Any ideas what has happened to it? It's been down for ages now

There slowely getting it back up i think

It crashed, and they lost a lot of stuff from the DB. Gradually recovering things now, so the over-moderated and terribly organised waste of a forum can continue to operate.

At least I can still select the old template style, which is vaguely nice to use.

it seems to be up, but not fully running, slow as hell and i can't login, i keep getting time-outs.

Their forum was overwhelmed by the iRacing pricing thread.

RAID array failure, incompetance by the hosting company, much lost data in fragmented little chunks that needed to be reassembled manually (and that work is still continuing)... it's been a nightmare to fix.

Its been back since yesterday.

I haven't missed it at all.

Quote from JamesF1 :

RAID array failure, incompetance by the hosting company, much lost data in fragmented little chunks that needed to be reassembled manually (and that work is still continuing)... it's been a nightmare to fix.

good to hear it's getting better James

Quote from JamesF1 :

RAID array failure

RAID is not an alternative to backup. I feel your pain though.

vBulletin's nightly backups 'mysteriously' stopped backing up everything at the start of December, hence the data loss on everything *except* actual thread/post data (i.e. forums, PMs, etc.)... By 'mysteriously', I mean that no-one knows why... but I find it hard to believe that it wasn't fiddled with by someone who thought they'd be smart.

Regardless, as much data as possible is being recovered manually (as I3D refused to let the array rebuild itself, for some strange reason, and opted instead to install a new array and provide the disk contents to us).

It's a long old haul, I'm afraid!

Quote from JamesF1 :

vBulletin's nightly backups 'mysteriously' stopped backing up everything at the start of December

Ouch. You have my sympathies.

Quote from JamesF1 :

but I find it hard to believe that it wasn't fiddled with by someone who thought they'd be smart

Probably for optimizing performance

Quote from wien :

RAID is not an alternative to backup. I feel your pain though.

Well - it is practically as good, if you properly maintain it.

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

Well - it is practically as good, if you properly maintain it.

Bull. One mistake at the commandline and all your files go away. An application could corrupt the files. RAID controller failure and you have to piece it together by hand like James seems to be doing now. A power surge could wipe out all your drives and take most of the other hardware with it. A fire could take down your entire system and the data in it. The possibilities are endless. Do NOT trust RAID as your sole "backup" solution.

Quote from wien :

...like James seems to be doing now...

Oh believe me, I'm certainly not doing it. Was asked and refused - I'd rather keep my sanity... I've seen what it's done to the others who have been working on it

Quote from JamesF1 :

I've seen what it's done to the others who have been working on it

Heh, I know a guy that does data recovery for a living, so I know what you mean. His big fat pay-cheque helps him cope though. People are generally more willing to spend when the shit hits the fan than they are when it comes to paying for proper backup solutions in the first place.

Isn't that the truth. And to think, a little:

can save a lot of hassle