Author Topic: COMPLETE: Short Planned NSF Forum Downtime Notice - Friday, Jan 5, 2018  (Read 5663 times)

Offline Chris Bergin

Our hosts are doing some security upgrades on all servers (and I believe all hosts have to do it, so all sites will go through this), but we always let you know in advance. :)

The upgrades are being done while we're up, but this time it can't be hotpatched to fully install, so it'll be a reboot by the hosts (IBM).

First set reboot will be 06:00 UTC (01:00 Eastern) on Friday, Jan 5. - COMPLETE

Second set reboot will be 16:30 UTC (11:30 Eastern) on Friday, Jan 5.

The news site has been moved to a new host, and all work has already been done on that, so the news site will remain up throughout.
« Last Edit: 01/05/2018 05:52 pm by Chris Bergin »
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Offline WulfTheSaxon

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If anybody’s wondering what’s (almost certainly) precipitating the reboot: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/meltdown-and-spectre-every-modern-processor-has-unfixable-security-flaws/

Offline Eagandale4114

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And a link to the source material.

Offline Chris Bergin

Obviously, they aren't working to an ISS instantaneous window. ;) They say reboot is "shortly" but the 6:00am UTC must have been the start of the window for it. Anyway, will be soon.
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Offline Chris Bergin

Well that sucked!

Clearly more than "just a reboot", as that was about 30+ minutes (trust me, felt like a bloody lifetime when you're watching the monitoring and this site is like my own child).

Did not enjoy that one bit.

Forum function seems good. Attachments aren't displaying in preview, I've noticed. That can happen after a reboot. Will ask Mark to fix that....and he did minutes later ;D

« Last Edit: 01/05/2018 01:59 pm by Chris Bergin »
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Offline FinalFrontier

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Going to miss the old forum design when it finally goes for upgrade.

As for this, yea Chris this situation with the CPU kernel bug is really unbelievable. Lot of folks in the tech world saying this is the absolute worst security flaw in probably 20 years, maybe ever. The attitude Intel in particular is taking has really aggravated the situation in a big way. Patches are out but you are liable to notice some issues. Microsoft, Apple, ect all came out and say the best they can do is a bandaid patch, not a permanent fix, they have said the CPU manufacturers will have to do that by making architecture changes. So there will be issues, especially with software. This is because in order to work, the security patches change how the CPU handles sys calls among other things, and almost all modern software relies on heavy calls and speculative execution. So its going to really mess stuff up for a little while.

Don't be surprised if you find more issues.
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Offline Chris Bergin

The goal for the new forum (which is a long time away) will be not "I miss the old NSF forum", it'll be "Oh, it's the same NSF forum, but with a lot of extra cowbell!".

The news site was a bigger, more dramatic, change, but still feels like NSF, just better. The forum won't be as dramatic, but will be better.

That's the goal. But the next phase is the servers. Already done on the news site servers. Forum servers will be next. And of course, this downtime today is not related to any of that, it's to do with the major issue that is related to pretty much every computer on the planet.

Speaking of which, everyone make sure you did the windows update that I did on my computers last night.

Next, and final, downtime for NSF forum (not the news site) is about 90-120 minutes away and yeah, it's going to be about 30 minutes of downtime based on this morning. Totally has to be done, not NSF or the hosts fault. And at least there's not a launch today!
« Last Edit: 01/05/2018 01:57 pm by Chris Bergin »
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Offline WulfTheSaxon

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[…] Speaking of which, everyone make sure you did the windows update that I did on my computers last night.

People also need to make sure they update their firmware as updates come out in the coming days/weeks. Part of the patch requires a CPU microcode update, and this time Microsoft has said they won’t be updating that themselves except for their own Surface devices. It also won’t apply if your antivirus software (if present) is out if date.

Offline RocketLover0119

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Reboot 2 window is now open
"The Starship has landed"

Offline Chris Bergin

And back. That was only five minutes!

Will wait for a confirmation e-mail from IBM that this was all that was needed this time. :)
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Offline Chris Bergin

Yay!

>The planned maintenance is now complete. The following virtual guests should now be working properly:<
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