important Missing addon threads.

[hypervelocity]

the following thread is missing too and not currently listed in the OP: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/56643-/ (Ship Manifest mod)

[Red Iron Crown]

3 minutes ago, hypervelocity said:

the following thread is missing too and not currently listed in the OP: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/56643-/ (Ship Manifest mod)

Needs some text after the dash, like this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/56643-a/

[hypervelocity]

9 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Needs some text after the dash, like this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/56643-a/

Cheers!

[Merkov]

I feel really odd following this thread. On the one hand, I am eagerly looking forward to seeing these threads revived. On the other hand, while some people are talking about the intricacies of restoring parts of databases from backups, I'm firmly in the "can turn on his computer 9 times out of 10 without something going wrong" camp. If the forums were in hospital, the IT guys would be doctors and nurses, and I would be a kid with a "get well soon" card.

Thanks for all of the work being done to restore these threads, I'm cheering for you guys! (It's the least/most I can do )

[linuxgurugamer]

7 hours ago, WAKSLOB said:

Pretty upset at this whole KSP thing as i am a new player. For years now i heard of people telling me how great the mod community is in KSP. My question is; what mods? All the good stuff has been destroyed, by the modding community! I was watching RocketPCGaming on twitch, and was so intrigued with his list of mods installed, so i decided to try to partially reproduce the mods he had installed. This process took hours and hours of troubleshooting, and searching for third party download sources for the missing mod threads. Not happy about this. 

This community as well as any other community needs a solid foundation to rely on for mod distribution. If kerbalspaceprogram forums cant do it. Then maybe its time we open up shop somewhere else! 

Frankly, kerbalspaceprogram forums have let us down. 

And if you used CKAN, you wouldn't have to go hunting all the mods, the installer will do it for you, for all the mods that are registered with it (most of them)

[Loren Pechtel]

58 minutes ago, Merkov said:

I feel really odd following this thread. On the one hand, I am eagerly looking forward to seeing these threads revived. On the other hand, while some people are talking about the intricacies of restoring parts of databases from backups, I'm firmly in the "can turn on his computer 9 times out of 10 without something going wrong" camp. If the forums were in hospital, the IT guys would be doctors and nurses, and I would be a kid with a "get well soon" card.

Thanks for all of the work being done to restore these threads, I'm cheering for you guys! (It's the least/most I can do )

What's going on is that a game such as this will quite disproportionately appeal to us technical types.  Thus it's no surprise to find multiple people in this thread who have an understanding of what needs to be done despite having no knowledge of the system itself.

That's also why this game has such a mod community--the mods are written in a mainstream programming language, a lot of us speak it.

[rmaine]

58 minutes ago, Merkov said:

I feel really odd following this thread. On the one hand, I am eagerly looking forward to seeing these threads revived. On the other hand, while some people are talking about the intricacies of restoring parts of databases from backups, I'm firmly in the "can turn on his computer 9 times out of 10 without something going wrong" camp. If the forums were in hospital, the IT guys would be doctors and nurses, and I would be a kid with a "get well soon" card.

Thanks for all of the work being done to restore these threads, I'm cheering for you guys! (It's the least/most I can do )

Knowing about the intricacies is not incompatible with being in the "can turn on his computer 9 times out of 10 without something going wrong" camp. I know this from personal experience. :-)

Before retirement, I used to do tech troubleshooting at a NASA center. As in the head of the official help desk once complained and wondered about how so many people would often call me instead of the help desk; I thought it better to stay quiet than to give the obvious explanation - that I actually helped them much better. But... One day I could not get on the net after a power outage. Power outages regularly took the building router down, which I could not physically get to, so I called the help desk to get them to reboot it, as was often needed. They went through the usual litany of standard questions, including basics like was my computer plugged in and getting power. Yeah, yeah, yawn, yawn.... um....Oops. Thank you very much. Bye. My computer indeed had fine power, but I had forgotten about that little local subrouter in our room, hiding in an obscure corner and plugged into a separate surge protector, which hadn't been reset. Didn't occur to me until the help desk folk asked the usual boring question about my computer getting power. That was embarrassing.

