There was a 6 hour window of downtime that was not anticipated. Apparently, there were unidentified requests being made on our mysql server, and thus the mysql server apparently automatically blocked all incoming connections as a safety measure.

I’m going to be investigating the issue when my time permits.

As some readers of this website will know, the BBC and media organisations around the world are growing very concerned for the safety of the news correspondent Alan Johnston who was abducted in Gaza on 12 March.

More than 35,000 people have signed the petition calling on anyone who has any influence on the situation to increase their efforts to secure Alan’s immediate release.

Perhaps you could add this banner to your own website or blog, or sign the petition for his release.  It’s a simple thing but the BBC hope to be an effective way of spreading the message.

Shane and I have implemented battlestarwiki.org e-mails.

If you are an admin or bureuacrat on any wiki and would like a @battlestarwiki.org e-mail address, please e-mail either Shane or I at the following addresses (remove the two DELETE words in the address for it to work).

Shane’s e-mail: shaneDELETE@DELETEbattlestarwiki.org

Joe’s e-mail:joeDELETE@DELETEbattlestarwiki.org

When mailing either one of us, please specify what you would like your e-mail name to be, what password you’d like to use (as it has to be set at the server level), and whether or not you want this to be a redirect to an e-mail address you already use. If you only want a redirect, a password isn’t necessary…

Update (4/17/2007): In addition, the administratorsDELETE@DELETEbattlestarwiki.org e-mail address is in operation. If you’d like to be added to that list, please drop both of us an e-mail.

I have restored the number count feature for the wiki’s portal page. It now includes counts of the number of articles per wiki, as well as the number of files that are available in the media repository.

Thanks to Shane, the portal numbers are now updated on a weekly basis, so that the database isn’t called every time someone loads the portal.

There are 52. Why do I ask? Because we need some help finishing the Media Wiki “Picture of the Week” Project! To help head here and start! It’s very simple!

I’ve updated the project goal listing on the [[Battlestar Wiki:Community Portal]] page.

If you want to identify any additional goals, please feel free to discuss them at [[Battlestar Wiki talk:Community Portal/Goals]], or bring them up for discussion here.

Right now, Battlestar Wiki is fully operational, with the exception of squid and @battlestarwiki.org e-mail mailboxes.

Of course, if you run across any issues, please report them here.

Thanks!

As you can see we are starting to get things back up in order of importance. The blog, our communication tool to you, is a must vaild link between all the wikis. None of the wikis are up yet, but all the databases are restored and are in perfect “stable” state for when they do come back online. Squid is not yet online. Since we don’t expect heavy use since Battlestar is down for the Season, we expect to get it up and running soon. Please bear with us if you notice some down time while searching the site.

Also, Myself, Joe, Steelviper, Frank, Mercifull, Spenc, and Peter and the other admins on Battlestar Wiki, will be introducing some new features and we hope you can enjoy them once everything is online!

Myself and Joe would like to thank you for your calm patience.

I’m verifying all the backups right now and the server should be down around 1 PM ET for the format and OS restore.

After that, we will be configuring and testing Apache 2.2, Squid and Webmin, as well as the other services.

Stay tuned to the Case Orange blog for details.