Some of Bob's sites, including Stardust, are back up

I've got to be gone for about six hours, I may not be able to get to the site while I'm gone. In these situations I always called Bob. :( Makes me miss him all over again.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

We may have to thank Bob for that.

This is entirely speculative but... I think Bob himself may, in a way, be responsible for the sites being back up.

Let me explain. I'm not talking about ghosts. But Bob had a thing for automated procedures. I remember something about him setting up the server where Whateley resided to reboot automatically once a night (around 05:30 UTC), to work around some sort of stability issue.

Now, sometimes machines hang on auto-reboot. And sometimes you really do need to do a full power down to get around a hang. So he might have rigged some sort of automated power-cycle timer to do that every Saturday for the more troublesome servers (such as the one hosting Whateley). It's not a totally unreasonable assumption.

The more mundane explanation is that Bob's sister got the sheriff to open the house for her on a Saturday morning so she could turn on the servers, as a nice gesture to Bob's online friends. But that leads to the question of why did she turn only SOME of them and not others (like the Tuck forums, for instance). And, for that matter, how would she know which servers to turn on. I think an automated procedure is simply more likely.

Thank you for your years of generous service, Bob.

Sounds like something he might do

Mind you his sister left a very kind blog here and it could have been her. Maybe she didn't know how to turn all of them on?

But an automated system sounds like the sort of *gadgets*/techie things Bob was frequently talking about here and elsewhere.

At least it may give Warren time to do more about conserving the site and moving it elsewhere.

John in Wauwatosa

But that leads to the

But that leads to the question of why did she turn only SOME of them and not others (like the Tuck forums, for instance). And, for that matter, how would she know which servers to turn on.

After a dirty shutdown, could be that one or more machines are sitting in init-1 showing a rootshell prompt below a "you need to redo fsck" message. I've had power glitches give me that.

Hmm.....

Where does the Sheriff get the power to turn off the electric? I find this curious.

By turning off the power, the sheriff could cause property damage. Frozen fish in a freezer dethawing because there is no electricity could cause a major stink.

Writing is painful, it's lonely and you suffer and there's no immediate feedback.- Actor, writer, playwright Robert Shaw

Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant

Not including ham radio

Not including ham radio equipment and personal PC's and whatnot, Bob quite possibly had 15+ servers running in his house. IT's summer time, no chance of freezing and the Sheriff turned off the power to the house more than likely because he felt it was a risk of electrical fire if unattended. Remember, until the family acquired the keys, the house was under the care of the sheriff and if there was a fire or whatnot, they might have been held accountable.

-P

"Science is just magic with an explanation, and bumblebees are just tiny little fairies in disguise. :)" Submitted by Erin on Sun, 2010/04/04 - 6:37pm.

"She was like a butterfly, full of color and vibrancy when she chose to open her wings, yet hardly visible when she closed them."
— Geraldine Brooks

Makes me chuckle

Sort of like the entire population living inside a locker in the train station, Men in Black. We may be one of many groups Bob was fostering on his servers and the Sun has risen once more :-)
His thoroughness and skill continue to amaze me.

Didn't you know

We're all living in a snowball owned by an autistic child? Look at all of this that's inside it and tell me we aren't also.

"If your going to dress like a viking, make it Frank Tarkenton."

Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant

A lot of UPSs will safely

A lot of UPSs will safely power down a computer if main power goes out, and then power the computer back on once power is restored. So if the sheriff turned all the power off and someone has now turned it back on, that could explain it. It would all depend upon what the boot procedure is, how automated the process of getting the various software running on each machine. If he set up Stardust, Otherworlds, and the Crystal Hall to automatically load the sites upon power up, that's all that would need to happen.

Anyway, whatever is going on is not the final solution. But it's still nice.

Yours,

John Robert Mead

Speculation.

When I saw they were up I kind of assumed that the ones that had returned were the ones on Bob's servers, and the ones that didn't come back were the ones that Bob had the DNS for, because you said you were rerouting the DNS for those via the service provider.

Anyway, it's fantastic they're back, and we need to give Bob's brother-in-law a big thank you! Now for a more permanent solution.

Xaltatun

Some of Bob's sites, including Stardust, are back up

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Crystal Hall is up!

Power back on

Out of the house