UESP Forums

My dear Lord High Inquisitor Ratwar, it would seem that there's a mass problem with avatars. Though mine is fine, it would seem a common problem that people are having their avatars revert to older versions. Additionally it would seem uploading new avatars has been universally disabled. I assume this has something to do with the work you're doing, but I thought you'd like to know.


Edited simply because I just now noticed I missed a . in a sentence and it was irritating me.

Alright, I've let Daveh know about the issue, and checked to be sure it isn't something fixable in the forum software.

Okay, the upload problem is fixed. The ones that were lost in the over change (if there are any still 'lost') can just be reuploaded.

If there's still issues, let me or Daveh know.

If I might ask, what was the problem that caused it? Related to the changes you're working on, or something else?

Also I double-checked to make sure, and it's working perfectly for me now as you can see from my nice golden crown. I know you asked to report bugs, but I figure reporting that it's working for others could be helpful as well.

Basically, we're moving the entire site to a new server group, and that definitely caused the problems. I'm speculating here (because Daveh handles the server stuff), but I think the reverting avatars was simply caused by moving an old copy of the avatar file. Probably Daveh copied all the files he didn't think were going to change much and went ahead and moved them over to the new server a little while before the actual move, to minimize downtime during the move. People that changed their avys between the copy time and the actual move time had their avys reverted. Once again, that's me speculating. I don't know enough about servers and such, so I tend to stay out of the way.

As for the inability to upload, that was simply a file permissions issue. The forums software wasn't allowed to write to the avatar file.

The good news is that 5 of our 6 severs have now been switched. The bad news is that the last switch will cause a period where the forums are set to read only.

Do you know how long that period will last for?

And when it will begin?

Also I'm curious: are we going to be hosted on more servers, stronger servers, bigger servers... etc? I'm just wondering how it's going to help specifically. As for technical stuff, I have only a fleeting "in passing" sort of knowledge so anything you say will be fine. In fact, I'll probably make you look vastly knowledgeable on the subject.

All that's been said is a 'short window' for the forums being read only. Basically all the time it'll take to move the forums and the wiki over to the new servers. Less than a day, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was more than an hour.

As for when it begins, that depend on when Daveh has time for it.

As for the servers, we're moving to the same number, and while the hardware itself is getting a bump (in some cases a significant bump), most of that bump won't be noticeable. In pure hardware terms we aren't that close to maxing out right now. The main cause for the change is bandwidth. We're moving to our own special rack which allows bandwidth between our servers to be free and increases our bandwidth allowance, which we'll need by Skyrim's release.

If you're interested, here's the old server setup and the discussion about the new server setup.

First of all, thanks for the links as they're quite informative. Second.. we have a server named Squids. That's interesting.

Anyway, here's hoping the last bits work well and have no trouble.

Situation sounds a lot better than what I first thought. I assumed someone found a way to exploit the avatar server by tricking it to upload malicious code rather than an image. The only way to keep SkyNet from launching the nukes was to trash the corrupted batch, load the last clean backups, and disable the upload feature until the Connors found a way to thwart the machines.

Um I know this might not be the right thread/forum for this but I was wondering if I could get access to use avatars and since Im unauthorized to use pm's I dont really know any other way to get in contact with mods, so do I need to do something or am I unable til i reach a certain amount of posts?

10 posts is the checkpoint. but if you ask a mod, im sure they'll confirm you as a user

also, post count is only affected by oblivion, morrowind and other released game threads. general banter and skyrim do not.

I'm pretty sure that all forums count towards having avatars/PMs unlocked, however. I'm not 100% on that, but it's my impression of how (I think) Nephele set it up back in the day.

Only posts that count toward your post count, count towards making you a confirmed member. But anyway, Bossman, I've added you as a confirmed member, you'll be able to add an avatar and send PMs.

thanks for allowing me to put up avatars, and sorry for the late reply

Can i be confirmed too please?

I'll do it.

I got an email saying to reactivate my account, which i did, but still cant upload an avatar

Ah, that did the trick - thanks