main server failure

[adminless]

ok guys massive apologizes for the delay but it was quite a situation hehe unfortunately it turned out that the Friday morning around 11:30 CEST (UTC+02) the (now former) main server unexpectedly failed altogether (it just started rebooting itself each minute) and even after all these days the folks at this provider have even failed to stabilize it and fully repair it (ram, cpu, motherboard, power supply, rack, cabinet, infrastructure whatever the server kept failing only yesterday I was miraculously able to image it to restore everything until the Friday 16 of June of 2023 11:30 CEST [UTC+02] approx) so obviously I just moved the whole thing out (I mean, in process of). to make matters worse it broke a Friday which meant that the weekend service is limited to basic emergencies that made the whole thing even more difficult. anyways hopefully as you could see just as I realized that the situation was pretty serious and there was going to be downtime in the order of days just the Saturday eight in the morning I restored at least the game servers from the last physical emergency backup I keep on the desktop here on the best available deal I could grab so hopefully at least there was service on that aspect and from what I saw I think it even worked great. obviously the emergency local physical backup is a manual procedure that I only do from time to time (typically each season) which is why the version currently running on the new backup server (I now intend to keep that machine) is older as it's from spring. on the next days I look forward rolling out the last imaged version I managed to grab yesterday.

unfortunately for the website things took a bit more time as initially I was expecting a prompt solution so rolling "everything" out was probably not worth it. obviously it was by the Monday/Tuesday when there was no real further progress that then I just proceed to move everything and while there's still a ton of broken stuff to deploy which I'll go doing along the next days the site is now open again so you can keep track of this as usual. needless to say the contract with the previous provider has been terminated so the "main" server won't be back online, I'll roll out some new servers within these days (hopefully a new gaming machine tomorrow/the Friday) and I'll keep that backup server at least for now that it really saved the day so stay tuned. additionally I'm hosting this site now on the cloud and independently of the game servers (or when back online of the rest of the sites) for high availability so in the event something else would happen you can at least know first hand what's going on.

ok, enough said, I go back to roll out more data and servers, thank you very much for your patience and huge apologies for the downtime

[adminless]

new main game server (basically/partially) up already at ip 93.186.198.129 on all the usual ports since yesterday night check it out. as usual, I'll go completing that machine over the next days along with the rest of the things but that should be at least functional by now. this time it's the real deal, the last version of the servers not the outdated (two months old approx) emergency local physical backup copy of them that was currently running at the new backup server that hopefully I'll also properly setup next and once I setup some link with these site that should be where the server will run now. hopefully I'd expect probably in some more days/a week or so to have finally completed migrating and setting up everything properly so stay tuned.

[adminless]

finished now (except for UnFreeZe that required a cycle and it was almost full) manually adding the secondary ip 109.230.236.70 for the servers so check that out as well. the dns are currently inverted, by the way I had migrated this the "eu" route is now the main (and hence recommended) one while the "de" is the secondary/alternative. as said, hopefully on the next day I finish with the rest of the things (most notably the stats and a the downloads) but I guess that at least by now this should just work.

[PacMan]

You know what dude , everyone had withdrawal symptoms lol, so good job , what will we do without unfriz lel

Thanks , must have been time pressure .....

[adminless]

hehe I think the worst part about it was not really knowing if the last updated data could be fully recovered as it wasn't clear until the last minute. clearly as you saw I still run nevertheless a local physical emergency backup copy of the servers on a external hard disk (that probably I also gonna need to update soon) on my desk however happens that obviously that's a manual procedure that I only run from time to time (typically each season, 2-3 months, and/or after major changes/updates) so the last backup I had was about two months old (i.e. from spring) then about two months worth of material could have been lost. at the end of the day that's what really bothered me the most, the server itself not so much as I can always just grab another deals (as you can see) and that's exactly why I always turn down any sort of commercial offer that includes commitment as I know from experience that that's exactly where you lost big money on broken stuff.

