Erik

*Stands up in front of everyone* It was me. I did it. *hides smoking gun* Truthfully though I had to make some last minute changes to our DNS records to bring a new piece of equipment online. Everything should be cleared up today if not already. Windows users can run ipconfig and flush their local DNS records to get a new lookup. START > RUN > Type CMD > Press [ENTER] AT COMMAND PROMPT: C:\some_directory\maybe_another> Type ipconfig /flushdns > Press [ENTER] AT COMMAND PROMPT: C:\some_directory\maybe_another> Type exit > Press [ENTER] CLOSE BROWSER WINDOW(s) AND REOPEN

Happy to help.

I tested the forum and it seems to be working correctly. Can you do the following for me? Reply to this message. Just the below the box you type in you'll see the "Attachments" Window. It's where you normally upload screenshots. On the left it should say something like. Attachment space used 4.01MB of 8.00MB If the first number is larger or close to the second number you've reached the maximum upload limit. Currently your user group is set to a maximum of 8.0MB of upload space. There are a few things we can try at this point. 1. Manage your attachments - You can manually remove older attachments by using this link. http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?act=U...amp;CODE=attach -or- you can us the "My Controls" link at the top of the forums and find the manage attachments link in the left navigation bar toward the bottom under options. 2. Instead of using up attachment space for images and if you upload a lot of images I might suggest creating your own album in the gallery. You can use the "My Controls" link at the top of the forums then from the left navigation bar under Invision Gallery click the link for "Your Albums". -or- click here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...&req=albums. Once you've created a personal album you can upload unlimited images to it and then link them directly into your posts. 3. We can negotiate for more space on the HDDs for users. Suggestions welcome. Erik

Testing image upload feature.

As with the rest of the community I wish AVSIM a speedy and if possible full recovery. As Dave mentioned and I'll just add to. Anything connected to the internet is vulnerable to attack. The contingency that most people aren't prepared for is total connected loss which is considered loss of data across an infrastructure. It is the same as having four hard drives in your local machine, a diligent daily backup to solid state or removable media, and then the volcano 20 miles away that you never knew existed erupts and buries it all in molten lava. Backups made to local hardware are only for convenience or single point hardware failure they can never be considered backups just copies. There's more work to do here after the two moves back to back, but we're about 90% there.

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

http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=41020 Thanks for the thoughts. :yes:

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.

Specifically what are you trying to download. At this point there really "should not" be any problems with downloads. Link to file: Browser you're using: Browser version: Thank you.

Well .... My first dog when I was kid was the most amazing animal alive. Of course the reason I got him was my mom hit him with the car and brought him home to nurse him back to health. After no-one claimed him and he mended from the hit and run I named him "Bumper". The rest I'll leave to your sense of humor.

Sounds more like static electricity discharge or a power spike than a PS going bad. I suppose anything is possible but I'm betting something happened that caused the PS to go out which also took out your other peripherals. I like to run line conditioners in front of any hardware. That way it takes the brunt of electrical surges and discharges before the actual equipment. Any weird weather in your neck of the woods that could have caused this? Run any UPS or conditioning equipment that has hardware warranties in front of the computer?

Bigger drive = more heat. More heat = quicker dead drive. Add cooling, remove air flow restrictions, physically separate the drives for air flow and so on.

Sounds odd to me. Almost like one of your rails in the PS is no good. I'd consider taking it back and trying a second power supply before saying everything else is bad. To check maybe you can move some of those things that don't work to another computer and try them? Personally I buy OCZ power supplies. I like their 12V 4 rail design and modular wiring setup. Check newegg.com. ;) E

Thanks ... fixed

Yeah this guy caused some problems. I'm sorry about the SPAM through the personal message (PM) system. I updated our software last night so this kind of thing can't happen again. So you know someone signed up manually going through the process of entering an email address and IP address. Then used an automated system to SPAM our members on-site using the PM system. The absurdity of some people is beyond me. Please ignore and don't open any link contained in the PM you received from "mignulikz". I would advise simply deleting the PM from your inbox. I've spent two hours this morning removing us from SPAM clearing houses. Thanks again for the report. Erik

The guys who wrote our forum software, IPS, have released a patch today to fix the PM system which will prevent the abuse we saw this morning with the SPAM. I will get the new patch in place tonight and all should be back to normal. Sorry for the SPAM. Erik

During my rounds tonight I discovered this. Maybe it's been passed around maybe not, but I laughed until it hurt. E

We promised Dave a USAF skin first.

Call me thick. I just realized you were probably using the new OFF skin which isn't quite complete as of yet. There are still a few bugs left in that one though for the most part it works well. I also can't use the forum options in that skin, so it's not just you. At the very bottom of this board there is a skin chooser (from main forum page, lower left next to RSS feed). If you would select a new skin, try the options button, and report back. If it works in other skins, then we'll both assume it's the OFF skin that just needs a little work. Thanks; Erik

I am certain that would not do any good. There is nothing in any of the account settings that control how web pages on your machine are displayed. The fact that both FireFox and IE are doing the same exact thing leads me to believe that the machine's software environment is preventing pop-ups or java style applets from running, or local browser settings that are causing the problem. Erik

gotta be security related or connected to the browser settings. That's all I can think of. E

Do you have a popup blocker or internet security suite installed like McAfee?

The warn notification is standard with all members. You can see your warn level but you can't see other people's warn level just like they can't see yours. Basically it's a moderator's tool and will always be there. Ignore it unless you've done something that warrants a moderator warning you about, which I doubt will ever happen. IE8 ... That explains it. Because IE8 is still Beta software I hate to even begin diagnosing problems. It's possible that Java isn't supported under IE8 at this time as they might not have released a Java platform for IE8. I really don't know how to advise you on that. I would however do the following. Download and install FireFox. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ You can then use that browser to determine if it's a browser issue, which I'm betting. As a side note: IE8 is designed for higher strength security while web browsing. One of the options in the Tools > Options > Advanced? (I think) allows you to put a check mark (select a radio button) but allowing java applets to run. I'm guessing but I'm betting the security on your stock installation of IE8 is probably set to not allow java or popups from our site. Erik

Do you have Java installed on your machine? I believe those buttons are Java applets. http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp Erik

Silverbolt ... you should be able to edit your own files. I've checked the settings and they appear correct, so I'm a bit confused. 1. Did you upload the file? 2. Does it appear in your Manage Files location? 3. You're sure you're looking in the right place? Just to check go to the page like you're going to download the file (where the download buttons are). Before you click the download button on the lower right of the page do you have the option that says "edit file" or any options at all? Erik