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Spockie-Tech
Site Admin


Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia


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ABBL Forum Down

Well, it appears the ABBL (www.abbl.org) forum is offline again at the moment. Hopefully they are just doing some work on the servers or something and it wont be too far away from being back.

In the meantime, please feel free to register here and use this board to keep in touch with the Australian Robot Community. As we grow, things like Forums become more important, and especially now, on the verge of Australia's biggest gathering of Robots yet, we can ill afford to be out of touch for any length of time.

Let your friends know about this board, and encourage them to register. I am not trying to replace ABBL (I have lots of other things I'd rather do than be a forum admin !), but keep this one in mind as a backup should there be problems with ABBL.

Post Tue Jun 15, 2004 7:08 pm 
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well brett thank goodness for this forum .i took 1 look at the abbl situation and freaked ....only 17 days to go and a communication breakdown Very Happy
cheers sarge Rolling Eyes

Post Tue Jun 15, 2004 9:06 pm 
 
andrew



Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 3110
Location: Castle Hill, Sydney. N.S.W


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Yeah, tru that.
Big thanks for Brett for once again being a great help when in need.
Its a very nice forum as well i must admit. As good if not better than most i have seen.
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Post Wed Jun 16, 2004 6:50 am 
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Nick
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 11802
Location: Sydney, NSW


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It looks like the ABBL forum server has lost its database in addition to all the broken links and lost data of the last few weeks.

Even for a free service, this sucks! The forum critical to our sport in NSW and probably the rest of Australia too. We have to get it back up or replace it before all the gains of the last year are lost.

Perhaps I missed something from the early days, but it seems that the guys that set up the ABBL forum are not really active in the sport any longer. We need active competitors or very close associates to organise and drive the site forward. Anything else will land us back in the current mess.

Its hard to beat the cost of the current forum, but if any one knows of a cheap co-location deal, I can provide a pro grade web server with software, plenty of disk space, RAM and tape backup. If nothing else the competition might stir the Corporate Systems people into getting our site back Smile
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Post Wed Jun 16, 2004 3:59 pm 
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Spockie-Tech
Site Admin


Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia


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Well, I'd like to hear a statement from Andrew Gaze (the Corporate Systems guy), or Karmond on what they think is happening with ABBL before we jump in any particualr direction.

I'm happy to continue running the RoboWars forum if noone is prepared to put any time into ABBL. I'm no PHP Guru, but so far its all gone fairly easily, I've found plenty of info and support on setting up and customising PHPbb, so if it appears ABBL is going to stay down, then I'll look into adding some of the features like Robot Profiles, News Items, an online chat room and a few of the other customisations that it would be nice to have.

The present Robowars.org host is a professional hosting company (www.hostingshop.com) , with multi-redundant links, weekly tape backups and all the blah, so hopefully we wont experience any technical difficulty with them.

The only thing I'm not certain about is storage space. I have 250meg to play with on the present deal, I can increase that fairly easily, but I dont want to have to store gigabytes in order to host everyones profile pictures and so on. I considered setting up a delphiforum (like BattleBots and RFL), which I prefer the format of to PHPbb, but if you dont join (pay), they dump heaps of annoying ads on you). At least PHPbb is clean.

I just noticed the www.teamvertex.tk website is still working (which as far as I know is sub-hosted at the abbl.org domain), so maybe abbl will recover shortly after all. I think a "Sorry, we are experiencing technical difficulties, we expect to be back around xxxx" would have been nice to do though.

anyway, now that I've setp this forum, I promise I'll keep it going unless a better option comes along

Post Wed Jun 16, 2004 4:36 pm 
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Karmond



Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 97


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Sorry everyone, not a clue what's going on, and it's beyond my control anyway.

On top of that David or Allan haven't replied to my emails so you'll probably have to wait until they do. Sad

Anyway, my last week of tafe would be next week so after I finish off some other things, I can work on a new ABBL website for when the server starts working again.

Post Wed Jun 16, 2004 9:06 pm 
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Karmond



Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 97


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OKay, I just read a few of the posts then...

Nick, the database is still there, just seems to be a problem with connecting to it for some reason.

Brett, Aaron's website works because he doesn't use SQL.

