Anyone esle getting a lot of database errors lately?

[BG5150]

Over the past couple days, I've been getting "IPS" errors, or something like that. Says something is wrong w/ the database.

Anyone else getting that error a lot?

[GMK]

Yes. I think Dave's on it.

[A Shot in the Dark]

Today is the first day, I have been able to access the message boards this week.

And from time in time in my attempts, I wasn't even able to get to the benefitslink home page.

[oriecat]

Yup, been happening to me too.

[Don Levit]

Yes, me too.

Don Levit

[K2retire]

me too

[Mike Preston]

Just a guess, but it probably happened to everybody.

[Guest Sieve]

Good guess.

Guessing comes in handy, too, when reading the regs . . .

(The date stamp is way off, too. I did not post this before sunrise. But I like the idea of turning back the clock on April 15.)

[Dave Baker]

I am very sorry for this trouble, folks.

I believe the message boards have been getting hit by a rogue piece of software somebody (not a board member) is running, which is trying to suck up all the messages at once. There is a limit to how many requests can be made at the same time. It caused the server to crash about once a day for about four days. I made an adjustment that seems to have stopped the crashes. When I restarted the server it got the date and time were wrong (Murphy's law), which I spotted (but not right away) and fixed.

I hope to improve the error message that is standard under the message board software, to say something more useful than "database error." Generally the database is not working at all when that occurs.

IPS is the name of the company that makes the software, which is why that word appears in the error message.

Please feel free to email me at davebaker@benefitslink.com if you see this error or if the message boards have become very very slow.

P.S. - If you are frustrated with the way the message board software automatically puts you into an "HTML" mode when you are posting a message, which seems to me to cause difficulty when trying to edit the text of the post before submitting it, you can click on the top right button that has two arrows chasing their tails (in the screen that appears when you click a button to post a new topic or to post a reply in an existing topic). That button puts you into a plain text mode.

Thank you!

[GMK]

We knew that Dave was on it.

Thanks, Dave.

[david rigby]

We always appreciate Dave's efforts to bring us this valuable website.