Great Western Coffee Shop

Please note that the server computer on which this site is running will be moved and reconfigured overnight tonight, 25th to 26th July (starting from 11 p.m.). this is being done by our Web Space Provider, who tells us that the changes should be completed by the start of normal business hours tomorrow.  They write

Your data will not be affected by this upgrade. However, as a precautionary measure, we strongly recommend you back up your data and server settings before the upgrade.

Yes, I do have a backup, taken late yesterday.

I will still be reachable via email - graham@wellho.net - in the event of any problems. 

The following domains on which we provide content are effected:

http://www.melkshamhotel.co.uk (http://www.melkshamhotel.co.uk)
http://www.savethetrain.org.uk (http://www.savethetrain.org.uk)
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info)
http://www.wellhousemanor.co.uk (http://www.wellhousemanor.co.uk)
http://www.training-notes.co.uk (http://www.training-notes.co.uk)

The following domains on which I provide content are hosted elsewhere and are NOT effected:

http://www.wellho.net (http://www.wellho.net)
http://www.wellho.co.uk (http://www.wellho.co.uk)
http://www.grahamellis.co.uk (http://www.grahamellis.co.uk)

We have a few domains that we host for others on the server in question; I will notify separately where appropriate

My apologies for a gap of around 3 hours in the service on this forum early this afternoon.  I am looking into details of what happened.

I think our outages total about 6 hours in the last 6 months - that's an availability of over 99.83%.  During that time we have had to contend with staff shortages to run the forum, delayed works at our offices due to overrunning contractors, engineering issues on the server, floods, and surges of visitors when we hadn't expected them. But we haven't had any bridge strikes.

Come on, FGW, if we can get 99.83% availability, why can't you?   99.83% availability equates to between 2 and 3 train cancellations A YEAR at Melksham.

P.S. No posts have been delayed by more than 5 minutes either!

But how many of your servers are over 30 years old?

Perhaps you should try getting some 286s in from oop North, to more accurately reproduce that authentic FGW atmosphere...

My ROSCO - oops - I mean my WSP - tells me they're closest to Adalante vintage if you compare them to the FGW fleet  ;)

It's fair comment about the equipment age, though. New equipment is unreliable when it's teething, has a great midlife, then gets sick again ...

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/bathtubeffect.jpg)

I was loaned a book on planning railway services to read over Christmas 2005 (and enjoyed it very much) and I learned all about the bathtub effect.

So if I tried to access this afternoon and was delayed by over an hour, do I get some nice FGW Coffeeshop vouchers in compensation? :)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/coffeestationfgw.jpg)


John, you're very welcome to pop by our business place (http://www.wellhousemanor.co.uk/) at almost any time and have a free cup of coffee (coffee station above!). Nothing to do with the problems this afternoon, mind you. Perhaps I should retell the story of why I run a hotel sometime, should I?

I might do that if I'm ever passing. And if not before, to celebrate the rebirth of the line when your campaign finally succeeds.

You may have seen some very slow server responses - to the extent that the site may have been unreachable to you - in recent days.  This is due to external forces loading our server from time to time.   

At the present time, I am still researching the problem; I have, though, made certain software changes which should limit the effect of these forces and hopefully you'll see a crisp site once again.  However, with the issues only occurring intermittently, it's darned hard for me to test so this can only be a statement that I've done my best and I'm working on it .... and not that I'm sure I've got a work-around.  Because I'm not sure  :-\

If you consider yourself one of our keener members, you may like to make a note of my email address - it's graham@wellho.net - so that you can reach me to let me know if the forum is blocked up again.  Please bare in mind, though, that my work takes me away from base on a very irregular pattern (I'm posting this from the Balkans, and happen to have good access here!) so I may not be able to respond for a while at times.

An update ... the "Denial of Service" attacks continue to knock at our front door - what it is to be popular!! - but we are largely dealing with them so that the majority of our users are unlikely to be aware of what's going on.  If you're one of the minority who saw the site down during yesterday evening for about an hour, or for half an hour this morning, my apologies.

are FGW starting to get annoyed and DDoS'ing the forums? :P

Whilst (as admin) I have to consider every potential possibility, I think that's a remote one.

In order to help locate the issues which have been causing server access problems, this server was in a maintainace mode over lunchtime today, and may again go into such a mode for further short periods over the next 48 hours.   We will of course try to minimise such outages, and where practical to give good notice and to choose quiet times.

Thank you for your patience over the weekend.  Full service on "The Coffeeshop" was restored yesterday evening, and no further outages are planned in the near future.

The server was unavailable for about 2 hours this afternoon - my apologies.   I understand the cause was connectivity issues in the data centre where it is housed (a.k.a. a network cable got pulled out?) which was unforecastable, so I couldn't give you notice!

For anyone who gets coffee withdrawl symtoms, bookmark
               http://www.wellho.net/share/coffeeshop.html
where I will report ongoing incidents like this.   If you're not quite that concerned, but would like to be able to get in touch if the site is down, my email address is graham@wellho.net.

Further issues overnight ...

This site is hosted (as are most sites!) in a network centre, and it seems there has been a hardware problem with either our machine or the equipment connecting to it and letting it be seen and controlled on line.  I have not got full details (yet?) but I do know that our service provider has replaced a power supply on something.  That may turn out to be the final fix, or it may turn out (as is the nature of these things) to be either a side effect or a red herrlng.  As I here more, I'll update here and also via the status page on the other site.

The server on which this site is hosted was out of service this evening for about three hours. I am awaiting an analysis, but the data so far indicates that it was something like a power supply failure on the computer.

Those of you who get withdrawl symptoms when "The Coffeeshop" is offline ... remember that there's a status page at http://www.wellho.net/share/status.html and that I flag major problems with any of our machines on a "stop press" box on http://www.wellho.net 's front page.

Sorry about the problems ...

Sorry about the server outage.  Fairly obviously, we're back ....

We've had two issues today ... I'm investingating / they may not be the last

Ouch. Hope it wasn't / isn't a denial of service attack?

I'm still at the "please await the results of the investigation" stage.

Had a database error earlier! Sounded quite serious.

Yeah ... with the server located in a network centre and any emergency actions performed by engineers who are very good at fixing hardware issues, but less good at communicating back as to the details, I don't know fully what the trigger was - though I've got a reasonable idea.   The database error message that you saw has a bark worse than its bite  :D

Please note that our server is being relocated between 10 p.m. on 10th December and 7 a.m. on 11th and will be unavailable during this period, according to a notice I have received from the company who provide the system and its connections.  I have been advised to take a full backup ahead of time, which doesn't indicate to me that they are 100% confident in what they are doing ...

I'll provide any status updates needed at http://www.wellho.net/share/status.html - and can I suggest that you bookmark that page NOW as once the system's down, this page won't be acccessible.   The status page is also where I post about other outages

5 4 3 2 ... a countdown to remind you that the server will be unavailable from late tomorrow evening until (all being well) Friday morning.   Not totally in my hands ... so make a note of the URL for the status page ...

In preparation for the downtime, I have been running some tidy and backup scripts - sorry for any brief interruptions  And there may be one or two more yet.  We *should* just be down from around 10 p.m and back by 7 a.m. ...

2 hours, 20 minutes if you need a final cup of coffee tonight!

Looks like we're back ... 04:30!