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Site was down for ~30 min MRH forum help
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MRH Founder 17,559 posts joef MRH Founder 17,559 posts
joef
The site was down today for about 30 min. Our hosting service applied a security patch and it glitched something. But we're back now!

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

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Warflight Prolific poster 3,008 posts
Warflight

w00t!

For a minute I thought it was me! I was all "Damn Firefox!" but when it was down in Edge, I knew it probably wasn't just me.
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dssa1051 Regular poster 438 posts
dssa1051

site was down

I thought it was me since I had just posted some photos and then I couldn't go back and look at them.  Seems like it was down for more than hour. Whew!!!

Robert
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joef MRH Founder 17,559 posts
joef

It did go down more later

It did go down two more times later, another 30 min and then back up, then down again for an hour. So it was down off and on over a total of three times in about a 3 hour period. It has to do with a security update that’s considered vital to fix a serious weakness in Drupal 6. It turns out to fix the issue we need to first upgrade to the newest version of Drupal 6 and THEN apply the vital security patch. Applying the patch directly tanks the slightly older version of Drupal 6 we’re running. So we’ve got some work ahead of us, with some more outages coming, only this time deliberately planned outages. We need to first make a backup copy of our site and then upgrade and test, then apply the patch and test. We’re likely to find some add on modules that also need upgraded and tested, too. Once we KNOW the exact upgrade process through testing, then we make a fresh copy of our system and then do a dress rehearsal upgrade and see if there are no issues. We repeat this copy-dress rehearsal process until it’s flawless. Then we copy the current system one last time and do the real upgrade on the copy. Finally, we swap systems, renaming the real upgrade copy to become the real system and rename the old system to another name to take it out of circulation. It’s all pretty involved even though it is only a minor upgrade of one version of Drupal 6 to another version of Drupal 6. At any point we can easily roll back if things go south. Fun, no?

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

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ctxmf74 Super User 15,990 posts
ctxmf74

site was down

Had a hard time trying to figure out anything interesting to do on the internet when the MRH site was down :> ) ....DaveB

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UPWilly Prolific poster 1,965 posts
UPWilly

Alternate URL problem

Using MRHMAG.COM does not seem to work properly even after clearing cache. The model-railroad-hobbyist.com URL does work.

Probably will work once your patching is finalized?

 

Bill D.

egendpic.jpg 

N Scale (1:160), not N Gauge. DC (analog), Stapleton PWM Throttle.

Proto-freelance Southwest U.S. 2nd half 20th Century.

Keep on trackin'
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joef MRH Founder 17,559 posts
joef

Clear your cache and restart your browser

If things are acting strange, clear your browser cache and restart your browser. Also check any virus blocker / malware blocker and ad blocker. Make sure you allow an exception for both model-railroad-hobbyist.com and mrhmag.com.

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

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Cadmaster Frequent poster 867 posts
Cadmaster

I think you should give

I think you should give everyone a free month of access to this site!!

Neil.

Diamond River Valley Railway Company

http://www.dixierail.com
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UPWilly Prolific poster 1,965 posts
UPWilly

@Joe

I did clear the cache. here is the page presented:

(also, clicking on the login box did not popup my user name like it does on using the full URL)

img.png 

Bill D.

egendpic.jpg 

N Scale (1:160), not N Gauge. DC (analog), Stapleton PWM Throttle.

Proto-freelance Southwest U.S. 2nd half 20th Century.

Keep on trackin'
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smadanek Frequent poster 704 posts
smadanek

Your Drupal Site Software

Joe

Drupal 8 upgrade on your horizon?

 
Ken Adams
Walnut Creek, California
Getting too old to  remember all this stuff.... Now Officially a COG (and I've forgotten what that means too...)
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joef MRH Founder 17,559 posts
joef

@UPWilly

First thing I notice is the ads are blank, which means you have not added mrhmag.com to your browser's ad blocker as an exception. That may also fix the login problem. Ad blockers tend to block anything that might compromise security if you don't add the site as an exception.

