# Anyone having problems with FA?



## YukiShizuko (May 17, 2016)

I keep getting this picture and I've been looking around to see if the website is being fixed, but I haven't seen anything. I've refreshed a couple of times but it doesn't work.


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## AliothFox (May 17, 2016)

That page means exactly what it says.  The site is offline.  FA just posted on their official Twitter feed that they had to pull the site offline temporarily and would have more information on the downtime once they're able to.

Best thing to do in the meantime is just wait it out and browse other sites in the meantime.


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## SammyChasity (May 17, 2016)

I've been seeing the same thing, you're not alone


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## GamerFox (May 17, 2016)

They're being pretty vague about the reasons. Is there something they're trying to hide?


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## AliothFox (May 17, 2016)

GamerFox said:


> They're being pretty vague about the reasons. Is there something they're trying to hide?


I don't think so.  I think the site just hit a wall and they're trying to GET more information before they potentially say something wrong.


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## CryArt (May 17, 2016)

Probably Got Some Bugs Going on or Spammers.... who Knows.. Their Servers Could be acting up


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## Deleted member 82554 (May 17, 2016)

Yup, and I don't care.


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## UndyingSongArt (May 17, 2016)

In case anyone missed it: https://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/05-17-2016.1530505/


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## YukiShizuko (May 17, 2016)

UndyingSongArt said:


> In case anyone missed it: forums.furaffinity.net: 05/17/2016


thank you!


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## UndyingSongArt (May 17, 2016)

You're welcome.


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## GamerFox (May 17, 2016)

Yeah, that's the what. I want the why.


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## AliothFox (May 17, 2016)

Mr. Fox said:


> Yup, and I don't care.



You know, posts like this always amuse me.  Fake apathy is so try-hard that it comes across as funny in its sheer level of witlessness.  You came here and took the time to make sure everyone's aware of your supposed apathy - so you obviously care enough to do that (if only to get a reaction out of people, which I'm admittedly providing, against my better judgment), or you're so bored without FA being online that you literally have nothing better to do.  Either way, it's so dopey it's funny.


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## InvaderInsane (May 17, 2016)

Well.. I hope stuff gets fixed


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## Deleted member 82554 (May 17, 2016)

AliothFox said:


> You know, posts like this always amuse me.  Fake apathy is so try-hard that it comes across as funny in its sheer level of witlessness.  You came here and took the time to make sure everyone's aware of your supposed apathy - so you obviously care enough to do that (if only to get a reaction out of people, which I'm admittedly providing, against my better judgment), or you're so bored without FA being online that you literally have nothing better to do.  Either way, it's so dopey it's funny.


You see it's like this: opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one and everyone thinks everyone else's stinks. But at least my nose is clean.


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## GamerFox (May 17, 2016)

Apparently before the yank every user and submission was showing "not in database" errors? Does this mean everything is gone?


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## Elf-cat (May 17, 2016)

-pouts- How will I communicate with my other furry friends?


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## AliothFox (May 17, 2016)

Elf-cat said:


> -pouts- How will I communicate with my other furry friends?


A lot of them are probably on Twitter


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## Elf-cat (May 17, 2016)

GamerFox said:


> Apparently before the yank every user and submission was showing "not in database" errors? Does this mean everything is gone?


Yes, everything is gone because someone pulled out the hard drives of all of the server cases. >:3
But everything will be restored because people always back up their data.


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## Elf-cat (May 17, 2016)

I don't have it rough, I have it meow! :3


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## Volvom (May 17, 2016)

CryArt said:


> Probably Got Some Bugs Going on or Spammers.... who Knows.. Their Servers Could be acting up


I think a lot the same thing. Also it can be something new what is coming up and that's why they needed to put it down.
This happens a lot nowadays, but usually with just anonymous error message >A>
Oh well, hope site will be online soon. I have a lot of commissions to work out and send them to customers :/
This makes me nervous.


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## GamerFox (May 17, 2016)

It's been an hour and no status update... Neer hasn't even stated if our data is OK or not.


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## Raynehatori (May 17, 2016)

I am noticing one thing, that is that it has been about  year since that one huge DDOS attack we had...so I am wondering if it is sheer coincidence. 

Hopefully the data is ok though as I don't have my gallery backed up...


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## Volvom (May 17, 2016)

Mmmm-m, maybe there is really something major going on 
I hope that they can tell us something soon!


