June 15, 2007
Private Messaging
Have questions about the messaging functions? Ask here.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
07:47 AM
| Comments (13)
| Add Comment
Post contains 10 words, total size 1 kb.
Miscellaneous Errors
If the system coughed up a strange error, and you don't know what was wrong or why, post here for assistance.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
07:46 AM
| Comments (30)
| Add Comment
Post contains 23 words, total size 1 kb.
Frequently Asked Questions
We're new enough that we don't have an FAQ yet, but you are more than welcome to nominate questions here.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
07:44 AM
| Comments (24)
| Add Comment
Post contains 23 words, total size 1 kb.
June 13, 2007
Unexpected Errors
The new server somehow got disconnected from the distributed cache; if you got an unexpected error while posting or commenting (or whatever), that's why.
Your post or comment (or whatever) would be saved successfully, but you wouldn't see the result because the server was trying to update the cache with.
Restarting the local cache manager fixed this, but that shouldn't be required.
Update: And if you got an error logging in, that was due to the same problem. I've fixed a bug in the code that I think was behind this. (It was certainly a bug, and it's certainly fixed; I'm just not 100% sure it was the cause of the problem we experienced.)
Your post or comment (or whatever) would be saved successfully, but you wouldn't see the result because the server was trying to update the cache with.
Restarting the local cache manager fixed this, but that shouldn't be required.
Update: And if you got an error logging in, that was due to the same problem. I've fixed a bug in the code that I think was behind this. (It was certainly a bug, and it's certainly fixed; I'm just not 100% sure it was the cause of the problem we experienced.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:02 PM
| Comments (6)
| Add Comment
Post contains 116 words, total size 1 kb.
No Outage Required!
After a certain amount of fiddling, we are now running on two, count them, two web servers. Which web server you are directed to is essentially random, but you will get exactly the same pages regardless.
We don't (yet) have automatic failover, so if one server dies, 50% of people won't be able to access the site until I redirect the traffic. We will be enabling additional servers in the coming weeks to balance the load further, and also working on the automatic failover stuff so that our technical guys can take a bathroom break now and then...
In the meantime, enjoy!
We don't (yet) have automatic failover, so if one server dies, 50% of people won't be able to access the site until I redirect the traffic. We will be enabling additional servers in the coming weeks to balance the load further, and also working on the automatic failover stuff so that our technical guys can take a bathroom break now and then...
In the meantime, enjoy!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
03:48 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 105 words, total size 1 kb.
June 08, 2007
Planned Outage - Saturday 9th June, 2AM GMT
This outage should be fairly brief, probably less than ten minutes. I'll be switching us over to the production database cluster in preparation for our launch.
After that, we'll be activating additional web servers. There shouldn't be any downtime involved in that at all, and I'll be monitoring for problems.
After that, we'll be activating additional web servers. There shouldn't be any downtime involved in that at all, and I'll be monitoring for problems.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
04:59 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 58 words, total size 1 kb.
June 02, 2007
Imagery
It's been a while since the last update, but I have been busy. Here's the first of the new features uploaded today:
Automatic Server-Side Image Scaling and Thumbnails (ASSIST!)
Shrink to 200 pixels wide - side-by-side with a browser-scaled image for comparison:
[thumbnail=/images/Benten.jpg size=200x]
[thumbnail=/images/Benten.jpg size=x200]
Fit inside a box 100 pixels square, keeping proportions:
[thumbnail=/images/Benten.jpg size=100x100]
Resize to 100 pixels square, regardless of proportions:
[thumbnail=/images/Benten.jpg resize=100x100]
Accessing this directly from HTML:
This is intended to make it easy to produce image galleries and photo albums where you need to produce images in multiple resolutions. Also, it will be used for user avatars: Since mee.nu users have complete control over their site layouts, there won't be a single fixed size for avatars, and resizing in the browser produces ugly images.
The advantages (apart from the improved quality) is that it makes it very easy to keep the image proportions, and it produces smaller files for fast loading times. (And less strain on your bandwidth.) Doing high-quality image processing is fairly CPU intensive, but we already have 16 CPUs at our disposal, so that is not anticipated to be a problem.
One hitch: This doesn't currently work for animated GIFs. Neither does the image processing function in the file module; the GIF library I'm using is lacking in several respects. This will be resolved in the next month or so.
Automatic Server-Side Image Scaling and Thumbnails (ASSIST!)
