PING: Anyone using my code for your MP league

[Ben E Lou]

There was a server upgrade this week and it's causing the issues. I am on live chat with Support right now. You *know* you're a special case when you type in your issue, an agent is contacted, and this is the very beginning of the chat:

To put it into perspective, in the past there have been times I practically begged to be sent directly to Tier 2 because I knew Tier 1 wouldn't be able to solve it. It took over a year, but I finally "won" and got my account flagged to allow me to ask for and be routed to Tier 2 support without going through all the checks by the lackey at Tier 1. I'm pretty certain I've never just skipped to Tier 3 immediately. Not sure what that means, but I've been promised a response within 24 hours.

[Ben E Lou]

Tier3 ftw!!!

Looks like the issue is solved. I'm not sure if your FTP settings will need to change, but it looks like they *might*. Contact me if you have an FTP account on my site and it isn't working.

[Sef0r]

I work in a tier 2/tier 3 technical group for a telecommunications company. You my friend are very lucky, we don't take any cases directly without being filtered first. Okay I lie, there are some exceptions...they know our CEO

[w24olfpack]

That's like going to a doctor and he says... "Hmmmm....." and then starts calling in interns to observe this 'special' case.

[Raiders Army]

I wonder exactly what your flag says to get to tier 3 status so quickly.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Raiders Army

I wonder exactly what your flag says to get to tier 3 status so quickly.

On a past support call, a Tier 1 person read part of a support ticket to me that was filed by the Tier 3 lead. I don't remember the exact wording, but it included something along the lines of "...hey guys, it's Ben Lewis and his massive databases again..."

[Sef0r]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

On a past support call, a Tier 1 person read part of a support ticket to me that was filed by the Tier 3 lead. I don't remember the exact wording, but it included something along the lines of "...hey guys, it's Ben Lewis and his massive databases again..."

lol, we know the chances of a customer asking for ticket logs is slim to none but you eventually learn not to write anything that doesn't need to be written. At least your one is funny, I've seen some...interesting ones

[Ben E Lou]

One other issue has cropped up: the db location has moved and there's a problem with access to the new location, but the old databases are still there. I've got a ticket in and I expect it to be resolved soon. However, any database updates made going forward (and maybe from the last couple of days) will not be present once the issue is resolved. This is pretty much a non-issue EXCEPT in one critical case: IF YOU HAVE JUST ENDED YOUR SEASON OR ARE ABOUT TO END YOUR SEASON, YOU WILL LOSE TRANSACTIONS AND INJURIES FROM THE LAST GAME OR TWO OF THE OLD SEASON. Everything else can be recovered, but if those are critically important to you, then I'd advise you to pause the league until I give you the new server name for DBUpdater.

[Ben E Lou]

Flasch and Sov, I need you to PM me. You will need new FTP credentials, but I don't recall your FTP passwords. Right now your new accounts are set to the main passwords. Don't use your old FTP credentials. They'll work, but the stuff you upload using them won't be able to be accessed soon. PM me with the desired FTP password, and I'll set it up and send you new credentials.

[Hoya1]

just sent you a PM for the IFL. I think Sov might be otherwise occupied.

just let me know what I need to do. I should've checked in here first

[Flasch186]

yeah, for me something is wrong still. As I mentioned via email, its not pulling the menu bar on the left nor the banners across the top...we were having msg board errors too regarding being able to post and send PMs.

[Ben E Lou]

Bad day for this....on the road until around 6pm or so....

Flasch...hadn't thought about it, but it's a bigger issue for u b/c your msg board is on my db server. New posts will likely be lost. Might want to shut down board until I get home.

[Flasch186]

I think its shut down anyways, no one really knows how to access it unless they back door their way to it.

That being said, no worries, I understand. Just bad luck. Thanks for looking when you have time.

[Ben E Lou]

Flasch, if you still have my number, call me.

[Hoya1]

I'm good until whenever. Def not the end of the world. Just let me know what I need to do whenever you have a spare minute

[Raiders Army]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

On a past support call, a Tier 1 person read part of a support ticket to me that was filed by the Tier 3 lead. I don't remember the exact wording, but it included something along the lines of "...hey guys, it's Ben Lewis and his massive databases again..."

That's awesome. Sorry to hear about the DB problems though.

[Ben E Lou]

Not really huge problems. They upgraded the servers, changed the server names, and the backups are a day or two old. In the end, it just means that when people run DBUpdater with the new db server name, it'll update the last few stages. It should be a complete non-event for leagues that aren't about to roll over a season.

[Ben E Lou]

League commishes running DBUpdater on my server, PM me and I'll send you the new server name. It's ready to roll now.

[Flasch186]

Ben

see my PM regarding problems on the msg board. Cant post anything on there or write PM's

[Ben E Lou]

Yes. Your board uses the db as well. I need to change those settings, I suspect. Gimme a bit...

[Flasch186]

Im chasing ya

the uploader seems to need new credentials too.

[Ben E Lou]

Well, I've sorted out what happened and they've now filed a support ticket with the admins for it. It gives me some strange satisfaction when the initial tier reads my question and doesn't even bother to follow up. Just an immediate "Uh, yeah.....this is beyond my skill to heal...it needs elvish medicine"

Without getting too technical, there are many fields that should be auto-incrementing fields. In other words, when DBUpdater puts in a new Game Result, it needs an id for that result. The database *should* provide that, but for some reason when they moved the databases, a bunch of auto-incrementing fields got that tag removed. What's weird is that it didn't happen for every league's db, just some. *shurg*

Once the ticket gets resolved, a lot of stuff will just fix itself.