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## Elf-cat (May 17, 2016)

Volvom said:


> I think a lot the same thing. Also it can be something new what is coming up and that's why they needed to put it down.
> This happens a lot nowadays, but usually with just anonymous error message >A>
> Oh well, hope site will be online soon. I have a lot of commissions to work out and send them to customers :/
> This makes me nervous.


I have no commissions to do, I'M FREE! YAY! FREE AT LAST!!!... oh sorry for the yelling, I'm  just finding it a blessing in disguise. I make backgrounds both digitally painted and CGI and techno / trance music. I sometimes get overwhelming amounts of commissions, but today I'm going to celebrate with a big tub of ice cream and eat it all to myself.


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## DarkXander (May 17, 2016)

GamerFox said:


> Apparently before the yank every user and submission was showing "not in database" errors? Does this mean everything is gone?



This sounds like SQL Injection to me, im a Certified Penetration Tester.

Sounds like either a DROP DATABASE xyz, or DELETE FROM xyz got loose in the database engine from some insecure php code, just a guess based on what was seen just before the site was taken down.


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## Volvom (May 17, 2016)

Elf-cat said:


> I have no commissions to do, I'M FREE! YAY! FREE AT LAST!!!... oh sorry for the yelling, I'm  just finding it a blessing in disguise. I make backgrounds both digitally painted and CGI and techno / trance music. I sometimes get overwhelming amounts of commissions, but today I'm going to celebrate with a big tub of ice cream and eat it all to myself.


Well, I need always money so I work like maniac b drawing SFW and NSFW YCH commissions 
Not to mention that I just don't have any inspiration to draw my own characters lately and I don't have piercing/tattoo customers either right now -__-




DarkXander said:


> This sounds like SQL Injection to me, im a Certified Penetration Tester.
> 
> Sounds like either a DROP DATABASE xyz, or DELETE FROM xyz got loose in the database engine from some insecure php code, just a guess based on what was seen just before the site was taken down.


That is possible, or then server problems maybe? 
Ghhh, too much things what can be wrong!


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## Raynehatori (May 17, 2016)

DarkXander said:


> This sounds like SQL Injection to me, im a Certified Penetration Tester.
> 
> Sounds like either a DROP DATABASE xyz, or DELETE FROM xyz got loose in the database engine from some insecure php code, just a guess based on what was seen just before the site was taken down.



Bah hopefully not, I had 2 commissions I was waiting on...they are keeping us in the dark so far though :/


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## DarkXander (May 17, 2016)

Raynehatori said:


> Bah hopefully not, I had 2 commissions I was waiting on...they are keeping us in the dark so far though :/



Thats what kinda convinces me it was possibly an attack, if this was just a provider outage, or a equipment failure, i think Neer would be all over blaming X piece of equipment or Y internet company for them being down, this silence makes me think they are spinning going WTF!!!  or WHAT DO WE DO????


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## Elf-cat (May 17, 2016)

Meow, I better make some food. Does anyone here eat perogies?


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## Raynehatori (May 17, 2016)

DarkXander said:


> Thats what kinda convinces me it was possibly an attack, if this was just a provider outage, or a equipment failure, i think Neer would be all over blaming X piece of equipment or Y internet company for them being down, this silence makes me think they are spinning going WTF!!!  or WHAT DO WE DO????


Exactly and on the 19th last year we also had a huge attack, it was not pretty at all. Took 3 day If I recall to get the site back.


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## Elf-cat (May 17, 2016)

At least it didn't happen on Friday the 13th, that would've been spooky!


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## DarkXander (May 17, 2016)

Raynehatori said:


> Exactly and on the 19th last year we also had a huge attack, it was not pretty at all. Took 3 day If I recall to get the site back.



I remember because my Furry Site referenced in my signature was also attacked durring that incident, as well as sofurry and a few others, tho, my site has far better defenses in place, and did at the time, so we slowed down a bit, but never actually went offline or had any major issues.


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## GamerFox (May 17, 2016)

Where on earth is Neer?


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## DarkXander (May 17, 2016)

GamerFox said:


> Where on earth is Neer?



I have Neer on skype because ive helped him in the past, but hes not answering at all, shows online tho.


