Phew! Glad to see you all again!

[Olham 164]

Couldn't get in to the Forum all day and thought, now we were the next victim for web hooliganism.

So, I'm glad to see, you're all here - safe and sound!

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Yes...But I have a mission to fly now!...And I have a very bad feeling about it!!

[sitting_duck 3]

im beginning to think they did it on purpose,,,,to make us appreciate them more,,,,,my wife does it to me all the time...

[+Erik 1,805]

The recent upgrades to the equipment and software that provide our services here and for other sites were started last weekend. Call it good timing but the sites' health and its ability to recover after a disaster are *always* on my mind. The recent tragedy at AVSIM and the server loss at Sim-OutHouse are good reminders to me why being pro-active is always better than reactive.

 

After this last round of upgrades, which I'm nearing being 100% complete as of today, I'm confident we not only have the equipment and platforms to continue our ability to meet each of your needs well into 2011 but that we also have in place secure offsite backup repositories for those total destruction events that can and do occur.

 

I hope our downtime hasn't caused any inconvenience. It was and is a necessary part of keeping us all online and your time here enjoyable.

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Nice one Erik

 

I am sure I speak for all the OFF(ers) and beyond, that we appreciate your efforts at making this such a great place to hang out!

 

S!

[Olham 164]

Absolutely ditto! Thank you, Eric!

[+hgbn 91]

Hear hear

[RAF_Louvert 101]

Yes Sir Erik, I add my thanks as well for keeping this place up and running for us all to enjoy. I know it is a big job.

 

Cheers!

 

Lou

[Typhoon 5]

Your doing a great job Erik, Just wish you would have warned us though, I almost had heart failure when I got the 404 message, and then the email from Cameljockey. Good thing I had my nitro spray handy.

 

Tony

[Rickitycrate 10]

All's well. So happy to hear that. I too was very concerned that something awful had happened. It's nice to be reassured. Thanks Combat Ace!

[+Erik 1,805]

Your doing a great job Erik, Just wish you would have warned us though, I almost had heart failure when I got the 404 message, and then the email from Cameljockey. Good thing I had my nitro spray handy.

 

All's well. So happy to hear that. I too was very concerned that something awful had happened. It's nice to be reassured. Thanks Combat Ace!

 

http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=41020

 

Thanks for the thoughts. :yes:

[sitting_duck 3]

not up on any of this server stuff,,but stumpjumper still cant get the site to load...(page not found) Might be others with same promlem too.

 

lol..oh yeah,,i remember seeing that post,,,guess it didnt sink in thou

Edited May 18, 2009 by sitting_duck

[+Erik 1,805]

stumpjumper still cant get the site to load...(page not found) Might be others with same promlem too.

 

I was fighting not to change our IP addresses so we wouldn't have to go through another lengthy name server update, but I lost that battle when the configuration I wanted built couldn't be done in the physical server space so they built us a shiney spanking brand new server from the ground up. It was easier and less costly for them and in the end we got something much better than I wanted. That almost never happens, so I went with it.

 

The DNS Saga: DNS (dynamic name servers) keep up to date records of where a website can be found like a physical address but in the computer world a physical address is known as an IP Address. In the real world Mary Jones lives at 1242 Elm Street, in the computer world http://www.combatace.com lives at 216.104.36.210 aka http://216.104.36.210. We submit our IP address changes to our name server record keepers by giving them our new IP Address (physical address) they in turn update their records and as if by magic all the name servers around the world get changed. Sometimes that process can take a day or two. In planning for the change I changed our TTL (time to live) in all our SOA (service oriented architecture) records. SOA records are *supposed* to tell name servers how long to cache (keep on file) our IP address before asking our name server for a new updated record. As it turns out only some of the name servers actually obey our SOA records and the other half just do what they want. For those name servers that have hard fast rules as to how long our IP address remains in their cache before they renew it they will not know where we have moved to until their records update. The members who use those name servers will be directed to "not found" pages.

 

Here's something they can try however.

 

Flush your local DNS cache:

1. Open a Command Window - START > RUN > Type "CMD" > Press [ENTER]

2. A command window will open > At the prompt type > ipconfig /flushdns

3. The DNS cache will flush > At the prompt type > exit

 

 

Something else to try:

 

http://www.combatace.com

http://combatace.com

http://216.104.36.210

 

 

Both go to the same place but require two different look ups in the name server. Maybe one will work for them and the other won't. If one does, both do, or both don't it's probably due to DNS propagation and will just require 24 hours or so to fix itself.

 

Sorry about the downtime.

 

E

[sitting_duck 3]

whew,,,needed an advil after reading that...

 

but got him on teamspeak, so will let you know how he makes out...

[stumpjumper 3]

whew,,,needed an advil after reading that...

 

but got him on teamspeak, so will let you know how he makes out...

 

 

i MADE OUT THANSK TO DUCK FOR SANGGING THE INFO FOR ME THANSK A MILLION FOR THE HELP GUYS

[RAF_Louvert 101]

In the future you could try this as well:

 

 

 

Cheers!

 

Lou

[sitting_duck 3]

combatace down use this url http://216.104.36.210

 

 

this is just for anyone googling the problem

[Hauksbee 103]

I couldn't get back on until I deleted the bookmarks in my Favorites File. The confusion between my machine and the Forum site changed the little OFF icons to a little server w/ a doc. beside it. Took me to some place called Parallel. After I deleted the bookmarks this morning and entered the address manually, my machine found you. [i can breath again.]

[Hasse Wind 46]

Phew indeed! I read about Avsim's demise and the next thing is Combatace goes down! I hope there are good backups available if something similar ever happens here. I guess there's not much else you can do if some criminals decide to destoy a website...

[Olham 164]

Calm down and read Post 4, Hasse Wind - these guys seem to know, what they are doing.

I feel we're in good hands.