Shrink to 200 pixels wide - side-by-side with a browser-scaled image for comparison:
[thumbnail=/images/Benten.jpg size=200x]
Shrink to 200 pixels tall:
[thumbnail=/images/Benten.jpg size=x200]
Fit inside a box 100 pixels square, keeping proportions:
[thumbnail=/images/Benten.jpg size=100x100]
Resize to 100 pixels square, regardless of proportions:
[thumbnail=/images/Benten.jpg resize=100x100]
Accessing this directly from HTML:
<img src="/images/Benten.jpg?size=200x" border="0" />
This is intended to make it easy to produce image galleries and photo albums where you need to produce images in multiple resolutions. Also, it will be used for user avatars: Since mee.nu users have complete control over their site layouts, there won't be a single fixed size for avatars, and resizing in the browser produces ugly images.
The advantages (apart from the improved quality) is that it makes it very easy to keep the image proportions, and it produces smaller files for fast loading times. (And less strain on your bandwidth.) Doing high-quality image processing is fairly CPU intensive, but we already have 16 CPUs at our disposal, so that is not anticipated to be a problem.
One hitch: This doesn't currently work for animated GIFs. Neither does the image processing function in the file module; the GIF library I'm using is lacking in several respects. This will be resolved in the next month or so.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
01:56 PM
| Comments (2)
| Add Comment
Post contains 231 words, total size 3 kb.
Changes!
Hi everyone.
You'll see changes happening to the edit screens over the next two days, with a number of new features popping up. It will take me a little while to put all the updates in place, so if you try some of the new links and they don't do anything, that's why.
Once I've finished with the updates, I'll put a longer post up explaining where everything is and what it does. And then, if something isn't working, feel free to tell me about it.
Okay, the update is in! We are now running on version 1.0. I still have to do some tweaking, and enable some of the features, but we're here!
And then... The documentation.
You'll see changes happening to the edit screens over the next two days, with a number of new features popping up. It will take me a little while to put all the updates in place, so if you try some of the new links and they don't do anything, that's why.
Once I've finished with the updates, I'll put a longer post up explaining where everything is and what it does. And then, if something isn't working, feel free to tell me about it.
Okay, the update is in! We are now running on version 1.0. I still have to do some tweaking, and enable some of the features, but we're here!
And then... The documentation.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
08:57 AM
| Comments (4)
| Add Comment
Post contains 122 words, total size 1 kb.
June 01, 2007
Planned Outages - June 2nd, 3rd and 4th, 10AM GMT
This weekend, I'll be rolling out the update to version 1.0, and switching to the production servers, so expect half an hour or so of downtime each day.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
11:59 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 38 words, total size 1 kb.
May 27, 2007
Someone Let The Magic Smoke Out
Not, on the whole, a fun weekend.
We've had a drive failure on the beta server, which isn't causing problems with the application yet, but could do so without warning. I'm preparing everything for a move to the production servers right now.
Not, on the whole, a fun weekend.
Update
I backed everything up to the production server, and then my PC died. After repairing my PC (a task that wasn't made easier when I found that my Windows install disk had gone missing), I rebooted the beta server to see if that would help with the disk problem.
The beta server didn't reboot.
So I went to the backup on the production server, and discovered that it didn't exist - I had logged in to the wrong system, and backed everything up to the beta server again. Leaving the only up-to-date backup on a dead server.
So I started up the hardware monitoring tools, and tried to reach the server, and couldn't see any signs of life at all. And then, then it came back, working just fine. I've migrated everything off the faulty disk, re-run the backup to the right server, and it should all be good to go for the next 48 hours, after which we will migrate across to the production cluster and I can have the friendly tech support folk rebuild this box.
Whew.
I backed everything up to the production server, and then my PC died. After repairing my PC (a task that wasn't made easier when I found that my Windows install disk had gone missing), I rebooted the beta server to see if that would help with the disk problem.
The beta server didn't reboot.
So I went to the backup on the production server, and discovered that it didn't exist - I had logged in to the wrong system, and backed everything up to the beta server again. Leaving the only up-to-date backup on a dead server.
So I started up the hardware monitoring tools, and tried to reach the server, and couldn't see any signs of life at all. And then, then it came back, working just fine. I've migrated everything off the faulty disk, re-run the backup to the right server, and it should all be good to go for the next 48 hours, after which we will migrate across to the production cluster and I can have the friendly tech support folk rebuild this box.
Whew.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
03:00 PM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 229 words, total size 2 kb.
22kb generated in CPU 0.0849, elapsed 2.5029 seconds.
32 queries taking 2.4927 seconds, 83 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
32 queries taking 2.4927 seconds, 83 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