I still have plenty of things left to setup but from I've seen I think that for a totally unplanned emergency migration that I had to take as it went it turned out pretty good and the servers are running great now and hopefully as I said thanks to the long term planning the whole operation only costed 15 euros (i.e. about a week worth of service costs that were lost) plus 6 euros of the spare micro server I run for emergency (i.e. around 21 euros in total) no big deal at all. yesterday/this morning I finished rolling out IPv6 on the new machine and decommissioning the previous secondary server that now will get replaced by the new proper backup server (the one that ran this on the emergency backup recovery plan and saved the day). let's see if today/tomorrow I can finally bring up this site downloads and the next week (approx) the rest of the things. as usual I'll keep this updated if anything relevant happens.

[imprecise]

Hi Adminless

Well done for recovering/repairing the fps.classico servers and the website, thank goodness you're organised and had anticipated this kind of problem.

A big thank you to you for your personal investment, your generosity and all the work you accomplished ...

I hope a lot of players and members will be grateful for your efforts to keep fps.classico and its servers alive.

Many people have realised how important these servers are to them and how crucial it is not to be able to connect to the servers to play and find their friends.

I hope this will motivate them to support fps.classico financially fpsclassico project funding links : personal: https://www.paypal.me/adminless - fpsclassico: https://paypal.fpsclassico.com (with this last link you can pay by credit card without creating a Paypal account)

Even if not everyone agrees with your choices, the fact remains that these servers have the merit of existing and functioning, and that they are correctly and fairly administered.

These servers, despite everything that can happen on them, are our joy and happiness.

We come together to play, have fun and chat, and that's why I'd like to thank you once again for everything you do...

Long life to you, take care of yourself, you are indispensable to us, sincerely friendly thoughts

[adminless]

ok, downloads and videos up now on the new (now proper/useful) secondary server so hopefully now the site should fully work. as I said I still have more stuff left to deploy and migrate but with this I believe the major part should be done. hopefully on the next days I'll do the same with the stats and then it will just come down to the details and specific customization for the new setup. so far so good I guess from what I see.

[adminless]

stats up and manually updated now so not a single record got lost. as said, on the next days I still have to put everything together so it just run by itself as usual (i.e. not manually) but I assume that then this now should complete the migration at least of the main thing. for clarity and ease the stats now will go on the "web" domain (.com) as they now run on a separate machine (the secondary server) also on this server now that I kind of finished installing it I'll permanently locate the freefun, ffa and duel servers on next days after I'm done setting up and already backing up so even in the event of another failure of some of the servers sensible games should still remain available for now virtually downtime zero. additionally before proceed further also next week or so I guess that I'm still gonna need to make a few extra check with the new main server (the one running now) and reinstall it one more time just to be safe as lack of planning I didn't really have any time to do so (so far I'just rolled out stuff without any testing). anyways now that there's two capable servers running and it's planned this time there should be no down time and it should go smooth (I hope) so stay tuned.

[PacMan]

Dude out of curiosity are you now running servers different locations?

Example main on one server host and then freefun on another ?

So meaning different hosts or one host seperate servers?

[adminless]

right now no as I still didn't get there but on the "future" (i.e. some days) yes that's the plan. as always you'll have all the servers setup and info when I'm (fully) done and then we'll see how it really turns out and/or if there's need to change something else.

[adminless]

ok, game servers relocated now to the secondary fpsclassico.com (87.106.243.201) machine to reinstall and more thoughtfully check up the new primary server in the next few days. this will be the final location for the UnFreeZe2, ffa and duel server though so look it up and update your favorites. overall I think this time the relocation has gone smoothly. I believe that then in 1-3 days or so everything should be complete.

[adminless]

ok, that was a lot quicker than expected hehe primary server setup complete now so now the servers running from both locations at all times for zero down time. now aside from some more minor changes I think the task should be pretty much complete. hopefully then in some days I can even finally make the whole servers report so people know how this works now.

[adminless]

finally yesterday I just put together the new servers documentation here for all of you to know and today I finished with some more final servers check ups and from what I saw step by step all the services has been restored and running for around a month already without any further (significant) issues so I assume that then this should have been fixed and all that is left now is just the normal operation/maintenance of the servers as usual.