P.S. Yes, cheering for the good guys here.

[Beetlecat]

10 hours ago, WAKSLOB said:

Pretty upset at this whole KSP thing as i am a new player. For years now i heard of people telling me how great the mod community is in KSP. My question is; what mods? All the good stuff has been destroyed, by the modding community! I was watching RocketPCGaming on twitch, and was so intrigued with his list of mods installed, so i decided to try to partially reproduce the mods he had installed. This process took hours and hours of troubleshooting, and searching for third party download sources for the missing mod threads. Not happy about this. 

This community as well as any other community needs a solid foundation to rely on for mod distribution. If kerbalspaceprogram forums cant do it. Then maybe its time we open up shop somewhere else! 

Frankly, kerbalspaceprogram forums have let us down. 

Jeeze -- lighten up, Francis.

By all means not *all* the good stuff, and not at all *destroyed*. A fix in the works, just a complicated procedure to restore individual threads. Squad IT and the forum software vendor are working on it.

And as above, the actual mod hosting sites are still wholly intact.

[politas]

Nothing happening until Monday, which I guess means Tuesday for us people of the future (aka Australia/NZ/Japan). I'm guessing that support staff are frantically working on the whole issue.

[Temeter]

Oh wow, seems like a bunch of the most frequented mod threads just died.

Well, to be fair, it's good to know there wasn't just a mass exodus of modders.^^'

[Sol Invictus]

7 hours ago, politas said:

I'm guessing that support staff are frantically working on the whole issue.

I honestly doubt that. If that was the case, then the whole issue would be resolved in a matter of hours after being noticed. Day or two, at most. Not entire week, and still counting.

[sarbian]

3 hours ago, Temeter said:

Well, to be fair, it's good to know there wasn't just a mass exodus of modders.^^'

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish !

 

11 minutes ago, Sol Invictus said:

I honestly doubt that. If that was the case, then the whole issue would be resolved in a matter of hours after being noticed. Day or two, at most. Not entire week, and still counting.

Yeah, IT is so simple, right ?

[Sol Invictus]

2 minutes ago, sarbian said:

Yeah, IT is so simple, right ?

If it was simple, I would expect it to be done in a matter of minutes. Although, it depends on what you mean by "frantically working".

[Murdabenne]

Sigh... Unless you have done a partial restore of a database to a live system while its still in use, and successfully merged in a specific subset of the records/transactions from the backup, without corrupting the linkages and trashing the entire database, as well as not forcing a rollback, etc - then its probably not a good idea to make assumptions about time lines.

Folks, I think they are attempting to do is a pretty nasty piece of coding (SQL or similar, along with some shell/python/perl/vb type scripting language) to first restore the old version of the database from the transaction histories/data-warehouse/backups onto a scratch server, then on that restored older version find and extract the needed data (including links and references across tables, etc), then translate that to a dataset to be inserted, or else come up with a set of transactions against the current database, then *test* it on a copy of the current live DB, and only after that looks like it works can they do a "restore" of those threads.  And that's *if* they can do it at all - I would bet that most message board software is not designed with partial restores in mind - most likely the only solution they have been offered is to roll back the entire thing.

So maybe some of you should think a bit about what you don't know - and then ease up on the comments like "just restore it from backup" and "it should only take a couple hours".

[Temeter]

32 minutes ago, sarbian said:

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish !

Well, as long as we get spared from the poetry...

Edited January 10, 2017 by Temeter

[Starwaster]

3 hours ago, Temeter said:

Well, as long as we get spared from the poetry...

Pray that they soften us up with cudgels first...

[Loren Pechtel]

6 hours ago, Murdabenne said:

Folks, I think they are attempting to do is a pretty nasty piece of coding (SQL or similar, along with some shell/python/perl/vb type scripting language) to first restore the old version of the database from the transaction histories/data-warehouse/backups onto a scratch server, then on that restored older version find and extract the needed data (including links and references across tables, etc), then translate that to a dataset to be inserted, or else come up with a set of transactions against the current database, then *test* it on a copy of the current live DB, and only after that looks like it works can they do a "restore" of those threads.  And that's *if* they can do it at all - I would bet that most message board software is not designed with partial restores in mind - most likely the only solution they have been offered is to roll back the entire thing.

