RMweb - Change of hosting, missing images - April 2022

[PhilJ W]

With reference to the above I've tried it on Firefox and it works OK. (I usually use Chrome).

[PhilJ W]

2 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Something rather strange is happening. When I open a thread it appears OK but when I want to return to content the return button doesn't seem to work and I have to hold the cursor over the return arrow then click on content. This only seems to happen when I open a forums thread, in all other instances the return button works as normal.

 

2 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

With reference to the above I've tried it on Firefox and it works OK. (I usually use Chrome).

I've got rid of the problem, by turning the ad blocker on? I noticed that the ad blocker was on on Firefox so I turned it on on Chrome and the problem ceased.

Edited June 30, 2022 by PhilJ W

[Steamport Southport]

I know you are on Premium, but there is an annoying ad space that takes up about an inch of the bottom of the screen that has appeared in the last day or so, which seems to be affecting the site.*

 

Might be related to that if it stops with an ad blocker.

 

 

*Not a complaint about adverts, more a comment about functionality.

[Nick C]

13 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Something rather strange is happening. When I open a thread it appears OK but when I want to return to content the return button doesn't seem to work and I have to hold the cursor over the return arrow then click on content. This only seems to happen when I open a forums thread, in all other instances the return button works as normal.

I'm seeing the same issue, it's caused by an advertising script. I've just PM'd Andy with details about it. 

[ChrisN]

7 hours ago, Nick C said:

I'm seeing the same issue, it's caused by an advertising script. I've just PM'd Andy with details about it. 

 

It is happening to me as well.  I am running Windows 10 and Edge.  It appears to be duplicating pages, so if you hit the 'back' button, it makes one of the same to go to, and then there are two contents pages.  It is not an issue for me as I can get round it, but something odd is happening.

[AY Mod]

4 minutes ago, ChrisN said:

something odd is happening.

 

We are aware and investigating - just to save further reports.

[kevinlms]

On 01/07/2022 at 05:29, PhilJ W said:

Something rather strange is happening. When I open a thread it appears OK but when I want to return to content the return button doesn't seem to work and I have to hold the cursor over the return arrow then click on content. This only seems to happen when I open a forums thread, in all other instances the return button works as normal.

If you right click the back arrow, you will see that the history will show 2 (usually) of the same link. If you click the lower of the identical ones, you will go to the intended location.

 

Somehow the last page you were on is reloading - at least the history thinks it has.

[Sir TophamHatt]

It's a good example where using the browser back button is usually not the best option.

You can use this section to click on whereveryou need to return to:

 

 

[AJCT]

On 13/06/2022 at 19:38, AY Mod said:

 

It's still pot luck, it won't work for all posts I'm afraid.

Is there any progress to report on recovery of images, or should I set to and try the edit/re-insert option ?  Thanks in anticipation....

 

Alasdair

[Mark Ellis]

Andy hi,

 

Joined the group to research Union Mills and raise awareness of the UM appreciation website that I've set up. But I'm unable to view the images on many threads. Is this because of the server issues or some restriction on my account or?

One example is Richard's DCC thread
https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/138717-union-mills-dcc-fitting/#comment-3342106

I don't see the pictures, just generic thumbnails
From the post

And when I click on the images I get a black box

 
When I click on the tiny thumbnail in the black screen, I get an XML Access denied message



And for some reason, when I copy and paste an image here, it's posting duplicate images - which I've deleted

Edited July 14, 2022 by Mark Ellis

[dhjgreen]

On 31/03/2022 at 10:43, AY Mod said:

Firstly, my apologies for the extended and unplanned absence of the site since Monday 21st March.

It was evident that all was not well with site performance for a few weeks. I had been repeatedly advising and questioning the host’s (Dediserve) support since late January. Repeatedly they would push the blame back saying there was nothing wrong there so it must be software/configurations/heavy loads. Eventually on 3rd February they had to restart the drives due to an issue at their London data centre and they also replaced one of the drives; for a couple of weeks after this the performance was better but the issues gradually returned. Repeated contacts were made with the same rebuttals; regular intervention was required to tweak settings and clear caches which would return service for a few hours. Requests for a further restart were refused on the basis it would affect other clients. This reached intolerable levels during a supposed week off.

Due to concerns over poor performance and support plans were already in hand and preparations largely completed before that week off. We had held discussions with the president of Invision (the software used for the site) about migrating the site to them as soon as practicable.

