Downtime today 26th October

[SiC]

I did wonder if the file upload broke because the server ran out of space. I mean the file uploaded basically said that when it broke. 

You might also want to look at what is stored. For quite a while there was no real restriction on size. Some people might have found that useful rather than dropboxing stuff. I mean it let you do it and doesn't break everything when you do it, it can't be wrong right? 😅 🙉🙈😇

(Sod being an IT support bod for any software development department...)

[SiC]

You can see what you have saved by going into account settings and also can organise by size. Looking through mine, there is all sorts and it's easy to forget how much some stuff can take. Especially in an age of high speed internet and (nearly) unlimited storage. 

E.g. how about a 17mb gif of my cat chasing her tail that I must have posted quite a while ago.

[SiC]

Right I've deleted at least 2gb of stuff from PM's. Maybe it would be good to have an amnesty? Or just delete any file that is a tars/zips/7z.

Incidentally I noticed the 24MB size limit came in soon after the last time I uploaded some large files here. I guess someone noticed the backups getting larger suddenly 🤣 

[SiC]

I suspect you could save a lot of space by recompressing PNGs into JPEGs too. I can't imagine many posted images on here use the alpha value either. Most probably are screenshots of pictures uploaded. 

[GR8 PL8 M8]

7 hours ago, SiC said:

I did wonder if the file upload broke because the server ran out of space. I mean the file uploaded basically said that when it broke. 

You might also want to look at what is stored. For quite a while there was no real restriction on size. Some people might have found that useful rather than dropboxing stuff. I mean it let you do it and doesn't break everything when you do it, it can't be wrong right? 😅 🙉🙈😇

(Sod being an IT support bod for any software development department...)

Half a gigabyte! I think we've found our scapegoat.

Uploading manuals to a manual library and then linking here is probably the way to go, and would help out non-Autoshite internet users as well.

[Zelandeth]

Thanks for all the work to keep the lights on folks.

 

Things like pruning particularly large attachments like that and moving videos to external hosting seem like a good way forward.  Out of all the sites I know of which offer on-site hosting, this is the only one which supports videos.  Images are auto-resized to a moderate resolution by the software anyway aren't they?  However video file sized especially in the last year or three have just started to get silly.

Something I've not used massively regularly, usually preferring to link to YouTube.  There are a few in my list though, I'm guessing from when YT's uploader was on the blink - will try to get those moved externally when I get the chance. 

Likewise just going to have a general dig through for anything which sticks out as an obvious "that's way bigger than I expected" that can be dealt with later today when at a PC.

I'd not mind using an external image host if it weren't for the lack of support for normal BBCode tags that basically every other forum supports - that's Invision's daft decision though and not something the admin team have any control over.

I absolutely don't believe that deletion of old *images* though is a way forward, just look at how many historic threads like how how tos and technical guides on other fora are now useless due to the great Photobucket scandal. Do we really want to cause the same on here?

Videos, definitely suggest they be moved elsewhere.  Large attachments of other forums, likewise.  There's no shortage of free options to host random stuff on these days. 

Few years ago uploading to YouTube from anything other than a PC was a right faff, it's pretty much a three click process from a mobile device these days, so there's really no reason not to use it from a technical side.

Photos, leave them be.  Unless the file size is insane (I noted one on obnoxiously large PNG at a glance in my list that I'll try to deal with) I'd say leave well alone.  In that case, the posters should be asked to reduce the file size to a sensible level if they have the technical know how to do so.

One of those areas where the forum has become something of a victim of its own success I suppose!

[beko1987]

Just deleted a 400mb video I uploaded to my hoover thread! 

Bar that everything else is photos. 

Do like a good digital clear out though, it's good for the soul! We don't want to be paying for more storage, it'll be a slippery slope as when that runs out "well we paid for it last time) 

[nomiST]

Thanks, feeling my anxiety levels dropping as I type!

[AnnoyingPentium]

Went through the attachments thing and took out stuff like videos that had been sent via PM and some of the bigger stuff. Should have cleared about 200MB all in if my maths is right.