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## Raynehatori (May 17, 2016)

I found something itresting there was a site that asked what someone would do if they found an exploit and exactly 1 hour ago a user replied with this 

"
f it were serious enough, I'd use it to have the site lose a good percentage of submissions on their servers and backups.

Because fuck FA. Fandom would be a (slightly) better place without it.

Unfortunately, I'm not a programmer, so FA lives on..."

Suspicious no?


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## Volvom (May 17, 2016)

Raynehatori said:


> I found something itresting there was a site that asked what someone would do if they found an exploit and exactly 1 hour ago a user replied with this
> 
> "
> f it were serious enough, I'd use it to have the site lose a good percentage of submissions on their servers and backups.
> ...


That sounds VEERY suspicious to me.
I dunno why fandom can make people mad that way. I mean, it can be possible that someone really did this on that purpose if it happened.
I don't like DA too much anymore, but I don't see nay point to attack >A>


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## BayouBaby (May 17, 2016)

DarkXander said:


> This sounds like SQL Injection to me, im a Certified Penetration Tester.
> 
> Sounds like either a DROP DATABASE xyz, or DELETE FROM xyz got loose in the database engine from some insecure php code, just a guess based on what was seen just before the site was taken down.


You can't penetrate me with that Security+ talk. 

//ITjokes


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## ArielMT (May 17, 2016)

Raynehatori said:


> I found something itresting there was a site that asked what someone would do if they found an exploit and exactly 1 hour ago a user replied with this
> 
> "
> f it were serious enough, I'd use it to have the site lose a good percentage of submissions on their servers and backups.
> ...


It could be just coincidence.  If the cause turns out to be hardware failure, there's no way that could be achieved through any over-the-Internet software means.  No one's said or claimed anything yet.


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## GamerFox (May 17, 2016)

I'm kinda getting really scared here. Is the data safe or not?


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## Zipline (May 17, 2016)

I miss FA... I hope they come back on soon. :c


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## BayouBaby (May 17, 2016)

GamerFox said:


> I'm kinda getting really scared here. Is the data safe or not?


No data anywhere is ever safe. I doubt any data was lost. Don't panic too much, servers are fickle creatures.


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## DarkXander (May 17, 2016)

Most people who make threats like that have no knowledge towards actually doing it, i run into those types all the time, there was a user known as Carl Cain on my site who kept telling my users he had backdoor access to my site via Private Messages, i know this because people reported the PMs to me and i was able to view them then and when confronted, i offered him a cash reward of $100 to prove he could actually do anything to my site, as we have a bug bounty program, he hummed hawwed, and then made up a story that he was a room mod, and a site builder, and he knew how to do this shit, but wasnt going to do it because reasons...  I asked him, so then you must know my sites secret IP, which is it, 172.16.0.5 or 127.0.1.1?    His answer was the latter, thus proving he has no clue even how basic networking operates.


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## AliothFox (May 17, 2016)

Just got word from Dragoneer.  He didn't give me any details, but he assures me that all of the site's data is intact and safe.


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## GamerFox (May 17, 2016)

If you look at this tweet, apparently there was no data loss?


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## DarkXander (May 17, 2016)

AliothFox said:


> Just got word from Dragoneer.  He didn't give me any details, but he assures me that all of the site's data is intact and safe.



Safe and intact, in the backups....


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## AliothFox (May 17, 2016)

DarkXander said:


> Safe and intact, in the backups....



Thaaaaat's why backups exist :3


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## Dragoneer (May 17, 2016)

AliothFox said:


> Just got word from Dragoneer.  He didn't give me any details, but he assures me that all of the site's data is intact and safe.


The majority is, yes. The backup we have is 6 days old. We're still going through and trying to determine the extent of the issue, and once we have more information, we'll post it publicly and give a full, transparent run down of what happened.


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## AliothFox (May 17, 2016)

Dragoneer said:


> The majority is, yes. The backup we have is 6 days old. We're still going through and trying to determine the extent of the issue, and once we have more information, we'll post it publicly and give a full, transparent run down of what happened.



Thanks Neer.  I know you're busy trying to get things fixed.  This has just been my routine pestering to shed a bit of light


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## GamerFox (May 17, 2016)

so wait, everything newer than 6 days old is gone?


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## Dragoneer (May 17, 2016)

We're still investigating and looking into the issue, and once we have more information we'll share it with the community.