Finally, on 21st March, everything started collapsing. Requests for information were met with vague responses about investigation. The following day a technical report was sent…
 

 

So much for the successful drive replacement they reported to me on 4th March!

At that stage we were looking at a total data loss by Dediserve as the backups were within that array. An earlier backup from around a year ago was found intact. We had taken the precaution of taking the sql database away from Dediserve onto an alternative platform (again due to performance issues) a year ago so we had all the user/post content safely separate so the drive failures related to the uploaded content such as images. The backup file was enormous, in website terms, which entailed logistical problems in transferring this to Invision.

 

So what does this mean?

 

• The transfer to Invision means that the hosting will be with the software providers so that performance should be better integrated.
• Invision’s systems utilise Amazon’s cloud platforms for improved resilience with continual backups.
• Improved software support.
• The uploaded images from the last year could, sadly, not be recovered from Dediserve. Older images should be largely intact although further checks are being made. Users will be able to edit earlier posts and re-upload images if they wish. It’s far from ideal and I’m furious with Dediserve for their failings in this regard.
• It’s evident at this stage that some saved avatars haven’t been ported across so please re-upload up those when you get opportunity.

 

If the navigations bar or other links do not appear to be working can you please clear any RMweb browsing history in your browser.

 

Once again, I apologise for the interruption in service. Thank you for the emails, Facebook posts, phone calls, text and WhatsApp messages etc – although a distraction when trying to get things moving your support was seen and appreciated. Of course there will still some knobbers but I can’t cure everything.

 

Other issues may be identified through the course of the coming days; your patience will be appreciated.

 

37 minutes ago, Mark Ellis said:

Andy hi,

 

Joined the group to research Union Mills and raise awareness of the UM appreciation website that I've set up. But I'm unable to view the images on many threads. Is this because of the server issues or some restriction on my account or?

One example is Richard's DCC thread
https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/138717-union-mills-dcc-fitting/#comment-3342106

I don't see the pictures, just generic thumbnails
From the post

And when I click on the images I get a black box

 
When I click on the tiny thumbnail in the black screen, I get an XML Access denied message



And for some reason, when I copy and paste an image here, it's posting duplicate images - which I've deleted

 

[jamie92208]

I've just had a look through my missing images and checked against the spreadsheet that I constructed in March.  It looks as if no new images have appeared.   I've decided to slowly upload the missing ones.  As there are about 140 pages at 25 per page, that means over 3000 to my early morning brain, I may well not do them all but will work through one thread at a time.  First I'm going to do my layout thread which starts in 2009 and then probably sort my UK an French random pictures threads.

 

Jamie

[RedgateModels]

53 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

I've just had a look through my missing images and checked against the spreadsheet that I constructed in March.  It looks as if no new images have appeared.   I've decided to slowly upload the missing ones.  As there are about 140 pages at 25 per page, that means over 3000 to my early morning brain, I may well not do them all but will work through one thread at a time.  First I'm going to do my layout thread which starts in 2009 and then probably sort my UK an French random pictures threads.

 

Jamie

 

I've started to do mine too. You'll find that there will be the odd locked topic that you can't edit your post to replace images and from my point of view there will always be some "capture.jpg" images that were not saved elsewhere. I'll get most of mine done eventually though.

[AMac]

Hi Andy and all. Similar to Mark Eillis's post, I can't access nearly all images (one example is photos from a 2014 post). Does this mean a lot of members like Jamie and Redgate need to re-upload them (or were you both talking about the 12 months up to March this year)?

I saw the problems you had a few months ago - what a pain for you!  I appreciate all your efforts. This is a fantastic site and I have got lots of great information from people with a lot of knowledge either directly or by reading other members questions. 

 

Cheers

[DaveF]

 

 

I've done a quick count of missing images in my threads - it comes to over 20,000.  It's about 40% of all the railway images Dad and I took.

 

I'm going to think about what to do next - reuploading them would be a big job.

 

Any ideas anyone?

 

David

Edited July 20, 2022 by DaveF

[jamie92208]

33 minutes ago, AMac said:

Hi Andy and all. Similar to Mark Eillis's post, I can't access nearly all images (one example is photos from a 2014 post). Does this mean a lot of members like Jamie and Redgate need to re-upload them (or were you both talking about the 12 months up to March this year)?

