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GeocacheUK Down

Andy33

By Andy33
in United Kingdom and Ireland

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wizard1974uk

+wizard1974uk

Posted
Posted (edited)

You won't have lost any of your data all it means is:

 

a) They've used up too much bandwidth and their host has suspended the account.

 

or

 

b ) They've forgotten to pay their latest hosting bill.

 

Reputable hosts will not delete a site without trying to come to some sort of resolution with the client, they would also give a client a chance to back up any data before terminating the account.

Edited by wizard1974uk
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Deego

Deego

Posted
Posted

Its actually to much load on the servers due to the amount of caches, logs, cachers etc. I have spoken to Ian and he is hoping to get T:UK reinstated as soon as possible but G:UK is more of a problem.

 

All data is backup automatically daily (I believe) so it will be all safe.

 

Sorry for the outage.

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alistair_uk

alistair_uk

Posted
Posted

Is it an option to share the load a bit more? Perhaps run the complicated geographical calculations on a dedicated PC (on someone's ADSL line perhaps) that would cache waypoints, run the geographic queries and return the indexes to the web server. The web server can then combine these with the main database and return the full requested dataset.

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Edgemaster

Edgemaster

Posted
Posted (edited)

I don't believe the geographical calculations take particularly much power. However, the werbscraper that is used has pushed it over the balence before, and as I'm sure you're aware searches are taking a very long time to run now.

The searches cannot be run externally - the overheads would just be higher and it would take even longer!

Edited by Edgemaster
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pklong

+pklong

Posted
Posted

When the site was coded there were about 1000 caches, now we are adding a 1000 per month, it just cant keep up. Either Ian (Teasel) or myself will post when we hear more.

 

Can't GeocachingUK and Geocaching.com come to an agreement for a feed? Surely it would be in both organisations interests.

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alistair_uk

alistair_uk

Posted
Posted

Can't GeocachingUK and Geocaching.com come to an agreement for a feed? Surely it would be in both organisations interests.

Could they, yes. Will they, no. The Groudspeak business modal is not exactly "Web 2.0" compatible and it is a miracle that tolerate GeocachingUK at all.

 

If there is any coding I can help with then let me know. On a side subject, of anyone is in to coding mashups (that I guess GeocacheUK technically is) then you may want to sign up for http://hackday.org/ .

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Teasel

+Teasel

Posted
Posted

I've not yet heard back from DMC about why they've suspended the account. But I expect it was due to "sheer weight of traffic" (coupled with an inefficient database design!), in which case it may be down for some time yet ;) I hope to get the trigpointing site back reasonably quickly, as this is less resource hungry than the stats site. I'll keep you posted...

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pklong

+pklong

Posted
Posted

Can't GeocachingUK and Geocaching.com come to an agreement for a feed? Surely it would be in both organisations interests.

Could they, yes. Will they, no. The Groudspeak business modal is not exactly "Web 2.0" compatible and it is a miracle that tolerate GeocachingUK at all.

 

If there is any coding I can help with then let me know. On a side subject, of anyone is in to coding mashups (that I guess GeocacheUK technically is) then you may want to sign up for http://hackday.org/ .

 

"it is a miracle that tolerate GeocachingUK at all." is why I suggested a feed. As I understand it GecachingUK runs on a loop polling all the Caches for new posts. This must place an enormous burden on the Geocaching.com servers. GeocachingUK is a resource well used and respected by the UK Geocaching community, have they even approached Geocaching.com?

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Teasel

+Teasel

Posted
Posted

 

"it is a miracle that tolerate GeocachingUK at all." is why I suggested a feed. As I understand it GecachingUK runs on a loop polling all the Caches for new posts. This must place an enormous burden on the Geocaching.com servers. GeocachingUK is a resource well used and respected by the UK Geocaching community, have they even approached Geocaching.com?

The vast majority of updates come via pocket queries. Of the rest, most happen when people browse cache details pages via G:UK. Neither of these methods increase the load on GC.com server at all (though admittedly the second route does make G:UK appear in the GC.com server logs quite a bit!). Finally, there is a trickle feed (the "webscraper") which does place a small additional load on GC.com (less than one page a minute), which is used for checking whether pages which haven't appeared in PQs for a while have actually been archived, or whether new caches are members-only. Generally it's for info which isn't available in the PQs.

