Ginka Migration Thread

[Nyr]

Since the game isn't "down" (i.e., we planned this), I made a new thread for everyone.  Yay.

[Xeran Van Houten]

*saving this post for later*


-----

I look forward to playing on this new server thing.

[Pale Horse]

*saving this post for later*

>steal space Xeran.

[Nyr]

*saving this post for later*

>steal space Xeran.

>steal boots space

[valeria]

Oh, Ginka migration.  You just had to happen on my first night 'off' of a very busy and stressful week.  I seem to remember Lizzie grumbling somewhere about something similar.

I think you guys planned this.  It's a plot to make me watch TV tonight instead.

[Semper]

How will I fall asleep now? Too much going on in my head ... 

[Semper]

Does the migration mean no more (or a lot fewer) crashes/reboots/etc? I suspect reboots will still be necessary, but what else might be effected by the upgrade?

[Nyr]

Does the migration mean no more (or a lot fewer) crashes/reboots/etc? I suspect reboots will still be necessary, but what else might be effected by the upgrade?

The particular option we've chosen is one we hope will be better.   The crashes we have had are software based--problems in the code.  The reboots we have had are either necessary (fixing code) or just thoughtful (if we've been up for a long time we generally try to reboot for the hell of it).  Anything else is conjecture and I'd rather not venture into that realm without knowing for certain after a few days of testing.

[Potaje]

With a broader band width less lags, correct?

[Zoan]

Nyr just wanted to start his own thread so he could one-up my popularity. I can see the politics in this. Cad.

[Bebop]

Ginka has shed it's physical form and is transcending into the interwebs.  Godspeed Ginka.

No srsly, I hope this makes you stop lagging. 

[HavokBlue]

I can't wait until I can transcend my physical form and live in the internet.

[brytta.leofa]

I miss my PC.  Addiction: renewed.

[Redheart]

I can't wait until I can transcend my physical form and live in the internet.

We have been subordinate to our limitations until now. The time has come to cast aside these bonds and to elevate our consciousness to a higher plane. It is time to become a part of all things.

I wonder where I'll go now. The net is vast and infinite.

[Jdr]

I can't wait until I can transcend my physical form and live in the internet.

The day you can get cranial ethernet ports is the day I stand in line.

[Feco]

Atonement & SOI have probably experienced in influx of players already.


Just sayin'.

EDIT:  Temporary players.  They are all gonna go away come tomorrow.

[Nyr]

Nyr just wanted to start his own thread so he could one-up my popularity. I can see the politics in this. Cad.

A cad.

[Tiernan]

There's never a good time to have a complete system outage when you're a service provider.  However,  a Tuesday evening / Wednesday was the least intrusive.   It gives us some time to test out the new server in a production mode before we go into the mad frenzy of activity that is the weekend.  If there are a few migration issues, it's better to have them knocked out during the week.

[BleakOne]

There's something about Doctor Who and a pirate flag with a cat-and-crossbones on it which makes me feel reassured.

I have no idea why. 

[Reiloth]

This move to a virtual server sounds like a great call, Tiernan.

[Mooney]

In one night without Arms, I cooked myself a hearty, balanced dinner, rediscovered my love for music and art, and did some soul searching. It's freaky.

Drug me up soon, crackageddon.

[Canned Heat]

I read war and piece, and figured out how to cure male pattern baldness....krath!! I'm gonna be rich!

[Niamh]

Don't just sit there, DO something!   

Go play outside
Read a good book
Learn to do something new
Cook a nice meal for yourself
Take a short trip to visit friends/family
Seize the opportunity to do something you've never done before


Enjoy real life for the day, and all the fun activities it has to offer.

[Lizzie]

I'm still scared. I imagine when the game shifts to Arm Reborn, I'll be taking Xanax for the month prior.
Lizzie doesn't like drastic changes outside her own control.

[Cutthroat]

"Ginka migration"
Scarcely describes this move towards
Immortality.

[Marshmellow]

I think it is kinda chumpy that Semper couldn't get his app in because they started the server move earlier than the announcement said it would be begun at.  Sorry, dude.

[Redheart]

It wasn't really staff fault, the migration time frame was given, and I believe they said it was approximate. Everyone was at the schedule/whim of the new provider.

