Gamingforce: IT'S ALIVE
 

Dammit, this place just refuses to die.

I'll stick the epic recovery process in this post later. It was really rough in the first week but we never gave up. Thank you all for sticking with us!

Edit: Here's what happened.

At approximately 8:00pm CST on Jan 17, our server’s primary hard drive failed. Initially I thought it was a scheduled downtime, which indeed was announced on the forums of our host (Layeredtech). But after two hours the site still wasn't responding, so Miles put in a reboot ticket.

While we were waiting, this transpired in the mod channel. It is 100% genuine.


Later we were informed by a tech that the hard drive had failed, and it was "impossible" to recover the data. All hell broke loose, etc.

Anyway, Miles did have a mid-december backup of GFF, but VGMdb wasn't so lucky (notice that I was hoping we had a backup?). In the end, seeing that Layeredtech wasn't bothered to look into the problem any further, Miles decided to just get the dead drive off them. The tech discussed it with the manager.

300 BUX

Well, they had the data, so what could we do except bend over? We coughed up the cash and Miles received the drive the week after.

This was when the VGMdb people came into the picture. I'll just link to Liontamer's VGFrequency blog post about it (FYI, Liontamer is the head submissions evaluator at Overclocked Remix and is a staff member at VGMdb). Basically, Starla of #ocremix came down from the heavens and bailed out our asses. Since she works for a major data recovery center, she had various vendor contacts, and soon she was sourcing for spare parts for Miles to use in a self-recovery attempt (some of us wanted to just send it directly to the company, which would have incurred a far higher cost -- at least a few grand.) Since the dead drive wasn't spinning up, a possible way to fix it was to transfer the logic board from another working identical model. She located one within 30 minutes!

Anyway, after another week, Miles received the working identical drive. The following is taken from Miles' post on Serious Business, which was also replicated on VGFrequency:

I won't bore you with the database restoration details, since you're looking at the result anyway. Rejoice!


A couple of notes:

• We're now with a host (ServInt) that provides regular backups, so the next hard drive crash will result in much shorter downtime.
• Miles still has a few gigs of attachments to upload so some attachments may be broken for the time being.
• If there's any database error, inform me immediately.
• Total recovery cost: $436 (thanks, Starla of #ocremix!)
• Total downtime: 29 days

(Wow, I just literally happened to look back to the site, and was shocked that it's back this very morning!)

*GREAT* Job, I'm glad you guys pulled it off! Kudos & much congrats, I know I'd love to hear the epic story of the restoration!!

At least it was restored! Which is more than what the previous owner was capable of :tpg:

I wonder how much users we lost due to this.

THE LIVING DEAD!

Now I can waste my vacation to plan "4chan analyzis with pix, vol. 2" entry.. :tpg:

Looks like the DNS propagated fast. I changed it barely 15 minutes ago.

Yay, Gamingforce is back!! *bows before the mods and Starla for making this possible* Hell of a way to start a Friday. :)

Good work Blah and Miles. I guess my 40 hour countdown was a bit off but hey, it's all back.

Excellent.

Time for bannings.

Hello the Gamingforce, lets have a fun and enjoy for the future!

Yay!! Good times are here again!! Welcome back, Gamingforce!

Man, I missed this place. It's good to be able to come back again. Thanks for all your hard work: blah, miles and starla!!

:D

Great job at restoring this forum guys and ofcourse to Starla for making it possible.

Dahaha. I hopped on, expecting SerBiz and looked on user CP. An old thread of mine was posted in (which felt like I did right when SB came up and GFF went down). I clicked it, not thinking, and saw props/disses.

"What the... My av/sig! =o GFF is back haaaaaaay~ <3"

Edit: This is bizarre though... When I posted a reply, the tacked on response didn't load the boxes/pictures right on the left hand side:

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...g/Image1-3.jpg

Oh yes, before I completely forget:

I am making advanced nominations for the 2008 GFF Awards

Starla for Most Helpful Member
Starla for Best New Member

It popped up while I was reading journals. Good thing I read Infernal Monkey's before it switched over.