__________________
The media don't understand the kinds of problems and pressures 54 million come wit'!

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Last edited by Ben E Lou : 10-12-2009 at 11:42 AM.

[Flasch186]

Nothing tonight Ben?

hoping for tomorrow Really wanted to get the Regular season started to keep the appetites sated.

[Ben E Lou]

No word. Keep in mind that the auto-increment issue is likely a system-wide one. It's huge. I would think that anyone trying to post on any board that lost its auto-increment values would have this issue. I can look at manually changing some of the phpbb fields to auto-increment values, but I don't know how many might need to be changed.

[Ben E Lou]

OK. I went in and hacked the phpbb database a bit so y'all can post and send PMs. There will probably be some other things that don't work until they do a global fix of the auto-increment fields.

[Ben E Lou]

The uploader is an entirely different issue in all likelihood, fyi. There's a ticket on that as well. I can't do anything about that one. If you trust your owners not to delete someone else's export, I can set up a location that everyone can use to export via ftp. The other two options are to have exports emailed to you, or wait until that issue is fixed. Looking at it from their perspective, the auto-increment issue has got to be a *MUCH* bigger deal, so I would think that whatever is wrong with the uploader isn't going to be a high-priority item for them.

[Flasch186]

Understood.

Thanks for the hack. at least it allow me to communicate with them.

I do trust them so if you'd have time I would certainly appreciat the FTP position for exports until they get the uploader working...

Thanks for all.

[Ben E Lou]

Horrid response from support (potential solution for lost msg board issues in here) - Aplus.net Forum

I am going to act the fool now.

[gstelmack]

Yeah, the key here is they should have the schema for the old databases to compare.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Horrid response from support (potential solution for lost msg board issues in here) - Aplus.net Forum

I am going to act the fool now.

I get a database error when trying to read it.

[Ben E Lou]

Try again...looks like they fixed it.

[Sef0r]

Doesn't surprise me. A different group was probably tasked with the upgrade and their sole responsibility was to migrate to a new platform, etc. The faults/support teams are blind as to the full list of changes that may have occurred.

I have been in similar situations, I hate having to ask a customer to provide me with something my company should already know. I am not excusing it in any way though.

My suggestion would be to log a complaint right away to coincide with your recent conversations with support. This will actually help support in getting assistance from the group involved in creating this mess in the first place.

[Flasch186]

Ben, any update on their progress fixing things for you?

[Ben E Lou]

All of the auto-increment fields are fixed. I got an email about that a day or two ago. I would think that we're still some time away from the uploader issue, since it's specific to that particular script and not system-wide. That ticket is still open.

[Flasch186]

That being said, some of our auto posting stuff at USFL still doesnt work right.

For example, I changed the Owner of ST. Louis to NYURDRMS and the postbits dont stick to them/him.

Also, our match previews show up blank in the forum.

Many of the links on the left side of our site still dont work.

If moving to VBulletin will help us in our league I have NO problem losing posts or whatever.

and as you know the uploader is still an open ticket...

Thanks man for steering the ship but want to get the site fixed as soon as possible.

[Ben E Lou]

OK. The ability to go straight to phpmyadmin and update the owner and player ratings table is gone, and won't be restored. Here's a workaround for the owner names:

1. Do a search and download MySQL Query Browser
2. Put your credentials in there. ("Schema" is just the dbname again.)
2a. You should get an error when you log in successfully. Ignore it.
3. Send this query to change an owner:

UPDATE woof_owners SET name="{newownername}" WHERE teamid={teamyouwanttochange}

(The lightning bolt icon sends the query once you've typed it in.)

In other words, if you wanted to have me take over Team 2, you'd put in the following

UPDATE woof_owners SET name="Ben E Lou" WHERE teamid=2

{and then hit the lightning bolt icon}

That'll take care of that. To see the list of owners...

SELECT * from woof_owners

Updating player ratings is on hold, probably at least until Christmas. I'll have to code a solution for that pretty much from scratch, using some php functionality that I've never touched or researched.

[Flasch186]

did you ever get an apology out of them or anything?

[Ben E Lou]

Yes. And the auto-increment issue, while having huge ramifications, is a fairly easy mistake to make. The new way of handling phpmyadmin is, from what I've seen, the more "standard" way of doing things. Of all the leagues I've helped out, well under half of them have hosting plans where you can get to phpmyadmin without going through the control panel. I didn't realize that was a bit of a luxury.

At any rate, it looks like there's going to be a fix very soon for player ratings. 3ric has written something that I think I can port for all leagues by the time the Thanksgiving holidays are done.

[Flasch186]

and dont forget to let me know when they have an uploader. I think i might be the only league out there using email and FTP for their files, no?

Im so tired. aiden has Jaundice. stuck nin the hospital

[Flasch186]

6.3 update is going to make DBupdbater unuseable currently until a fix is made and thus break your sites, no?

[Ben E Lou]

No. Nothing will break. You just won't be able to update until Greg decides to change DBUpdater and/or Extractor. The workaround for now is to keep one machine on 6.2, download the files each turn, and DBUpdate from the 6.2 machine.

[Flasch186]

ahhhhhhhhhh

[Yoda]

You can also set up a virtual machine to do the same thing, if you don't have an extra machine.