[Feco]

Get a daily dose of Armageddon + nostalgia (if you're old) or history (if yer noobz like me)

http://waybackmachine.org/*/http://www.armageddon.org

[Redheart]

09/24/2008: Fixed crafting (and lots of other code) to use "a" and "an" articles correctly -- Xygax

This still isn't 100%, but it's better than it used to be.

08/09/2007: Added descriptions for 71 rooms in Kalashasa (Arm 2.0) -- Naox
08/08/2007: 20 room descriptions put in for the Tablelands (Arm 2.0) -- Domino
08/08/2007: New story posted in the Reborn Blog (view) -- Domino
08/07/2007: Added descriptions for 16 rooms in Kalashasa, created 10 NPCs for Ruins of Tuluk -- Naox

Ah, the glory days, I wish we still got updates like this.

[Nyr]

I think it is kinda chumpy that Semper couldn't get his app in because they started the server move earlier than the announcement said it would be begun at.  Sorry, dude.

If anyone was planning to wait until 30 minutes before Armageddon was scheduled to migrate (and an hour and a half after it could have started), it's not really our fault.  Saikun posted an update yesterday morning at 9:52 AM Eastern giving notice not to plan anything after 8 PM or so (that's a solid 10 hour window to get an app in).  Maeve warned about the server move being possibly sooner and moved the deadline forward a bit, leaving 5.5 hours to get an app in.

In short, if you were planning to wait until the last minute, you picked the wrong day to do it (and the wrong minute, at that).  We provided updates twice during the day to give people time to do anything they needed to do, ensuring they could handle things before either the announced deadline or the updated announced deadline.  If life schedules didn't allow for someone to get their app in until the last minute, that's unfortunate.  

If you really want a role, don't procrastinate on your application.  edit to add:  'cause we want to eat brains sooner than later

[Malifaxis]

Don't just sit there, DO something!   

Go play outside

Did YOU actually just say that!??!

[Marshmellow]

Oh, don't get me wrong.  I think he shouldn't have waited, but some allowance being made would be nice.

[Semper]

Oh, don't get me wrong.  I think he shouldn't have waited, but some allowance being made would be nice.

Thanks for the thought, but I understand deadlines and all that. Just didn't cross my mind that the request tool would also be down with the server migration until after it happened.

[Marauder Moe]

I should update my character's biography.

[boog]

I should update my character's biography.

Me too.

(God damn 'o' button sticking...)

[Majikal]

http://www.tinychat.com/zalanthasmud Let's do it folks.

[Morgenes]

http://www.tinychat.com/zalanthasmud Let's do it folks.

I don't see what the buzz is about, it's just me in a room talking to myself.  I mean, the conversation is great, and I love answering all my own questions, but eventually it gets old.

[valeria]

Am I the only person picturing vast herds of ginka vines shambling their way across sub-Saharan Africa?

[Anaiah]

Am I the only person picturing vast herds of ginka vines shambling their way across sub-Saharan Africa?

I actually flashback on the movie The Lawnmower Man and think of Job as Ginka.

[Adhira]

http://www.tinychat.com/zalanthasmud Let's do it folks.

I went there. There was talk about Mul babies.

[Majikal]

http://www.tinychat.com/zalanthasmud Let's do it folks.

I went there. There was talk about Mul babies.

Wielding Mul babies as powerful weapons.

[warforged32]

Does the migration mean no more (or a lot fewer) crashes/reboots/etc? I suspect reboots will still be necessary, but what else might be effected by the upgrade?

The particular option we've chosen is one we hope will be better.   The crashes we have had are software based--problems in the code.  The reboots we have had are either necessary (fixing code) or just thoughtful (if we've been up for a long time we generally try to reboot for the hell of it).  Anything else is conjecture and I'd rather not venture into that realm without knowing for certain after a few days of testing.

And us people who sell to the NPC peeps appreciate those thoughtful restarts ^_^

[warforged32]

I can't wait until I can transcend my physical form and live in the internet.

We have been subordinate to our limitations until now. The time has come to cast aside these bonds and to elevate our consciousness to a higher plane. It is time to become a part of all things.

I wonder where I'll go now. The net is vast and infinite.

Wherever you "go", try not to plug up the "tubes"
'cause the internet is a series of tubes, y'know...

[Feco]

http://www.tinychat.com/zalanthasmud Let's do it folks.

I went there. There was talk about Mul babies.