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

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UPWilly Prolific poster 1,965 posts
UPWilly

@Joe

Hmm! Now I have not changed my ad blocker settings for this site and was very succesful dozens of time using the URL MRHMAG.COM (it always redirected to model-railroad-hobbyist). Per your suggestion I did turn off ad blocking on MRHMAG.com and the Ad at the top did appear, but the username box does not function the same as model-railroad-hobbyist.com and having been logged in, I would have expected going to MRHMAG.COM would show me as already logged in. Note that the FireFox tab to the left does show me connected. Perhaps the problem is with the DNS on U-Verse (my ISP for the past 15 months).

This problem may just go away once you finalize your patches.

 

Bill D.

egendpic.jpg 

N Scale (1:160), not N Gauge. DC (analog), Stapleton PWM Throttle.

Proto-freelance Southwest U.S. 2nd half 20th Century.

Keep on trackin'
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joef MRH Founder 17,559 posts
joef

@UPWilly

Next step then is to flush all cookies for model-railroad-hobbyist.com and mrhmag.com. Getting a fresh start with all new cookies may help.

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

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Read my blog
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trainmaster247 Prolific poster 2,041 posts
trainmaster247

I do notice that mrhmag.com

I do notice that mrhmag.com no longer redirects to the longer url, login in does work fine still though

23%20(2).JPG 
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UPWilly Prolific poster 1,965 posts
UPWilly

@Joe

Flushing ALL cookies for mrhmag.com and model-railroad-hobbyist.com does not solve the problem either.

P.S. It is doing the same on both my Win7/Latest FireFox notebook and Win7/latest FireFox mini-tower desktop.

I have not had this experience prior to your fault this morning ( connect at least once every day or two and sometimes many times a day. I was connected last night for almost an hour using the mrhmag.com URL.

 

 

Bill D.

egendpic.jpg 

N Scale (1:160), not N Gauge. DC (analog), Stapleton PWM Throttle.

Proto-freelance Southwest U.S. 2nd half 20th Century.

Keep on trackin'
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joef MRH Founder 17,559 posts
joef

Hmm, changed that just now

Quote:

I do notice that mrhmag.com no longer redirects to the longer url, login in does work fine still though.

Hmm, looks like that setting got changed. I changed it to redirect to the full URL for now. That may be what was going on.

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

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Read my blog
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UPWilly Prolific poster 1,965 posts
UPWilly

That did it, Joe

It now works properly. Thanks for the fix.

 

Bill D.

egendpic.jpg 

N Scale (1:160), not N Gauge. DC (analog), Stapleton PWM Throttle.

Proto-freelance Southwest U.S. 2nd half 20th Century.

Keep on trackin'
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Tom Edwards edwardstd Frequent poster 505 posts
Tom Edwards edwardstd

While you are installing security and other patches...

You might ask your hosting service what would be involved in upgrading to Drupal 7 or 8. Once a web site is at one of those versions, security and other updates are a lot less painful. (I'm probably preaching to the choir. )

Tom Edwards

N scale - C&NW/M&StL - Modeling the C&NW's Alco Line

HO scale - Running on the Minnesota Central (Roundhouse Model RR Club, St. James, MN)

12" to the foot - Member of the Osceola & St. Croix Valley crew (Minnesota Transportation Museum)

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joef MRH Founder 17,559 posts
joef

We're well aware ...

Quote:

You might ask your hosting service what would be involved in upgrading to Drupal 7 or 8.

We're well aware there are newer versions of Drupal but we ARE NOT rushing into anything for the very reasons listed here:

https://www.mydropwizard.com/blog/why-you-shouldnt-upgrade-drupal-6

And yes, DropWizard is a consulting firm we work with on this stuff.

Joe Fugate​
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine

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Read my blog
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Tom Edwards edwardstd Frequent poster 505 posts
Tom Edwards edwardstd

Drupal upgrades

Oh, I agree 100% - don't rush into anything. As I said, I feel like I'm preaching to the choir.

I have to two Drupal sites that I support which will probably remain on v6 for probably the rest of their life span. Both have low viewership and it would be more of a pain to upgrade than to just install the basic security updates.

At some point, however, it will pay to make the move and the process that you described is a good one to follow.

 

Tom Edwards

N scale - C&NW/M&StL - Modeling the C&NW's Alco Line

HO scale - Running on the Minnesota Central (Roundhouse Model RR Club, St. James, MN)

12" to the foot - Member of the Osceola & St. Croix Valley crew (Minnesota Transportation Museum)

Blog Index
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