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Slashdot Prepares Switcheroo 207

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hoo-boy-its-time dept.
We're planning on making the final switch from Slashdot to Banjo tonight at around 8pm my time. User preferences changed after 6:30pm will be lost. Comments won't be. Around 8pm, Slashdot will stop providing dynamic pages: only the static homepage will be visible until we we complete the transition, which will hopefully take only however long it takes for us to incrementally update all the critical data. We should see you by 9.
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Slashdot Prepares Switcheroo More

Slashdot Prepares Switcheroo

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  • Changelog? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mutantcamel ( 213431 )
    so whats new/cool with banjo?

  • We should see you by 9.

    On what day?

  • when they finally get things back up. :-)
  • "Around 8pm, Slashdot will stop providing dynamic pages: only the static homepage will be visible until we we complete the transition, which will hopefully take only however long it takes for us to incrementally update all the critical data. We should see you by 9."

    PM?... AM?... September the 9th?... 2009?

  • Well (Score:4, Funny)

    by PovRayMan ( 31900 ) on Friday August 17, 2001 @06:31PM (#2117184) Homepage
    Is this a 1st post or did all the comments get lost?

    Is this just my lucky day?

    • Re:Well (Score:3, Informative)

      by TOTKChief ( 210168 )

      What's really nice about the new Slash is that FP is gone, and I guess it's replaced with the Nth comment number in the entirety of Slashdot. That should strike a blow for the noisemakers...

      Can't wait to see the race for post N million, etc.

      Hey, Taco, what about sticking a "N comments served", kinda like McDonald's, on the static front for all the noobies? Be kinda cool, and updating every 20 minutes or so shouldn't make it too much of a load on the system, no?

      • Re:Well (Score:2, Insightful)

        by GlassUser ( 190787 )
        Yes, unfortunately it will make for slightly more errors when determining what's redundant and what is original.
        • Yeah, I originally reported this as a bug when testing Banjo. When my bug got closed as irrelevant, I figured it out...=)
      • Wait... if there are half a million users and 2.4 million posts...

        ...that don't seem right, now, does it?

  • So, do I get to keep that extra karma I got on banjo? last time I looked, it was still there. Please? awww....
  • With all of the first posts and goat sex links, can any of the data on Slashdot be really termed "critical data"?

    :)

    • I think you mean this [slashdot.org].
      • EXCELLENT... You mean things are like this BEFORE they do the switch:

        OK
        The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
        Please contact the server administrator, pater@slashdot.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

        More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

        • and I just noticed, my comment is apparently the 2,171,131th comment for this article! Woah, talk about a lively debate!!

          by Telek (dNaO99@hSoPmAeM.com) on Saturday August 18, @03:44 (#2171131)

  • Beep... Beep... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Halo- ( 175936 )
    I say we play "Dark Side of the Moon" till things come back, or... baring that... go out... maybe meet some members of the opposite sex. Hopefully O'Reilly makes a book about that....

  • "my time" is when? (Score:5, Funny)

    by blair1q ( 305137 ) on Friday August 17, 2001 @06:49PM (#2132579) Journal
    And what color is the ethernet cabling in your world?

    --Blair
  • I hope the problems you've had with Banjo have been worked out. For example, last time I went to Banjo, my karma was lower than it should be. Good luck!

    Who wants to take bets on how long it will take before Slashdot switches back to the old code?

  • You can tune a banjo.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportlandNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Friday August 17, 2001 @06:47PM (#2147741) Homepage Journal
    ..but you can't tunafish
  • [but wait I do...]

    Just strummed on the banjo server and about 1/2 of the things I clicked on returned internal server errors. Hope this is not a sign of things to come later tonight.

  • Will we hear about Cisco chicks, rebooting to erase critical logs and the death of a nearby star system (not neccesarily in that order)?

    Will any and all posts asking for the truth, or pointing out that the narrative of events is on it's fifth unique revision be moderated down lower than a hot-grits-toting, petrified Natalie Portman visit to goatse [goatse.cx] post?

    Inquiring minds want to know!

  • Just curious (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17, 2001 @06:34PM (#2154966)
    "Your time" is Eastern, right? That would be 5pm here on the West Coast?

    Not that it really matters that much, just want to make sure.......
    • I think they plan on doing it "Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve" style where only the eastern folks will see the new server live at 9PM. Central, Mountain and Pacific users will continue to see their regularly scheduled /. until 9pm their time.

      Beat the system! Have your EDT friends send you screen shots of the new /. so you can see it before everyone else in your area!

