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Post by Sharon Faulkner on Aug 14, 2005 10:10:17 GMT -5
The NSS Discussion Board at cavechat.org is not functional at this time, hence the use of this substitute forum for discussion amongst members.
I phoned Director Kevin Smith this morning and he was sending a message to the rest of the BOG to see if anyone knew what the problem may be.
Sharon
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Post by Tech Support on Aug 16, 2005 4:49:34 GMT -5
Information posted on another egroup by Bill Liebman:
The service provider for the NSS website had a hard disk crash and many files were lost. The NSS is in the process of assessing damage and getting things back up and running. As most of you are aware, a disk crash takes time to recover from, if at all. This was a provider crash, not an NSS crash, but bottom line is they went down taking their customers with it. We have some items back up and running and are working to get the rest of the site back together. Fortunately we have a brand new IT person who is very skilled and has been on the job a week now when this occurred. Without his expertise, and assistance from others to include the past IT chair Kelly Prebil we would not have recovered to the point we have this quickly. We are not done recovering yet, and may have permanently lost some data, but we are back online again. I do not have a whole lot of details, so this is all I am able to explain at this time. At some point in the near future when more information is known and available an explanation will be forthcoming. Obviously our new IT person has passed his audition.
Please be patient and bear with us during this time of difficulty and not bombard the NSS with questions and accusations and complaints. We are doing the best we can under the circumstances. We are all on the same page over this.
Thank You for your patience and understanding.
Bill Liebman NSS-BOG
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L Roebuck
Technical Support
Caving
^V^ Just a caver
Posts: 2,023
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Post by L Roebuck on Aug 16, 2005 17:47:28 GMT -5
Posted on the NSS site today: www.caves.org/soapbox/index.html" The NSS Discussion Board is unavailable. I will be working this week on getting at least the software back up while the Interim IT Chair is out of town. Chances are high that it won't be a recovery of the discussion board, but at least the forums will be available again. Please refrain from sending questions, etc. so I may have more time dedicated to getting this up and running again.
Sincerely, Kelley Prebil Retired NSS IT Chair "
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Post by Squirrelgirl on Aug 17, 2005 14:55:09 GMT -5
OK, so I'm like totally confused. WHAT is this board? ? It seems like it has been in existence since BEFORE the NSS DB crashed. Though I just found out about it a few minutes ago from Scott McCrea. Who made this and why?
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Post by Sharon Faulkner on Aug 17, 2005 16:08:15 GMT -5
OK, so I'm like totally confused. WHAT is this board? ? It seems like it has been in existence since BEFORE the NSS DB crashed. Though I just found out about it a few minutes ago from Scott McCrea. Who made this and why? Hi Barbara, Welcome to the forum. To answer your questions, this board is a discussion forum much like any other forum in existence, except it has a Spell Check feature at the bottom of the reply box. It has been in existence since June of 2004. It has never been a secret, in fact the URL had been posted to the NSS Discussion Board. NSS Members created or built the forum from scratch. It has been completely created, run, and maintained by regular NSS members. There is no real why, unless of course you consider that the NSS Discussion Boards have crashed annually since 2003 and some folks wanted a place to communicate with each other should such an event happen again. It also provided an excellent place to try out new categories to see what others may find interesting, so I suppose it is something of a testing ground for folks interested in discussion boards or caving forums. The forum has never been highly promoted, so to speak, as it wasn't needed for communication purposes. However, it can serve as a capable substitute until the NSS Discussion Board is functional once again, which will probably be any day now. Hope this helps.
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L Roebuck
Technical Support
Caving
^V^ Just a caver
Posts: 2,023
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Post by L Roebuck on Aug 17, 2005 18:25:36 GMT -5
BTW I searched it and that URL is still on the NSS Discussion Board ... er... well... humm ... (since the NSS DB seems to have suffered some type of disk crash on Aug 13th) , I mean the URL is on the "Google Cached Version".
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Post by Squirrelgirl on Aug 17, 2005 19:08:26 GMT -5
Thanks, Sharon, for the explanation. Yes, well I can see that it certainly could be useful during the periodic crashes. I guess time will tell if it becomes more useful, too.
Thanks, SG
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Post by dcampen on Aug 23, 2005 20:18:22 GMT -5
Sharon,
Have you heard anything about how the work of restoring the NSS Board is going?
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Post by Sharon Faulkner on Aug 23, 2005 20:59:08 GMT -5
Hey Dave,
No, I have not heard a report of what progress is being made towards restoration of the NSS DB. Someone else may have better info on a time frame.
