# Better Time Estimation needed?



## maxgoof (Feb 13, 2012)

Yes, I fully expect this thread to get closed within two hour of posting, but it needs to be said...AGAIN!

The original estimate said the site was going down Saturday-Sunday for approximately six hours for maintenance.

I, for one, did not believe it. Why? Because scheduled maintenance on FA has never, ever taken place on time or within the time estimate. Ever.

And lo and behold, the site did not go down on Saturday, it went down on Sunday, around 5AM Pacific Time.

Twenty four hours later, four times the original estimated time, the site is still down. Anything unexpected? Nope. Just poor estimates.

Again.

Doesn't anyone look at the logs of the last time they had to archive the data file and then reload them to know that it's going to take longer than six hours? It always does.


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## LuckyLiolf (Feb 13, 2012)

I agree!

Plus, doesn't it go down a lot? I mean like, it's gone down... 2/3 times since i joined FA :L Which hasn't been ages at all...

What makes FA different from any other site?


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## coyoteOdin (Feb 13, 2012)

As soon as  the last site again start working site?


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## Summercat (Feb 13, 2012)

Actually, the six hours thing was a slight misunderstanding on my part. So, my apologies for that.


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## coyoteOdin (Feb 13, 2012)

The site  is not working day!
 * Angry *

 When finally the site will work again? And  then I start to get angry from waiting ...
:evil::evil::evil:


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## LuckyLiolf (Feb 13, 2012)

Summercat said:


> Actually, the six hours thing was a slight misunderstanding on my part. So, my apologies for that.



Blame the wine!


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## coyoteOdin (Feb 13, 2012)

And  I, by the way yesterday in the  evening waiting  for Gift ...
 And then  the site is not working day, and I am now waiting for a whole day to finally see this Gift


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## Foxhound3857 (Feb 13, 2012)

What's funny is that the admins put up that "FA IS DOWN, GO OUTSIDE FOR A CHANGE" .gif up, probably because so many people were refreshing, hoping that FA was working again. Can't really blame them, considering that a 4-hour or so maintenance turned into a 24-hour crawl, with no end in sight.

P.S: I'm not complaining. I was a mod on F2F a long time ago, so I know all too well that shit happens unexpectedly and things don't go as planned. But I also know how the community at large tends to respond to it, especially given what kind of community it is.


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## Devious Bane (Feb 13, 2012)

6 hours was indeed a poor estimation.
It could take anywhere from 12-72hours if not longer to do what they're doing.


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## Ainoko (Feb 13, 2012)

Foxhound3857 said:


> What's funny is that the admins put up that "FA IS DOWN, GO OUTSIDE FOR A CHANGE" .gif up, probably because so many people were refreshing, hoping that FA was working again. Can't really blame them, considering that a 4-hour or so maintenance turned into a 24-hour crawl, with no end in sight.
> 
> P.S: I'm not complaining. I was a mod on F2F a long time ago, so I know all too well that shit happens unexpectedly and things don't go as planned. But I also know how the community at large tends to respond to it, especially given what kind of community it is.



YAY! A fellow F2Fer!!!


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## coyoteOdin (Feb 13, 2012)

the  announcement said  about six  hours, and the  site does not  work more than a  day!

 * very, very, very angry *
:evil::evil::evil::evil::evil::evil::evil:


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## Devious Bane (Feb 13, 2012)

Forums are more entertaining this way.


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## Blux (Feb 13, 2012)

Lock this thread. People complaining about a FREE site being down. Pathetic.

In fact ban everyone who isn't on the donate list and comes in here to run their mouth about it.


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## ArielMT (Feb 13, 2012)

Blux said:


> Lock this thread. People complaining about a FREE site being down. Pathetic.
> 
> In fact ban everyone who isn't on the donate list and comes in here to run their mouth about it.



That seems to me to be as useless a response as the initial complaints themselves.


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## Devious Bane (Feb 13, 2012)

Thread is overdue a lock, yes.

What's done is done now get over it.


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## Blux (Feb 13, 2012)

I do what i can.


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## Foxhound3857 (Feb 13, 2012)

Blux, I agree with the lock, but the rest of your post just makes you look like an ass.


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## Devious Bane (Feb 13, 2012)

Who doesn't like being an asshole every now and then?


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## coyoteOdin (Feb 13, 2012)

When finally the site will start working again????!!

*angry*


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## Devious Bane (Feb 13, 2012)

In 7 years.


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## coyoteOdin (Feb 13, 2012)

Hooray!  The site finally started to work again!!!!!!!!!!!


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## Foxhound3857 (Feb 13, 2012)

Devious Bane said:


> Who doesn't like being an asshole every now and then?



When it's in good fun, sure. When it's meant to insult and belittle others without a legitimate reason to do so, not so much.