      Zildy
    • central, I think. plus it 3 hours difference from west and east coast.
      • Not that I've done any amount of research, but based on past stories, I believe that Taco is/was in Michigan (Eastern) and the server is in a data center near Boston (also Eastern). I'd say it's a safe bet that "my time" is Eastern.
        • If this goes like all of the "upgrades" I've done I will bet that at 2am EST things are being rolled back! In all seriousness I hope things go well and the amount of caffeine imbibed is less than the amount of beer!!
    • All "your time" is belong to us.

      Sorry in advance for that one :)
  • At least they have the sense to do it on a Friday night, so they have the whole weekend to screw up. Dimes to dollars says they fall back to the current version by Monday.
    • Don't know about you, but my free time is mostly on the weekends. Which means thats when Ishould be using slashdot the most.

  • banjo.org (Score:5, Funny)

    by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportlandNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Friday August 17, 2001 @06:34PM (#2154968) Homepage Journal
    news for hillbilly's, stuff thats inbred...

    • Re:banjo.org (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "hillbillys" in this context is not a contraction, possessive, and is not a letter or number like a VCR is.
      • "hillbillys" in this context is not a contraction, possessive, and is not a letter or number like a VCR is.
        Wow, "a VCR" is a letter or number?

        Did Big Bird tell you that?

    • news for hillbilly's, stuff thats inbred...

      I live in Oklahoma, so I guess that I'm a hillbilly by your reasoning. What must be very embarassing to you is that I have better English skills! For instance, had I written your comment (i.e., had your comment been written in correct Engish), it would have looked like this:

      News for Hillbillies. Stuff That's Inbred.

      Note the following:
      • 1. correct spelling and pluralization of "hillbillies";
      • 2. the use of the contraction "that's", meaning "that is", instead of "thats", which at best can be viewed as a pluralization of "that", which, of course, makes no sense;
      • 3. correct capitalization, as the text is a subtitle and therefore deserves capitalization to match.

      I hope this experience has been an educational one for you. I'm just glad I could help.
      • Just being from Ok, I don't think your a Hillbilly.

        I wrote the catch phrase as if it was written by a hillbilly.

        Why would you presume to know what I consider to be a hillbilly? It seem to me you were just looking for something to take offense to.

        Sorry if my english skill are too pore for your wyes, but the internet is international. Even though your from Oklahoma, I'll assum you know what that means.

  • Missed Opportunity (Score:3, Funny)

    by scott1853 ( 194884 ) on Friday August 17, 2001 @07:47PM (#2154992)
    Why the hell didn't we get a chance to put up a poll on what would happen with the update!?

    24 hours to get it working

    48 hours to get it working

    Cowboy Neal will have to get it working

    "We should see you by 9"

    Um, 9:00 on what DAY?


    C'ya later everybody. Nice knowin ya all. Maybe we can talk again in another couple years.

  • Break on through to the other side...

  • So What? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rabtech ( 223758 ) on Friday August 17, 2001 @07:12PM (#2155065) Homepage
    I have reviewed the changelogs, and I don't see many new features, and certainly none that would affect me as a standard reader/poster on slashdot.

    I'm sure the administration side has improvements, and the behind-the-scenes code is better. But I'm left asking... So What?

    If anyone can explain the real benefits from this move, let me know. And congrats to those who worked on Bender.
  • You mean just the code base, right? As in, I won't have to go to http://www.banjo.org/ from now on, and explain to my semi-geek friends who have heard of Slashdot but never kept up with it that I haven't changed to a redneck just because I now visit Banjo as often as I used to visit Slashdot, right?

  • How to tune a Banjo... (Score:3, Funny)

    by daeley ( 126313 ) on Friday August 17, 2001 @06:37PM (#2155618) Homepage
    Just in case things go awry:

    http://www.wiredweb.com/~banjoboyd/tuning.html

    'Remember that as you begin to play music with others its will become important to tune in settings that are loud. Your banjo is a cannon and you stand behind it. If you sence that you are out of tune turn away from the group and face into a corner or wall. This will allow the sound to bounce back toward you. Another easy way to tune in a loud environment is to use a battery powered digital tuners. A fiddle tuner pickup is available which will plug into the tuner input jack and clip on the bridge of your banjo. This tool allows you to tune in the most loud environment without any interference or even the need to hear precisely the string note. You simply tune according to the digital devise display. Most music stores stock these devices and will be happy to demonstrate them for you.'
  • ...about launching changes on a Friday? Plan to spend all weekend with headaches, Taco.

