Dopers of the Insomniac Briagade and overseas Dopers will probably have had this experience, usually around 3 am. CT. You’ve been carefully composing the perfect answer to a GQ, or the killing repartee for GD, and you’re about to post when: “The administrator has temporarily disabled this board for routine maintenance.”
So this has got me thinking: what is “routine maintenance”? Does vBulletin need virtual grease? Does SDMB need cyber-cooling fluid? (Having read Pit threads, this seems likely.) Special software STP to speed up performance?
What is cyber-maintenance, and why does it happen every night, just as I’m struck with inspiration by the Muse?
There are many things that may need to be done on a vBulletin Board for routine maintenance. I do this every few days or so on my vBulletin Board, because I have low traffic.
My routine is as follows:
- Kill Apache.
- Shut down MySQL.
- Rename the Apache “access.log” so I can scan through it and see who has been hacking my Board, or searching for odd things in the “Search” function, etc. This also resets the large log file to be a small size.
- Rename the Apache “error.log” so I can look for possible problems.
- Delete the MySQL error logging file, since there is little I can do with the information.
- Run WinZip on the Board and the SQL databases to create a backup.
- Copy the Board backup to a CD-RW.
- Put CD-RW in the fire safe.
- Reboot the server to clear memory.
- Allow everything to re-start normally.
The board goes through a maintenance routine every night – it writes to backup, changes the tp on the roll, feeds the hamster for all I know.
Since you know what time it happens, maybe that’s a good time to go get a cup of coffee or something. I realize it’s a pain in the fundament to our friends across the pond, but there’s really no good time to schedule it and y’all got the shaft on this one.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
In my experience, this occurs every day at precisely 4:30 AM (ET).
I disagree.
I think it occurs at precisely 1:30 AM (PT).
Knucklehead!