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## Devious Bane (Feb 13, 2012)

Now we watch the site crash as everyone floods into it.

Edit: Foxhound, you have to drawn the line between the differences of being an ass and being whiny.


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## Foxhound3857 (Feb 13, 2012)

Devious Bane said:


> Now we watch the site crash as everyone floods into it.
> 
> Edit: Foxhound, you have to drawn the line between the differences of being an ass and being whiny.



I think you missed the point. But meh, we just see things differently. It is amusing, I will say that. 

Doesn't really bother me though, to be honest. Being an admin isn't as easy as everyone thinks.


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## LuckyLiolf (Feb 13, 2012)

Foxhound3857 said:


> I think you missed the point. But meh, we just see things differently. It is amusing, I will say that.
> 
> Doesn't really bother me though, to be honest. Being an admin isn't as easy as everyone thinks.



I think it's more being an admin of a furry forum isn't as easy


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## coyoteOdin (Feb 13, 2012)

However, I  can not understand  - what a positive effect given the modernization of this? The  site runs  even slower than before :-(


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## ArielMT (Feb 13, 2012)

I don't understand why anyone thinks getting angry would make restoration happen faster.  In fact, every time I've seen anger influence an outage, planned or otherwise, it's been to disastrous ends, making things take even longer than before.

Zen.  Learn some.


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## Devious Bane (Feb 13, 2012)

> However, I  can not understand  - what a positive effect given the  modernization of this? The  site runs  even slower than before


Because people are flooding it all at once.



Foxhound3857 said:


> Doesn't really bother me though, to be  honest. Being an admin isn't as easy as everyone thinks.


Ugh, tell me about it. It's a complete pain in the ass.


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## Blux (Feb 13, 2012)

Foxhound3857 said:


> When it's in good fun, sure. When it's meant to insult and belittle others without a legitimate reason to do so, not so much.



But those are the best ones!


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## ArielMT (Feb 13, 2012)

coyoteOdin said:


> However, I  can not understand  - what a positive effect given the modernization of this? The  site runs  even slower than before :-(



Servers tend to run slower when things aren't yet cached.  If it still runs slower later on, then your complaint will be a valid one.


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## Foxhound3857 (Feb 13, 2012)

Blux said:


> But those are the best ones!



I take my anger out on Majini in Resident Evil 5 (or Louis in Left 4 Dead).


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## coyoteOdin (Feb 13, 2012)

ArielMT said:


> I don't understand why anyone thinks getting angry would make restoration happen faster.  In fact, every time I've seen anger influence an outage, planned or otherwise, it's been to disastrous ends, making things take even longer than before.
> 
> Zen.  Learn some.


 Personally,  I am angry  not so much due to the fact that the site did not work, but because of the fact that it did not work just when I was waiting for Gift (if the site is working - I have this Gift yesterday evening would have got, and now I I do not know - as I am still waiting for this Gift.


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## Devious Bane (Feb 13, 2012)

coyoteOdin said:


> Personally,  I am angry  not so much due to the fact that the site did not work, but because of the fact that it did not work just when I was waiting for Gift (if the site is working - I have this Gift yesterday evening would have got, and now I I do not know - as I am still waiting for this Gift.



That's something you need to settle with the gift giver. There are alternate ways to receive any sort of gift you can get by simply having access to FA.


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## coyoteOdin (Feb 13, 2012)

ArielMT said:


> Servers tend to run slower when things aren't yet cached.  If it still runs slower later on, then your complaint will be a valid one.


 thank you for  what was told  the reason why he is so slow. Hopefully soon he will be working at a normal rate

  once again thank  you!


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## ArielMT (Feb 13, 2012)

coyoteOdin said:


> thank you for  what was told  the reason why he is so slow. Hopefully soon he will be working at a normal rate
> 
> once again thank  you!



You're welcome?  I'm just a mod, not an admin, and certainly not a server admin here.


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## Devious Bane (Feb 13, 2012)

Thank you for doing their job for them.


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## coyoteOdin (Feb 13, 2012)

ArielMT said:


> You're welcome?  I'm just a mod, not an admin, and certainly not a server admin here.


 I just  wanted to say thank you for what you told me to my question. After all, I just can say thank you?


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## DKitty (Feb 13, 2012)

Devious Bane, ilu. Your "In 7 years" comment made me LOL epically.


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## coyoteOdin (Feb 13, 2012)

????

[h=1]Fur Affinity[/h] [h=2]Error 503[/h] 
*                          Please wait a few minutes and try your request again.              
*​          The server is currently having difficulty responding to all requests.  	
​


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## Nanakisan (Feb 13, 2012)

*face desk* cripes I'm almost entering my 6th year as a user on FA and all honesty, watching people complain about it being down just makes me laugh. Dunno why? Must be my background of being a lead admin for 8 years to a sci-fi RP community. Besides the point. People complaining like most furs tend to do doesn't help the staff one bit. It makes them pressured and uneasy with their work. Plus knowing there is some 100,000 so furs ready to raid their house and punish them for taking their porn away.

