[Alex Pepple]

Dear Eratosphereans,

Be informed that Eratosphere will be going offline a little later today - for maintenance/migration, initial phase - at about 8 pm PDT. I expect it to remain off for several hours, and how long will depend on the speed of systems and processors involved. Sorry for the relatively short notice.

Cheers ... and thank you all for your support!
...Alex

[Alex Pepple]

System has been brought back up for now. Migration software appears buggy so the operation will resume once I resolve the problem - hopefully with the help of the company that develops it, apparently charging a hefty fee for what appears to be a substandard tool!

Anyhow, stay tuned for a follow-up offline notice if and when the above problem is resolved ... if not, I'd really really hate to carry out the extremely tedious manual migration, and the attendant prolonged offline time period!

Cheers,
...Alex

[Alex Pepple]

After a lot of frustrating testing and debugging of the server setup, I'm ready for another go at it. So, this is another offline notice for today, around 7pm PDT.

Cheers,
...Alex

[Alex Pepple]

Even though it feels like I'm talking to myself in this thread, I'm reporting that last night's follow-up attempt at carrying out the migration failed as before, except that it's looking like the problem is with the service provider's network connection. They've been into it and think it's resolved, so I'll give it another go tonight, around 8 PDT, and the site will be unavailable then.

Cheers,
...Alex

[W.F. Lantry]

Alex,

Not to worry, lots of people are reading the thread... and keeping their fingers crossed for you! I know how frustrating these things can get... things that should just work sometimes don't, and looking under the hood (or under the false floor of the server room) simply reveals a confusing mass of spaghetti posing as fiber-optic cable!

Thanks for sticking with the problem!

Best,

Bill

[Alex Pepple]

Thanks, Bill. And for update, last night's attempt after the hosting company's supposed fix failed again just as before. Well, at least, they're now acknowledging connectivity problem with their equipment and connection and are "investigating". Hopefully, they'll provide a dependable system when they give the OK to try again. And it's good I'm finding the equipment problem now instead of when everything is loaded and running live on the new system.

Cheers,
...Alex

[Cyn Neely]

I figure these don't require comment, but I look for these announcements. Thanks Alex

[Alex Pepple]

Thanks, Cyn!

And there'll be another attempt tonight - the service provider thinks they've isolated and resolved the problem. So, the Sphere will be offline today, around 9pm PDT.

Thank you all again all again for your support!

Cheers,
...Alex

[Alex Pepple]

Last night's attempt was more of the same mode of failure. Since then, the service provider has again looked at things and again, think it's OK to try again. So, unfortunately, the saga continues and expect another offline event tonight, at around 9pm PDT.

Cheers,
...Alex

[Alex Pepple]

Didn't take last night either - what's new. But there are more instructions for more things to try by the service and hardware provider. So, although it's a short notice, expect another downtime tonight, and soon, in the next several minutes from this post's timestamp.

Cheers,
...Alex