Cf Update

[admin]

Ok Good news,

CF is working again but need to be quite a bit more strict on how we submit the DSN's. We wil be doing them all manually again in small increments. You must submit the following to support@vortechhosting.com:

DSN name:
db Server:
Database name:
UID: db username
PWD : db password
driver-name | MySQL , Ms SQL etc

You must include all of the above info or we cannot add the DSN for you.


DSN's that DO NOT have all this info and were submited in CF admin are being removed to keep from having more issues. If your DSN's is not working or stops working you must submit the above and we will do them ASAP.

[Dabelo]

AN OPEN LETTER = DASH VS UNDERSCORE

It sure does matter. Consider this.

The prior - enforced - policy was a dash. All sites
were coded to this Standard.

When the cfdsn were enabled you had to use a underscore.
Fine - for new sites. The old sites could still use the
Dash.

BUT!! -- the historical records for the dash are
stored in the xml file -- yuck -- unsafe.

So to recreate you have to hand-enter them. No one
wanted to do this. I.E. when the xml file need to be recreated
Brad ask everyone to reenter thru the control panel.

BUT now you need to do the underscore - forced by the
Control Panel -- and everyone had to change there Source
Code. Wailing the developers - as there should be.

When the control panel was suspected, and disabled
(- I now think wrongly - )The current policy of
"It doesn't matter" is now in place by Vortech,
Because :

1. The manual cf hand method doesn't' care.

2. The control panel requirement underscore causes
a reversal in the former 'dash' policy, and
in some cases - re-coding of customer sites.

3. We are in crises, and don't need any non-essential
changes.

However handcoding of the cfdsns is a pain for everyone.
If the control panel cfdsn code works it - would be better
for everyone to use it when things settle down.

Therefore - a word to the wise -

1. Use underscores cfdsn names for new work !!! -
2. Retrofit old code when convent to use underscores !!! -
3. Look toward the day when the control panel cfdsn work again.
4. Encourage Vortech to bias toward underscores.



Just my option I could be wrong !

[admin]

DASH - UNDER score, really we could care less all we want is the DSN name you want. CF DSN's have NOTHING to do with H-Sphere now. We took it 100% out of the loop. There will be NO other DSN's on this box now but the ones in CF ADMIN and they are added by hand. So how ever you have it in your code send it to us. We don't care about the - or _ thing.

All we care about is that the DSN can verify in CF admin now.

[Gary]

Hello all. I am new to the forums, but have been with Vortech for awhile. I agree with many of you here, this is a great hosting company, as hosting companies go. I am a CF/MS SQL Server user only, I know no other languages (to speak of) and CF is the MAIN reason I came here, so comments about "getting rid of it" stress me a bit Brad.

That said, it seems to me there only a few options.

1. Use MX the way it is and submit DSN the messy, but... won't kill the server way (the good ole 'workaround the problem trick', my favorite).

2. Rollback to 5.x of CF (won't affect me much, but will be a bummer for others out there).
3. Ditch CF altogether (MY GOD MAN, IS HE MAD!!!).

So, since 1 seems best for now (er, me), maybe Vortechs team (or one of us community types) could write a simple web based form for submitting DSNs to support@.... Maybe it could be kludged into the hsphere control panel in the support section. Just a thought. I think it would make it less likely that mistakes would be made, things would be forgotten, etc.

Anyway, I am glad the crisis seems to be leveling out, I was just about to panic, run around in circles, then crawl under my desk and bang the back of my head on the wall and mumble inane stuff, like I am now (people that pay you money can get soooo pissy when there stuff is down. Man, what is with that?).

-Gary McNeel
-www.mykitplane.com (still down 'til the DSNs are fixed)

[admin]

I think we got CF all happy and stable now. No issues all night and we are making backups of the neo file about every hour or so. I am the only one adding CF DSN's as well to keep from having 2 people add them at the same time.

We also upgrade the java CF is using to J2SE 1.4.2 SDK from the really old default 1.3.1. This should increase speed as well.

[Coldserver]

sites are down again

[admin]

For a good reason as well, CF UPDATER needed to be run. Want to get that on there, it should only take about 5 min max.

[Coldserver]

ok, thanks. just a little paranoid

[admin]

Can't blame yea.

[admin]

I want to get it all updated and stable then I want to go though the logs and look for users with bad code or users that have not updated there CF DSN's with us. But that should not cause any down time.

[admin]

all done.

[tkraffty]

Don't know about anyone else, but things look good on my CF client's site, and have been stable since yesterday afternoon. He reported some jrun errors this morning, but after reading this, I'm guessing that probably happened during your java update.

Apologies if the answer was already posted somewhere before, but do we know for sure what caused the instability? Is it just that CF just can't play nice with ODBC or what? I just want to be sure we've got the problem-case specifically identified, and are confident things are truly back to normal/stable now. Maybe it's too early to call that one, but we've all already lost enough time having to babysit/monitor the CF machine this week!

TK

[admin]

Well its been stable for the most part, the new file did its little thing again this am as well but I was able to fix that really fast by replacing it with a backup ne file. I am backing them up every 6 hours now and also doing them by hand from time to time as I add DSN's.

Also if you go to a site and you just get the CF page that means we stoped your site so it would stop giving errors in the log files. If you see this and send in your DSN info please let us know the site is also stoped so we can turn it back on. This was done to help keep CF stable as well.

[Coldserver]

it looks stable to me too! i have randomly seen datasource errors, but if you refresh the page it works. i have been wrapping my queries with cftry/cfcatch and rerun the query if it catches an error. anyway, glad to see the sites are up!!

[Spirited]

Originally Posted by Coldserver

it looks stable to me too! i have randomly seen datasource errors, but if you refresh the page it works. i have been wrapping my queries with cftry/cfcatch and rerun the query if it catches an error. anyway, glad to see the sites are up!!

I have learned that CFTRY and CFCATCH aren't trapping all errors. Particualrily
some timeouts.