I actually expected the downtime to be around 24hrs as that is the norm when it comes to the Database. Sooo sit back and relaaaaax the site is back. Enjoy your porn!


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## Stratelier (Feb 13, 2012)

yak said:
			
		

> Still here, still importing.
> messagecenter_submissions.ibd, 38452M, will you import already.


People will you PLEASE NUKE THOSE DAMN NOTIFICATIONS ALREADY.

Sheeeeeeesh. :roll:


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## NerdyMunk (Feb 13, 2012)

>>
Hey look, guys! I found homework/chore/job to do to pass this time! Or better, you have others sites such as e621 and fchan. I find it quite amusing 1523 (an guestimate) guests online here on the forums. There's other places to fap (or upload), guys.


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## Nanakisan (Feb 13, 2012)

Thus the reason i laugh at them. Hell i was playing Minecraft with some other furs while it was down. XD


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## Devious Bane (Feb 13, 2012)

I was too busy not giving a damn and next thing I know it's back up.
And then I stopped giving a damn.


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## zachhart12 (Feb 13, 2012)

Stratadrake said:


> People will you PLEASE NUKE THOSE DAMN NOTIFICATIONS ALREADY.
> 
> Sheeeeeeesh. :roll:



???


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## Stratelier (Feb 13, 2012)

If you don't remove your new submission notices then they'll continue to linger around and clog up the system.  Wanna bet that's why its corresponding database table (messagecenter_submissions.ibd, as yak notes) takes up over *38 gigabytes* on disk and requires several whole hours just to backup/restore?


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## zachhart12 (Feb 13, 2012)

Stratadrake said:


> If you don't remove your new submission notices then they'll continue to linger around and clog up the system.  Wanna bet that's why its corresponding database table (messagecenter_submissions.ibd, as yak notes) takes up over *38 gigabytes* on disk and requires several whole hours just to backup/restore?



Furs are dumb .  I always keep my FA cleaned up.


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## TechKat (Feb 13, 2012)

Quit whining, okay? 2/3 of the shit done on FA anyway is people whining in comments or people uploading a shitload of photos or art that doesn't really need to be on FA.
Wanna know the reason why it took so long? Cuz of you assholes "forgetting" or "not wanting" to clear messages. Maybe if you nuke your messages more often, you'd give yak some time to get the database imported in downtimes like that again.

Sheesh, why do you need your messages left on your account? It's no use to you so clear them! Now sit in the corner, and think about how that solution really can make a difference. 38GB of messages in the database...that is just feckin' stupid in my opinion.


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## Accountability (Feb 13, 2012)

TechKat said:


> Quit whining, okay? 2/3 of the shit done on FA anyway is people whining in comments or people uploading a shitload of photos or art that doesn't really need to be on FA.
> Wanna know the reason why it took so long? Cuz of you assholes "forgetting" or "not wanting" to clear messages. Maybe if you nuke your messages more often, you'd give yak some time to get the database imported in downtimes like that again.
> 
> Sheesh, why do you need your messages left on your account? It's no use to you so clear them! Now sit in the corner, and think about how that solution really can make a difference. 38GB of messages in the database...that is just feckin' stupid in my opinion.



Your argument has more holes than swiss cheese.

Why does the software allow messages to sit and rot for years and years?
Why does the software allow banned, suspended, and otherwise inactive users to continue to collect messages?
And perhaps most importantly, why hasn't a better system been developed that's not as ridiculous as "Enter a row into a database for every person watching a user everytime the user uploads something"? Consider this: An artist with ~3,000 watchers that uploads 1 piece of art a day will generate one million rows worth of new submission notices in a year.

It's stupid that it's still allowed to happen when there are numerous better ways to do it, but the administration and technical staff refuse to do anything other than treat the symptoms and not the problems.


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## Armaetus (Feb 13, 2012)

They just need to estimate 12-36h and not just 6 hours, you see how well that worked :roll:

You know shit might take longer than estimated, so why risk putting a shorter time on something as trivial as database maintenance?


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## Andy Dingo Wolf (Feb 13, 2012)

On the bright side, it could have been much worse.


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## Armaetus (Feb 13, 2012)

I'd rather see another months long outage again just to see how furries react to it, the way there was major hardware failure a few years ago and FA was out for almost 4 months.


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## Whiskey.Tango.Foxtrot (Feb 13, 2012)

The rate of computer problems is directly related to the desperation of the user.


