FurryMUCK Status' Journal

FM disconnects-problem fixed
After the unicode update to the server a tcp_keepalive bug showed up, causing some users to be disconnected after only a few minutes of inactivity. It took a bit of code searching and a few server restarts, but Revar figured out the problem and repaired it. Idle sessions should behave normally again.

Sorry for the interruptions! Here's to hoping it's another 2 years before we need to do another restart or patch again. :)

Update completed.
We've restarted the server and did some very overdue maintenance.

The MUCK code was patched to permit ISO-Latin-1 unicode. As a result of the code change, we had a few errors to ferret out of the system after the restart, causing about 20 minutes of instability but no data loss.

If you see any program execution errors or other problems with the server, please let the wizards know. We'll fix them as we find them. Thank you very much!

FM Server reboot to happen within the next hour
We're doing a reboot of the system to clear up some memory issues and do some updates. The server will go offline at 5:10 PM PDT and will be down from 10-60 minutes depending on how long patching and updates take. It'll be our first server reboot in about 730 days. :)

UPDATE: We're back up but not fully operational. There's work still going on to repair errors caused by the software patches. Please stand by and expect Reality Distortion Fields for now if you're logged in.

FurryMUCK problems
It appears that there's a server problem. I've emailed Tugrik, Revar, and Lynx as well as CCing all the rest of the wizards to notify them of the problem.

I'll post more when I hear more.

Aragh

Server reboot
We're rebooting FurryMUCK (after 203 days of uptime) to clear up some database issues that were causing some problems tonight. No data should be lost and the MUCK should come up a few minutes after the reboot finishes.

Just as an interesting statistic, the server hardware that the MUCK runs on has an uptime of 411 days. That uptime will continue as we're only restarting the MUCK application and not the server itself. :)

FurryMUCK problem
FM appears to have hung and folks are unable to login. I've sent an email to Tugrik, Revar, and Lynx letting them know of the problem. Hopefully FM will be restarted soon. More information as I get it.

FM's Colocation Center is off the air
The whole colo center that FM is located at is off the air as of about a half hour before this message. I currently do not know why, and their support hotline is busy. Messages have been left. I'll update status here as I get it.

Revar and I had a potential move to another data center (that we already are in, for other machines) planned for FM's machine anyway. If we don't come back up in the very near future, we may simply accelerate this move and yoink the server about 10 miles away to the new center, bringing it up there instead.

If that happens, it may be this early evening before FM goes back on the air. Hopefully the current colo will get its act together in quick fashion instead.

Edit (4/14/08 12:05 PDT): The main internet link at the co-location center is back up. The server itself stayed up the whole time, so no reset of the server was necessary and no data was lost.

Furry.com DNS restored
DNS service for Furry.com has been restored as of about noon, Pacific time.
Downtime was due to complications from a power outage at the server's data center.

Current Mood: annoyed

Furry DNS problem
It looks like the DNS server for MurryMUCK is acting up and using the name muck.furry.com is not resolving. The muck is up and you still can connect using the IP of 64.124.52.148 and your usual port. The most common port is 8888 and port 8899 if you're using an encrypted connection.

An email has been sent to Tugrik and Revar. More info when we get it.

FM back online
I logged into the server and restarted the muck. I'm on a short roadtrip to a friend's wedding, so I had to log in from celmodem; sorry for the delay. Personally I'm surprised that there's EVDO coverage way out here in the middle of the Mojave desert. :)

We'll take a more in-depth look at what happened later today or tonight. Sorry for the outage!

Furry MUCK problems
I've just tried to connect to FM and I found it's down. I've sent an email to Lynx, Tugrik, and Revar.

The server is up and I can ssh into it. But I don't have privileges to restart with the account I have.

Aragh

PS I'll post more when I find out more.

Public Notice: Idle timer increased to 6hrs
A player took the time to write us a very nice letter asking if we could eliminate or at least increase the idle timer on the muck. The original reason for the short idle timer was one of resources; an issue we've not had for a long time now.

