Site was down this afternoon.

[CougTek]

Hi,

I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed it, but the site has been down for a long period late this morning up to a few hours ago (at least for me). Guess Burst still has improvements to do :(

[Buck]

It was down for me too.

[CougTek]

Looking at the number of posts since this morning, it must have been down for everyone.

[Handruin]

It seems like it was down from 11:00ish to after 4:00? I don't know why...crappy hosting service is my best guess. :evil:

[Buck]

The forum was down for me about an hour ago. I just got a Critial Error message with some programming gibberish and something like "line 243", describing a missing file named....I think it was handruin_xxx.php. I don't know the full file name.

[i]

Heehee ... guess who hasn't had a job as technical support. :wink:

Here's the full page I got this evening while trying to access the forums (main site was ok):

------------------------------------

phpBB : Critical Error

Error doing DB query userdata row fetch : session_pagestart

DEBUG MODE

SQL Error : 1017 Can't find file: './handruin_phpBB/phpbb_sessions.frm' (errno: 5)

SELECT u.*, s.* FROM phpbb_sessions s, phpbb_users u WHERE s.session_id = '8c5c3ae5e10825fdb9b99d02494c5758' AND u.user_id = s.session_user_id AND s.session_ip = '1819033b'

Line : 243
File : /home/handruin/public_html/phpBB2/includes/sessions.php

------------------------------------

(Of course having posted all that, I'll probably find someone hijacking my session or account now.)

It was only for an hour or two this evening that I found I couldn't access the forums.

[me]

(Of course having posted all that, I'll probably find someone hijacking my session or account now.)


Don't flatter yourself. :P

[Handruin]

Thanks for letting me know. I'm not sure what caused the error, my guess is that the database was down or there was some problem with the site in general.

I think we will be switching sites soon anyways. I'm tired of Burst being unavailable for us.

[Handruin]

I just looked at the site info and it appears the server was rebooted about an or so ago.

http://beta.storageforum.net/system/

Look at the top left section to see the server uptime.

[Buck]

HA! Technical support my petunia! I was in a hurry to leave for dinner and I knew that the 5 or 6 moderators we have would come across the error message and diligently contact Handruin.:excl: I did not expect to get such lip from I, Me, or Myself :mrgrn:

[i]

Sorry Buck, no offense intended! I read your post and I couldn't help but laugh out loud. Truthfully I figured the same as you, that it would be solved with no help required ... it was just the way you wrote the post that brought back toooo many tech support memories. :) Oddly, they all make me laugh now, yet most of them didn't at the time.

Having said that, one of the rarer ones just came to mind:

Female User: <walks into the helpdesk office, and says only one thing> "I can't get off."
Me: <somewhat stunned look> "Umm ... excuse me?"
Female User: <now annoyed, again says only one thing> "I can't get off!"
Me: <turning to look at my mischevious good-to-go officemate, while trying not to smile> "Uhh ... I'm sure Marco here can help you with that."

Apparently the system froze while she was attempting to log out. That's what Marco told me a few minutes later when he returned to the room, anyway. I just about passed out from laughter when he strolled back into the office and announced, in as theatrically a manner as possible, that he had solved her problem. :o

Oh well, I guess you had to be there. Or at least, that's the explanation I give to strangers after I've suddenly found myself laughing out loud in otherwise quiet, public places. Strange what technical support jobs will do to you if you hold them too long. :roll:

(I hope any continental differences as to how the phrase "getting off" can be interpreted are not insurmountable.)

[Buck]

(I hope any continental differences as to how the phrase "getting off" can be interpreted are not insurmountable.)

Clearly understood mate.

And I do understand your experience, not only have I provided helpdesk support, I've also monitored helpdesk support (you know, listening in on the phone call and grading the technician). The best ones are when the customer is drunk. That didn't happen too often, but when it did, it was a gem.

By the way, no offense was taken, in my haste I provided the best end-user response that I could. When I asked myself if I should copy the error message, I said: "Naaah, they're smart blokes, they'll figure out what I was trying to say." And I love it, because someone else gets to handle the problem - not me! That was the best thing about leaving the helpdesk and system admin environment, now I can decide whether or not I want to help, there are no quotas. Wait, aren't quotas illegal? :mrgrn: