Little Golem broken down

[malas...@gmail.com]

<p>I am very sorry but Litle Golem is now unavailable</p>

What happened ?

During my holiday (in mountains where is not so hot a where is not
internet connection) broken down my notebook
(exactly on July 11th),
where was backup of Little Golem database. On this notebook was always
one week old backup of database. Immediatelly
after holiday I bought new notebook (on July 17th) and next day (on
July 18th) I create backup of database on server,
where is Little Golem. Because backup file is large (more or less 2gb)
I always downloaded backup file during night.
But on noon broken down server and I was without any backup file.

It was really bad luck. During 7 days broken down two computers where
are data and on both computers is broken
down only hard drive.

Now exists only very old backup (April), and probably all tournaments
(mainly championships)
must start from scratch.

Little Golem will start during several days.

[bep...@gmail.com]

Thanks anyway for your great work!
We can discuss about a backup on my site or anyone else for as soon as
it comes back.

Beppi (Pitch).

[ypercube]

Thnx for getting us know what happened. I'm sure many will be
frustrated that they'll have to replay some games, but I think most of
golem players will be just happy to have littlegolem up and running
again, even if we have to replay (and lose again) hundreds of games.
It's amazing that for 4-5 years that golem exists, that there is only 1
(this one) major breakdown and only this one loss of data.

ypercube

[twixter]

April is better than total data loss, which is what happened to PBMserv
once. Thanks for letting us know!

(back in Twixt first league, heh)

[DaveN55]

[DaveN55]

LG is a awesome game site and I'm just happy it will come back up
soon!! No worries about lost games...we can replay them :)

Thanks for all your efforts,
Rozebud (Dave)

[Kd Hoffmann]

Some months ago it was the beginning of a new friendship (me and Little
Golem).
Maybe after the crash I have not beated any more KH in Twixt and surely
never DB (who is twixter :-)
But who cares! If Little Golem is coming home (under what cicumstances
ever) I will be happy.
As Avery Brundage said in 1972: "The games must go on"!

[arbivara]

Don't your web space provider have a backup policy? My provider (for
http://www.hiperchess.com.br/) makes a backup every week (or, at least,
so they claim).

Anycase, thanks very much for this fantastic site, and we'll surely
keep gollemning.

All the best

[labradors]

I, for one, would be willing to send a PayPal contribution toward
installing read, hardware RAID on the system, IF enough other people
would also be willing to do so, but it would probably take a lot of
people to accomplish that. (As a missionary in a third-world country, I
certainly couldn't contribute enough on my own.)

Another option - less reliable, but also much less costly, would be for
us to contribute toward an external (USB) hard drive for performing
backups. Of course, it's hard to beat a hardware RAID array with
hot-swappable drives and a hot spare!

[Kpato]

whaaaaa

dont worry...richard.

u dont have to give us explanations..(thankz anyway)

some of us...are addicted to LG
and we dont pay a cent!
im very greetfulll of LG

gl with the database Richard...

Long life to LG

[coan.net]

Thanks for letting us know what is going on - I think not knowing what
is happening is usually the worst part for us "users".

Look forward in seeing the site back - losing a few months is not too
big of a deal - it is just a game site afterall - plus you already give
so much without asking for much in return, everyone should be happy
just to have the site back!

Thanks, and good luck getting the site back and running. (And as
someone else some-what mentioned, this would be a perfect time for a
fundraising drive - you will see many who would be willing to donate to
help the site.)

[agysejt]

Dear Richard,

I have a backup about all gomoku games from LG.
Backup date is: 2006.07.14, it is very fresh :-)

I will send gomoku games in zip archie via email.

cheers, Istvan Virag

[Michael X]

That's great, but it's probably a lot of work, to synchronize the
database status information with the games, (Who's turn is it, time
left, etc).
I fear , "someone" would have to check every single game...

I guess we rather have the unique chance to repeat life since last
April (and make it better this time)...

[silexu]

That's really bad luck. But no worry, as all say, it is only a game
server, not a bank. It will be great anyway to mention the winners of
the championships that was finished since April. Replaying rated
tournament and even montly cups would not be a big problem.
Good luck,
silexu

[Michael X]

Thanks for informing us, and thanks for setting up the emergency page,
finally.
(I rechecked several times during the last days, to be sure the problem
is not on my side -- or our company's firewall ;)

I should think about how addicted I became, as well...

[technolion]

During the outage I found out that LG has become an important part of
my daily Internet life.
Thanks for letting us know what happened. I guess you where really
responsible - keeping multiple backups. In this case you really had
back luck. sh*t happens.

Good luck for the rebuilding!

two suggestions:

-putting a *single* banner on the site - thus raising a lot of money
-Using the money and setting up the new LG site on dedicated hardware
with professionla tape backup

Thanks!

[OSUCOWBOYS]

About when will Little Golem reopen?

[drgoplayer]

Yes thank you for letting us know. And thanks you for all the time you
have been providing this service. I have no complaint about the loss
of.

Just restart things when and how you can and all your users will be
delighted!

Hope you had a cool and relaxing vacation!

drgoplayer

[alhensel]

For what it's worth, I have all the TwixtPP games (the raw TXT files)
up until July 16. I do statistics on them. Unfortunately, it seems
pretty obvious to me that LG is keeping more data about games in its
database than are put in the TXT files. For example: unique numerical
user IDs, start times and finish times, and whether a game ended in
forfeit. So I can't really see reloading this downloaded data as a
viable option.

However, if those TXT files contained enough information, and there was
an easy way to download all games of a particular type since a certain
date, then users would find all kinds of uses for them ... including
sending them back to Richard if he ever needs them.