 

I'd certainly jump at a closer relationship with GC.com. However arguing that G:UK places an enormous burden on GC.com is a risky way of going about it! ;);)

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SlytherinAlex

SlytherinAlex

Posted
Posted

I've not yet heard back from DMC about why they've suspended the account. But I expect it was due to "sheer weight of traffic" (coupled with an inefficient database design!), in which case it may be down for some time yet ;) I hope to get the trigpointing site back reasonably quickly, as this is less resource hungry than the stats site. I'll keep you posted...

It does beg the question again about accepting contributions from users towards maintaining a hosting account with more "beef"

 

I know that Mark's philosophy was that it would never cost anything to use the site but even he could not have forseen the growth of caches placed in the UK over the last year.

 

I'm not suggesting a subscription, just a "donate" button on the site that lets people chip in a few pounds here and there if they feel they are gaining greatly by utilising the factilites available.

 

alex.

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pklong

+pklong

Posted
Posted

 

"it is a miracle that tolerate GeocachingUK at all." is why I suggested a feed. As I understand it GecachingUK runs on a loop polling all the Caches for new posts. This must place an enormous burden on the Geocaching.com servers. GeocachingUK is a resource well used and respected by the UK Geocaching community, have they even approached Geocaching.com?

The vast majority of updates come via pocket queries. Of the rest, most happen when people browse cache details pages via G:UK. Neither of these methods increase the load on GC.com server at all (though admittedly the second route does make G:UK appear in the GC.com server logs quite a bit!). Finally, there is a trickle feed (the "webscraper") which does place a small additional load on GC.com (less than one page a minute), which is used for checking whether pages which haven't appeared in PQs for a while have actually been archived, or whether new caches are members-only. Generally it's for info which isn't available in the PQs.

 

I'd certainly jump at a closer relationship with GC.com. However arguing that G:UK places an enormous burden on GC.com is a risky way of going about it! ;);)

 

Well obviously! Handicaching and Trigpointing however would make good selling points. I second a donate button (however I hate Paypal.....)

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Edgemaster

Edgemaster

Posted
Posted

Please come back soon. For downloading UK waypoints it's the best. Now if when downloading it could mix the cache type in the GCxxxx name......

This will not happen. Groundspeak forbid it. If you do want that feature, become a premium member (or manually do some clever filtering on the G:UK side)

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Gushoneybun

+Gushoneybun

Posted
Posted

I've not yet heard back from DMC about why they've suspended the account. But I expect it was due to "sheer weight of traffic" (coupled with an inefficient database design!), in which case it may be down for some time yet :blink: I hope to get the trigpointing site back reasonably quickly, as this is less resource hungry than the stats site. I'll keep you posted...

Good luck :D

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martlakes

+martlakes

Posted
Posted

I hope you manage to get it up and going again. I certainly appreciate the site and visit it often. It adds greatly to the logging experience - I especially like the map with the red dots! I love seeing new dots appear after logging caches! (sad!) There's no real equivalent on geocaching.com for getting an overview of your finds. I also use the CIS map quite a bit, better in some ways than google earth for checking caches in an area.

I quite like rating the caches I've found and I do the handicaching ratings, although I find some of the options confusing but I do my best!

I can't say I'm too bothered about knowing how many caches I've placed on a Wednesday! So if you want to cut some bits out to make it simpler, a graph or two could easily go! I'm also not bothered about all the star 'league tables' of which there seem an excessive number, so some of them could go (no. days in the sport? don't have to try too hard for this, just keep living, but how to catch up!?). Maybe these aren't the most intensive bits.

Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for the hard work and the free service which I appreciate.

"Thanks!" :blink:

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Teasel

+Teasel

Posted
Posted

It does beg the question again about accepting contributions from users towards maintaining a hosting account with more "beef"

The problem is not with the server, but with the code. I'm currently paying "mates rates" for an account on a quad processor machine. There isn't really anything with much more beef without paying serious amounts of money!