I saw the problems you had a few months ago - what a pain for you!  I appreciate all your efforts. This is a fantastic site and I have got lots of great information from people with a lot of knowledge either directly or by reading other members questions. 

 

Cheers

This is the ones prior to June 2021.  I did all the ones back to then. Yes you need to re upload them.  It's not a difficult process just time consuming.  Somewhere way back up the thread I did a step by step guide.  Obviously you can't upload ones that were posted on your threads by others.  I tend to do one thread at a time, starting with the earliest and working forward to 2021.

 

Jamie

[Colin_McLeod]

It appears no images have been reinstated for a while now. 

 

Perhaps @AY Mod can give an update and likely prognosis.

 

It is beginning to look like the remaining images are lost for good but I so hope that I'm wrong.

 

 

 

[AY Mod]

14 minutes ago, Colin_McLeod said:

 

Perhaps @AY Mod can give an update and likely prognosis.

 

Very busy at the mo but will give a better explanation in due course when I've established some more information.

[melmerby]

3 hours ago, DaveF said:

 

 

I've done a quick count of missing images in my threads - it comes to over 20,000.  It's about 40% of all the railway images Dad and I took.

 

I'm going to think about what to do next - reuploading them would be a big job.

 

Any ideas anyone?

 

David

Hi Dave

Are they the same ones as your Flickr thread?

Would replacing the lost pictures with one link to a Flickr Album per RMWeb post achieve similar results?

Edited July 20, 2022 by melmerby

[ChrisN]

The duplication of pages on Microsoft Edge appears to have ben fixed.  🙂

 

Thank you.

[Nick Gough]

15 minutes ago, ChrisN said:

The duplication of pages on Microsoft Edge appears to have ben fixed.  🙂

 

Thank you.

Good old Ben! 😆

[ejstubbs]

I don't know whether this has been reported before, but just now I was trying to reinstate some images which had gone AWOL from a post of mine (this one) and, although most of them did not appear in the actual post itself, they do all appear in the "UPLOADED IMAGES" section of the edit screen.  So they're on RMWeb's hosted server, and I can reinstate them in the post without having to upload them again from my computer.

 

Might it be that some of the photos that people think are still missing have actually been recovered, but just not put back into the actual forum/blog posts that they are supposed to appear in?

 

(I've left half the photos still not restored into the body of my post so that the Admins can see what I mean - if they haven't seen such behaviour already.)

Edited July 29, 2022 by ejstubbs

[Compound2632]

41 minutes ago, ejstubbs said:

I don't know whether this has been reported before, but just now I was trying to reinstate some images which had gone AWOL from a post of mine (this one) and, although most of them did not appear in the actual post itself, they do all appear in the "UPLOADED IMAGES" section of the edit screen.  So they're on RMWeb's hosted server, and I can reinstate them in the post without having to upload them again from my computer.

 

Might it be that some of the photos that people think are still missing have actually been recovered, but just not put back into the actual forum/blog posts that they are supposed to appear in?

 

(I've left half the photos still not restored into the body of my post so that the Admins can see what I mean - if they haven't seen such behaviour already.)

 

I note your post is from May 21 which is one of the months for which images were restored at the start - in the case of my posts, they do appear in the posts, not just in the upload images section in edit mode.

[john new]

2 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

I don't know whether this has been reported before, but just now I was trying to reinstate some images which had gone AWOL from a post of mine (this one) and, although most of them did not appear in the actual post itself, they do all appear in the "UPLOADED IMAGES" section of the edit screen.  So they're on RMWeb's hosted server, and I can reinstate them in the post without having to upload them again from my computer.

 

Might it be that some of the photos that people think are still missing have actually been recovered, but just not put back into the actual forum/blog posts that they are supposed to appear in?

 

(I've left half the photos still not restored into the body of my post so that the Admins can see what I mean - if they haven't seen such behaviour already.)

Sadly, having just looked, the missing attachments are listed but are zero bytes. That may well be a good way to put them back if/when they get loaded to the server but not then re-populated into the posts. As it stands though if they are visible in the other media link they are already restored into the post.

[jamie92208]

I've cracked on with my reloading of images and have moved on to a 2nd thread.  Today I've done the images from April and May 2020.  Just as an aside, in the May images several posts had the pictures there with the links but not embedded in the text.  reloading was easy.  A few others had 1 image out of 6 loaded and the others present but not embedded.  Just a comment.

 

Jamie