Exactly the sequence of steps that I would do to attempt a partial restore, although I would be more optimistic at the odds of success.  Since the offending messages were pulled out of the database their numbers should currently be unused.  Simply sticking them into the database and rebuilding indexes would probably lead to success.

[Snark]

Hi everyone,

This is a topic where emotions are running high.  That's perfectly understandable:  here's something that's really important to you, and it's been unexpectedly taken away, and that makes you unhappy.  Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

And of course, there's a natural human reflex to want to do something about it (which in this case you can't), or to try to understand it (which in this case you also can't, since you don't have the internal technical details of what happened or what's being done to fix it).  It's galling to be ignorant of what's going on, and powerless to do anything about the situation.  Totally natural and understandable, and there's nothing wrong with feeling that way.

However... there's another natural human reflex, which is unhelpful despite its ubiquity.  That's the urge to try to make an explanation, or to predict what's going to happen.  Which is completely pointless in this situation, since any explanation you come up with is almost guaranteed to be wrong, given that it's basically impossible to make technical judgments without access to technical information.

Here's the actual state of affairs:

• A bunch of threads that lots of people care about went poof.
• The folks at Squad are well aware of the issue and its impact to users, and are working to fix the problem.
• It's taking a while, because fixing the problem requires a lot of work.
• It'll be ready when it's ready.  All you can do is wait.

That's basically it.  Speculating about what happened, or why, or what's being done to fix it, or how long it will take, or whether this was all preventable, or the competence or diligence of the people involved, etc. is unproductive, because in the absence of specific knowledge of all the stuff that's going on under the covers, you simply don't know what you're talking about.

If that sort of speculation helps to blow off emotional steam, well... that's as may be, but please be aware that that's all that's happening here.

For the curious, here's a FAQ about the situation in a spoiler section.

Spoiler

• Q:  What happened?
• A:  A bunch of popular mod threads got deleted.
• Q:  Well, duh, I know that, but why?
• A:  Because IT and computer stuff is hard and prone to problems.
• Q:  But I want to know all the technical details.
• A:  Won't happen.  "It happened because reasons" is basically all you get.  If they were going to release that sort of information, it would have been done already.
• Q:  Will complaining about the lack of information help anything?
• A:  No.
• Q:  Did the stuff get deleted on purpose?
• A:  No.
• Q:  Did anyone at Squad want this to happen?
• A:  No.
• Q:  Did it happen because anybody is stupid, or incompetent, or doesn't care about the users?
• A:  No.
• Q:  Does Squad know about this?
• A:  Yes.
• Q:  Are they working to fix it?
• A:  Yes.
• Q:  Why is it taking so long?
• A:  Because technical stuff is hard and takes time.
• Q:  Well, I think it should be quick and easy to fix, and the fact that it's taking so long means they don't care or they don't know what they're doing!
• A:  Okay.
• Q:  Will complaining about it make it happen faster?
• A:  No.
• Q:  What's the ETA?
• A:  As soon it's ready.  Folks are working on it.
• Q:  Why hasn't an ETA been announced?
• A:  Because they don't have one.
• Q:  Will complaining about the lack of ETA help?
• A:  No.
• Q:  Will this particular thing happen again?
• A:  No, because steps have been taken to ensure that it won't.
• Q:  Well, if it's so easy, why didn't they prevent this before it happened?
• A:  Hindsight's wonderful, ain't it?  Quick show of hands from everyone who, 1. has spent significant time working in IT, and 2. has never had anything bad happen that in hindsight could have been prevented?  <crickets>  Nah, thought not.
• Q:  Will anything bad ever happen to the forum ever again?
• A:  Probably.  Stuff happens, things break, people fix it and move on.  It's the circle of life.

Thank you for your understanding.

