Erik

Yes. To everyone else who PM'd me or sent me an email I think there are about six or seven of you, I haven't forgotten you. I've been busy with the downloads and I will get to you just as soon as possible. Thank you.

Updated.

Hello -- I can't duplicate this report. Can you send me a PM and show me what you mean and how the truncation breaks the actual link. I've tested this with short and long links and haven't found what you're on to. Thank you.

This is done automatically by the system. However each person has the option to choose when and how they want to receive notifications. Those options are found in your settings here: http://combatace.com/index.php?app=core&module=usercp&tab=core&area=notifications This has to be done by the recipient because they are the ones being notified. Thanks.

So as you all have probably figured out by now we had a serious issue develop. Three weeks ago while awaiting a fix for the file server I awoke one morning to find a response to my support ticket. In brief, they had fixed the problem by reformatting the drives on the file server. The assumption was this was a clean machine with no data on it other than the operating system, etc. In fact the drives contained the almost 1 terabyte of data known as our downloads. I'm still working with the data center to come to a resolve regarding this, and in the meantime I've been repairing our files. Three weeks of living and breathing downloads, three weeks of living hell. I've received many emails and correspondences some of which I haven't even replied to yet. Thank you all for contacting me and yes I know the downloads are offline. Let's get into the meat of it. This is where we stand today. FILE STRUCTURE - 100% FILES RECOVERED - 100% ( I still have a few hundred files to fix but they all are in tact) SCREENSHOTS RECOVERED 15% (I haven't worked on this yet or found a simple solution, TBD) FILESYSTEM - BACK ON-LINE If you are a file Author please feel free to update your file with screenshots or just check your files. If you have a problem or question please let me know and I will be glad to help. This will help me out tremendously. FILE SUBSCRIPTIONS -- If you have a membership I believe I credited everyone for a month and I know we're really close on that. If you feel I owe you time please let me know and I'll make the adjustment. If you started a subscription while the file system was offline I will be restarting all those after writing this. So everyone should be square, but if I overlooked something please speak up. The last thing I ever want to do is short someone or not be responsive to your concerns. I'm not sure when I will get around to recovering the screenshots, the files alone took three weeks and there are multiple screenshots for each file so I can't even imagine what it's going to take to do those. As mentioned if the author's get around to it first it would help with my workload. Dave, maybe you can reach out to some of the guys and see what they can do or spearhead an operation. I would have never thought this situation could ever happen and I sincerely apologize. I planned for every contingency except one having my disks formatted and as this is the first recovery I've ever had to make from our backups I'll be implementing some changes to those also to aid in recovery should this happen again. That said I've spent our entire working budget on restoring the files and upgrading equipment so I need to heal financially from this as well. Spending the time on the downloads that I have has kept me from other work so all in all things are just grim. It's a huge mess and we're on the road to recovery. Here's to tomorrow and a good night's rest. All my best; Erik

On his way out to lunch, CombatACE's Lead Engineer Bruce Shingleton smiles for a photo as he comments on the downloads he is responsible for and oversees. "Last week we got a new pencil for the pencil holder on my desk and we blew past the five million downloads mark," says Bruce. Indeed we've reached a milestone and are quite proud of the silent counters that keep track of important yet needless numbers. We hope you've gotten hours and hours of entertainment out of the downloads we've help provide to the community, even if you didn't download all 5,000,000. .

MigBuster announces that his work with the SF2 files directory structure is complete. With some help from our very own Wrench the transformation was completed almost over night. I'd like to extend a very big thank you and job well done. Guys you out did yourselves the new file structure looks terrific. I'm sure the community is going to appreciate all your efforts for years to come.

Unblock 109.190.84.***, trying permanent blocks... Removing rule... DROP all opt -- in !lo out * 109.190.84.*** -> 0.0.0.0/0 DROP all opt -- in * out !lo 0.0.0.0/0 -> 109.190.84.*** ...Done. Unblock 109.190.84.***, trying temporary blocks... iptables: There are no temporary IP bans iptables: There are no temporary IP allows ...Done. It was loaded by the system as a blacklisted IP which uses common RBLs to determine the networthiness of an IP. I don't think it's an overzealous way of doing things I think its a way to prevent spam. I would suggest, since this is a common practice nowadays, to get the IP removed from these lists. You can use a service like mxtoolbox.com to check RBLs or google "search an IP on RBLs". If it happens again I'll have to whitelist the IP, but since I was unclear who we are talking about you or your friend (your IP doesn't resolve to that IP) I didn't want to arbitrarily just grant carte blanche without knowing. Thanks.