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## AliothFox (May 17, 2016)

GamerFox said:


> so wait, everything newer than 6 days old is gone?



It's like I said from the beginning: they don't want to give information they're not sure about.  What they KNOW is that everything older than 6 days is safe.  What they DON'T know is how much - if anything - newer than that was lost, so they're not ready to commit to an answer on that question yet.  It'll all get sorted out, like it always does


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## obsceneoblivion (May 17, 2016)

Dragoneer said:


> We're still investigating and looking into the issue, and once we have more information we'll share it with the community.


thanks neer


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## homie (May 17, 2016)

Elf-cat said:


> Meow, I better make some food. Does anyone here eat perogies?



Please stop. This is a rather serious thread.


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## Raynehatori (May 17, 2016)

Dragoneer said:


> We're still investigating and looking into the issue, and once we have more information we'll share it with the community.


Take your time with that, hopefully it wasnt' anything serious


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## SodaBubbles (May 17, 2016)

Thanks for the update we have!


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## GamerFox (May 17, 2016)

That's not very comforting. If there's the remotest chance of data loss, don't you think you should tell them ASAP?


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## homie (May 17, 2016)

GamerFox said:


> That's not very comforting. If there's the remotest chance of data loss, don't you think you should tell them ASAP?



Not if they're caught up in fixing the issue at hand. 

Keep in mind nearly everyone here will potentially overreact if they announce data may have been lost if it really hasn't.


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## Raynehatori (May 17, 2016)

GamerFox said:


> That's not very comforting. If there's the remotest chance of data loss, don't you think you should tell them ASAP?


They are still looking into things, I am positive once they have the whole picture they will tell us.


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## shadow42 (May 17, 2016)

n


GamerFox said:


> That's not very comforting. If there's the remotest chance of data loss, don't you think you should tell them ASAP?



no because that would start a panic that they would have to deal with on top of the site being down. and if it is recoverable and they tell people it gone then that is bad too. in the long run, it sucks to be in the dark but it happens


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## AliothFox (May 17, 2016)

GamerFox said:


> That's not very comforting. If there's the remotest chance of data loss, don't you think you should tell them ASAP?



Not really.  Because if there is a "remote chance" of data loss, then there's nothing end users can do about it except worry more, and if it's only a chance, that means there's also a chance that the data is completely safe and/or recoverable.  So it's better to wait until more information is known, and dispel any rumors in the meantime.  The reason I was trying to get an answer from Neer on that is because Flayrah News and other outlets were already making massive speculations, and people were freaking out about it.  That's usually the best time for a "here's what we do know."  Neer said what he knows, and beyond that, he doesn't want to feed speculation.  I don't like it either, but knowledge really isn't power at this point, because there's nothing anyone on this side of things can do about it anyway.


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## GamerFox (May 17, 2016)

You're just trading off "oh no, my stuff might be lost" for a whole bunch of "hey, my stuff is gone, you asswipe" later.


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## Calax (May 17, 2016)

What are you all so scared about? It's not like you uploaded every picture, every document etc to Furaffinity and have no local backup xD

If any data of a said timespan of 6 days is lost, it's most probably just a few notes and a few pictures, which you can definetly easily re-upload without much trouble

I don't really see the big deal here


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## TheKC (May 17, 2016)

I have arts to post. o n o,

*rolls around waiting for site to come back up*


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## Warwick (May 17, 2016)

So I thought I'd try another art site, and it offers an option to import from FA. Obviously, just when that seems like a good idea... you can't. Haha.

At least I could upload the doodle I'd intended to upload to FA to cloud it somewhere.


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## Pingu2002 (May 17, 2016)

YukiShizuko said:


> I keep getting this picture and I've been looking around to see if the website is being fixed, but I haven't seen anything. I've refreshed a couple of times but it doesn't work.View attachment 11366




__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/732624868391419904
This is what I think it happening...


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## Yeneeko (May 17, 2016)

Calax said:


> What are you all so scared about? It's not like you uploaded every picture, every document etc to Furaffinity and have no local backup xD
> 
> If any data of a said timespan of 6 days is lost, it's most probably just a few notes and a few pictures, which you can definetly easily re-upload without much trouble
> 
> I don't really see the big deal here


Because this type of stuff doesn't affect one or two people and it doesn't mean one or two notes or picturesor a journal. This affects money and personal information. People work off of this site. It's a lot more important than your trivialization of this situation.

