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System Downtime, Maintenance

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the brace-yourself-for-fun-and-excitement dept.

We're taking the system down tonight for a some system updates. We expect to go down around 9 (eastern) and hope to be back up by midnight. This is a pretty substantial upgrade, but the changes are almost entirely 'Under the Hood' type fixes: architecture stuff that shouldn't really impact much end user functionality. When the dust settles we expect there to be a few bugs cropping up, so please click that 'Bugs' link on the left hand menu and submit reports so we can squash them quickly. And sorry about the inconvenience. We know it will be hard to live without us for a few hours, but I figure some quality time with your friends and family might just be long overdue! (Also, for the curious, a brief summary of what the change is actually all about follows) Ok, so when I wrote the original code for Slashdot, I had these "Sections" and these "Topics". You're familiar with both I'm sure... the "Sections" are like "Apple" and "BSD". They have unique color schemes, and their own homepages. The "Topics" are specific areas of subject matter... you know them because they each have a colorful little icon associated with them... like for example the rockin 'Slashdot' logo that is attached to this story.

When I originally "designed" (I use the term loosely since evolved is more accurate) the system, "Sections" were meant to be for "Data Types"... for example "Book Reviews". A book review is fundamentally different than a Slashdot "Article" because it has extra fields like the ISBN code. At the same time I essentially coded "Skins" because each "Data Type" needed custom look & feel type stuff so that the story could actually display the unique data fields.

So when we created YRO and the BSD section and later on the Apple section, I just reused the skinning part of "Sections".. it was the easiest way to do it, but it created problems later: under the old design a story could only have one "Section"... some sections defined "Data Type" and others defined "Subject Matter" (like Apple or BSD)... thats why bsd.slashdot.org can never include a book review, and apple.slashdot.org can't include an 'Ask Slashdot'. This confounded users of our search page to no ends, to say nothing of frustrating editors who couldn't include topical stories within their appropriate section.

Undoubtedly we'll see some bugs to pop up... so please be patient and submit bug reports. We'll be wacking bugs for a few days... there's always a few of them that don't pop up until you put them in front of the half a million users on the real hardware. Thanks for understanding!

40 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. 9 eastern? by lecithin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Thanks for the advanced notice!!!!!

    --
    It could be worse, it could be Monday.
    1. Re:9 eastern? by oudzeeman · · Score: 5, Funny

      slashdot isn't that crucial to your Friday night, is it?

    2. Re:9 eastern? by maxbang · · Score: 5, Funny

      Are you kidding? This is worse than having all six suns setting for the first time in thousands of years. I have no choice but to watch Stargate: Atlantis and finish the other half of this pizza feast. Fatter, yes. Completely insane, also yes. Plans for Friday night, of course not.

      --
      I also reply below your current threshold.
    3. Re:9 eastern? by Squareball · · Score: 5, Funny

      I wonder if the subscribers get the downtime before the rest of us?

    4. Re:9 eastern? by Pharmboy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Oh, I almost forgot, while slashdot is down, you should check out this homestarrunner "system is down" message.

      Trust me.

      --
      Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
    5. Re:9 eastern? by Pathwalker · · Score: 4, Informative

      What's more likely is that the phone reps are penalized for canceling accounts, so he made up an excuse to get you to call back on a day when he wasn't going to be working.

    6. Re:9 eastern? by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Informative

      That is most likely it exactly. The only phone reps who are allowed to cancel accounts in most mega-company setups (AOL, credit card issuers, insurance firms, etc.) are people who are specially trained to try to talk you out of canceling, and statistics are kept on how well they perform. A person who calls, gets to the cancelation reps, and doesn't actually go through with it is scored as a "save", and various metrics are computed to determine the saves per time worked, number of calls taken, etc. and compared to the company averages or arbitrary metrics.

      I think the grandparent poster just encountered somebody who was lying about being unable to process the cancelation so that they'd be given a save in order to boost the numbers. I don't think top-level management would approve of such a tactic, but it's certainly possible a mid-level manager would "look the other way" about his "star performer"...

  2. At least... by example42 · · Score: 5, Funny

    At least it's night time (here) so I can go outside to play. The evil burning brightness is gone for 8 hours.

  3. Uh oh.... by Kymermosst · · Score: 4, Funny

    20,000 nerds are going to have to find something else to do for three hours...

    --
    "Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
    1. Re:Uh oh.... by Kpt+Kill · · Score: 4, Funny

      Just jam on refresh until the page comes back

  4. NO! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    uh oh, no /. for 3 hours! I might have to actually interact with people in meatspace! say it ain't so!!!

  5. Downtime... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You forgot to add, "Do not attempt sexual relations, as years of computer monitor radiation have left
    your genitals withered and useless."

  6. Question.... by Lurch+Kimded · · Score: 4, Insightful

    9pm eastern... Whats that in GMT? ;)

    Good luck with the upgrade, I hope Sod and his law stay far... FAR away.

    --

    How can you say that civilisation's do not advance... in every war we invent new ways to kill you.

  7. Be sure to do a backup by Neil+Blender · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just kidding.

  8. Bad timing by GuyMannDude · · Score: 5, Funny

    We expect to go down around 9 (eastern) and hope to be back up by midnight.

    Oh that's just great. Now what the hell am I supposed to do with myself on a Friday night? Go downtown and watch all the cool people on their dates?

    Couldn't you guys have scheduled this downtime for sometime during my work hours so I could actually get something done at the office for a change?

