TW Timeline?

[Bluff]

First, I?d like to thank Qan and the dev team for putting forth the effort in restoring TW and all its glory, especially with all of the challenges of working with a 15+ year old code.

TW has been down for nearly a week. I know Qan has explained in detail on another thread the obstacles in front of them. On that basis, is there a an rough estimation as to when it may be back up?

[Rab]

Yep.
1. Why is it down?
2. What has been done so far?
3. What is being done now?
4. What else needs to be done before tw returns?
5. ETA on tw's return?

[zidane]

Prob a ddos like the one that took the zone down a few years ago or no one can reach Priitk to reset the server

[RoDNeY]

been talking to priit for the past few days, he says this is what we get for benching Rab this TWLB

[bandcampgirl]

RIP tw

[Bosshawk]

guys hes said they are resolving something that coull end up being a big plus going forward... its been down not even 3 days..... take a deep breath.. hes made official statements saying its being worked on and will be resolved... can you not just put some trust in him and be patient?

i mean after a week or two i could understand a lil more sense of urgency but its not like no ones said anything.. he came out and made the statement asking us to be patient it would take a few days...

[Bosshawk]

ok here is a post by qan and he said share the info:

qan [4:10 AM]

@everyone Well, we were hookwinked by MasterTroll Kasesalu. Only the zones will be moving. The reason for the delay was to attempt to find a reliable and safe way to host the biller. Now that we know we'll only be hosting the zones, it's a fairly trivial move to put up the gameservers, which hopefully should be up again within the next 24-72 hours, depending on Priit's response time.My brain is absolutely fried from talking spaceship politics endlessly the last few days, and this will be a welcome return, even if it means we still will not gain control over the biller.One advantage is that we will have full gameserver access once again. This allows us the ability to finally see all of the zone files, meaning we can index all of the public arenas available, including no doubt several hundred we have no record of.We can also finally have a chance at hosting TW on ASSS, allowing a wide variety of additional features using server-side code!More details to come. Thanks for staying patient, and sorry for not being more forthcoming sooner. Feel free to spread this information to the public.

note: the reason he said only the zones are moving is originally it was thought the biller was moving as well.....

so in a nutshell.. it will get better.. but still looking at 24-72 hours possibly before back up and running

[Rab]

Thanks Boss/qan for info.

If there's anything I can do to help get the zone up quicker let me know, I have plenty of free time.

Stuff I would like to know:
- What was the cause of this outage?
- That sounds like there'll be a new server for hosting the zones. Will this server still be hosted US-East, or elsewhere? Is there any other reason to expect performance/reliability improvements as a result?
- Will the original server still host the biller, or is there a new server for that too? Even if we're not going to control the biller, can we get a new billing op or two?
- Is Priit still covering the costs of hosting the biller and zones?

[Bluff]

Yeah thanks a lot for the info, Boss.

I also second Rab. I?ll help if at all possible, but I?m no coding expert.

Off-ish topic, the fund is something else to discuss. I?d seen better reporting by Enron. We should know where our money is going. I?d volunteer to do the accounting legwork. I went to school for finance and studied for my CPA before deciding on med school, so I?m mostly qualified. Just throwin it out there.

[qan]

Stuff I would like to know:
- What was the cause of this outage?

The IP to the server was reassigned in planned maintenance, which apparently Priit was unaware of. Priit decided to discontinue the server hosting the zones after this.

- That sounds like there'll be a new server for hosting the zones. Will this server still be hosted US-East, or elsewhere? Is there any other reason to expect performance/reliability improvements as a result?

It should be in US East. We won't be using Superb, as they are anything but, so there may be some connection improvement for certain players, and possibly worse for others. Latency should remain roughly the same for everyone, though.

- Will the original server still host the biller, or is there a new server for that too? Even if we're not going to control the biller, can we get a new billing op or two?

At first we were under the impression that Priit was giving up the biller as well as the zones, but this isn't the case.

This has brought a lot of discussion back, and the issue of having too few billing ops is one of the issues raised. SpaceHiker should be getting more tools to do his job properly. Mom is the only other active billing op, and she currently has the role of approving SH's reset requests, but is quite busy IRL, so that's slowed down a bit. With luck, maybe a second ticket-handling billing op will be put in place. However, apparently the tickets are still being handled in the normal way (if this isn't the case, please let me know).

- Is Priit still covering the costs of hosting the biller and zones?

He'll cover the cost of the biller, but we'll be taking on the cost of the zones, unfortunately. Also, EG may try to host separately.


Currently we're searching for someone with significant Windows server experience and a proven track record of reliability and trust. (Almost all SS devs are Linux guys, it seems.) If you have anyone in mind, please recommend them.

[qan]

Also, ETA is before the end of the weekend. Let's hope for an Easter miracle.

[Grasps]

With luck, maybe a second ticket-handling billing op will be put in place. However, apparently the tickets are still being handled in the normal way (if this isn't the case, please let me know).
.

I've placed numerous tickets to get my name back (LamedFighter) since 2016 and haven't had a single response back. I'd say that that's not the "normal' way of handling tickets or maybe your simply referring to the system that takes in request (not the people who should take the ticket). Spacehiker told me several months back in-game when I heard he could help me that they reset names once a month, told him how happy I was that they still help folks but even he has gone silent on the matter after asking him several times in game. It would be most welcomed to get a server op who can take tickets like mine and fix them or very least close it with a response that they can't help lol They just sit open forever currently. It would be awesome if we could have someone who does at least as Spacehiker said, fixing names and such once a month.. or even once every 3 months. Going on 3 years now lol

[Grasps]

Also, ETA is before the end of the weekend. Let's hope for an Easter miracle.

Right on. BTW really appreciate you keeping the community up to date Qan. Have a nice rest of your week man. Cheers.

-Ixa

[Rab]

Thanks for the info.

I have 10+ years experience with Windows Server, happy to help, whether what's advice or doing stuff is up to you.

How much is the extra cost? What does that bring our total monthly upkeep to? How many months will our bank balance last?
Can we have a patreon or equivalent for setting up regular donations? I think people would be more likely to trust something like that, the current donations arrangement is just weird and that makes it hard to trust.

[Bluff]

He'll cover the cost of the biller, but we'll be taking on the cost of the zones, unfortunately. Also, EG may try to host separately.

So, essentially, it?s going to be indirectly P2P. What are we looking at in terms of cost? Going to need someone active in seeking/planning out fundraising activities, in general.

Mom is nowhere to be found haha. It?s cool, I just want my squad name ?Puncture? back

Save us, Obi-Qan Kenobi, you?re our only hope.

Thanks again, Dude!