I’m not sure if this addition came in with the latest changes or simply I had not seen it before, but I like the addition of “upcoming activations” listed on the Summit Information page:
73 Ed.
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I am having problems entering my SOTA activations that I did today onto the new SOTA Database. I tried to submit my activation of Shining Tor G/SP-004 where I made a high number of QSO only to get a message saying that this summit was not valid at the time of activation which I completely untrue and I know this for a fact as I am the G - Association Manager. I then tried to submit the activation of Shining Tor G/SP-004 with just one QSO to see what would happen and what I ended up getting was an error message of “object” when I tried to verify the log. I then managed to eventually submit this log, but trying to find it to delete it seems to take a long time as for some reason everything on this new SOTA Database is taking a long time to load up. It seems that there is clearly some bugs with the new SOTA Database and I would really appreciate if this gets sorted. I will be logging my activations, chases and SWL on the old SOTA Database which is now in my opinion is a much better system.
EDIT - I have now found that the drop down boxes on the old SOTA Database no longer work and therefore I would really appreciate it if the bugs on the new SOTA Database get sorted ASAP so I can be submit my recent SOTA activations chases and SWL onto the new SOTA Database ASAP
Jimmy M0HGY
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We’ll fix it just for you Jimmy.
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Looks like it’s been fixed already Andy as I have now managed to submit my log successfully for Shining Tor G/SP-004, just need to try need and submit my other 2 activations now and also submit my chases and SWL. Hopefully they’ll be no more issues.
EDIT - All logs now submitted.
Jimmy M0HGY
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Nobody did anything. The DB you use is a combination of software running on several computers communicating over networks. The fact the old DB site was misbehaving as well points to system issues as its software has not been updated. Looking at the time showed no servers under abnormal CPU or memory load, there didn’t seem to be any stalled tasks. Direct commands to the DB engine got instant results tending to discount problems there. It’s possible the internal networking at the data centre was unduly loaded making the comms slow between computers. I don’t know as I have yet looked in the logs. Whatever it was, it rectified itself; either too many requests caused queued tasks which were serviced and the queue subsided slowly or there was slow internal networking.
Since the new software was launched we’ve been doing lots of monitoring to make sure we have enough “power” to handle the changed dynamics. Andrew found one of the “is everything working tests?” that alerts him if things go wrong was adding an undue load and tweaking reduce load on the DB engine by about 40-50%. How slow is too slow? If a task completes 99% of the time in under 1sec and then 1% takes 10secs is that OK or do we need to up the resources available. Does a sudden demand of many of these 10secs tasks cause a domino effect that pushes the system off a cliff edge in performance.
The other problem is the rubberneck problem. Just like you find you get car crashes on the their carriageway when people stop paying attention to their driving and stare at a pre-existing crash on the other carriageway, you get similar effects with software bug reports. Users see a comment that X isn’t working properly and they check it out to see if the report is valid often resulting in making something a little marginal much worse. That’s just human nature, but it often masks the real problem as it disappears under a sudden increase in load from the users.
Probably something needs adjusting. The adjusting is normally simple. Finding out what needs adjusting is the harder job.
4 Likes
Continuing the discussion from SOTAData3 (Part 1):
Yesterday I activated my 007th 007 summit but I haven’t got another badge, only the Connery one.
This was also a 007 to 007 S2S contact with @M0JKS and we were wondering if there’s a special badge for that? Maybe a Mission Impossible one?
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LZ2JPN’s logs are missing in SOTA Database3, but his points are there. At https://old.sotadata.org.uk/ everything is fine.
Jany LZ1GJ
Yes, he has two accounts (under LZ2JPN). When he is logged in there’ll be big banner at the top saying “Please contact the MT to remove your second account” because a) you shouldn’t, and b) it breaks things like this. It is likely that Andy has already emailed him a couple of times to try to fix this.
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TNX I try to contact with him.
Since I started cleaning up the accounts I have deleted over 1100 duplicate accounts. Each dupe has to be checked manually to see if there are logs in both accounts and the logs merged. There are 140 left to process. I’ve also deleted 347 accounts where the holder said they were resident on Bouvet Island. There are also 105 where the account holder has no callsign set. Some of these are SWL accounts.