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Post by Scott McCrea on Aug 25, 2005 18:27:48 GMT -5
Tom Rea, NSS OVP, is reporting that the NSS Discussion Board will be reactivated. He said it will likely be a couple weeks before things are ready to go live. Yippie!
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Post by madratdan on Aug 26, 2005 13:41:59 GMT -5
I hope thats true Scott. The Discussion Board link on their web page could be interpreted differently. Here's what I see when I click on the link. This message was just changed by Kelley.
caves.org experienced a disk crash August 13th - restoration is still in progress.
The NSS Discussion Board is indefinitely unavailable.
Sincerely, Kelley Prebil Retired NSS IT Chair
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Post by Azurerana on Aug 26, 2005 15:07:09 GMT -5
I'm a little surprised that the NSS did not have the website and at least a skeletal discussion board backed up so that, as others have indicated, it could not be 90% restored and functional in a couple of days. On the other hand, periodic amnesia can be a good thing.. ..
I have all the business websites I manage triple backed up. I only now have ventured into cgi-scripted or PHP interactivity, but for the most part, the NSS site (DB excepted, of course) consists of pretty static pages. Like the NSS, I have little control over the infrastructure of my contracted webhosts, and that makes me even more sure that I have portable backups offsite from the hosting.
I have no idea what goes on under the electronic skin of chat rooms or discussion boards, but they are unlikely to be rocket science to backup or restore. Just take some disk space and time. I doubt if people would object to a once a month periodic outage if needed at some odd time of the day to ensure proper maintenance.
I agree with the person who said the NSS should have a part-time paid IT guru to take care of the website. It has become way too important as a communication medium to be neglected. If the paper publications editors can get a part time level stipend, so can a web guru.
Jo Schaper (out of the closet for now)
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Post by pacaver on Aug 28, 2005 16:18:27 GMT -5
Here is some encouraging news when you try to access the now defunct NSS discussion board:
Caves.org experienced a disk crash August 13th. Restoration of the NSS Discussion Board is in progress, and we expect to have a new, improved forum up by Labor Day, possibly sooner.
Thank you for your patience, understanding, and continued support.
Wayne Harrison NSS Discussion Board Administrator
Kudos to all involved in restoring this significant means of communications in the caving community. I know I speak for many more than myself when I say that the NSS discussion board is sorely missed.
Kevin Dunleavy NSS SCCI MAKC York Grotto
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Post by dcampen on Aug 29, 2005 10:36:48 GMT -5
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Post by marlatt on Aug 29, 2005 12:55:46 GMT -5
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L Roebuck
Technical Support
Caving
^V^ Just a caver
Posts: 2,023
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Post by L Roebuck on Aug 29, 2005 13:59:21 GMT -5
You can also use this link:
http:/ / www. cave chat org
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Post by dcampen on Aug 29, 2005 23:50:58 GMT -5
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L Roebuck
Technical Support
Caving
^V^ Just a caver
Posts: 2,023
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Post by L Roebuck on Sept 1, 2005 14:13:49 GMT -5
caves.org must be down again, it displayed this message when I went to the web site.
"This is the Pleskā¢ default page If you see this page it means:
1) hosting for this domain is not configured or 2) there's no such domain registered in Plesk.
For more information please contact @adminemail@."
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Post by Andy on Sept 1, 2005 14:22:50 GMT -5
I am getting the same message when I visit www.caves.org. At least there isn't a Discussion Board to wipe out this time! Andy
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Post by Sharon Faulkner on Sept 5, 2005 6:32:27 GMT -5
Hi Folks, The NSS DB wait is over. This message was posted on a few list serves last night and this morning: The new NSS discussion board is up and running! Point your mouse to www.cavechat.org and you'll go right to the new forum. Because it's new, you'll need to re-register, since the old accounts (and posts) were lost.
Our new forum uses phpBB software, so if you are already posting on a caving board that uses that software, you will be familiar with it.
We appreciate your support during the time our forum was down and we hope you'll come back and take the new forum for spin. See you there!
Wayne Harrison NSS Discussion Board Administrator (Permission granted to circulate widely in the caving community)
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Post by Rick Rhinehart on Sept 5, 2005 23:22:27 GMT -5
Now that the "official" NSS Board is back up and running, I am hopeful that this board will not be going away. There's no reason why cavers cannot support multiple discussion boards.
Plus, it is worthwhile to have a board that is not under the direction of the NSS Board of Governors.
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L Roebuck
Technical Support
Caving
^V^ Just a caver
Posts: 2,023
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Post by L Roebuck on Sept 6, 2005 9:25:03 GMT -5
I also hope the U.S Cavers board will choose to stay in place for cavers. This Board seems to have a lot going for it that the new NSS Discussion Board just does not have. I really like the "caving family" atmosphere here!
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