That being said, it's probably not that serious, and if it is - neer will let us know once things are figured out in more detail.


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## Yeneeko (May 17, 2016)

Pingu2002 said:


> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/732624868391419904
> This is what I think it happening...



Unless neer confirms it in an official post, it's not what's happening and is only speculation.


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## Pingu2002 (May 17, 2016)

Yeneeko said:


> Unless neer confirms it in an official post, it's not what's happening and is only speculation.



I know it's speculation, but its our only info. A guy said he found a exploit, and no admins said they did anything to fix it. We don't even know if the guy reported it or not. And yes, while he could be bluffing, the old saying goes "When there's smoke, there's fire."


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## Yeneeko (May 17, 2016)

Pingu2002 said:


> I know it's speculation, but its our only info. A guy said he found a exploit, and no admins said they did anything to fix it. We don't even know if the guy reported it or not. And yes, while he could be bluffing, the old saying goes "When there's smoke, there's fire."


Well there's obviously an issue, it's getting quantifiable information first. I just think making people worry more is probably not a good idea.


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## rjbartrop (May 17, 2016)

Don't forget that Dragoneer's dream job is dependent on keeping this place running,  so however bad you think it is for you, it'll be far worse for him.


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## maxgoof (May 17, 2016)

I do find the wording a bit of a concern, however.

"We will provide more information on the downtime once we are able to do so."

Well, clearly they are able to do so, now, but are waiting until they have an answer or a fix or something before telling us what it is. Why they feel it necessary to wait is beyond me.

The statement says it is temporary. That says it is fixable. If it is fixable, that says they know the likely reason why the problem occurred. It would be nice to know at least that.


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## wolfbeast (May 17, 2016)

Even if full transparency can't yet be given at this point in time, it would be nice to know _something_. Was it a technical failure, was it an attack, or was it something else?
I understand the need for keeping details under wraps if there's an investigation ongoing for an attack, but letting us know what type of temporary issue we're dealing with here might help us understand better why there's extended downtime, and be more understanding as to the time needed to fix it (and potential need for repairs by artists).


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## Bruce (May 17, 2016)

Neer is most likely diagnosing this all remotely from a backdoor Admin-only terminal connection to the server farm - that makes it a bit more difficult because you can't just page through the terminal and see what's going on.  And if you reset the wrong thing you can make it much worse real fast.  Got to be slow and methodical.

It would be lovely to get a detailed status report - but he has to figure out the status first, and by that time he's 2/3 of the way to the solution anyway - so you get that started, then you update the status...  And you don't want to panic the Chicken Littles.  "My Data is gone!!" 

6 day old full backup means be careful not to reset the storage with all the changes since the last backup.  Incremental backups are often a pain to work with.

If the storage server is viable but the index got corrupted, or one drive in a RAID Array dies, you have to give it time without any traffic to reindex the data or rebuild the array with a hot spare.  Because if you lose a second HDD while the first is still rebuilding onto the hot spare...  It can get real bad.   And if there aren't any hot spares in the server someone has to go to the hosting site or put in a request for the staff to do it.


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## ZX6R (May 17, 2016)

Bruce said:


> Neer is most likely diagnosing this all remotely from a backdoor Admin-only terminal connection to the server farm



Possibly something like Intel's remote management module.


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## Sultz Z. Wolf (May 17, 2016)

Will you please put FA back on now, because it's been over four hours since it went offline and I have waited long enough.


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## PheagleAdler (May 17, 2016)

Calax said:


> What are you all so scared about? It's not like you uploaded every picture, every document etc to Furaffinity and have no local backup xD
> 
> If any data of a said timespan of 6 days is lost, it's most probably just a few notes and a few pictures, which you can definetly easily re-upload without much trouble
> 
> I don't really see the big deal here



If all of my submissions from a few days ago are gone, then you use your own time to reupload them to my account, wise guy. I take this seriously because I use free time to upload, and I work a lot so I don't have a lot of free time.


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## ZX6R (May 17, 2016)

Sultz Z. Wolf said:


> Will you please put FA back on now, because it's been over four hours since it went offline and I have waited long enough.


It's not wise to bring FA online until the extent of any damage is known.


