Anything else would have required
HOURS OF DOWNTIME!11!1one!!!.

So instead they dawdled and the site was offline for a month loooooooooooooooooooooool.

[MazelTovCocktail]

Is it really that difficult to replace parts on a server? 

Unless they're factoring in let's-take-a-break-and-have-sweaty-furry-sex time (which I'd approximate at 30 seconds, tops unless foreplay is involved) they're taking too long if they can't pop the case open, replace what they need to replace, and have it back in the rack in 15 minutes. 

[Jim Demintia]

Aren't most servers, especially those overpriced ones they have, designed at a hardware level to let you replace parts without shutting down the system? You can even hot-swap in and out memory and CPUs on some of them, I believe.

My stupid-ass VMware Workstation instance of Windows Server 2008 hosting Microsoft Exchange even lets me emulate such features. I was able to add a backup disk to the virtual hardware without rebooting, and on Windows, yes, even Windows Server, that's saying something.

[ProvincialTwit]

What?  No that's stupid, you're stupid, VMWare is stupid.  Hot-swapping hard disks?  Sure.  But that doesn't even require you to open the chassis.

Also, most halfway decent server motherboards these days come with dual NICs, so step 1 is to just reassign the IP to the other NIC port and plug it in.  Or - and here's a mind blowing proposition - use both NICs with ethernet bonding!  Wow, what a concept!

Anyway for all the talk of OMG DOWNTIME and these people being complete idiots, at least some of it has to boil down to them also being incredibly lazy and unwilling to go do the work at 4am.  I've been working in the hosting/isp biz for a decade now, and downtime is just something that happens.  If you can offload services to another existing box while the problem one is down, great.  If not, you schedule some downtime and get to know the wee hours of the morning a bit better.

This whole concept of OMG CANT HAVE DOWNTIME is also just them giving themselves a hugely inflated sense of worth/importance.  No, guys, the world won't end if some furfag in a far-flung timezone has to wait a few minutes for porn.

[Arche Kruz]

Thought I'd throw in a small stick to the massive pile of monuments to the staff incompetence, since this popped in the FA chat just now.

http://pastebin.com/V9Pe6qgf

The gist of it is that, CerbrusNL is lead to believe that talking about console modding is illegal and thus closes a previous thread, Joe Modder here starts another thread and complains about the mod being naive about closing the other thread, and guess what happens. CerbrusNL infracts Joe Modder for criticizing the mishandling of a case by a moderator and closes the thread, while said naive mod makes a childish "U mad" type of post.

[Eevee]

blah blah things about datacenters

I feel obliged to ask yet again why FA needs to manage their own hardware at all when they're just hosting a crappy PHP app, MySQL, and a bunch of static files.

[Conan]

blah blah things about datacenters

I feel obliged to ask yet again why FA needs to manage their own hardware at all when they're just hosting a crappy PHP app, MySQL, and a bunch of static files.

It's the same reason they don't want to go offline for fifteen minutes to fix something: because they pretend  to be a lot more important than they are.

[Eaglebird]

blah blah things about datacenters

I feel obliged to ask yet again why FA needs to manage their own hardware at all when they're just hosting a crappy PHP app, MySQL, and a bunch of static files.

I'm gonna take a shot in the dark and say it's probably because their "throw hardware at it" approach stopped being something hosts didn't do or couldn't do, so they settled for squeezing furries for donations + ads and a fat pipe(s) to throw more hardware on.
Or tl;dr: it IS a crappy PHP/SQL app!

Page generated in 1.565 seconds [ 98% PHP, 2% SQL ] (15 queries)

[Pi]

Hey, at least it's not doing this any more:

Page generated in 20.35793 seconds (-5299.981% PHP - 5399.981% MySQL [ 5 queries ])

I don't even want to speculate on what might have caused that. It was doing this for a while a couple of years back.

Also, lol, last night it was taking 0.75 seconds per page, this morning it was taking 1, and now it's aiming for 2 seconds. GJ, guys. Great fucking job.

[Eaglebird]

I don't even want to speculate on what might have caused that.

overflow :lmao:


also forgot this gem:

Thought I'd throw in a small stick to the massive pile of monuments to the staff incompetence, since this popped in the FA chat just now.

http://pastebin.com/V9Pe6qgf

The gist of it is that, CerbrusNL is lead to believe that talking about console modding is illegal and thus closes a previous thread, Joe Modder here starts another thread and complains about the mod being naive about closing the other thread, and guess what happens. CerbrusNL infracts Joe Modder for criticizing the mishandling of a case by a moderator and closes the thread, while said naive mod makes a childish "U mad" type of post.

I didn't really do much of anything, but I felt so much better after getting onto CerbrusNL for their shit. I was surprised to see how far he went to -censor- me before just banning me.

[Ben]

If I have to be honest, I'm confused as to why the rest of the staff has no problem with Cerbrus. He's made roughly the same amount of mistakes I did while a mod, but because none of them were stepping on the toes of other mods (well, there was an instance where he decided to call out Ratte for bewildering reasons, so once then), he's apparently fine. Apparently they wanted to permaban my forum account because I argued with Cerbrus about an infraction, stating that I don't show the staff respect, and therefore I should be permabanned. I'm not disrespectful to them in public on FA or FAF, and my arguments are not emotionally charged, and yet apparently it was -so bad- that they wanted to permaban me. If there's anything I learned while being on FA staff, is that select individuals absolutely -hate- it if you argue with them, and will never let it go. It's kind of ridiculous.