Wielding Mul babies as powerful weapons.

The M tribe was nice while it lasted.

[Akaramu]

I'll probably be too tired to get online when it's back up. I had the looooooongest day. *collapse*

[Saikun]

As we're testing things, you may find systems coming up and going away, like the web page, the game, or whatever. Please hold off on doing anything until we say it's up for sure. Otherwise, you might lose data or screw something up.

-S

[Tiernan]

Hello folks,

You'll be happy to know that everything appears to have survived the migration.   We're going to go ahead and open the game up to players now, with the caveat that we may need to take it down and fix any unexpected errors which crop up.  Hopefully we won't have any issues and we'll let things play out, so to speak.

The new IP address is:  209.159.155.236

Game on!

Tiernan

[zakattack]

This move to a virtual server sounds like a great call, Tiernan.

Also excited to see how everything performs on the new server.

We moved from having co-located machines to one dedicated machine and one virtual machine from Softlayer a few months ago. Couldn't be happier, really. Same price per month, ten times the bandwidth speed, thirty times the quota for nearly the same price. Most importantly, no more hour and a half drive to get to the datacenter to get console access and I no longer have to spend a couple grand every few years to upgrade the hardware. Only concession I had to make was to go from FreeBSD to CentOS, which hasn't been too bad. As a bonus Softlayer connects to the same backbone as our ISP so our ping times were halved even though the physical distance has doubled from Portland to Seattle. Good times!

Out of curiosity, do you guys have any idea of how much bandwidth the mud consumes a month?

[Tiernan]

Also excited to see how everything performs on the new server.

Out of curiosity, do you guys have any idea of how much bandwidth the mud consumes a month?

Me too, we've had it to ourselves for about 6 weeks now but it's always different when you're operating at a test versus production level.

As for bandwidth, I'll defer to Saikun and Brixius, who admin the server and our boards respectively.  Since we've got them on different hosts it's not so easy to come up with a total bandwidth consumption number.  Being text-based, I'm sure that relatively speaking we're much lower than many other services.

[brytta.leofa]

For a total SWAG on just the MUD itself:

  50 lines of text per minute per user.
* 80 bytes per line.
* 20 users average
* 60 minutes / hour
* 12 hours / day
* 30 days / month
* 1 KB / 1024 bytes
* 1 MB / 1024 KB
= 1648 MB / month

[warforged32]

It can only handle 50 lines of text a minute? I sense there will be some issue
(Yeah, 'cause people can even type that fast... Not)

[zakattack]

Kudos to all the staff for working so hard to have such a fast transition!

[Morgenes]

It can only handle 50 lines of text a minute? I sense there will be some issue
(Yeah, 'cause people can even type that fast... Not)

I believe that was an estimate from brytta.leofa.  We do not have specific network traffic data to share.

[brytta.leofa]

It can only handle 50 lines of text a minute? I sense there will be some issue
(Yeah, 'cause people can even type that fast... Not)

That's just me making a wild guess of how much text the game might send the average player in the average minute.  I suspect it's actually way lower than that.

[lordcooper]

It can only handle 50 lines of text a minute? I sense there will be some issue
(Yeah, 'cause people can even type that fast... Not)

That's just me making a wild guess of how much text the game might send the average player in the average minute.  I suspect it's actually way lower than that.

Maybe not actually, spam walking sure can build up a wall of text.

[Bebop]

Just wanted to say thank you to the staff.  Thanks for keeping us all informed as Ginka took on her incorporeal form.  Grats on the migration going smoothly.  Also, thanks for getting us upgraded and all of your work on keeping our crackageddon running.  Kudos!

[Akaramu]

Just wanted to say thank you to the staff.  Thanks for keeping us all informed as Ginka took on her incorporeal form.  Grats on the migration going smoothly.  Also, thanks for getting us upgraded and all of your work on keeping our crackageddon running.  Kudos!

+1

[BleakOne]

I'm happy Arms is back. Yay!

[Fredd]

I like it. I've noticed a major change in the lag, at least on my end.

[Dar]

Is it me or the lag increased dramatically lately?

[Nyr]

Is it me or the lag increased dramatically lately?