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## kriwu (May 17, 2016)

PheagleAdler said:


> If all of my submissions from a few days ago are gone, then you use your own time to reupload them to my account, wise guy. I take this seriously because I use free time to upload, and I work a lot so I don't have a lot of free time.


cant say im happy with fa being down either, but i gotta say:

if your time is so valuable that you absolutely can't deal with having to reupload some submissions, maybe you should set up your own site to use as your portfolio.


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## GamerFox (May 17, 2016)

If it was storage failure, wouldn't FA tweet that almost immediately rather than "something failed"?


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## Timmy Fox (May 17, 2016)

6 days? .. the backups of whatever went down are only done on a weekly basis then? That sounds like not enough redundancy to ensure minimal loss even in the most catastrophic levels of hardware failure :v


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## Biowolf45 (May 17, 2016)

Hey is the site back up yet?  (I wanted to talk to my daddy  )


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## Laini (May 17, 2016)

Timmy Fox said:


> 6 days? .. the backups of whatever went down are only done on a weekly basis then? That sounds like not enough redundancy to ensure minimal loss even in the most catastrophic levels of hardware failure :v



I asked someone about that and the reply they gave me was that would be fairly standard practice for a site with FA's users. If you backup too regularly you just incur lag and/or downtime.


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## shadow42 (May 17, 2016)

ok this is why so little is said and none at all should have. look at all the panicking people here. nothing can be done about it by complaining here. it well be done when it done. we need to chill out and let them do there job to fix the problom.


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## GamerFox (May 17, 2016)

Can we get a yes/no on whether the site was actually attacked?


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## Biowolf45 (May 17, 2016)

How ok thanks.   Me and him haven't talked in awhile so I'm depressed I can't talk to him


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## PheagleAdler (May 17, 2016)

Laini said:


> I asked someone about that and the reply they gave me was that would be fairly standard practice for a site with FA's users. If you backup too regularly you just incur lag and/or downtime.



Even with the amount of submissions this site goes through on a daily basis?


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## Draconas (May 17, 2016)

Sultz Z. Wolf said:


> Will you please put FA back on now, because it's been over four hours since it went offline and I have waited long enough.


You act like it's down just for shits and giggles.
If it's down for a reason, it's down for a reason.


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## Timmy Fox (May 17, 2016)

Laini said:


> I asked someone about that and the reply they gave me was that would be fairly standard practice for a site with FA's users. If you backup too regularly you just incur lag and/or downtime.


6 days still feel like way too long for the amount of data that goes through per day. I'd say at least daily backups should be more appropriate, with everything scheduled and optimized for minimal lag.

In the simplest manner you could just have everything that goes onto the main storage server be automatically duplicated onto a mirror which is then backed up to the backup server which is again backed up to an off-site backup.

The only performance hit you would see is the tiny overhead of mirroring the data that goes onto the main server as all the other servers included will be dedicated for backing up and thus won't cause any lag on the primary server.


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## wolfbeast (May 17, 2016)

shadow42 said:


> ok this is why so little is said and none at all should have. look at all the panicking people here. nothing can be done about it by complaining here. it well be done when it done.



I don't know about you, but I don't see many people panicking here. I'm not, at any rate, but I do like to know at least something? Anything?

If people are kept _completely_ in the dark and nothing is said for too long, that is when people will get pissy and/or panic. If downtime exceeds more than a few hours for a busy community site, you need to let your community know _something_ - I should know, I've adminned plenty. It can be a simple one-liner just providing very basic information; not just "We'll fill you in later" though. *Details aren't needed*; just a *basic* grasp to prevent people making wild assumptions and the panic resulting from that in itself.

For all you people unhanded by FA being down and being cut off from loved ones: I would suggest when the site comes back up to exchange secondary contacting information (IM, e-mail, skype, etc.) so you can stay in touch when FA is unavailable


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## shadow42 (May 17, 2016)

PheagleAdler said:


> Even with the amount of submissions this site goes through on a daily basis?



that's just the thing. there are submissions ever 15 sec on avrig that 1000s a day the were on the equipment to back that up daily would be afull and there would be a lag point on each day the backup was done. and i bet they keep a few week of back up so the hard drive space woudl be a nightmare


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## Draconas (May 17, 2016)

It should be common sense: don't put all of your eggs in one basket.


