Been Down for 5 Days

[BlackOut]

Does anyone have another shard thats decent cause this is taking too long i need my UO fix.

[Cypress]

I should have posted about the downtime myself earlier, but have had other things going on. I'm sorry for that. Still, I did notify our host some days back, and I hope it is back up soon and that all is well.

Let's be honest and fair here too. He's been hosting for a number of years and the up time has been tremendously fantastic, and I would say by far outweighs the downtime. Downtimes do happen though. It's just part of running a server, but this is probably the longest one we've had in years. Let me emphasize "in years." He is a fantastic host. Just be patient

[will parrish]

Well said Cypress. Things do happen and life happens. Our host has been wonderful through the thick and thin. Plus the fact that a Hurricane just went up the East Coast. Be patient and good things come to those who wait. Long Live Sylvan!!!!

[Llewellyn]

I just got home late last night and had to work a full day today.
I had limited time today to work on it but will focus on it tomorrow after work.
The server is having some sort of weird power-cycling issue that might be storm/lightning related because the UPS that it is plugged into was discharged.
Most likely we had an extended power-outage that was too much for the UPS to handle and everything had a less-than-graceful shutdown.
Hopefully I can diagnose the issue quickly tomorrow and have everything up and running soon.

Thanks for the patience all,
Llewellyn

[Llewellyn]

As promised, here is an update.

Sadly, no good news....
Looks like that less-than-graceful shutdown took down the motherboard or at least one of the capacitors on in.
Motherboard used: GA-EX38-DS4 Gigabyte rev 1.1, intel x38 LGA 775

According to the manual (page,99)http://download1.gigabyte.ru/manual/motherboard_manual_ga-ex38-ds4_e.pdf, the POST error-beeps I am getting is indication of power modulation failure.
This is not good because it means that I need a new main-board. Hopefully the processor and eveything else is ok, but I have no way of checking at at the moment.

The very bad news is that I cannot access the server files atm because they were on a RAID configuration to preserve data retention. That data retention is only for hard drive failure and not motherboard failure sadly.

I still have a few more tricks up my sleeve so not all hope is lost yet, but continue to be patient with me please. Real life is going to intercede over the next few days, but I should get 2-3 hours each night to work on this.

As an aside, if anyone has a working motherboard as listed up above I would like to hear about it and potentially buy/borrow it. That would simplify my life immensely.

[will parrish]

Thank you for all you do. Sylvan is a wonderful place. As always said in life its the Quality of Service and people not the quantity!!!

Customer Service report from me would be ABOVE AND BEYOND!!!!!

[Llewellyn]

Well...

Been an interesting few hours to say the least; actually damn near 5-straight.
Good news is that I have rebuilt the RAID using Ubunbu and the mdadm command. Half following the procedures at https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Recovering_a_failed_software_RAID#Force_assembly and half my own trial-and-error.  
All I have to say is Linux to the rescue once again.

The best news I have for you tonight is that I am copying the shard files over onto a clean USB stick for backup and migration.
I am going to attempt to stand-up a temporary server machine for the interim until I can replace the broken hardware.
Needless to say my office is a disaster at the moment as I had to pull just about every piece of computer equipment out of the closet and cobble together something to read these hard drives.
http://imgur.com/PeUwBZf

..:EDIT:..
Correction, I will try and throw up the temp computer/shard tomorrow after work. I need to go to sleep to get up for work in 5 hours. I gotta call it quits for tonight

Llewellyn

[will parrish]

Thanks again for all you are doing. Long Live Sylvan

[Cypress]

Let me echo Will in saying thanks for all you are doing as always, and by the way, epic pic of the office man

[will parrish]

Wow so that is what powers Sylvan!!! Amazing!!!   

[Llewellyn]

Looks like the temporary server is holding steady.

I have the next two hours to watch it.
Can someone (besides myself) log in?

Thanks,
Llewellyn


..:EDIT:..
http://prntscr.com/cg5u2g
New motherboard in the mail!

[Cypress]

I'm in and it's working! Woot! Sylvan has returned!!    Thank you, thank you Llewellyn! Grats finding the board like that too 

[will parrish]

I'm in as well and going strong