Good job Blah, Miles and Starla!

Once again I have to thank Blah and Miles for bringing this place back, and Starla for making it happen faster. Hope my donation worked out for you guys. <3

(and why does the diss button look so bloody retarded)

Well, well. Welcome back! I watched the goings on at SB, and I would like to congratulate BigBlah, Miles and Starla on their great work. Thanks to each of you.

Finally, it's back (again)! Thank you for all the work, you had done, Bigblah, Miles and especially Starla!

Fucking awesome. I was sorta startled when I saw more forums than I was used to. :tpg:

vbSEO is temporarily deactivated (so some links in posts may be broken) until I get the updated product XML from Miles.

This was very unexpected as I'd gotten up early this morning to check out new posts on Serious Business and the IRC chat and then got into work and lo and behold everything old was new again. :)

Congrats on getting everything back up in order like it was never gone.

Also MAD props to starla for all the help.

Let's get through the 07 awards first. ^_^

Thanks so, so, so much guys.

I would like to knit you all something fantastic, but things that are knit are rarely fantastic. And I doubt anyone involved would want anything.

GIFTS OF LOVE IT IS, THEN. <3

Welcome back.
Thanks to Blah, Miles and Starla!

good jobs guys

But where is "the concert hall"? hope it's not vanished forever.

ok i see it now.......sorry about that

That would be awesome, yes?

I told you Miles, you could have just made it "disappear" under the guise that "some things just couldn't be recovered," but nooooooooooooooooooo, you just had to be nice.

definitely........the earth will cease to rotate. Sun will be coming out from the west and everyone will freak out like there is no tomorrow.

Whoo, we're back.

Thanks to all who helped bring it back!

Even though we had Serious Business, GFF cannot be replaced.

So GFF is back, FUCK YEAH!

That and SB didn't get all that many posts anyway, 'cause we're all tards waiting for this forum to get back up before bothering to actively post again. :(

Welcome back my children. I will update the donations page when I get home from work. And we will plan our form of attack to our old host.

Thanks for the vbSEO stuff Miles. I've reactivated it, so nice URLs are back.

Apparently it's also fixed the broken images in the AJAX new postbit append.

I've never been so happy to see TWO-FACED POSERS. :tpg: Good work, everyone!

LOL what's up with that anyway? Anyway glad to see things are back in working order. ;)

Ahh, goodbye Serious Business, hello Business as Usual. You can't keep a good forum down. Kudos to everyone who got us back!

Agreed. I rather miss not seeing that feature already. It was very helpful and it WOULD do well (as long as concert hall is blocked from it cuz WAAAUUGGH SHEET MUSIC) :rolleyes:

If we had that 5 recent posts feature we need to block pretty much all of the Music & Trading section by default, but I suppose if Concert Hall means that much to you then there should be an option to turn that on. If you aren't logged in then The Sewers and any other material you shouldn't see unless logged in should obviously be blocked as well.


Oh right! Awesome job Blah, Miles, & starla. I hope she registers here and sticks around.

wow - nice to see GFF back again...

Just updated the first post with details.


This is what saved GFF:

http://www.vgfrequency.com/wp-conten...recovery-4.jpg

AMERICA. FUCK YEAH.

\o/ yay.

You guys should be given a medal. Lesser men would've accepted their fate and not dealt with the problem.

On another note, it SEEMS like it has been a few years since GF has been up and running...

Awesome. :3: Gamingforce is back. When I just got used to posting as SB too. Now half the threads aren't up to date, but oh well!

Starla is awesome. Miles is awesome. Blah is awesome. Without your awesomeness, GFF would still be dead.

People can make money be replacing chip boards?

I gotta get into that business.

GFF admins kick ass. ;D

Layered tech needs a beat down. They should of been able to do all of this in the first place.

You guys are great!

