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Kupok

RAID Failure

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Our house runs a 10TB Raid file server. Raid 5 to be precise, so when two of those 1TB puppies decided to explode at the same time, you'd think that'd be some preitty bad shit right?

Fuck no. Not with Johnny Dog and Alynna on the watch. That shit's recovered and repaired using some super advanced technomancer mumbo jumbo I'll never be on par with within 24 hours.

Meanwhile FA is still down 9w6
Viewed: 49 times
Added: 11 years, 6 months ago
 
Stumpycoon
11 years, 6 months ago
FLAWLESS VICTORY !
FoxWolfie
11 years, 6 months ago
I'm sure FA would be up right now if they also had RAID 5.  Unfortunately, that costs money, and if you look at FA's donations page, you'll probably see that they haven't had any donations this year. During 2011, they got only around $950 in donations.  Considering that the site is now costing over $21,000 a year to operate, I wonder were they might find a comparable server and RAID array.  Most places want money for those highly desired upgrades.

If they charged about 6 cents per user account per year, they could fully cover their cost!  The average furry is far too cheap to pay even that much though.  There are a couple users who have donated as much as $300, which covers a lot of users, but there simply isn't enough people who actually care to that degree.  Seriously, if just the people who complain decided to send in $10 for a year, they'd probably have enough to buy new servers and double their capacity.  And yes, I've donated a few times myself, and this outage remained me that it is time for me to do so again.  FA is pretty much running out of the grace of Dragoneer's pockets.  Their ad revenue is not even close to supporting the site, especially since most of the users are probably blocking the ads anyway.  People want a better FA that never goes down, but they aren't willing to pay for it.  Several hundred thousand accounts, and they're lucky if they've even got 100 donations since they existed!  Servers and RAID arrays aren't free, and unlike a home server, FA has to pay huge bandwidth usage costs. Home servers don't normally have 10,000 users signed in at one time, downloading and uploading almost continuously. Comparing a home server to FA is sort of like comparing an ant to an elephant!  :)
Flygon
11 years, 6 months ago
You realize it was their RAID controller that actually broke down (buggy firmware), and that they actually (surprisingly enough) actually had a competent RAID array type (RAID1).

Course, a RAID fails when the RAID controller itself is fucked. :p
FoxWolfie
11 years, 6 months ago
Yes.  Even if they had a dozen spare drives to swap in place of the bad drive, it would not have helped, because the controller itself was failing to work properly.  I've seen several people asking why they didn't have a spare drive. It's likely that they did, but they obviously didn't have a spare RAID controller.
Flygon
11 years, 6 months ago
Exactly.
Yiffox
11 years, 6 months ago
I personally won't donate to any site that randomly suspends me.  Go figure.  Both times I was not violating their AUP, but some jackass admin didn't like what I was posting or didn't understand it.  Many other users have the same experience.  Look at their forums from a year ago.  Half the people are banned.  That's a crazy way to run a place dependent on donations.

They blatantly lie to people.  They ban people left and right on whims of admins with no appeal, because their attitude are the admins are always right...and their biggest customer service flaw is when confronted with these things their typical response is its our private site, we do what we want, and screw the users.  THAT is why they dont get donations and really shouldnt get any.  Maybe when it dries up totally they'll change their attitude.
RuscoIstar
11 years, 6 months ago
This. FA will die from donation starvation caused by their terrible service, community wise. In contrast, just look what happened here at IB: Donations were asked for nicely, they got them in less than two weeks and in excess; enough for twice the term required.
FoxWolfie
11 years, 6 months ago
They have something like 500,000 accounts there.  If half of them were banned, as you just said, then show me where they are. That's 250,000 user accounts! I'd easily believe that might ban 50 people in a really bad month, but even then, that would be just a hundredth of one percent.  I think the reality is that anyone would have a very hard time providing a list of even 100 banned individuals, and it would surely be spread over a great deal of time.  During that same span of time, they probably gain more than twice that number in new members.

FA has it's share of problems, but it is still the largest actively used furry site, and still growing, despite many predictions of its doom over the past few years.  They may be doing some things wrong, but they are obviously doing more things right.  Otherwise, more people would be leaving than joining, and the site would be shrinking instead of expanding.  At it is, they are having to increase their maximum bandwidth once or twice a year, just to keep up with the growth.
Kupok
11 years, 6 months ago
That's not a fair slope. Los Angeles is a bad city doing many things wrong.

But for the people that live there, it is all they know. All of thair friends are there. It is difficult to leave. It is their community.