[keptin]

Thanks for the update Snark 

-KAX dev

[Climberfx]

2 hours ago, Snark said:

Hi everyone,

This is a topic where emotions are running high.  That's perfectly understandable:  here's something that's really important to you, and it's been unexpectedly taken away, and that makes you unhappy.  Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

And of course, there's a natural human reflex to want to do something about it (which in this case you can't), or to try to understand it (which you in this case you also can't, since you don't have the internal technical details of what happened or what's being done to fix it).  It's galling to be ignorant of what's going on, and powerless to do anything about the situation.  Totally natural and understandable, and there's nothing wrong with feeling that way.

However... there's another natural human reflex, which is unhelpful despite its ubiquity.  That's the urge to try to make an explanation, or to predict what's going to happen.  Which is completely pointless in this situation, since any explanation you come up with is almost guaranteed to be wrong, given that it's basically impossible to make technical judgments without access to technical information.

Here's the actual state of affairs:

• A bunch of threads that lots of people care about went poof.
• The folks at Squad are well aware of the issue and its impact to users, and are working to fix the problem.
• It's taking a while, because fixing the problem requires a lot of work.
• It'll be ready when it's ready.  All you can do is wait.

That's basically it.  Speculating about what happened, or why, or what's being done to fix it, or how long it will take, or whether this was all preventable, or the competence or diligence of the people involved, etc. is unproductive, because in the absence of specific knowledge of all the stuff that's going on under the covers, you simply don't know what you're talking about.

If that sort of speculation helps to blow off emotional steam, well... that's as may be, but please be aware that that's all that's happening here.

For the curious, here's a FAQ about the situation in a spoiler section.

  Reveal hidden contents

• Q:  What happened?
• A:  A bunch of popular mod threads got deleted.
• Q:  Well, duh, I know that, but why?
• A:  Because IT and computer stuff is hard and prone to problems.
• Q:  But I want to know all the technical details.
• A:  Won't happen.  "It happened because reasons" is basically all you get.  If they were going to release that sort of information, it would have been done already.
• Q:  Will complaining about the lack of information help anything?
• A:  No.
• Q:  Did the stuff get deleted on purpose?
• A:  No.
• Q:  Did anyone at Squad want this to happen?
• A:  No.
• Q:  Did it happen because anybody is stupid, or incompetent, or doesn't care about the users?
• A:  No.
• Q:  Does Squad know about this?
• A:  Yes.
• Q:  Are they working to fix it?
• A:  Yes.
• Q:  Why is it taking so long?
• A:  Because technical stuff is hard and takes time.
• Q:  Well, I think it should be quick and easy to fix, and the fact that it's taking so long means they don't care or they don't know what they're doing!
• A:  Okay.
• Q:  Will complaining about it make it happen faster?
• A:  No.
• Q:  What's the ETA?
• A:  As soon it's ready.  Folks are working on it.
• Q:  Why hasn't an ETA been announced?
• A:  Because they don't have one.
• Q:  Will complaining about the lack of ETA help?
• A:  No.
• Q:  Will this particular thing happen again?
• A:  No, because steps have been taken to ensure that it won't.
• Q:  Well, if it's so easy, why didn't they prevent this before it happened?
• A:  Hindsight's wonderful, ain't it?  Quick show of hands from everyone who, 1. has spent significant time working in IT, and 2. has never had anything bad happen that in hindsight could have been prevented?  <crickets>  Nah, thought not.
• Q:  Will anything bad ever happen to the forum ever again?
• A:  Probably.  Stuff happens, things break, people fix it and move on.  It's the circle of life.

Thank you for your understanding.

I'm waiting. The only part i can't agree is the speculating part. If it bring comfort to those unstoppable imaginative minds that can put themselves into horror, just by not knowing what happens, i agree that speculating can be a good treatment for anxiety and wait stuff.

[Snark]

1 minute ago, Climberfx said:

I'm waiting. The only part i can't agree is the speculating part. If it bring comfort to those unstoppable imaginative minds that can put themselves into horror, just by not knowing what happens, i agree that speculating can be a good treatment for anxiety and wait stuff.

Sure thing, nothing wrong with speculating.... as long as it's clear to all concerned (the speculator, and the speculatees) that that it is, in fact, just speculation.  It may seem obvious that "I'm just guessing here" is understood context, when one is speculating... but it's easy for that to get lost in the shuffle, and discussion can kinda snowball.