There are about 10-15 new accounts created each week where the account holder does not set their home association. The holders get emailed and asked to update the account or it will get deleted after a few days. About 20% of them reply or update their account and the rest are deleted.
Worst “offender” for multiple accounts had a total of 13 accounts. I think he didn’t understand the difference between registering for an account and logging into an account he had created.
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You know, I was always led to believe that Bouvet is uninhabited - 347 hams to work there !!
Joking apart - Thanks for all the work you do and have done for a long time, behind the scenes Andy - it is appreciated even if we don’t say so that often.
73 Ed.
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It’s nice to get thanks but the real “heavy lifting” work over the last few years has been by Andrew @VK3ARR This kind of programming work (web sites etc.) is closely related to his job whereas my programming work is Linux kernel work, USB and Ethernet drivers, embedded applications and infrastructure. It was Jon GM4ZFZ who picked the software we use for this reflector. I didn’t like it at first but I have come to really like it. But Andrew has done 99.99% of the programming you see on SOTAwatch, the database and the hidden systems underpinning everything. Nowadays I do mainly admin stuff, updating the summits once/month, maintaining peoples accounts, along with the SMS spotter and the SOTA cluster. Andrew built a rather reliable system so that when it goes wrong myself and Josh @WU7H have to scratch our heads to figure out what is broken, especially as we have some redundant systems.
Josh and Elliott @K6EL do huge amounts of community building and support work in the US which helps lighten the load. Jim @G0CQK is the reflector admin, he spends a vast amount of time ensuring people who sign up are not spammers and also keeping on top of Discourse software and theme changes so that we have a consistent reflector UI. Brian @G8ADD reads all the messages as chief moderator and ensures standards are maintained. Tom @m1eyp keeps a stream of SOTA stories appearing in the radio press. There’s Simon @G4TJC, Csaba @YO6PIB and Warren @ZL2AJ working on the summits.
And finally we have Barry @GM4TOE. Barry is treasurer and runs the awards and merchandise sales. Without Barry doing his huge amounts of work we’d have no money to pay the annual hosting costs. Those costs are running around $250-$275US per month.
I just hope I’ve not forgotten anyone.
15 Likes
Neither do I. Send me the CSV/ADIF and I’ll look.
Sorry, I lost all after a timeout of my session. I reenter all in the old database, here are the successful result in Sotl.as.
73 Chris
1 Like
My suggestion is to use something like FLE or just manual CSV creation. I have a CSV file that I edit and re-edit time and time again for log entry. Takes moments to prepare the last version for the new version then type times and calls and maybe S2S ref. I may try FLE one day but for now, tweaking a previous CSV works and is painless. (I use LibreOffice on Linux and Windows as it’s free and I’m cheap!)
Having a CSV means I’m only at the hands of my own typos, I am immune to any system issues/bugs/outages etc. as I always have MY file to retry.
Josh @wu7h suggests FLE to all people in the US he helps with issues. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a bug. Though I did see the DB engine restart today at 1329Z, we are having an intermittent scale/load issue with it. The engine is running after about 2mins but it can take 10-15mins for all the other services that were stalled when the DB engine restarted to spot it has crashed and burned yet has risen from its own ashes like a Phoenix 
Maybe you were just active at this point?
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The database tried to allocate a very large amount of memory just prior to that, and failed, and was in the process of autorestarting at the time.
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Thanks everyone. Looking at those costs to keep thing running maybe we activators should not only be handing out chaser points and collecting MG merch. But not “buy a coffee”, “buy a tank of fuel” in the form of a Donation at the store. My average SOTA trip tank of fuel is $70 for a day trip more if I do several days burning up the liquid gold. I probably guess several folks do give donations at the store to keep these great volunteers in there tasks to keep the show running.
Regards.
Ian vk5cz …
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Great idea, Ian. I diary twice a year to donate 100 British pounds each time. If a few dozen SOTA enthusiasts did that, we would be 90 percent there, methinks.
Elliott, K6EL
1 Like
I just donated 60 euros.