FA gives much the same mindset. Your friends are there. It would be unfair for you to leave your friends.
FoxWolfie
11 years, 6 months ago
And that is why most people don't leave.  Leaving FA because an admin asks you to remove a submission that is in violation is sort of like leaving Los Angeles because the city fined you for not paying your water bill.  Most people just pay the fine, or remove the problem submission, because they realize that they goofed.  Sometimes FA, or the city, messes up.  When they mess up, and a person really is innocent, then the only thing they can do is to be as nice about it as possible as they try to resolve the problem.  I've seen users who were asked to remove a picture go into a swearing name-calling hate rage, instead of nicely asking for details on their request to do something.  Then they ultimately get banned because they went out of their way to be as pissy as possible toward the admin.  I'm aware that some people don't do that, and they really do get banned for wrong reasons.  If you ask 100 banned users who was at fault for them being banned, about 95 of them will usually blame an admin, or another user.  The reality is that probably 3 or 4 out of the 100 were actually a mistake or fault of an admin, and the rest were banned simply because they did do something wrong.  That 3 or 4 out of 100 should never happen, but it does.  It happens like that on any large site that bans people though, not just on FA.  The vast majority of people who get banned from a site did something to deserve it.  A few innocent people get caught in the mess though.  People aren't perfect, and admins are people, so they aren't perfect.  Likewise, users aren't perfect either.  The sad truth is that most users don't want to be told what to do, especially if they are doing something wrong.  And, when they are caught, they do anything to get out of it and to put the blame onto someone else - usually an admin or another user. The AUP on a site means little to some people.
Yiffox
11 years, 6 months ago
no no no, you misunderstood what I said.  Go back to any old forum post...half the people there are banned.  That in itself seems sad.  But it goes to the entire attitude of the site.  We dont have to explain ourselves, our rules dont have to make sense, they continually defend their actions by saying this is a private board, if u dont like it, leave.  Not that admins are wrong, they continually have been, not that bad decisions are made, they were, most egregious of all, they claim that their admins are always correct.  No appeal, and their continual lies....they claim they give warnings, but more often than not, they just suspend people, no appeal, no warning, just suspension.  Even when they do give a warning....something in your gallery may be amiss, correct it in 72 hours or be banned.  Umm, I have 500+ things in my gallery, care to be a lil more specific?  Its just incredibly lazy staff.

And to dare say its our private board, we do what we want....really?  then dont expect donation to support YOUR board
FoxWolfie
11 years, 6 months ago
I agree. About half the people in some of the forums are there because they were banned from the main site.  For those who are banned, or who run into problems, I don't imagine or expect that they'd want to donate or support anything.  It's unlikely that most users ever run into trouble though.  I doubt of most users have ever gone to the forum site - but they would if they were banned, and it was the only way to say anything.  So, you are going to get a much higher percentage of angered people there.  It's sort of like how the Firefox support forums are filled mainly with people who are complaining about something not working in their browser.  If you just look at the forums, you'd think it was the worst browser in the world.  In reality though, the people who use the forums are the ones who are having problems, while the vast majority never have a need to look there, since they aren't having any big problems.

Most FA users that I've talked with have never had any problem with the admins.  Most of the forum users probably have though.  There is something like 2,000 times more accounts on FA's main site as there are on the FA forums site.  Most of the hostility and angst seems to pop up in the forums, but it represents such a tiny fraction of the actual users.

If significant numbers of people start having problems with FA, they'd probably leave, and the admins would noticed a decline.  Instead, they've been getting a steady increase, even through bad times, like the cub porn ban. They probably lost 2,000 members in a matter of a few months over that, but they still gained more new members at the same time.  I won't deny that some people have gotten on the bad side of FA, for whatever reason, or maybe no reason at all.  So, those people leave and don't donate or support FA.  Luckily for them, there are lots of other furry sites, including this one, that they can go to.  The admins on FA have been friendly to me and to various friends I've talked with, so I don't know what the cause is for some people having problems.   Most convicted people will claim that they are innocent, whether they are a convict in some prison, or just a banned user from FA.  Most are probably not innocent though, but a very small amount almost certainly are.  Human justice isn't perfect.  I just don't see it as being worse on FA than it is in any other area.  All large sites ban people, sometimes wrongly, and banned people tend to not like the sites that do that to them, even if it was a justified banning.
Yiffox
11 years, 6 months ago
a lot of people on the forums are there to discuss the community, not because they were banned from the main site.  and its older users that got banned...basically post enough on the forums, dont kiss admin ass and you will get banned

by the way, I got banned yesterday on the forums for asking a question..

yes, thats what got me permabanned.  this by summercat who claimed they were acting badly 5 days ago and stepping away from admin duties for a bit....seems the lure of the ban hammer drew them back.
FoxWolfie
11 years, 6 months ago
Actually, I was reading the FA forums as that happened, and there are some things you did not mention here.  Rather than being banned, you were originally only suspended for a day to cool off.  Also, I saw very clearly that you were not banned for asking a question.  Anyone can go look up the threads involved, and any admin who was doing their job would have done the same.

This makes me wonder how many other people, who were banned or suspended in the past, simply go onto other sites and leave false impressions of why it happened.  I know that mistakes are made, because admins are no more perfect than any other humans, but you did not get banned for asking a question.  If I had not have been reading the forums a lot over the past couple days, and seen what happened in person, I might have assumed that you were innocent.