Just trying to make sure we keep it real. 

[Virtualgenius]

There are some really clever people in the community by releasing the technical details of what happened and the proposed technical  fix  another solution may present itself that maybe quick and easy that Squad IT may not have considered, after all you would be pulling information from a global pool of people with a vested interest.

Many hands make light work 

Edited January 10, 2017 by Virtualgenius

[asmi]

On 07/01/2017 at 2:51 AM, Flashblade said:

We all know who the culprits actually are, don't we? The russians are responsible, aren't they?

Sorry, but I could not resist:

Spoiler

 

[Wallygator]

I would suggest that "managed hosting" of a forum software platform is likely not to be considered a core value chain component for a game (or any top tier) company - it might be a consideration as a function/capability that might best be outsourced to a third party with strict KPIs and SLAs.  Errors like what has happened may still occur, but at least the customer would have commercial leverage.   Just sayin'

Regardless, key questions from my perspective are: (And I fully expect that no one will even think about these openly - so no worries)

1) Was this procedural error? People did the right thing but the procedures did not comprehend a specific use case. OK, let's get over it and modify the procedures.

2) Was it a human factors error?  Someone just made a mistake.  OK, let's get over it.  Revise training and move on.

3) Was it a technical error? Something just broke? Fair enough.  Fix it in parallel with recovery activities.

4) Was this a policy error? Were there specific criteria in play that dictated such an event? Then re-evaulate policies, change them appropriately and move on.

5) Why does it take so long to recover? Does the recovery technology solution not comprehend timely individual thread restoration?  If not, then we are experiencing the effect of a requirements gap and the requirements need to be revised and the corresponding solution realigned.  If it does, then we are dealing with an operational management capability issue (and I'm not counting beyond 5 tonight so there...)

Apologies if your grandmother already knows how to utilise a pressure gradient to remove the yolk from an eggshell - this post was not intended for you ;-)

EDIT: The above has absolutely no criticism of Squad, if you think is does, then that is your interpretation but not explicit language. Nor does it demand answers, rather it attempts to provide generic contextual questions/responses in a more refined framework.  Squad can do whatever they want and take the time they need. In the meantime, Reddit and Github function as my adhoc forum-like alternative service.

Edited January 10, 2017 by Wallygator

[Snark]

2 hours ago, Virtualgenius said:

There are some really clever people in the community by releasing the technical details of what happened and the proposed technical  fix  another solution may present itself that maybe quick and easy that Squad IT may not have considered, after all you would be pulling information from a global pool of people with a vested interest.

Many hands make light work 

Or you can assume that Squad knows exactly what they're doing, and what the problem is, and they are in fact working on it, and input from Random Internet People is unlikely to help much, but is likely to cause a lot of randomization trying to explain things.  When competent technical people are hard at work on a thing they understand, I find that it's generally best not to be jostling their elbows and breathing down their necks, so they can get on with it.

14 minutes ago, Wallygator said:

1) Was this procedural error? People did the right thing but the procedures did not comprehend a specific use case. OK, let's get over it and modify the procedures.

2) Was it a human factors error?  Someone just made a mistake.  OK, let's get over it.  Revise training and move on.

3) Was it a technical error? Something just broke? Fair enough.  Fix it in parallel with recovery activities.

4) Was this a policy error? Were there specific criteria in play that dictated such an event? Then re-evaulate policies, change them appropriately and move on.

See the FAQ:

4 hours ago, Snark said:

• Q:  Well, duh, I know that, but why?
• A:  Because IT and computer stuff is hard and prone to problems.
• Q:  But I want to know all the technical details.
• A:  Won't happen.  "It happened because reasons" is basically all you get.  If they were going to release that sort of information, it would have been done already.

In a similar vein,

14 minutes ago, Wallygator said:

5) Why does it take so long to recover? Does the recovery technology solution not comprehend timely individual thread restoration?

Also see the FAQ:

4 hours ago, Snark said:

• Q:  Why is it taking so long?
• A:  Because technical stuff is hard and takes time.

 

There, see?  Hallmark of a good FAQ.  It answers the actual questions people are asking!