Our Forum

[Hannah Anderson]

Hi all,

I'm Hannah I work on the development team over here at the Grow Your Own headquarters. I just wanted to let everyone know what has been happening with the forum recently.

Last year when Chris (our lead developer) started development on the new forum/website we run into an issue with the software that's run on the box.

When the server crashed it was a progressive failure so we didn't see the affects of the failure for days (potentially weeks) this was completely out of our control and there's no way to check when it started. Because we didn't see the effects of the failure, errors were copied over onto our backups (which are stored on a completely different server).

The Sunday that the server crashed everything had to be rebuilt from the ground up and I believe there was around 6/7 hours downtime before being brought back online. Since then we have lost files (images primarily) but the way the server failed it's difficult to isolate a pattern. We've tried and tried to get the images back online because the last thing we want is to cause disruption. We have been looking into potential solutions for quite some time now and have been met with a brick wall at every turn.

There's one final attempt we are looking into and will be trying over the coming weeks. If this fails unfortunately we've lost the files.

This was a situation completely out of our control and there's very little we can do to prevent this. Failures are uncommon but they do happen, usually the backup is enough to protect us, but because it was a silent failure over time it's copied onto the backups. Chris and Dave have had numerous conversation with engineers and tried to put in place further protections.

Unfortunately this not the kind of news anyone wanted to here.

We will keep the everyone updated with how the situation evolves.

[Bigmallly]

Good news or bad doesn't matter Hannah, the fact that you have addressed the forum is appreciated.

[scarey55]

Thank you Hannah for letting us know

[Thelma Sanders]

Thank you for giving us some idea of what happened and what is going on now behind the scenes.

[Guest]

Thank you. No one likes saying or hearing that it has got to the poopy stage but it happens. Thank you again for being honest and letting us know all that has happened it is appreciated.

[Nicos]

Thanks for the update Hannah....everything crossed for the final attempt at retrieving the piccies

[Jay-ell]

Thanks for letting everyone know what's happening

[lottie dolly]

everything crossed for your team,now ti's spring lets hope they spring back

[Bren In Pots]

Thanks for posting an update Hannah.

[sparrow100]

Really appreciate the warts n' all update Hannah, thank you.
And thanks too to the team working behind the scenes to try and recover the images.

[Potstubsdustbins]

First thanks to all you 'in the back ground people' for trying to sort it out for us.

If it proves impossible, well spring is round the corner, so its camera times peeps.

[Tripmeup]

We appreciate the update Hannah...any news on the recent difficulties in uploading photos?

[Mr Bones]

Thank you Hannah and thank you also to everyone who works on our behalf to make this the forum it is. Even with lost photos etc, for me this is still the best forum on the net.

[Snoop Puss]

Thanks for all your efforts and best of luck.

[Cadalot]

Thanks the update Hanna, looks like periodic archives as well as a rolling backup is in order to protect you from this in future. I love hindsight is always such an exact science.