What actually happens when the forums go down for maintenance?

[ManBearPig]

Read title. What exactly do you guys maintain? Just curious.

 

[AVAFREAK182]

anand needs to open a new tab

 

[sandorski]

Yo Mama

 

[Rubycon]

Honing of the ban stick to make insertion easier.

 

[ElFenix]

syringer's spider, of course. it needs fed crickets from time to time.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

The hamsters take a break.

 

[Kalmah]

They must jump up and down for 15 minutes because the dungeon floor is getting lumpy.

 

[dquan97]

The lifers and elites get together for a group hug

 

[silverpig]

Mod orgy.

 

[guyver01]

It's obvious that the dilithium matrix is realigned using positronic phase inverters to achieve a phase variance of 0.023 nanomicrons (nM), and if that doesn't work.. that a tacyon pulse is required to destabilize the intermix chamber, in order to prevent a full scale chamber cascade failure.. and as we all know... a cascade failure is really hard to fix.

 

[Rubycon]

It's obvious that the dilithium matrix is realigned using positronic phase inverters to achieve a phase variance of 0.023 nanomicrons (nM), and if that doesn't work.. that a tacyon pulse is required to destabilize the intermix chamber, in order to prevent a full scale chamber cascade failure.. and as we all know... a cascade failure is really hard to fix.

Actually I understand they switched to multiple quantum well epitaxial rings for improved performance and lower astigmatism at maximum throughput.

 

[guyver01]

Actually I understand they switched to multiple quantum well epitaxial rings for improved performance and lower astigmatism at maximum throughput.

yes... but that now requires a special tool to fix.

 

[Rubycon]

Version 10.1.02b will have intrinsic self healing ability!

 

[sandorski]

yes... but that now requires a special tool to fix.

:awe: Another Alien Abduction victim!

 

[guyver01]

Version 10.1.02b will have intrinsic self healing ability!

i heard that hit a glitch... the last guy that went into the intrisnic field generator... got... changed.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Probably something completely unnecessary. I asked in the technical forum issues forum and got a vague response. The very fact that vBulletin is built on PHP+MySQL is a sign that it's probably a piece of garbage. Then again, I'm not sure there are any forum packages that are very well written. It's a sad state of affairs.

My first guess would be backups. vBulletin seems to rely on MyISAM for full text searching, so this means that you can't have transaction support. Without transactions, you can't reliably back up a table without locking the table, preventing any writes to it. It's stone-age technology. I have to suffer with MyISAM in my day job and I'm pretty bitter about it shortcomings.

The forum could possibly still function in read-only mode, but I don't know if vBulletin supports such a thing. Even viewing a thread causes writes (incrementing the view count).

 

[Leros]

Maybe there is some sort of operation that requires the whole database to be locked. Some kind of backup or indexing perhaps. A lazy programmer could just lock the database to make the algorithm simpler.

 

[paulney]

The probes needs to be realigned.

 

[guyver01]

Probably something completely unnecessary. I asked in the technical forum issues forum and got a vague response.

LOL vague response.

This was the answer that was provided, and is quite accurate for database maintenance on an enterprise-level Database.

The sheer size of the database requires that maintenance tasks that may take seconds on small databases take several minutes on this database. The maintenance window is simply the MySQL databases being checked for errors and indexes updated.

 

[TridenT]

Backup at best. Nothing at realistic.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

LOL vague response.

This was the answer that was provided, and is quite accurate for database maintenance on an enterprise-level Database.

Having worked in "enterprise" environments, I have to say that whenever someone says that word with a straight face, expect a bunch of bullshit.

There is nothing "enterprise" about a web forum running on PHP and MySQL+MyISAM. It's a joke. A sad, cruel joke.

Having to "check for errors" is an artifact of MySQL's amateurish architecture and is not an operation that is required on any legitimate database. A real database, by its very nature, ensures consistency (part of what ACID guarantees).

 

[guyver01]

There is nothing "enterprise" about a web forum running on PHP and MySQL+MyISAM.

Well...

you can always ask for a refund of your membership fees if you're not happy with the forums.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Well...

you can always ask for a refund of your membership fees if you're not happy with the forums.

I never said that I expected any more for my $0. I'm simply describing it realistically.

Also, vBulletin is not free. I feel bad for anyone who's paid money for it.

 

[sandorski]

I never said that I expected any more for my $0. I'm simply describing it realistically.

Also, vBulletin is not free. I feel bad for anyone who's paid money for it.

It's far better than Fusetalk.

 

[Powermoloch]

They had to maintain their supply of mountain dew.