Most of everything is done, has been. I'm waiting on a solution for our clustering software to bring our new file server online. For some reason the software is saying I have too many devices configured on the node or it's outside of my license. Neither of which is the case but when I enable the file server it takes all the other machines offline. So I'm sitting in the developer's queue waiting on a solution. The last update I had this afternoon at 2:41PM was that their designers were reviewing my settings (**IT'S MY FAULT, GET IT?**) to determine why the error is being thrown and why we can't bring the box online. Like you guys I'm frustrated too. They've essentially denied us business and it's costing us money, ironically the same money that pays for all this. So yeah I'm pissed, but there's nothing much I can do until a solution has been remedied. I definitely know I'm not going through another week and half of sleepless nights again for a long time. This has been maddening and to be honest, shit like this shouldn't happen in today's technological age. I can have Google maps in my eye wear but plugging in four boxes to run as one ohhh nooo that's like swimming to the moon. I'm with you, things will change. If I could undue the past I would but I can't, it's forward or no where. Anyone with a subscription plan, your accounts have all been granted an additional month of use regardless of when you were set to expire, had expired, or started the subscription. It's the only fair thing to do. Erik

Huh? I know I Know, nobody wants this done more than I do. I can't tell you how many emails an hour I get about this. I swear nobody reads the boards. Regardless until support comes back on Monday for our software we're dead in the water on the downloads. I expect this to have movement relatively soon. Thanks for the patience. Erik

Altimeter. Pilot Error. One look at all those red VASI lights should have been clue #1. Someone stopped flying the aircraft and was just along for the ride. Tragedy.

I do PM me for further instructions. Same as above.

Only two weeks and then??? If you're holding back some alien invasion plans I'm going to be sooo pissed. I'll let you know. As of now I'm still working on them, there's 1/2 a terabyte of them.

Column5 will be making updates to his site to fix the remaining problems. Currently the site is up and running so stand bye for further updates from him. Thank you.

Do you guys realize if you'd stop posting all over the place I wouldn't have to read 20 new posts about something I already know, spending hours getting distracted and forgetting what I was doing. Going to fill my drink and then suddenly remembering oh yeah I was working on the downloads. But when I refresh the site I see I have more notifications and PMs so I go take care of those and I forget what I was doing. So I think to myself gee I'm hungry and I go make me a sandwich, eat the sandwich and with a full belly fall asleep. Wake up with drool running down my cheek and my neck cocked backwards and sideways over the back of my chair thinking wow what the heck was I doing only to refresh the site and see I have more notifications which have to wait because I need a bathroom break. So I go read the paper for 20 minutes and come back look at my empty glass and refill it. Remembering I had a bunch of notifications to check I look at those and get side tracked on something else like my email where there are a bunch of people either telling me things I already know or demanding answers about something I can't give them because the vicious circle just keeps repeating itself. So .... the moral to the story is. Don't feed the bears.

The files are still being moved. It will be up as soon as it's ready. Thanks.

it's spelled <CTRL>+C and <CTRL>+V.

I counted one-to-many apostrophes in your post, does that count?

Absolutely! I will make sure everyone is well taken care of when this is done, even if your subscription has expired. We need the subscriptions to pay for the place but in no way are we crooks. To be honest I'd feel the same way, right is right so fix it. I'm with you 100%. Let me get everything finished up and I'll make those adjustments. If anyone has any questions about subscriptions please don't hesitate to PM me directly. I'm always happy to help. Erik

Yes I'm aware. I'm peddling as fast as I can. I forgot something back at the office. No but really I'm sorry for the downtime I got a wild hair up my ass and decided if I was going to rebuild everything I might as well do it on new equipment, so I spent all my money on new ultra nice hardware, hence the reason I'm riding my bike. Say hello to Marilyn, Bob and Sylvester which are clustering up with Files to make this one scary place. I'm expecting this will be last big interruption and that this should take care of all our needs well into 2016. Now I just have to figure out how to pay for it. As you've seen I've been getting pieces of the puzzle together and turning them on as they're ready. We had some time where things didn't resolve because the boxes were off as the actual switch happened on our port, then there was some initial build time and I had some static stuff up which was the "Forum Offline" you saw. The "Server Busy" was the high load caused from cross verifying file structures. I couldn't have you guys writing files when I was trying to compare them, make sense? That was pretty much Sat and Sun while I got the rest of the gear in place. There is still some work that needs to be done here and there, like the files, yes they are important and I'm working on it but there are many other sites CombatACE runs and they need to be online as well, so I'm dividing my attention to get the critical stuff knocked out on each site, then the important stuff, and finally the small stuff. So bare with me, I knew last week this was going to be a scary mess and here we are almost all of it behind us. Enjoy the new gear and see if 130 cores of processing power and a case of memory makes any difference on your experience. ~ Just the dude who mops the floors.

I don't know what you guys are talking about? Has the website been down?

I agree. I will also add that "apparently" information was removed via thumb drive and then transferred to this nefarious laptop, so I've read. Even a thumb drive being used is questionable, the screening, random searches, and various other entry and exit procedures I will only refer to as "the procedure" into and out of Crypto City make that extremely risky if not almost impossible. Regardless it appears to have happened, the root of which will be corrected while young Mr. Snowden lives out his miserable existence, though short I'm sure it will be, in the not so bad summer months abroad. Good luck Ed it was nice knowing you, dumbass.

Yes. Once you request the file from us by clicking "Download" we serve up the file, count it, and it's your responsibility to download it successfully. We don't get notice of failed download attempts and cross reference them out of the download logs if that's what you mean. :) Erik

If you use an accelerator and it actually works, you get what you get. We can't be responsible for the outcome because we record each download, even those that are threaded. So if you open six threads for the same file you're done downloading for the day. To prevent this we ask that you turn them off. We want you to have as many downloads as you're entitled to. Simple. The issue has been resolved and new members can download again. Thank you for your patience. But because we like our members, account status updated. Enjoy.