We found the problem, will let morg comment on it though.

edit:  I say we, Morg found the problem after the lag was noted

[Nyr]

Okay.  The lag we've been having for the past few months (intermittent, difficult to trace, and something we were pretty sure was network related) has been tracked down.  We (not me, the code folk) are working on a solution for it right now, but the problem itself has been found.  We've rectified the biggest contributor to it right now, we'll provide more info on it after we've got a solution in place.

[mansa]

is it the website?

[Tiernan]

We'd rather not comment further until we resolve the problem, as this would be tantamount to posting an exploit without having it fixed first.

[Fredd]

Aha. I was beaten to it. I just noticed a situation that makes things move at a crawl.

I wont post it though, sicne the staff seem to have it handled

[Myhrrn]

Aha. I was beaten to it. I just noticed a situation that makes things move at a crawl.

I wont post it though, sicne the staff seem to have it handled

You should send it in a request, it might help them.

[Morgenes]

Aha. I was beaten to it. I just noticed a situation that makes things move at a crawl.

I wont post it though, sicne the staff seem to have it handled

If you have something that you think is causing lag, please email me the details.

[Fredd]

Aha. I was beaten to it. I just noticed a situation that makes things move at a crawl.

I wont post it though, sicne the staff seem to have it handled

If you have something that you think is causing lag, please email me the details.

Morgenes@armageddon.org right?

[lepxii]

My 2 'sids, after playing for a bit, the new server/network/cloud a *HUGE* step up from ginka/snet in terms of lag.

[Morgenes]

[If you have something that you think is causing lag, please email me the details.

Morgenes@armageddon.org right?

That is correct, sir.

[Mooney]

Anybody getting random disconnects, that require a minute or two of wait to let back in?

Didn't happen before the migration, so I'm attributing it to something related to it.

[amish overlord]

I am getting random disconnects the past 15 minutes or so, sometimes not able to access a arm webpage. Even a few issues checking the gdb. Not sure if related.

Amish Overlord 

[shadeoux]

I'm not getting disco'd but I am getting huge spikes, where it locks up for 1min or so several times an hour, I see everyone else Disco but I just putter there inputting in l l score stat skills think gawd dis spice is good...
tee hee

[Tiernan]

We've been getting hit on/off most of the day by various spiders crawling all over our website, which may be contributing more to what's been happening.   We've been pretty good about setting up our website to deal with spiders in the past, yet we're continuing to check our new configuration and fine-tune it just the same.   We did ratchet back the website processes for the migration, mostly to see how the new server performed before we let it run wider.  If you've seen the website run a little slow now and again, that'd be why.

From a server resource perspective, our CPU utilization is fairly minor and our RAM footprint has plenty of free system RAM so we've little need to use actual O/S swap.  All in all, it looks very promising.   We'll figure out the website tuning soon enough.

I'm not getting disco'd but I am getting huge spikes, where it locks up for 1min or so several times an hour, I see everyone else Disco but I just putter there

The small bursts of lag, like 30-60 seconds we know of, (see earlier posts), and we're testing the fix for it before pushing it into production.

Anybody getting random disconnects, that require a minute or two of wait to let back in?

Didn't happen before the migration, so I'm attributing it to something related to it.

I would get those types of disconnects with great frequency on the old hardware, which I attributed to our old ISP.   Since not everyone is affected, it's tremendously challenging to troubleshoot.  I'm still thinking that it's related to the website interfering with the game process, but we'll keep looking.

[Mooney]

Far from complaining, glitches happen and the move overall has improved my playing experience.

Thanks for the hard work!

[LauraMars]

I desire graphs and charts.

[Morgenes]

Okay.  The lag we've been having for the past few months (intermittent, difficult to trace, and something we were pretty sure was network related) has been tracked down.  We (not me, the code folk) are working on a solution for it right now, but the problem itself has been found.  We've rectified the biggest contributor to it right now, we'll provide more info on it after we've got a solution in place.

Note that this was solved with the changes to biography that were pushed this morning.  Let's just say that some of you were using biography more than we had ever imagined.  Kudos.

[Malifaxis]

I desire graphs and charts.

I believe the lady made a request?

I wouldn't disrespect someone who just found their hairband, Morg.  This woman has POWAH.

[Adhira]

I don't believe we have any graphs and charts to share.

[Malifaxis]

I don't believe we have any graphs and charts to share.

Do you understand who you're talking to?  This is LauraMars.  You don't mess with LauraMars.  She's a ginger, and she knows how to use it.