And yes, a lot of people are in the forums to discuss various things in the community.  Unfortunately, the forums are also the place many people run to when they are banned from the main site, in an attempt to get around their bans.  Of course, *some* people actually get banned in the forums before they are ever banned on the main site - *sometimes* because they draw attention to areas where they are intentionally breaking the rules, or because they even make threats against other people, or the site itself.  Having moderated numerous sites in the past, I've seen people try to get away with almost everything in almost every way.  *Most* of those people will turn around and blame their actions on anyone but themselves.
Yiffox
11 years, 6 months ago
you are taking summercat's word that they suspended me for a day.  That was a lie, whether they hit the wrong button or whatever, they lied.  The date the suspension was listed was clearly NEVER.  So intentionally or not, they did permaban me.

And i was asking a question, which they did not condone to answer the first time I asked it, or even this time, which why was did dragoneer go back on his statement that is was ridiculous to ban sonic and apply human ages to cartoons of animals.  And yes I did talk about how rude and a put off it is to users to defend actions by saying almost constantly that its our board dont like it, leave.  

what was the admins reaction for daring to question dragoneer?  permaban and lie and say it was only a day

so more lies from the admins at FA, go figure.
GetPsychoCat
11 years, 6 months ago
I find it more interesting why they only had a single server. You would have thought with a site getting thousands of people using it a day, they would have had a redundant server in case the primary one breaks down.
MaDrow
11 years, 6 months ago
errr...WTF are you doing with so much space?

Also why do you care about FA? I thought you left it....

It's known that your house is more skilled in tech than all the admins houses of FA together.
Kupok
11 years, 6 months ago
Re: So Much Space-
 We like movies. But DVDs are not reliable. THey scratch. They degrade. All of our games, CDs, DVDs, etc are backed up. Too often have we been in the mood for a movie, only to pull it out and have issues.

Also porn.

Re: FA
 I do care about FA. As things stand, it is still the front face of the fandom. Believe it or not, I do wish to see it succeed. It needs to sack Yak and reign in it's insecure code first.
MaDrow
11 years, 6 months ago
" Kupok wrote:
Re: So Much Space-
 We like movies. But DVDs are not reliable. THey scratch. They degrade. All of our games, CDs, DVDs, etc are backed up. Too often have we been in the mood for a movie, only to pull it out and have issues.

Also porn.

Heh I see |=(:3

" Kupok wrote:

Re: FA
 I do care about FA. As things stand, it is still the front face of the fandom. Believe it or not, I do wish to see it succeed. It needs to sack Yak and reign in it's insecure code first.

I'm pretty sure there are more skilled coders than yak who have a member account on FA. But unfortunately FA's tactic is security through obscurity and kicking the bugfinding talents off the site.
And as you could see from FA's donation page, the trust in FA is as good as null.
Also why reinventing the wheel again when there are better sites with 'better' admins out there?
RuscoIstar
11 years, 6 months ago
I still shake my head to that day when they decided to kick and ban Vee. Alex single handedly could had zapped a lot of bugs and was making a good progress with Ferrox. Of course that he has an attitude problem, all geniuses do, but as a fellow coder I still would literally suck his dick to just get one tenth of his skill.
MaDrow
11 years, 6 months ago
Hey I didn't know you also write code.

Wasn't Vee only skilled in Perl and Python?

Not that it is a big deal since those languages have a lot of in common with PHP, but it could be used as excuse for not hiring him.
RuscoIstar
11 years, 6 months ago
Supposedly I'm studying computer engineering, and still I haven't contributed with any significant project or piece of code :/

And that's his most developed area, his expertise, his comfort zone. You should see how much he rants about X or Y language or paradigm XD

In fact he wasn't only hired. He was the lead developer of Ferrox, which was going to be a start from scratch.
MaDrow
11 years, 6 months ago
" RuscoIstar wrote:
Supposedly I'm studying computer engineering, and still I haven't contributed with any significant project or piece of code :/

Neither I. One time I created my own but It's already matured, so the development is ended till something very much changes to the Java Runtime |=(:P

" RuscoIstar wrote:

And that's his most developed area, his expertise, his comfort zone. You should see how much he rants about X or Y language or paradigm XD

I think I've seen enough of that in the previous #agnph channel.


OK, You made my day honestly. This is focking hilarious |=(:D
RuscoIstar
11 years, 6 months ago
FA has tried to start from scratch thrice XD
MaDrow
11 years, 6 months ago
Well, it gives a clear message about it's administration, right? |=(XD
GetPsychoCat
11 years, 6 months ago
" MaDrow wrote:
And as you could see from FA's donation page, the trust in FA is as good as null.

Without a proper networking setup (redundant server, not using beta-quality software, viable disaster recovery planning) its no wonder. People won't pay cash for a service that doesn't work, as RIM have found out after the infamous 2011 Blackberry outage.
MaDrow
11 years, 6 months ago
Exactly, and that's why I also fully agree with your previous comment:
" silvergunner wrote:
I find it more interesting why they only had a single server. You would have thought with a site getting thousands of people using it a day, they would have had a redundant server in case the primary one breaks down.

Having a backup server -or at least reliable spare parts in stock- is just a must when you run a site with so many visitors.

We should start a class action against Ferrox LLC for the bad service and donate all the compensations to IB and SF sites who deserve to stay online. |=(;þ

MaDrow
11 years, 6 months ago
Update: It seems that FA has a backup server. But I think FA just has it to have it.
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