    GMD

    --
    watch this
  9. never thought i'd get to say it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    last comment

    1. Re:never thought i'd get to say it... by daeley · · Score: 5, Funny

      Don't get too excited, this story will have a dupe by Sunday. ;)

      --
      I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
  10. Real Life Test by Duct+Tape+Pro · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is really a test to see if real life's servers can handle all the slashdot users trying to interact with it at once.

    --
    i hotdog.
  11. So, what are the changes? by Star_Gazer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Taco, all you do is describe what the current design (step of evolution) is, but what are the changes?. Obviously, you will have removed those restrictions, but you don't say so. :)

    1. Re:So, what are the changes? by Pharmboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think it means we are the beta testers, and the goal is to make it LOOK and feel the same, just different mechanically.

      Believe me, anytime something isn't working right, you can just grep through the comments and find all the complains and debugging information you can stand.

      --
      Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
  12. How about upgrading to valid html? by kevin_conaway · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And re-doing the layout in proper css?

    1. Re:How about upgrading to valid html? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's already been done, but no one wants to actually update Slashcode.

    2. Re:How about upgrading to valid html? by jamie · · Score: 4, Informative
      A pair of coders who use Slash are being generous with their time and effort, and working on migrating Slash to XML... we hope to work with them soon to get their work into the main Slash distribution.

      Migrating a whole site to XHTML is much, much harder than doing a mockup of one page.

  13. Aw come on :( by happyhippy · · Score: 4, Funny

    I was about to launch my DOS attack on /. at that time!

  14. Re:Edit? by Star_Gazer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Editing posts is evil! It may seem like a good idea for fixing that stupid typo or the wrong link, but it usually ends in deleted/edited posts where people just don't stand up to their words and nobody can follow what the reason for the discussion/flamewar was.

    I see it all the time on other discussion forums, it's no fun!

  15. Crossing my fingers by MooseByte · · Score: 4, Funny

    "We're taking the system down tonight for a some system updates. We expect to go down around 9 (eastern) and hope to be back up by midnight.".

    If I had stock options for every time I'd tried that and ended up having to scurry in a panic through the weekend... Oh wait, I'd still be broke. Nevermind.

    Best of luck guys!

  16. LP? by zoloto · · Score: 5, Funny

    Last Post?!?

  17. Re:oh no... by FyRE666 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm a geek! What am I to do until Slashdot returns?
    Set up a mirror? ;-)

    --
    Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
  18. Exactly. by cgenman · · Score: 5, Funny

    I agree. Anytime *I* have to take anything out of production for our 1500-odd users at the company I work at, they require *AT LEAST* 12 hours notice, if not more. Usually, we give 24.

    Do you have any idea how much of a disruption to the workflow at my company Slashdot going down is? If we don't keep the engineers distracted, they'll start interacting with the customers! The customers will be speaking to someone who knows something. Then the customer will know something. Then our business is ruined.

    Thanks Slashdot. Thanks a lot. I hope you like your prescious backend update. In Japan.

    --
    The ______ Agenda
  19. It will be interesting to see what happens by SteamyMobile · · Score: 5, Funny
    Slashdot switching from mod_perl to a JSP/Servlet backend is going to be a very interesting change. It will finally put an end to all this "Java is not scalable enough" and "Java is slow" type of talk we see here.

    If it doesn't work, then I'm guessing that Slashdot will move to the ultimate in stable, secure and scalable web architectures: ASP.net.

  20. Time::timelocal() says... by gkwok · · Score: 5, Funny

    The downtime will be between 1090026000 and 1090036800.

  21. Re:oh no... by PiGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wow, you guys should do this more often. During the time Slashdot was down, I found a girlfriend, got a secure, high-paying job, learned to ski, and seamlessly integrated KDE and GNOME into the Next Big Thing(tm).

  22. Thank god it's back up! by bergeron76 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I've actually had to work for the past few hours.

    [shudder]

    --
    Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
  23. Slashdotting by MaverickUW · · Score: 4, Funny

    I didn't know what had happened. I was starting to wonder if slashdot had referenced itself and somehow experienced the slashdot effect

  24. Re:Edit? by Alsee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A lot of the time you just want to fix a typo or broken tag moments after posting (even when you *did* use preview).

    So how about only allowing edits so long as the post has not been modded and no one has replied yet? As far as I can see that avoids every objection to editing posts.

    -

    --
    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  25. Re:Edit? by Yorrike · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Or get rid of the circa 1997 layout.
    I mean, tables? C'mon!

    For a site that's constantly running stories on how people should switch to Mozilla and the like, they've decided to keep compatibility to Netscape 3.0.

    No geek runs a browser so old that they have to rely on tables for layout. Get with the program, /.

    --

    Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?

  26. yay Taco by Geno+Z+Heinlein · · Score: 4, Informative

    Thanks for upgrading the rss code. Now I don't have to load the RSS for all the subsections separately, because the main rss has all the stories.

    --
    Five percent of one year's DoD budget puts us on Mars.
  27. Re:Edit? by mooingyak · · Score: 5, Funny

    You'd also need something in place to check if a post you're replying to has been edited since you clicked on the 'Reply' button (or the 'moderate' button) so that you don't get this sequence:

    Poster: "I like dogs!"

    Another poster clicks reply, and starts to type.

    OP clicks edit, and changes to: "I like sex with dogs!"

    The 2nd poster now clicks on submit with "It's good to find someone with the same interests as me."

    --
    William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
  28. This is much better! by fmaxwell · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm so glad that Slashdot finally made the switch from Windows 98 to Windows98 Second Edition. I expect that this will make thing run much more smoothly.

  29. Re:oh no... by TopShelf · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well, I guess I'll just have to go outside, or talk to a girl...

    Most readers here would need a published API for such interaction...

    --
    Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more