bukowski.net site is moving (1 Viewer)

mjp

Founding member
The main site is moving right now.

Well, it's already been moved, but the DNS just changed to point the domain to the new server. You shouldn't notice any weirdness, but if you do, it should disappear soon.

You may be wondering if the forum is going to move as well. Yes it is! Isn't that exciting? No?

The forum move is a little more painful because it has a database that changes every few minutes, so the old location has to be shut down in order to make the move. Otherwise for an hour or two some people would be posting to the old location and some to the new, and you can see why that's no good.

When is the forum moving? I don't know, but probably in the next day or two. If you hit the old server during the move you'll see a moving message. DNS updates pretty quickly these days, but it does still depend on the whims of your Internet provider. So you could see the closed forum for anywhere from five minutes to 12 hours. Though it rarely takes more than 30 minutes or so.
 
I should also mention that all of the images on the main site are now served from a CDN, so the site should be faster for everyone (since the images now live closer to where you live, no matter where that is).

These technological advances are brought to you for the same low price of $0!

Really though, all of this modern technology in service of a writer who died before the web was really born. It would be funny if it wasn't so awesome.
 
MJP,
It really sucked last night when I was not able to post anything stupid during the server switch. I felt helpless and disheartened. I had no outlet to say anything that anyone with common sense would forget in a second or less.

Which begs the question: Do you have a succession (sucksession) plan? If your girlfriend/wife, bookie, random asshole, or former lover (Bob) should randomly kill you, would this all turn to white space? Would John Martin buy the rights, like Mr. Ballmer is buying the rights from Mr. Sterling?

Real minds want to know…

Sincerely,
The guy who posts stupid shit…
 
Did I forget to mention the forum was moving last night? It was kind of last minute. Forgive me.

As for a contingency plan, if my girlfriend kills me you're in trouble, since she knows where all my passwords are.

But @hank solo and @hoochmonkey9 have an admin login, so if a tree falls on me or I die in a nail salon fire, they can take over. They'll have to ask @esart for the FTP password to get to the files. Can't have all the eggs in one basket, you know. It's like the President's nuclear codes. Same thing.
 
It really sucked last night when I was not able to post anything stupid during the server switch. I felt helpless and disheartened.
I felt the same way. I kept thinking to myself "What have I done? Why has God forsaken me?"
opanachke.gif

Today (unlike yesterday) I can see The Forum and (obviously & unlucky for you) I can post stuff.

I had no outlet to say anything that anyone with common sense would forget in a second or less.
rofl.gif

P.S. I still can't hit what I want here all the time but it gets better (and better).
 
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I'm still getting email saying it's down for some people.

DNS updates happen a lot faster than they used to (in the early days of the web we told hosting customers it would take 24 to 72 hours for changes to propagate - and a few ISPs only updated once a week!), but I guess there are still some rickety old ISPs out there that don't see what the big hurry is.

There's no painless way to move a site that relies on a dynamic database like this one does. Okay, I take that back - you can host the database in "the cloud," in which case there would be zero downtime for a move like this, but that service comes at a steep cost. But considering the technology necessary to do that with a database, I suppose the cost is understandable.

Here we are, in the future. It happened when you weren't looking.
 
Is there any clear relationship between one's distance from LA and down-time? The site was down from me from Friday night ~8 PM until some unknown time before Saturday afternoon - it was up when I first tried on Saturday afternoon. I'm just wondering if folks in Europe, for example, are still in the dark due to their geographical distance. Perhaps it doesn't work that way...
 
It isn't distance.

Domain names are used so we don't have to remember long strings of numbers. Every server on the Internet has a numerical address, but it would be inconvenient if you had to remember that 162.213.251.168 = the Bukowski forum. So there are thousands of DNS (domain name system) servers around the Internet that keep track of those server addresses and do the translation. So when you type bukowskiforum.com into your browser, the DNS system knows that bukowskiforum.com lives at 162.213.251.168.

(When Bukowski was learning the scheme at the post office, he was more or less becoming a human DNS server.)

There are a dozen root nameservers that all the other DNS servers get their information from. So when I change the address of bukowskiforum.com, those root servers update immediately to tell the thousands of other DNS servers, "Hey, bukowskiforum.com is now at 162.213.251.168."

But the root nameservers don't send that information anywhere, the other DNS servers have to come and get it. So the delay comes from the fact that those thousands of other DNS servers check in with the root nameservers at varying intervals. Some do it every few minutes, some every few hours, some even less frequently.

There is no standard, so if the nerds who run your ISP say, "We don't have the bandwidth to update the DNS servers more than once a day," you're stuck with stale DNS information until your ISP's DNS servers go ask the root servers for updates.

That's why it's different for everyone, and why when I update the address in Los Angeles, someone on the other side of the world may see the change in a few minutes, but someone 50 miles from me might see it two days later.

---

TMI! I know. But I've been giving high-level overview explanations of the DNS system to people for 20 years, so it just kind of happens when someone asks.
 
Some forum members got a headache when I mentioned FLV conversion to AVI.
I guess they'll fall into a coma if they get to read this DNS blurb.
 

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