    Heck, you'd probably be doing that anyway :)

    • Re:Isn't there some rule? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by roguerez ( 319598 ) on Friday August 17, 2001 @07:22PM (#2120269) Homepage
      I believe Rob mentioned a short while ago that the bulk of traffic happens during work days. The weekend is a little slower. Therefore picking the weekend makes sense, since less people suffer from possible problems during the switcheroo. I'm not sure if this is the reason for choosing friday, though.
  • Good luck guys. Hope it all goes well. Thanks for all the great work!

  • When All Is Said And Done (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Friday August 17, 2001 @06:55PM (#2155771) Homepage Journal
    There'll be partying, liquor flowing, a food fight or two, an underwear on the head parade, and lots of other celebration type activities the little ones shouldn't read about.

    Then they'll try to sober up enough to switch it over without fscking it all up.

    I suggest a prize of a /. T-shirt to the first post on the "It's Up!" article when it's back up around nine...(yeah... heard that one before)

    Here, I'll help ya by writing the article!

    Well we did it, it's up and running and we only lost half of the posts, several IDs, all the settings and everyone's karma is reset to 0, but it seems to be working just fine. Have at it and let us know if there's any problems. The techs have left their pagers in greasy pizza box and are heading off into the bushes to sleep it off. See you in the morning.

  • New Hardware Specs ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Friday August 17, 2001 @06:38PM (#2155782) Homepage
    What sort of new hardware will Slashdot (and, thus Slashcode Banjo) be running on? I would be quite intersted in the types and configurations of the servers, switches, and routers involved. It may be old-hat to sysadmins, but to me it's kinda neat!

    • Re:New Hardware Specs ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by michael ( 4716 ) on Friday August 17, 2001 @07:18PM (#2111220) Homepage
      The old hardware setup is here [slashdot.org].

      The new one is not terribly different: five beefier HTTP servers instead of six, still with the same Arrowpoint load-balancing switch; one NFS box and one beefier database machine.

      And of course, this will mark the switch to Slash 2.0.

      I'm sure there will be a story (maybe not until Monday though) which will give plenty of specs and info.
      • has the switch already taken place ? I have never seen slashdot response to be so slow...
      • Oh dear oh dear... something's wrong here. I see the title as this:

        Re:New Hardware Specs ? (Score:5, Troll)

        And I go, who the fsck moderated that as a troll, and how did it get to +5?? ... So I look at the comment itself:

        Moderation Totals: Interesting=2, Informative=2, Total=4.

        Yup... Slashcode 2.0 works guys!! So far, through the main slashdot.org page, I've seen 4 or 5 "internal server errors", some wacky comment numbers, addition that doesn't add up (well, actually, knowing /. that's probably a 'planned feature') and now this...

        The magic 8 ball says: I slept with your wife [penny-arcade.com]

        =; .. better luck next time guys =) See you on Monday after 48hours of "personal uptime"...
      • Intel is not playing [zdnet.com] nice with OEM's who are thinking about using p4's with DDR enabled chipsets. I am sure this absolutely has nothing to do with the rambus investment.

  • Best of luck (Score:5, Funny)

    by cnkeller ( 181482 ) <cnkeller@nOsPAM.gmail.com> on Friday August 17, 2001 @06:39PM (#2155793) Homepage
    until we we complete the transition, which will hopefully take only however long it takes for us to incrementally update all the critical data. We should see you by 9.

    So said mission control the Mars polar lander....

  • Tick Tock (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lothar+0 ( 444996 ) on Friday August 17, 2001 @06:38PM (#2155795) Homepage
    About 50 more minutes left to change your settings to filter out posters who have nothing better to do than keep track of how long until Slashdot makes the change.
  • Okay, I haven't been keeping up with /. things for a bit, but please tell me, WTF is Banjo? Is slashcode finally going down the tubes and they are moving to something PHP based (muhahaha, perl will know it's dead for web scripting when /. switches to PHP ;-)

    Anyway, 1 link to something banjo releated (that doesn't have anything to do with musical instruments or "Deliverance") would be apperciated.

    Word to yer_mom,

    ~Manse
  • I am currently involved in a server migration at work. Luckly it is an internal web/file server so it is not at critical, yet still a big issue. All I can go is wish all the /. staff the best of luck and hope you won't need too much coffee ;)
  • server or am I the lucky one?

    --Blair
    "Nyah-ha-haaaaah."
    • You have always been able to meta-moderate (well, at least since it was implemented). Apparently you had to opt in by clicking on it in preferences or somewhere (I forget). After that, the "Have you Meta Moderated Today?" line would appear magically each time you loaded the main page.

