SATSIG server

After copying all the content to the new server we changed the DNS A record to the new server IP address and within 2 minutes noted traffic starting on the new server and reducing on the old one. The process is expected to completely transition in 24 - 48 hours as the DNS change gradually propagates to every DNS server on the internet. There has been no outage.

Static web pages and the forum seem to be working normally.

The time taken to deliver "20 recent" was not improved the first time, but from second call onwards has been about 2-3 seconds. There may be some caching that is helping now. It used to take 10 - 30 seconds.

Comments please.

Best regards, Eric.

I am glad works well, dns hosting also working well

Due to spamming, the forum Sendtopic facility has been removed.

This allowed people to tell others about a forum topic by filling in a form which caused an email to be sent from our server to the recipient telling them "I want you to check out the following topic ..

Apologies to anyone who has received such spurious emails.

The facility to print a page has also been deleted as of little value.

Best regards, Eric.

The network reconfiguration failed on the first attempt, so we backed out. Success was achieved 24hr later. There was a brief outage.

The problem with slow generation of the "most recent 20 messages" has been temporarily resolved using a static page generated once or twice daily and saved as static html. Please use the "updated daily" link in the top index for the time being. It loads in 1 sec, instead of frequently as long as 90 sec.

Best regards, Eric.

Hi Eric,

Me - definitely. Before that, sometimes I even gave up any hope loading the recent 20. Now it works fine. I'm glad this has been fixed.

A planned satsig server outage, for high voltage power supply repair/upgrade, is due to start about 22:45 GMT on Friday 1st October. The outage is expected to last up to 6 hours, until early morning of Sat 2nd October.
Explanation from our hosting site:

"We recently installed a fourth 500kva UPS into the data centre to add resilience and capacity to our power systems.
The data centre was designed with this in mind, so the appropriate connections exist on the Schneider UPS Output Panel (that feeds all servers from a common busbar) to connect this UPS.
During the installation of the UPS, engineers discovered there was a fault with the panel which meant the additional UPS could not be connected.
To repair this fault, we need to electrically isolate the panel, as engineers cannot work on the panel while it is live for safety reasons.
The manufacturer of the panel, Schneider, is sending a team of engineers to repair the panel so it can accept the fourth 500kva UPS."

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Best regards, Eric.

maint complete at 9am, all services tested ok

Please use proper english words and grammar and no SMS texting type language.

"4sales" should read "for sale".  Even if there are multiple items for sale, the verb sale is not written in plural with an "s".   The noun "sales" in plural, is appropriate in the context of, for example, "New Year Sales".

Please start sentences with a capital letter.  Put a space after a comma.

Thanks, it saves me a lot of time editing, which I have done in the past.

I am sympathetic to people for whom english is a second language but such people, when readers, will benefit by seeing correct english, spelling and grammar.  It makes it easier to understand.

Also, good contributions are less likely to be deleted as spam .... Contributions with bad  spelling or grammar are being deleted.


Please try to get these abbreviations right:
dB, dBm, Hz,  kHz,  MHz,  GHz,  iDirect,  Eb/No,  L band, C band, Ku band, Ka band, 1.8m, 2W.

Best regards, Eric.

Sorry for server outage today from approx 10am - 6pm GMT.

This was due to a dual UPS failure, call out of fire brigade etc, and resulting general power outage at the BlueSquare data centre.

A shame really as we had completed a total transition of the satsig server from one data centre to this new one above,  just a week ago, and Colin (my son) had managed the transition of both the web server and the firewall interface computer without any anomaly or outage at all.

Best regards, Eric.

Our VM hosting company had problems with disk memory earlier this morning and I am not sure that it is completely fixed.

If you are seeing occasional "slow downs" please describe. eric@satsig.net

Best regards, Eric.

At 9pm tonight there will be a brief outage (2 minutes expected) to reconfigure the time sync arrangements.

Best regards, Eric.

I recently added "Social networking" buttons to the satsig.net home page and to the forum pages. 

See the Facebook, Tweet, LinkedIn and Google+ buttons at the top.

Does anyone find this of any value ?

It seems it may slow down the page load times and I would be interested to hear any feedback.

Best regards, Eric

I've added "Notify of replies" option to the forum.

This means you may choose to be sent an email when a particular forum topic is updated. Please say if you find this of value.

Also any comment on the "social networking buttons" at the top would be welcome.

Best regards, Eric.

Over past three weeks or so, I've noticed intermittent times (a few a few times per hour, each lasting a minute or a few minutes) when satsig pages and satsig forum pages have been very slow to display.

