Forum Issues

[Klaus]

This morning we had an outage that lasted an hour or two.

The reason was that the latest NodeBB upgrade fucked up the server pretty badly, and amazingly it was at first not even possible to restore from the last backup (the good old trick of turning it off and then on again eventually worked).

It is possible that a small number of posts has been lost.

I'll investigate this in more detail when I have more time.

[Doctor Phibes]

@Klaus said in Forum Issues:

This morning we had an outage that lasted an hour or two.

The reason was that the latest NodeBB upgrade fucked up the server pretty badly, and amazingly it was at first not even possible to restore from the last backup (the good old trick of turning it off and then on again eventually worked).

I thought it was the Russians. TNCR would be the obvious place to start if you want to bring down Western civilisation, after all.

[George K]

Any hope for the Twitter plug-in?

Or the spoiler plug-in?

[Klaus]

@George-K said in Forum Issues:

Any hope for the Twitter plug-in?

Or the spoiler plug-in?

Yes. I have a plan on how to make both work again.

The problem is: The "restore from backup" functionality is still not working. I'm currently in discussion with a guy from Cloudron (that's the software responsible for that) on how to solve that. I'm hesitant to risk anything before having a working backup functionality.

[George K]

@Klaus said in Forum Issues:

@George-K said in Forum Issues:

Any hope for the Twitter plug-in?

Or the spoiler plug-in?

Yes. I have a plan on how to make both work again.

The problem is: The "restore from backup" functionality is still not working. I'm currently in discussion with a guy from Cloudron (that's the software responsible for that) on how to solve that. I'm hesitant to risk anything before having a working backup functionality.

Thanks for the reply. It's more of an annoyance than anything else, of course. A minor thing compared to the catastrophe of a few days ago.

[Larry]

I can't get the "quote" icon to work.

[Klaus]

@Larry said in Forum Issues:

I can't get the "quote" icon to work.

Can you be more specific?

[Klaus]

@George-K said in Forum Issues:

@Klaus said in Forum Issues:

@George-K said in Forum Issues:

Any hope for the Twitter plug-in?

Or the spoiler plug-in?

Yes. I have a plan on how to make both work again.

The problem is: The "restore from backup" functionality is still not working. I'm currently in discussion with a guy from Cloudron (that's the software responsible for that) on how to solve that. I'm hesitant to risk anything before having a working backup functionality.

Thanks for the reply. It's more of an annoyance than anything else, of course. A minor thing compared to the catastrophe of a few days ago.

OK, reinstalled plugins this morning (I found a way to make a backup of the whole server, not just the forum - that should do as a safety measure).

This is the "standard" Twitter plugin, without the modification I made (which was to add a link below the embedded tweet). There were some posters who were having a problem with the embedded tweets, so maybe they'll be unhappy with the plugin. However, I'd rather not use my modification of the plugin again, because the status of being an "unofficial" plugin caused some of the problems we had.

Also :

click to show

Here's the spoiler plugin again.

[Klaus]

The Twitter plugin does seem to be a little fragile. When I embed a tweet and hit "reply", I can't immediately see the tweet but only when I reload the page. Maybe it's just my particular browser. Let's see how that works.

[Larry]

@Klaus said in Forum Issues:

@Larry said in Forum Issues:

I can't get the "quote" icon to work.

Can you be more specific?

It's working now.

[Klaus]

OK, backup is working again. Luckily the Cloudron developers are quite helpful.

Turns out I stumbled upon a Cloudron bug they fixed a week ago, but the fix hasn't been officially released yet.

https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/box/-/commit/7ed8678d50846bf85802bf6b706e12c1f026ec77

[Axtremus]

@Klaus said in Forum Issues:

Turns out I stumbled upon a Cloudron bug they fixed a week ago, but the fix hasn't been officially released yet.

https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/box/-/commit/7ed8678d50846bf85802bf6b706e12c1f026ec77

Looks like they just increased the timeout by 10x to cope with restoration of larger backups that need more time to complete. Give it enough time and our backup bundle will also grow to 10x its current size and will break this "fix" again. :man-shrugging:

Also an indication that Cloudron has not been used to support bigger deployments yet, seeing that we are among the first to stumble into this bug. We just may be the inspiration and the driving force that push Cloudron to scale better.

[Klaus]

@Axtremus said in Forum Issues:

Looks like they just increased the timeout by 10x to cope with restoration of larger backups that need more time to complete. Give it enough time and our backup bundle will also grow to 10x its current size and will break this "fix" again.

Actually, that's exactly what I told the developer, too It's a workaround and not a fix.

[taiwan_girl]

Not really related but kind of.

But what is the business model of the company where we have this forum? I dont understand how/where they are making money. even enough to pay for us!

[Axtremus]

@taiwan_girl Three parts to this:

1. The hardware & infrastructure part: we pay another company whose business is to rent out server hardware/infrastructure (to whoever willing to pay to rent them) to rent some server hardware/infrastructure for our use.

2. Software: we use free software (running on the rented hardware/infrastructure) to provide this thing we call TNCR for our own use. Why is the software free? Well, you can Google and read articles on why there are so much free software out there, or you can just enjoy it without knowing why ... it is sufficient to know that you can very easily go onto the Internet to download free software for your own use, we are basically doing the same with the software that powers TNCR.

3. Operations: the expertise, time, and effort that some humans put into keeping TNCR running. This is all volunteer work for TNCR, so far with @Klaus putting in the lion's share of this work. Why do people volunteer? Maybe @Klaus has an ulterior motive or an evil master plan behind all this, but personally I am happy to just take advantage of his work without thinking much about his motivation. It's just easier for me that way so I am going with it.

[Klaus]

@taiwan_girl said in Forum Issues:

Not really related but kind of.

But what is the business model of the company where we have this forum? I dont understand how/where they are making money. even enough to pay for us!

In addition to what Ax said: one main part of the software stack that was causing problems, Cloudron, is a commercial software. It is only free because we are running only one thing on it, namely the server. If you want to run more than two things on it, a subscription is needed.

We also do pay for two services, namely the rental of the server and the domain name. In total, it’s about 80 Euros per year, which is/was mostly covered by donations.

Ax is right about my evil plan, but you’ll only learn about it when it’s too late.

[Mik]

@Klaus said in Forum Issues:

The Twitter plugin does seem to be a little fragile. When I embed a tweet and hit "reply", I can't immediately see the tweet but only when I reload the page. Maybe it's just my particular browser. Let's see how that works.

I tried that and it does not work. Still can't see Twitter links, it just shows a gray bar. URL links work fine.

[Klaus]

@Mik which browser are you using? Any plugins/ad blockers activated?

[Mik]

Using Edge, no plugins, but there is an ad blocker. Never bothered it before. The ad blocker is just in Edge, no third party software.

[taiwan_girl]

@Axtremus @Klaus

Wait a second. We (I guess the we does not include me. 555) have to pay for this forum?

We should probably take up a collection or something.