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## maxgoof (May 17, 2016)

Bruce said:


> Neer is most likely diagnosing this all remotely from a backdoor Admin-only terminal connection to the server farm - that makes it a bit more difficult because you can't just page through the terminal and see what's going on.  And if you reset the wrong thing you can make it much worse real fast.  Got to be slow and methodical.


All well and good. That does not explain why they can't take a moment to let us know the probable cause. They can change the diagnosis later if it turns out to be incorrect.



> It would be lovely to get a detailed status report - but he has to figure out the status first, and by that time he's 2/3 of the way to the solution anyway - so you get that started, then you update the status...  And you don't want to panic the Chicken Littles.  "My Data is gone!!"


We've pretty much been assured that our data is NOT gone. We've also been assured that this is temporary. If they don't know what caused the problem, fine, let us know that they don't know and are looking into it, rather than hint that they do but aren't telling us.



> If the storage server is viable but the index got corrupted, or one drive in a RAID Array dies, you have to give it time without any traffic to reindex the data or rebuild the array with a hot spare.  Because if you lose a second HDD while the first is still rebuilding onto the hot spare...  It can get real bad.   And if there aren't any hot spares in the server someone has to go to the hosting site or put in a request for the staff to do it.


 Yes, yes, yes, we all know that data can get corrupted very bad. The wording given in the explanation is all that I am concerned about. It sounds like they have a good idea what the problem is and how long it may take to fix. Let us know that. If the diagnosis changes, or the time to fix changes, let us know that.

FA has gotten better in recent times in communicating when problems occur and in estimating down times. I'd like to see them keep that higher standard going.


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## Syfaro (May 17, 2016)

shadow42 said:


> that's just the thing. there are submissions ever 15 sec on avrig that 1000s a day the were on the equipment to back that up daily would be afull and there would be a lag point on each day the backup was done. and i bet they keep a few week of back up so the hard drive space woudl be a nightmare



Uh, what? 

How do you think Google or Amazon keeps backups? They have more data than FA by many orders of magnitude. Assuming you aren't already pushing the limits of your hardware that much, you shouldn't have an issue backing up your data. 

Also, incremental backups are a thing. You only have to store new data instead of all of it again.


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## GamerFox (May 17, 2016)

Just a tweet of "We still don't really know what's going on, we're still checking" would be nice.


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## maxgoof (May 17, 2016)

Draconas said:


> It should be common sense: don't put all of your eggs in one basket.


Your avatar reminds me of Gideon Grey.


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## shadow42 (May 17, 2016)

Syfaro said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> How do you think Google or Amazon keeps backups? They have more data than FA by many orders of magnitude. Assuming you aren't already pushing the limits of your hardware that much, you shouldn't have an issue backing up your data.
> 
> Also, incremental backups are a thing. You only have to store new data instead of all of it again.




yes but google and amazon have way more resources and servers where i bet fa does not have quite as much


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## maxgoof (May 17, 2016)

Syfaro said:


> Uh, what?
> 
> How do you think Google or Amazon keeps backups? They have more data than FA by many orders of magnitude. Assuming you aren't already pushing the limits of your hardware that much, you shouldn't have an issue backing up your data.
> 
> Also, incremental backups are a thing. You only have to store new data instead of all of it again.


Eh, not exactly fair to compare Google or Amazon to FA and IMVU. Yes, Google and Amazon have much bigger databases, but they also have much more staff, hardware, budget, etc.


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## shadow42 (May 17, 2016)

i also fear that we will crash fa again as we surge to get back on and start posting


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## Syfaro (May 17, 2016)

shadow42 said:


> yes but google and amazon have way more resources and servers where i bet fa does not have quite as much





maxgoof said:


> Eh, not exactly fair to compare Google or Amazon to FA and IMVU. Yes, Google and Amazon have much bigger databases, but they also have much more staff, hardware, budget, etc.



Well, obviously. But it's not that hard to do sane backups even hourly, especially considering how small FA is relative. 

Assuming you're not always doing full backups, smaller incremental ones would generate even less of a server load, as it only needs to do a small amount of data each time.


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## maxgoof (May 17, 2016)

Syfaro said:


> Well, obviously. But it's not that hard to do sane backups even hourly, especially considering how small FA is relative.
> 
> Assuming you're not always doing full backups, smaller incremental ones would generate even less of a server load, as it only needs to do a small amount of data each time.