After some consideration, the Wizards agreed that upping the timer (though not completely eliminating it) was a good idea. We've turned it up from one hour to six to see how it'll go. As long as the network connection stays up on your end, the server won't boot you until you've gone silent for the full six hours.

All we ask is that players please not abuse this by going idle for very long periods of time in very public / high-traffic places like the West Corner of the Park. If it becomes a problem we'll set up auto-sweeps that will send too-idle folks home, but will not disconnect them.

If you have any questions please either leave a comment here or drop a quick page#mail to any of the PR or Site Admin wizards within the muck itself. Thank you!

--Tug

The MUCK was rebooted
The physical server the MUCK resides upon had an uptime of 374 days. The MUCK software itself had an uptime of 130 days.

It's a known "feature" of the MUCK software that it grows in memory size over time. After those 130 days it had grown to slightly over the 2GB memory limit. This caused the MUCK to have failures within the game. Worse, it caused the server itself to disable other services, making remote management of it difficult.

We had to shut down the MUCK and then physically power-cycle the server to recover. Once it came back all systems are working A-OK. Any in-game data created between 11pm 3/30 and 2pm 3/31 (PDT) may not have been completely saved.

If you notice any other data loss other than objects created/changed last night, please let us know right away. Thank you!

--Tug

FurryMuck back up
FurryMuck has been patched and restarted. Blame Alynna.

FM downtime
FurryMuck crashed at around 9:28pm PST.
We're debugging and fixing the problem now.
The Muck should be back up within the hour.

Network connectivity problem
Something's going on at the data center where FM is hosted and we're losing packets right now. I've given them a call and they are researching the problem. More news as I get it.

Giving the muck a boot to the head
Y'know what happens when you leave a muck as big as FurryMUCK online for 220 continuous days?

furry 2856m 1746:35 fbmuck

Process sizes reaching nearly 3 gigs in size are a bit awkward. :) I'm restarting the muck tonight to get things back down to a reasonable state.

Some people have noted connectivity issues, and the colocation center has been notified. They say there's no problem, so I'm doing this restart to make sure that the server and software itself isn't causing the issue. After the restart if there are still connection errors I'll take it back to the hosting company to get things resolved.

Donations
Now that it's mid-July, I've had folks poke me to do another funding drive. FurryMUCK takes $70/mo in colocation fees to run, along with the occasional (but luckily very rare!) hardware replacement. We've had 11 months of good service on the new box and all is still well. The climate controls in the colocation facility have been very reliable and I expect to get another year or two out of the base hard-drives before I start worrying about their MTBF (mean time between failure).

I'm re-opening the donations bin as the last of it was used for May's colocation bill. As always, there is no worry of the Muck going away -- we'll keep it running no matter how funding drives go. With luck enough folks will pitch in to cover us for the rest of this year. Any donations sent in are highly appreciated, and I thank you very much for the kindness!

Help support FurryMuck!

(if you want more details about the donations, please look at our first ever donation request post from nearly a year ago. Thank you!)

Outage going on
For reasons currently unknown, the colocation center housing Furry's server is having a connectivity problem, showing about 60% packet loss. I'm working with them to find out what's going on, and will post more news as I have it. Some people still can get to the server while others can't, until this is fixed.

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Edit #1: The center is aware of the problem. They had a major issue with one of their peerlinks that is still under repair. They will be sending me status as it gets fixed.

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Edit #2: To quote: "One of the Junipers is experiencing technical difficulties . I think it's being worked on now." For now, the link to the server is back up. It may be unstable until the repairs are completed, however.

Network blips
Something's up with the network near Furry's site (possibly alter.net or other providers) and it's causing routing headaches for a number of players. I've sent in a query to the colocation provider to see if they can tell us what's going on. I'll post updates when I get 'em.

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