 

I'm currently trying to get the latest backups running on my home machine (a not too sluggish beast, with a water-cooled E6600 dual core processor, 2GB of 800MHz Corsair RAM, RAIDed raptors etc etc), and it's not coping very well! What's really needed is for me to tune the database, migrate certain key bits onto a proper Java application server, maybe remove some of the more resource hungry features, and basically get the whole thing running at least an order of magnitude faster than it currently does.

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Friendly Flyer

+Friendly Flyer

Posted
Posted

The problem is not with the server, but with the code. I'm currently paying "mates rates" for an account on a quad processor machine. There isn't really anything with much more beef without paying serious amounts of money!

 

So the reason for suspension is that we are using too many resources on the server? Rather than it being a connectivity/bandwidth problem?

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Teasel

+Teasel

Posted
Posted

Don't speak too soon! :anicute: I've had to hobble the search facility quite severely while I work out how to get it to run faster. So unless you specify a search so tightly that it brings back less than 100 caches, I'm afraid you'll get a random scattering of 100 caches which meet the criteria - NOT the nearest caches to the location you asked for! In other words, not particularly useful - or at least not user friendly! :anicute: Hopefully I'll get it working a bit better soon...

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gazooks

+gazooks

Posted
Posted

Regardless of the restrictions - its great to have the site back. Thanks to the geocacheuk site team for everything they have done and do.

 

I've never missed a website so much..... me addicted - surely not :anicute::anicute:

 

We all know its not about the numbers... is it ?

 

Thnaks again guys. :anicute:

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Gushoneybun

+Gushoneybun

Posted
Posted

Brilliant to welcome the site back :blink:

Thank you

Just a warning I use POIEdit to update caches on my Tomtom. I saw the site was running, so ran the programme which logs into the stats page. It ran and I now have a random selection of caches I guess 100. So if anyone else does this, DON'T!!!

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Teasel

+Teasel

Posted
Posted

Don't speak too soon! :o I've had to hobble the search facility...

OK, even that wasn't enough and MySQL is still suffering (the overnight batch update took 5hrs on Tuesday!). I can't risk losing my account at DMC Internet unexpectedly again (it's not just the stats site I use it for), so I've switched it off for the timebeing while I migrate it across to a dedicated server at 1&1. The new server isn't as powerful as the DMC one, but it has the advantage that it's "Mine, All Mine!", so it's only my sites which will grind to a halt! It also means that I can install new stuff such as java (my new java re-write of the overnight batch runs in under a minute!).

 

It'll take a day or so to get the data transferred across, then up to 2 days for the DNS to propogate. So hopefully it'll be back again before the weekend is out.

 

On a related note, it's been suggested that the problems some people have been having with logging in to the stats site may be related to the fact that there are multiple domains names all pointing to the same pages. So I intend to only transfer across the geocacheuk.com domain to the new server. Anyone with links to guk2.com or geocacheuk.org should change them (guk2.com email addresses, however, will remain the same for now).

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Gushoneybun

+Gushoneybun

Posted
Posted (edited)

I have just tried to get on GUK and my browser carn't find the page, I get the Page cannot be displayed message, TUK is fine. Has the address changed or is it still down?

 

You may need to change where your browser is looking. Make sure you are looking for http://www.geocacheuk.com/ previously this link and www.guk2.com worked the guk2 links has gone.

Edited by gushoneybun1
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Edgemaster

Edgemaster

Posted
Posted (edited)

Currently down, both portal and stats, complaining:

Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Too many connections in /home/geocache/public_html/stats/connect.php on line 24

I cannot connect to the database.

 

Would mysql_pconnect() solve this?

 

Another slight, insignificant problem is that the forum RSS feeds from the portal use the URL geocache.teasel.net or something similar.

Edited by Edgemaster
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Teasel

+Teasel

Posted
Posted

Teething troubles! The root cause of the problem wasn't running out of connections (we're busy, but not that busy!), but rather running out of disk space - the default install was expecting to get 10 day's worth of database logs into 4GB of disk space (we're busier than that!).

 

I've run linux at home for many years, but this is my first time running such a high-volume website, so please bear with me as I discover all the different ways to crash a server! :(

 

The geocache.teasel.net domain was the one I used to test the server before switching over the main geocacheuk.com domain. Looks like I missed something when I went live...

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