      From the comments that I've seen here (and on banjo when it went up for testing) everyone gets the meta-moderation line without opting in.

  • 1) According to my user page, my moderation points expire 8/3/2001. I saw someone else has submitted this in SourceForge, so I'll assume it'll get fixed.

    2) "Slashdot Overload" still doesn't work properly -- comments 1-50 on page 1, 50-99 on page 2, 100-149 on page 3, etc. Do they care? Noooo!

    -----
    Bug #106050, was updated on 2000-May-18 10:17
    Here is a current snapshot of the bug.

    Project: Slash
    Category: Comments
    Status: Closed
    Resolution: Wont Fix
    Bug Group: Slashcode
    Priority: 2
    Submitted by: eithkay
    Assigned to : cbwood
    Summary: 1-off error in "Slashdot Overload"
    -----

    3) Is the fact that I can't see who posted a reply in nested mode a feature, or a bug? I guess that's one less join to make per comment, which is a good thing if needed, but I'd still like to have it.

    4) I'd like to have the strikethru tag allowed -- much less geeky^H^H^H^H^H^H illegible.

    5) But, other than that, it's all good (AFAIK).
  • As well as your own local time, I think you really ought to give times in GMT! Every time zone is given in relation to GMT on official charts and stuff, but I'll be damned if I know how many hours ahead of my own time zone is CET, or west coast time, or CowboyNeal's friend's cousin's dog's time...
  • Why, is that a beowulf cluster?
  • It has come to my attention that many users are abusing the MetaModeration privelege! Help to stamp out these trolls' ability to squelch our moderation power! Support the SMMMA - Slashdot Meta Meta Moderation Association! E-mail Hemos or Taco today!

  • Hidden sids (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) on Friday August 17, 2001 @10:20PM (#2171206) Journal
    are gone. What happened?

  • New random quotes (Score:4, Informative)

    by HongPong ( 226840 ) <hongpong&hongpong,com> on Friday August 17, 2001 @10:58PM (#2171285) Homepage
    Sweet! The random quote of the day seems to have been updated. Futurama's definitely new I think. Though I bet it's just a text file they can change at will, it seems different than usual.

    For posterity: I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth. -- Fry

  • Neato! (Score:2, Informative)

    by vslashg ( 209560 )
    You know what's really improved? The historical stuff. Pull up an article from months ago, and you'll be able to browse the comments in an intelligent manner! Very nice.
    • Thank you, that was a lot of hell to make that work :)

  • Banjo Story (Score:2, Funny)

    by cjsnell ( 5825 )
    So this bluegrass picker goes into 7-Eleven for a few minutes and returns to parking lot, only to find his car window broken. As soon as he sees the shattered glass, his heart sinks. He had left his $3000 banjo in plain view on the passenger seat. "Oh no", he sighed. He looks through the broken window and sees his beloved banjo, still sitting on the seat. And lying next to it is...another banjo!
  • Looks like were all back and up..

  • Comment numbers? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Kreeblah ( 95092 )
    What happened? Did the database count all the comments in it so far, and start numbering from that point onward, or what?
  • Well, thats just annoying. You have to have at least typed for 20 seconds before you can hit submit? Whats up with that? Some of us can type fast, ya know..
  • It looks like the real thing
    It tastes like the real thing
    This fake plastic slashdot

    But I can't help the feeling
    I could blow through the ceiling
    If I could just roll back

    And it wears me out, it wears me out
    It wears me out, it wears me out

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday August 17, 2001 @11:45PM (#2171378)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Oh baby! <click> Respond to me baby! <click> Oh, yeah! <click> Oh, you know how to respond, don't you baby! <click> Oh baby, you're so Real Time! <click> Yes! <click> Yes! <click> Yes! <click> Yes! <click> Yes! <click> Yes! <click> Yes! <click> Yes!!!!!

  • I would go back and follow up on my postings to see if there are any replies, and maybe make counter replies. To find mine in the thread I would click on the browser search icon to bring up a search box, enter my name, and search for posts with my name as the poster. From there I can see if there are any new replies.

    My display format preference is "light".

    Now I can't. The new design leaves out the poster name. Nothing to find. The only way I can see my name is if my post got moderated up and doesn't show as just a one liner. But people do reply to posts that don't get moderated up. Not everyone reads at level 5.

    So how about putting the names back in on the one liner when the post isn't expanded? Or at least do so for one's own posts when logged in.

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