[dst...@gmail.com]

Hi, some more info about the server failure. The computer had only one
disk (it has 2 configured as software RAID 1 now). Looks like the
temperature in the server rack was too high and also the fan on the
power supply of the computer broke. The box has one more fan so there
was some cooling still left but most probably not enoush to keep the
hard disk of the server alive.

So the computer is fixed now (2 new disks + new fan on the power
supply) and we consider moving to another server room where the
tempature should be better than where it is now. The move would mean
some one day outage but compared to the current 3 month data loss it
should be only a minor glitch.

The only backup in place was what Richard was doing - it is up to him
to setup something, since even with the current RAID there can be e.g.
server room fire or something ... The data needs to be kept in
geographically separeted places ...

Hope you will come back to play on LG again, best regards, David Strupl
(your server maintainer)

[rastaro]

I this LG IS a great site and I thank Richard for all he does and David
and the other helpers behind the scenes. A swappable RAID configuration
as mentioned by 'labradors' would be the way to go one would think but
of course the cost factor might NOT be minor!! BUT maybe IF users were
provided with cost options they might agree on a cost effective
solution that they might be willing to contribute toward.

[honest1abe]

>From even the few people who have already responded, I'd say it is
clear that if we all contributed a little, Richard would be able to
afford a much more robust configuration.

Richard, once you get this up and running, put a link for contributions
and I'll put more than my two cents in the pot. This is a great, Ad
free site and I do not like Ads. I'd much rather contribute now and
then to help maintain this site than see it go commercial. Like many
others, this site is close to an every day occurance for me. Well
worth a few dollars for the hours of entertainment I get from it.

Keep up the good work and thanks for the notification.

[jancg]

I'd like to offer Richard/David/LG an online weekly backup located in
Amsterdam, the Netherlands in the Easynet datacentre.

Richard, David: contact me if you are interested.

Jan C. de Graaf (nick jancg on LG)
RoJaMa

[nash...@googlemail.com]

[nash...@googlemail.com]

Dear Richard
Thanks for your wonderful site and pity about the bad luck.
I think that probably the data on your hard drives
definitely can be recovered
try this link: http://www.atl-datarecovery.com/recoversoft.htm
I have used frtree many times to successfully recover data from bad
hard drives
But Dont pay for it yourself The LG users should pay!
good luck

[twixter]

> Dear Richard
> Thanks for your wonderful site and pity about the bad luck.
> I think that probably the data on your hard drives
> definitely can be recovered

> ...

> But Dont pay for it yourself The LG users should pay!

Okay, so Richard should send me a picture of a Twixt game tied to a
chair, with a gun at its head. He tells me "If you ever want to see
this game again, send me all your money NOW."

It might work...

[ypercube]

nash...@googlemail.com wrote:
> ................

> I think that probably the data on your hard drives
> definitely can be recovered
> try this link: http://www.atl-datarecovery.com/recoversoft.htm
> I have used frtree many times to successfully recover data from bad
> hard drives

> ................

Nice idea but the server probably had Linux and the program you suggest
works in Windows filesystems only. I'm sure Richard will try or has
tried recovery with other programs that work with the filesystem the
server used.

[honest1abe]

There is a very powerful program called Spinrite. I do not know the
current pricing, but not cheap. It does not matter what O/S you have,
it can breath new life into HDDs that have crashed. Steve Gibson is
the author of the software and his website is https://www.grc.com

Might be worth a shot. Checked and price is $90 (I always round up)

[nash...@googlemail.com]

Its worth considering that there may be a virus at work here . as two
hard drives that had been on the same network have failed hard disks!

[fjo...@gmail.com]

Hey, miracles happen! It all works again and nothing seems to be lost.
Great work, thanks you so much!!! Also for the little thrill and the
unexpected vacation ;)
Fjord

[Dan Vasilescu]

Is this a joke? I see nothing on littlegolem.net. What works? And why
do you say nothing is lost?

[ypercube]

I thought that it was joke too at first but no it wasn't! I had a
glimpse image of MyGames and Forum pages for a second but when I
reloaded they were gone again. I guess Richard is working!
My games seemed to have an expire date of 9th of August and the forum
last post was at May if i saw correct. Oh, why didn't I save the file?

ypercube

[Alain]

Seems LG is still down. I'd also like to congratulate Richard on a job
well done. Like ypercube I've also discovered how much a part of my
daily schedule LittleGolem has become!

Hope its back up soon...I don't mind replaying the games.

Regards,
Alain

[samoy2e]

hey i hope it does come up soon. the last time i played was july 12 and
i have been trying to get on the site but can't. i love your site and
the games on it. the people are nice there also.

[fjo...@gmail.com]

Sorry for my premature exitement, but Littlegolem was working a few
hours ago and all my running (go)games were there up to the last move.
So the good news is that probably nothing is lost; the bad news that it
is gone again. But it is still hot here, so I really don't mind to wait
a bit longer... and I do appreciate all the efforts Richard and friends
are making for us.
Fjord

[nash...@googlemail.com]

Dear Richard
I see LG is back
I decided not to make moves
until I am sure that you are up for real. Maybe you could make an
announcement?
Thanks for all your work jus for us to have fun.
Anyway when i replay that 3 pointer maybe I can win this time! LOL
Thanks again

[samoy2e]

i tried to get on littlegolem and i couldn't yet. how come it is not
up yet?

[cherie]

So glad LG is back. Don't worry about it breaking down...it would have
been much worse if something had happened to YOU in the mountains!
Thanks for all the hard work you do to bring happiness and fun to many!!