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## lostcat461 (Feb 13, 2012)

Whiskey.Tango.Foxtrot said:


> The rate of computer problems is directly related to the desperation of the user.



Eh? I could maybe see the number of users, or the rate of computer problems reported. But I didn't know computers could sense desperation. Unless you think people get so desperate they rage and break their computers.

All in all, I don't really see a difference in how FA handles their "downtime" and other more professional patchers. I mean really, how often was the patching time extended in WoW or SWTOR. The only thing FA might be doing wrong is giving too much information when they give an ETA.


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## quoting_mungo (Feb 14, 2012)

Summercat already admitted to misunderstanding something and therefore mistakenly giving the 6-hour estimate.

Yak at least was giving status updates throughout, which is a step in the right direction and more than FA's userbase has gotten in the past during downtime. I can't do timezone math before breakfast so I don't know if he started doing so after the 6-hour window had already passed - if so that's something that still needs to be worked on - but it's a lot better than quietly keeping the site down as I'd have half expected. Thanks for the updates, Yak.


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## Shireton (Feb 14, 2012)

TechKat said:


> Quit whining, okay? 2/3 of the shit done on FA anyway is people whining in comments or people uploading a shitload of photos or art that doesn't really need to be on FA.
> Wanna know the reason why it took so long? Cuz of you assholes "forgetting" or "not wanting" to clear messages. Maybe if you nuke your messages more often, you'd give yak some time to get the database imported in downtimes like that again.
> 
> Sheesh, why do you need your messages left on your account? It's no use to you so clear them! Now sit in the corner, and think about how that solution really can make a difference. 38GB of messages in the database...that is just feckin' stupid in my opinion.



Yeah, people are such assholes for keeping messages when there's no indication on the site that it's a problem. How dare they do something that they aren't told is bad for the site?


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## Arshes Nei (Feb 14, 2012)

This is true. While there was a conversation about this on the forums, and maybe a brief period this may have ended up on the announcements on the main site, most people don't know how this is an issue. So the solution is, do you let your users know constantly, or work to program a solution (possibly both)?

Not letting users know constantly and then blaming them later when things get difficult, is not the user's problem or fault. We get new people in daily.


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## Stratelier (Feb 14, 2012)

Accountability said:


> (1) Why does the software allow messages to sit and rot for years and years?
> 
> (2) Why does the software allow banned, suspended, and otherwise inactive users to continue to collect messages?
> 
> (3) And perhaps most importantly, why hasn't a better system been developed that's not as ridiculous as "Enter a row into a database for every person watching a user everytime the user uploads something"? Consider this: An artist with ~3,000 watchers that uploads 1 piece of art a day will generate one million rows worth of new submission notices in a year.



#1 - Because placing a time limit on message notifications just wasn't thought of.  Then there's the matter that people will complain about the principle of it.  (I would counter that it's their fault for not using the system the way it's intended, but that's pretty harsh.)

#2 - Spot on.  Banned and suspended accounts I can understand and support, but how do you define (on a technical level) an "active" versus "inactive" user?

#3 - Because that's about the only way to track which users have actually been notified about something they've explicitly requested notifications on.  If these were email confirmations, then notifying 3,000 users means you _must send 3,000 emails_ -- no ifs, no ands, no buts.  

An alternative could be to log only the timestamp of when the person last checked their message center and compile a list of notifications based on what/who they're watching and the timestamp in question, HOWEVER this would mean that you can't dismiss individual notices -- it becomes all or nothing.


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## SkieFire (Feb 14, 2012)

One of the issues with having lots of notifications is that when you get to a certain amount, the nuke button actually stops working properly as there are too many to clear out in one go and it times out. Yes, this means notices are removed one by one, which isn't that efficient. You can still select all - remove page by page, but that can be a bit of work when you have thousands of subs. I guess if anyone has that many and wants to try removing them like that we could increase their number of submissions per page to 1k temporarily.

As for time estimates, it kinda depends on who actually writes the notice. I did the notice yesterday for the short outage and purposefully doubled the estimate I was given simply because its always good to have a buffer in the event that something goes wrong. It gives yak and net-cat breathing room and if it all goes well then the site is back up a bit earlier than expected and everyone is happy (except the usual suspects).


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## yak (Feb 14, 2012)

SkieFire said:


> One of the issues with having lots of notifications is that when you get to a certain amount, the nuke button actually stops working properly as there are too many to clear out in one go and it times out.


I addressed that issue today.
Notifications are now deleted in chunks of 5000 instead of everything at once. This improves table locking contention as well as decreases the probability of deadlocks and subsequent rollbacks.
Even if nuking notifications times out, the process should still finish in the background.


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## SkieFire (Feb 15, 2012)

Awesome. Thats a few tickets I can close!


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