We have made many small changes (perl code, apache config, cron jobs, firewall settings etc) to try and speed things up, but with no obvious effect.  It has been difficult to reproduce the 'slow page' anomaly as for most of the time page loads have seemed normal.

Yesterday morning I started using the Pingdom test facility and within an hour had detected two anomalies lasting 1 minute and 6 minutes.  The second detected 'slow anomaly' was yesterday lunchtime at 12:08, when for 6 minutes, the page load times increased from typically 0.5 sec to 5 - 6 seconds.  

Yesterday afternoon the connection of the firewall VM and the server VM were reconfigured on to the same physical machine.

Initial tests overnight show that there have been no seriously slow periods since 13:43 GMT Tuesday. I am carrying on with tests today to see if any more 'slow' event can be detected.

If anyone has any observations or comments please email me eric@satsig.net

The satsig website is on a VMHosts VM Cloud shared server system.

Some upgrade is planned on Friday 19th July 2013 between 18:00 - 20:00

Expected connectivity loss should be limited to around 30 - 45 seconds

Best regards, Eric.

I've turned on an option to allow you to receive an email when you are sent a personal message.
You may have to activate the receive notifications option in your profile / options. Not sure.
I have also turned on the cc and bcc options for personal messages.
The time limit for modifying your own post texts to rethink, clarify, remove / correct mistyping etc is now 10 days.
Best regards, Eric.

Over the past few weeks I have been modifying the YaBB Perl software and templates that drive this forum website to try and make the displayed pages more compatible with smaller screen devices, aiming for as small as 320 pixels wide - but not quite there yet!

I have also tried to get the Google AdSense adverts which appear in the top left and top right corners to automatically adjust in size in response to the screen or browser window width.

I've tested using a large screen with Chrome 39, Firefox, Internet Explorer 11.

I've tested with a Samsung Galaxy SIIImini mobile phone using Chrome 26 and the Samsung internet browser.

It is generally working OK and this is to advise that there will be more changes over the coming days.  My updates (about 20 per day) usually involve an outage of a few seconds, followed by some unusual display while I debug my errors!

Best regards, Eric. 

Our hosting company are physically moving our server.

Shutdown is scheduled for 22:00 BST Friday 18th Sept 2015.

Hoping for restoration by 02:00 Saturday morning (19/09/2015).

However the maintenance window does extend to 06:00.

Hope they drive carefully and don't get stuck in traffic on the M25 !

Best regards, Eric.

End of year nannying !!

All forum members are reminded to use:

A complex password of at least 8 characters that is not guessable or in a dictionary.

To use a different password from other services.

To update their password after using public or hotel WiFi connections.

Happy Christmas and Best regards, Eric.

The future of this satsig forum ?

The YaBB forum uses old perl software that is interpreted source text code and thus slow.

I'm thinking of archiving this satsig forum so that all the pages are turned into static html pages. This will mean that they load faster and still remain there to help people with advice.

To continue with interactive questions and answers I'm looking for alternatives.

Would facebook be a suitable alternative ?  I am inexperienced with facebook. What do you think ?

A different forum software is a possibility. Suggestions welcome.

Best regards, Eric.

Nimrod

Thank you for your kind remarks. It's most encouraging for me.

I have become aware for the last few years that YaBB forums written on perl code are gradually becoming legacy systems.

I have tried to keep this forum up to date, for example making it fit for use on small screen devices and simplifying it to speed things up. The YaBB Perl software does run slowly, particularly when greedy 'downloader' bots attempt to automatically read every forum page in sequence. Added to that are non-member bots trying to post spam. It just slows things down and fills the log with line after line of 404 errors.


Example of the effect to two 'downloader' bots.

To simplify things further, today I have removed the name of the person who did the last posting in the index of each forum area.

I haven't a clue as to how Facebook works and the idea of converting these forum pages to some modern forum software would be big mountain to climb and I'm not sure it would help much. The YaBB code actually works well and is reliable and since it has been around for years it has been thoroughly tested and any problems fixed. I'm also a bit biased since having started the satsig YaBB I have gradually learned a bit of how it works. All the source code is easily readable and editable.

If I do have to stop the forum I would aim to convert all the programatically generated pages (i.e all the forum pages) into static html text pages. It is a pretty massive undertaking as all the pages will need new url names and all the links will need fixing. At least things would then be simple and fast, but there would be no updating or user interaction.

Best regards, Eric

Any ideas for the future welcome.

Is YaBB perl slow, dated and old fashioned ?

Is the satsig.net forum any good on mobile device screen sizes ?

What if the forum is 'statified' and turned into a set of static html archive pages.

If a new forum is started, what software system is suggested ?

Replies here or by email to me eric@satsig.net

Best regards, Eric.