[Omniscient]

Here is what got done:

Upgrade FreeBSD (major version)
Reinstall Named (destroyed during in upgrade)
Fixed server kernel based firewall
Install two GCC versions (took over 2 hours to build them, GCC sucks to build)
Rebuild FTP
Rebuild PHP
Rebuild Apache

And I had to reboot server three times with each time taking about 10 minutes.

This was like starting a server from scratch. Not fun. All I wanted to do today was optimize the database. Then I figured I would upgrade MariaDB. Then I found out it required FreeBSD 10+ because of a library. Then after I install the major version upgrade everything just feel apart. Which I should have expected I guess.

This is the worst part. A bug in the build for MariaDB 10.1 on FreeBSD 10+ exists.
https://mariadb.atlassian.net/browse/MDEV-8973

So honestly the reason we were down for all those hours was to try and upgrade our Maria install. Which in the end I didn't even accomplish. I'm rather pissed off about that. At least we got upgraded on FreeBSD but realistically not that great of an accomplishment.

Sorry to everyone for another handful of hours of downtime we had to all endure. With the server move, updates, optimizing, upgrades, attacks, and even datacenter outages it's been a rather heavy workload. And I still have so much more to do too. Now you know why I took so long to start this process. It's likely to continue for a couple more months like this too because I'm fairly sure the MyBB upgrade will be the most difficult process of all. Ugh.

I fear we have more downtime coming too.

[the wolf of blockchain]

Atleast it's over (for now)...

[brian188246]

At least a lot got done, any idea on how much downtime in the future?

[haydrazs]

Just when i bought a sticky ; ( oh well its necessary

[Telstra]

Thanks for the optimizations Omni.

[+Haze]

Isit me or do I notice the site actually loads faster now?

[Moeseph]

Just when i bought a sticky ; ( oh well its necessary

Same man, it's the worst.

[chrisman0091]

All good, thanks for keeping us updated, and at least now you don't have to do it later and you still didn't have to stay up and do it in the middle of the night!

[illuminati▲]

At least were back up for the time being.
^_^

[Mr Fox]

ayy, its better than not having any updates at all.

[Fish]

That sucks in how it all didint work out. Hopefully it will work next time. Thanks for the update

[CRT]

Sucks for me because I couldn't get on at all yesterday, and the time I had spare to come on today I couldn't get on ._. Ah well, it's all for the better of the site and at least everything's sorted now. 😉. Oh and thanks for keeping us updated through your Twitter account! ✌

[Vintel]

No need to say sorry to us. I'm glad that I can access this forum atleast sometimes.
Without you this would not be possible.

[Hydra]

Take all the time you need after Nov 6. You'll be doing me a great favor :D Black Ops 3 will be out and HF being down will allow me to focus my time on that lol.

Even though you ran into a bug, it'll eventually get fixed and you got work done nonetheless. Still progress, even if it's baby steps, it still counts.

Question for you though, I doubt it but is it possible to run both MyBB 1.6 and 1.8 on the same DB? If it is, users could use 1.6 as a stable platform and 1.8 as a beta platform. It's selfish for us to have that but it would be cool :P Not something reasonable tho but worth asking.

[ZuGgY]

Thanks for the update. I was hoping we were also getting upgraded to 1.8, but that's fine.

Thanks Omniscient, I'm pretty sure we cannot all imagine how tough it must be managing this forum.