Post Wed Jun 16, 2004 9:10 pm 
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Adrian



Joined: 20 Jun 2004
Posts: 2


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aww see, youve made me go out and create another account... Razz
Just thought I'd let yous know that I'm not dead. But am working on building wireless mesh's atm. Cool

Post Sun Jun 20, 2004 9:20 pm 
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Knightrous
Site Admin


Joined: 15 Jun 2004
Posts: 8511
Location: NSW


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Welcome back Mr Lodders.

How is the wireless work going for you?
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Post Sun Jun 20, 2004 10:17 pm 
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Adrian



Joined: 20 Jun 2004
Posts: 2


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Well Ive got my home network up and running (now with ADSL Smile )
The mesh here is about to kick off with its first public p2p link (should be around 4k's (aslong as theres still line on site).

The access point I was using is now dead, so im gonna have to get a newer better (linux in a box) access point and connect that to a 21dbi ex-galaxy dish.

Post Sun Jun 20, 2004 10:42 pm 
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Spockie-Tech
Site Admin


Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia


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ah, one of the infamous Linux powered WRT54G routers ?

I have one here running the Wireless Link to my music computer in the bedroom..

I was thinking about loading the Sveasoft linux firmware into it and having a tinker with all the cool features sometime soon when all these bots get out of the way Cool

Good to see you're still around anyway.. when can we expect to see a Wi-Fi controlled bot ? Jake and I have hypothesized on that a bit recently.

Post Mon Jun 21, 2004 11:47 am 
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Nick
Experienced Roboteer


Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 11802
Location: Sydney, NSW


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Have a look at the Roboteq site for a WiFi bot - all off the shelf parts.
http://www.roboteq.com/robovia.shtml

Is there any chance of the old forum running again? If not, is there a chance of getting the database and running the site somewhere else?

I was thinking of offering a spare server if anyone can find a cheap location to run it in. I can put in a 30Gb DLT tape for backup so we don't have problems with crashes
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Post Mon Jun 21, 2004 12:17 pm 
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Spockie-Tech
Site Admin


Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia


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There might be a possibility of copying the old ABBL Forum code and Database to the RoboWars server if you want access to the information on the old forum, *if* Karmond still has FTP access to the current broken SQL server. (which I guess he must have to have put in the redirect from ABBL to here that is currently in place).

Apparently the owner of the ABBL server presently cant be contacted, which isnt a good thing. I'm sure he'll show up eventually, but It would be nice if the forum was hosted by someone active in the community. or was at least contactable.. Confused Any recent news from David, Karmond ?

Another idea I thought about was the DelphiForums service. Thats what the BattleBots and R.F.L. guys use. That way its a neutral service that doesnt rely on any one persons generosity to keep paying their hosting fees.. its a very reliable service and hosts thousands of forums, and I like the interface better than any of the others I've seen, but if *every* user doesnt pay up a few $ a month to delphi, then you have to put up with an awful lot of pop-over ads and junk, which discourages me a *lot*.

Or we can just stay here.. I'm not planning on going anywhere.. Cool As an E.O., controller builder, Publicist with print articles (watch for the upcoming august A.P.C. !) and TV coverage of our growing sport, I have a definite interest in keeping everyone happy and warm. Wink

My current hosting provider does weekly tape backups in addition to the manual database backups I'm running every time I update the RoboWars site. Plus, I have some new features planned that might be good in the future, like a Wiki-pedia user-editable database pages we can all edit to compile our own FAQs'/Guides, a Web-based Chat-room (no IRC clients needed), an easily updateable news box, and other bits and pieces I'd like to add as I get used to this PHP code..

Post Mon Jun 21, 2004 1:41 pm 
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Karmond



Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 97


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Yeah Brett, there's still access to all the SQL and files, everything's still there.. As long as the ABBL server starts working again, I'd like to stay with it. 5G of filespace and 25G of bandwitdh is very handy.

If you want the sql for abbl forums, just ask.

Post Mon Jun 21, 2004 2:24 pm 
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Spockie-Tech
Site Admin


Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia


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Well, 5gig storage and 25gig bandwidth is certainly a lot better than what I have to play with at the moment - so if it can be gotten running again before people get too comfy here, then I'm all for moving back. saves me a lot of time being an admin to concentrate on other things too.

but we really cant afford the sort of downtime that has recently occurred. Not to beat my own drum, but organising the upcoming event would have been a lot harder without this place as a backup. Is there any way we can get some better access or support to david's kind server offerings so we dont have to endure weeks of downtime ? Cheap is good, but reliable is important too when you are providing a service to many..

Post Mon Jun 21, 2004 2:56 pm 
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