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Commodore
Russ Johnson

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USA
690 Posts

Initially Posted - 01/28/2015 :  14:35:19  Show Profile
To All Forum Users,

The Association Forum is having technical issues.
The solution is "in-progress", but I can give you the current status.

Background:
The Association Forum starting having technical issues in Aug-2014
When a user tried to access the forum, they would see the error
message:
-- Microsoft JET Database Engine error '80004005' --

When this happened, "Webmaster-Paul" would call the website hosting company and have them restart the service/server to allow access to the forum. This process usually took several hours.
After a few events, Paul showed me "Junior-Assistant-Russ" how to contact the website company to restart the server.

Note: Only the Forum was affected and other parts of the website working correctly.

While working with the website company, the exact cause of the problem was not determined, but there was a list of possible causes.
The forum software we use (Snitz software) only works on Windows-based Internet-Information-Services (IIS).
The forum is configured to use a Windows-based database file (.mdb file).

We have several theories:
A) Too many forum users on-line at the same time.
B) Too many open sessions, caused by forum users not logging off the forum before they close their browser.
C) Spammers accessing the forum, creating forum accounts and other activity (related to Item-A and Item-B).
D) Too many people searching the archive posts, causing the server to crash while searching data.
E) Too much forum data.
F) Too many subscription emails (some forum users get an email for every forum post).
G) Combinations of all of the above.

Solution:
Because the error message is related to the database connection, one choice is to replace the Windows-based files.
Researching the Snitz software, the forum supports a Linux-based database connection.
This means the current data needed to be exported from the current database and imported into a new database.
Note: The other choice was to lose all the forum posts and start over (no fun).
We were working on this export/import for the past month, to make the transition easier.
Because the forum was down several times this month without warning, we decided to make the transition earlier than expected.
This meant no advanced warning like we were planning.

Current Status:
On Jan-24, the forum crashed.
On Jan-24, we used a forum backup and started the exported/imported the forum data to the Linux database server.
On Jan-28, the export/import was complete and the forum was available.
Note: This is the "delivered" Snitz forum page layout and it does not include the "Association" pages or menu.
We are continuing to add the "Association" pages and menu to the forum (so we aren't done yet).
We hope to have the forum "just like it use to look" available soon.

You can always send me an email at commodore@catalina-capri-25s.org

Thank you for your support and understanding.
Russ Johnson,
Commodore

Russ Johnson, Commodore 2009-2022 (commodore at catalina-capri-25s.org)
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