[juular]

Can I suggest the Craiyon AI image thread as worthy of a rake through, or a candidate for a bulk resize and conversion.

I normally host my photos elsewhere to save on forum space but noticed most of my attachments are on this thread and are all 2-3Mb PNG files. 

This is probably because they were quick screenshot and upload jobs so they're all uncompressed and at the resolution of the phone display.

I suspect everyone was doing the same!

[Dick Longbridge]

10 hours ago, SiC said:

You can see what you have saved by going into account settings and also can organise by size. 

How do you access that area? This is what I get on my phone...

 

[AnnoyingPentium]

1 minute ago, Dick Longbridge said:

How do you access that area? This is what I get on my phone...

 

'My attachments' under account.

[juular]

For anyone looking for good free image hosting, open a wordpress account and dump all your stuff in the media storage.

On a PC it's a drag and drop affair to batch upload images. On mobile the app allows you to multi select and batch upload from your phone storage.

It's got a 'copy link' button on each image which you can then paste directly into your post and it will magically appear. No need to mess around with code or attachments.

It has 3gb free storage. If you run out, make another account.

[High Jetter]

FWIW I edit any pics I upload in ACDSee, cropping slightly. It reduces most file sizes considerably.

[beko1987]

What happens when WordPress do a photo bucket? It's all still someone else's computer at rhe end of the day... 

As it works now we* have direct* control and should keep it that way! Some sort of compression for uploaded videos and photos maybe and a look at the storage and pricing to see if maybe we do just need a bump up. As said previously we have become popular recently... Maybe it's just time to do something about it. 

But hopefully this quick panic will free up some space to have a think about it. 

(went through this at work a few months ago migrating our client file sharing solution to dynamics from alfresco. Gigs of un-used shite

[camryv6]

14 hours ago, wuvvum said:

Isn't your son about 4? 😕

Yes, and !!!

[juular]

46 minutes ago, beko1987 said:

What happens when WordPress do a photo bucket?

Yes this is always a risk hosting elsewhere. I did weigh it up and thought that Wordpress, being near ubiquitous for free hosting, is probably one of the safest bets around.  

I have tried linking direct to Google photos but that doesn't seem to work at the moment. That would be an even safer bet.

[Zelandeth]

14 hours ago, St.Jude said:

Easily done.

One time I put “rm -rf” when I thought I was in a specific folder. I wasn’t, I was in root. Like a dickhead I rebooted the server - a production server. Lost everything.

The server was down for 36 hours, as Rackspace tried twice to load the server backup (140GB) on to the server. But they kept using the wrong drive, which was 60GB in size.

So yeah, don’t sweat the small stuff mate.

While it didn't affect anything beyond my own PC, I managed to do that formatting a USB stick through the disc manager once.  Totally failed to spot that when it finished the initial wipe operation that the menu selection jumped back to the first physical drive...so went and formatted my root filesystem partition rather than the stick.  Oops.  I felt a right Muppet.

Hozelock apparently did something on a similar scale earlier this year.  They went to do a system upgrade, tested it sandboxed for 24 hours, it worked fine.

Put it live...everything fell over within the hour.  Turns out that whatever they were doing also somehow took out their - apparently on site only - backups.  They were basically sent back to the 1960s.  This was sometime around May.  It was apparently nearly a fortnight before they even got their phones back up.

They've only just started shifting stock again for their gardening line in the last few weeks - still no word whatsoever on when they expect their aquatics stuff to be moving again.  Word is that they never managed to recover a single byte of data.

I only know this because I've had a warranty claim pending since June and my local aquatics specialist has been keeping me very much in the loop on it.   They haven't received ANY of the usual summer stock from Hozelock this year whatsoever.  Last delivery they had at all was well before Easter.

So taking Autoshite down down a couple of hours really is a pretty minor blip in comparison!

[AnnoyingPentium]

Site I used to host my website (geocities.ws) had unlimited storage but I was capped to a 20MB at a time file limit. I may start using that again actually.