Actually, I think they do incremental backups, but again, I don't have enough experience to know how much hardware would be involved in that, or time, or expense, so, I won't make any assumptions regarding it. But whatever, we just want an update.


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## Laini (May 17, 2016)

I know FA goes down a lot but doing hourly backups seems excessive. I can't recall the last time FA had any data loss. You could probably theoretically do it, but why put your servers under that kind of load unecessarily?


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## -Censored- (May 17, 2016)

Man, I am really only seeing entitled reasons as to why people believe they should put the site back up right now. I'd rather wait for them make sure everything is working perfectly than them rush it to make you happy and it crash again. :/


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## frostbight (May 17, 2016)

More information about the downtime has been released.

Check it out here:

forums.furaffinity.net: 5/17 Site Attack


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## Modestyshorts (May 17, 2016)

That's a shame :<

Hope the restoration and everything goes smoothly. Cleaning up after stuff like this is a pain!


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## GamerFox (May 17, 2016)

We're fucked. It's _The Sum of All Fears_ all over again...


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## Timmy Fox (May 17, 2016)

Laini said:


> I know FA goes down a lot but doing hourly backups seems excessive. I can't recall the last time FA had any data loss. You could probably theoretically do it, but why put your servers under that kind of load unecessarily?


Because of reasons like what just happened. At least do it more often than, you know, weekly. It might not be a very likely scenario that it will happen too often, if at all, but better be on the safe side in the event that it does happen, y'know?

Losing a full up to 6 days worth of data is a MASSIVE loss in the grand scheme of things.. Just consider how many submissions is made in just a day, or even just a couple of hours.

Of course you shouldn't put all the servers under unnecessary load due to backups simultaneously but if you just set it up properly the lag should be quite minimal since you're just copying a couple of files, probably also from a mirror instead of the actual working server which means you're putting the load on a behind-the-scenes server and not the primary server.


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## Khaiyote (May 17, 2016)

I would think that it goes without saying that Neer and the other wonderful people involved with keeping this site running are doing everything they can to get the site back up. Thank you to those individuals! I had a bad day at work today, and when I got home I just wanted to browse FA to try and make my day better, and it was down. I was pretty upset at first, like some people. Quite frankly it doesn't matter why it is down, or how they are trying to fix it, how long they think it will be, or even how long it actually takes. It will be up when it is up, period. If info is lost, then so be it. Repost things if they are missing when the site is up again. If you didn't save the original files yourself, or relied upon FA to store your business information, shame on you. And this should be a valuable lesson for you. With all of the concern I see in the posts here, you would think that everyone owns stock in FA or something. I will patiently wait for the site to come back up, and again thank everybody involved with the sites operations for doing their best to get things going again, keeping things going in the future, and doing this all at no charge to the public.


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## shadow42 (May 17, 2016)

Khaiyote said:


> I would think that it goes without saying that Neer and the other wonderful people involved with keeping this site running are doing everything they can to get the site back up. Thank you to those individuals! I had a bad day at work today, and when I got home I just wanted to browse FA to try and make my day better, and it was down. I was pretty upset at first, like some people. Quite frankly it doesn't matter why it is down, or how they are trying to fix it, how long they think it will be, or even how long it actually takes. It will be up when it is up, period. If info is lost, then so be it. Repost things if they are missing when the site is up again. If you didn't save the original files yourself, or relied upon FA to store your business information, shame on you. And this should be a valuable lesson for you. With all of the concern I see in the posts here, you would think that everyone owns stock in FA or something. I will patiently wait for the site to come back up, and again thank everybody involved with the sites operations for doing their best to get things going again, keeping things going in the future, and doing this all at no charge to the public.



i agree with khai.


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## SSJ3Mewtwo (May 17, 2016)

I am going to close this thread, because an official announcement and clarification has been made here:  forums.furaffinity.net: 5/17 Site Attack

Included in that announcement is a request by Dragoneer that if you have any information to forward about the USB drives or any individuals you suspect of being involved to his private twitter account (@Dragoneer) or via email (dragoneer@furaffinity.net).

Please do so only via those private channels, not by posting anything directly on the forums.  We absolutely do not want names of individuals being passed around publicly, and getting innocent members harassed as a result.  That would be against main site policy, and against current forum policy.  And we would not condone publicly posting accusatory or incriminating information elsewhere.  We wish to see this problem resolved, not result in witch-hunts.


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