And Gamingforce is apparently Jell-O. Who knew?

EPIC recovery starla, and Blah and Miles and everyone else of course!

Oh jesus, this is probably the highlight of my day.

Big thanks to Blah, Miles and Starla. You peeps are just too awesome.

Hey Miles, can you guys reinstall "cool.php"?

I think the last 5 posts feature deserves a trial run with the trading forums and mod hut disabled. I'll see if I can install this when I get off work. :3

Don't strain yourself, dude. I think it's a given that you've put in a LOT of work over the past month already. But having that much more would be AWESOME <3

Godspeed, gentleman. This dedication is why GFF has members that come in for a visit and end up moving in.

WOW.GF is back.thx every one help for this.

So many more threads to check now! =o

Thanks for the dedication of bringing the boards back to us! <3

Awesome. That'll be perfect as long as the 5 posts feature is only viewable when you are logged into the forums.

Yay! now I won't be a bored anymore!

good work guys, i was shocked to find out that the forum was down, i thought that it would start over, but you manage to keep it!!!
congrats!!!
BTW hello everybody, im back from a long, long hiatus from the board, hehehe

^5:edgarrock::rock:

Awesome job on that recovery, Blah + Miles + Starla.

Yay~! I'm glad to see GFF back. I know I could never be an admin of a popular forum; I'd never have the patience to do what you all did.

GFF! You're back! <3 Yay!

Man, this is such a great way to start off the weekend. I got to work 15 days straight, so there goes two fun filled weekends.

I'm so happy to see GFF back. I appreciate the work that Miles, BigBlah & starla for all the work they put in. Expect a pretty good donation when I get back to Newfoundland.

Heh, glad GFF is back! Great job recovering the data. :)

Hooray. I'm glad things are back to normal.

Awesome. Thanks for bringing GFF back.

Awesome <3~

Wow, glad you guys were able to find a solution fairly quickly. Nice work! :tpg:

Finally it's back! I haven't bothered posting in the substitute forum really, but it feels great that the forum is back, even though I haven't had too much of a hard time without it. Thanks for all the hard work you've had to do to get this forum up and running again at 100%!

Well this is rather nice. It's good to have the old stompin' grounds back. Have a drink on me guys, and here's hoping for a long time without another crash =P

lmao this was posted on my birthday.

Thanks for Kairyu for keeping his FTP up during the site downtime, I downloaded Ys The Oath in Felghana from him.

Also, epic recovery.

cooooooooooooooooooooool

WHO IS THIS IMPOSTOR

For a non-profit organization, you guys sure go the four hundreded and a couple miles for the users, I thank ya'll and everyone who donate for that.

Hey, good job BB, Miles. :3 Update my donation count already.

$436 is a small amount to pay for a video game forum.

Fucking awesome work. Lovely to have GFF back.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1157/...a6e62317a0.jpg

I'll get you next time GFF, NEXT TIIIIIME!

That show taught me to buckle my seat-belt. :eagletear:

Just to say a quick hello and send my respective thanks to Blah, Miles, Starla for their efforts. Well done, excellent job!

Bit late off the bat but it's great to have the forums back, so hueg thanks to those who worked hard/donated to get GFF back on it's feet :)

I registered just to say thanks for all the hard work on bringing this place back, now I have things to read again.

I really like your name, ヽ (´ ー ｀) ノ. =)

I'm so glad Gamingforce the prop system is back. Hell, I've already made 7 props and 15 disses!

Life is good. :cool:

I think guy won award for best user name back then

He must have a lot of fun logging in.

Is there anyway you can put Serious Business back online in a different location so that we have access to all of the posts made there?

Not without violating vBulletin's ToS :(

But I can probably extract the posts from the database manually, if you need access to specific threads.

I'm very pleased that this site is once again up and running. Great job! :D

Comment of gratitude and joy for the triumphant return of our beloved forums. Life was not to same.

<3 Miles, Blah, Starla, and everyone else