Scheduled Server Maintenance(Completed for now)

[LadyPhoenix77]

Going to have a bit of server downtime to run some tests, with the increase of random server crashes and restarts we've been having today.

Now

Shouldn't last for more than a couple of hours.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

Sorry, decided to move up the testing, as the crashes continued to persist, and was being more of an inconvenience to try and play through and wait.

[LadyPhoenix77]

Bump, moved up the testing.

[_JM_]

Many thanks for the hard work.

Was getting a little ridiculous so I rather agree now is better.
Had the problem when portalled back from Deglos which LP77 fixed.
Crashed while Jay was putting things in the chest in his room and had to trash duplicates, so was fortunate was putting things away as other way round would have lost them.
Waited a while and then crashed about five minutes after logging back in when travelling the road to Tel.
Waited a while and then crashed again less than five minutes after logging back in again and trying to at least get to Tel as all I wanted was to get Jay to Tel to park him there so he was with the sick while I logged out to do an IC post.

Good fortune with finding the cause.

[LadyPhoenix77]

All is done, for now.

RAM in the server was bad, and needed replaced. Unfortunately the only RAM extra available at the moment was 512MB sticks. The old were 1 GB, so a bit of a downgrade for now.

Themicles may provide more information later.

[davicurtistaggart]

thank you for all your efforts.why,you should be promoted to lp76 or lp75,at least

[Shannen]

Thank you, Themi and LP77!

[princessofjustice]

tHX Themi and LP lOVE YAHgUYS

[Themicles]

Some technical info for anyone interested:

The server has two PC2700 DDR slots (not DDR2, not DDR3). The slots are capable of running dual channel configuration if two matching sticks are used. The RAM that was in the server was a matched pair (dual channel kit) of 1 GB Kingston HyperX memory.

When running MemTest86+ to test the RAM, errors started to occur around the 6th or 7th test in the first pass. I then tested each stick individually and they both had errors around those two tests. This was with a wall time of around 10 to 15 minutes each time I changed the RAM.

The spare RAM I swapped in were two 512MB PC2700 sticks. Generic brand. This dropped Poseidon from 2 GB of RAM to 1 GB of RAM. It's just barely enough, and may affect performance under heavy load after extended uptimes.

We could order new RAM, but the whole system is aging. It's still running an Athlon XP on a micro-ATX board with pretty much no upgrade options. The system survived the frying of it's original power supply years ago, so that too leaves me with little confidence left in this hardware. Ideally, we'd build a new system from scratch to replace it.

If anyone is interested in helping to rebuild Poseidon, I will match* donations up to $250 total to go towards a rebuild. If that limit is reached, that $500 will build a more than capable machine for Hala/Ysgard easily.

*The time frame in which I will match it will depend on how soon the number is reached, and how much money has to go into a few remaining maintenance issues on the car.

[Moonyju]

Thanks for all the work, guys!

[Themicles]

If anyone is interested in helping to rebuild Poseidon, I will match* donations up to $250 total to go towards a rebuild. If that limit is reached, that $500 will build a more than capable machine for Hala/Ysgard easily.

*The time frame in which I will match it will depend on how soon the number is reached, and how much money has to go into a few remaining maintenance issues on the car.

I am going to have to retract this for the time being. My wife lost her job last week, and has been denied further unemployment given that she was on it so long and was only back to work for 3 months. We currently have no idea when money will be coming in again and must save what we can if we don't want to be stuck at home living off of my parents' food.