Tower maintenance Sunday Sept. 13th

[Defen Estrator]

This weekend, I'll be migrating our old server operating system to a newer one, so that we can use some shiny new software (and because our old operating system is no longer getting security support). For the curious, the old is Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, and the new will be Debian 8.

I'll be building up the new server on Saturday, and then Sunday at 11AM PDT (6PM UTC) I'll be starting the migration. If all goes well it should be done in an hour or so, but it's a big enough change that all might not go well, and it could take the rest of the day to complete.

 

[Miridyth Al'Landerin]

will we see the site having different stuff as sometimes happens when we migrate?

 

[Defen Estrator]

Other than the interim "site is down" page, it should look the same before and after. The migration is for the underlying operating system; the forum software will stay the same.

 

[Mendo Cath]

Thanks!

 

[Defen Estrator]

So I'll have to partially take back what I said about nothing visible changing. Our version of vB doesn't support the newer version of PHP. Since the company we bought it from doesn't really support it anymore, I'm trying to find and fix all the incompatibilities myself. Also, the (seemingly unused) CategoryTree extension on the wiki doesn't work.

So, you probably won't notice the wiki change. There may be some remaining bugs in the forums that need fixing, though.

Also, I suspect the actual cutover will be closer to 2 hours rather than 1 hour.

 

[Erin al'Denael]

*goes to mention thoughts on vB in a non-public forum*

 

[Rhed al'Tere]

Sigh. vB. Thank you, Defen, for working on this.

 

[Defen Estrator]

Maintenance is officially delayed

Looks like vBulletin needs even more fixes than I thought to work with modern PHP. I'm not sure exactly how long it'll take, but long enough that it won't be done soon. I'll have to do the actual cutover a different weekend.