What is Digg?108 Comments
- theone3, on 10/12/2007, -5/+81Ode to Couchsurfing:
Yesterday,
All those backups seemed a waste of pay.
Now my database has gone away.
Oh I believe in yesterday.
Suddenly,
There's not half the files there used to be,
And there's a milestone hanging over me
The system crashed so suddenly.
I pushed something wrong
What it was I could not say.
Now all my data's gone and I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.
Yesterday,
Need for backup seemed so far away.
Seemed my data were all here to stay,
Now I believe in yesterday. - pseudojd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+30BS! You rotate backups out of service as long as you are backing up so this doesn't happen. every week or month, you take a tape out and it goes off site forever... that's all there is to it. EVERY big company does this. And you gotta do restores every once in a while... they asked for this.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20I'm a Drupal developer and I'll tell you first hand that CivicSpace is ass. Big, gaping, Goatse ass.
I've had nothing but problems with it. Also, you don't NEED CivicSpace unless you want to use CiviCRM. Even then, you're better off just installing Drupal and then installing CiviCRM manually with it. That's the only way I've gotten it to work.
If you want to build a site like this on Drupal, just go to drupal.org and download all the social networking modules (gojoingo, organic groups, buddylist, etc) and do it the right way. Stay away from CivicSpace. - partsguy74, on 10/12/2007, -5/+24Dugg just for the title...
- EmmEff, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20What company doesn't have a good backup plan that's been around for 3 years?
- endtime, on 10/12/2007, -5/+20"It feels to me like this loss of CouchSurfing is how it's meant to be. This crash is like a sign from the universe. "
It sucks that that happened and I feel bad for the guy, but that's kind of a copout. - whisperedlie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15www.inviteaserialkillertosleeponyourcouch.com
- krugerpr0n, on 10/12/2007, -8/+23That must suck but 3 years and no decent back-up bad idea!
pitty though looked to have been a very interesting site - morbid88, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14I think people here are missing a fundamental aspect of what CouchSurfing was.
There WAS no big company. Casey did a substantial amount of the work while he was on the road, USING the website's own service.
This wasn't a money-making machine. It was a non-profit organisation. An anarchistic social experiment that took off faster and higher than anyone really expected it to. The BEAUTY of it was that it was small.
I don't know how it happened, and apparently even Casey states that it was avoidable.
We users will naturally gravitate to the other services, and maybe some of us will band together to form a new one. Who knows.
I would certainly be interested. - neoform, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14@acrophoric
you're an idiot.
anyone that does proper backing up will not destroy an old backup until a new backup system has been put into place and is functioning perfectly. these guys just dropped the ball hard. - dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Seriously. I feel like he's shirking the responsibility of rebuilding this site. He's already got the userbase. All he has to do is give them something to input. I think he is just using this crash as an excuse to move on with other things in his life. His letter even states that he has foregone some opportunities for himself because of this project.
- RareSaturn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12After reading this I just backed up my database
- superkendall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Being small does not mean you can't do real backups. In fact it's more important, and it's not hard to always keep three copies of something going at once... it's just crazy to do any backup directly over your only existing backup.
- Hayl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11One that isn't making money and wants to go out of business? :P
- raid517, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I think he hired these people recently to take some of the stress he was feeling off of himself - and these people simply proved to be incompetent.
It sounds also like the guy was looking for an out. All that stuff about 'putting his life on hold', 'sacrificing his health' and 'suspending his own wander lust and other interests for the sake of the site.' sounds like a bigger factor more than anything else.
People who build large successful sites like this - but which don't make a lot of money from them, often don't live very normal lives - and this can be quite emotionally damaging at times.
I think that you need to get lucky and come up with a formula as successful as diggs, where you can sit back and just watch the greenbacks roll in, before it really becomes possible for you to relax.
But it is often very hard work. - SteelChicken, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10ones that dont make enough money to hire decent people and put in place good processes
or ones that dont really care enough to do it
i doubt this was a huge money making enterprise - valour, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Sometimes running a site can be like a job that you never get a vacation from. Or when you do take a vacation, the server goes down or something else happens. Enough disasters like that make you wish you could sell the site, or shut it down and do something else, but you can't because you have an obligation to your users/readers/customers. So when something like this happens where the site is wiped out, it's tempting to think that it's more of a blessing than a curse. You're free to do something else with your life -- your WHOLE life, not just the few hours you can trust the site to go without supervision.
- morbid88, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9This is absolutely terrible.
I'm not sure if someone from within the community will try to rebuild -- maybe using CivicSpace on Drupal?
but I'm sure packs of members wills tart gravitating to alternate services like hospitality club or something...
Is there anybody out there? - kvasinka, on 10/12/2007, -0/+81. www.hospitalityclub.org
2. www.globalfreeloaders.com
3. www.stay4free.com
4. www.travelhoo.com
I have been member of all 5 including couchsurfing for several years so I put them in order according to database size, ease of use and additional services (couchsurfing used to be no. 2 for me, from now, the hospitalityclub.org is way ahead of everyone else) - SniperX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8@pseudojd
You've obviously never implemented a backup solution. It most certainly does cost money. Granted, what you're backing up has a lot to do with the price, as well as the back up method used. But tapes, hard drives, dvds all cost money, so does *good* back up software.
Though obviously that wasn't the case here, they were actively backing up it sounds like, and the problem lies in how they executed the backup policy. - angelp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@2damntall - Actually, the article stated this, smartass:
"CouchSurfing allowed people to register their home and offer free accomodation to travelers." - bking, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Couchsurfing was a free service that allowed you to take in travelers coming to your area, or find a place to stay when you travel. When you register, you put down notes about your living conditions (no roommates, have car, always have couch, flexible schedule etc.) and people would be able to search for people in the area that they are going to that meet their criteria. There was a feedback system, as well as a few different tiers of identity verification, for your safety. It was an amazing service that did a lot of good.
- ElectroOverlord, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I just hosted a guy from Ireland that came to Detroit for the Detroit Electronic Music Festival. Was a really cool service and it sucks that its gone. I really wanted to couchsurf to Belgium next year. R.I.P.
- Picard102, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6What the hell? I could have used this service multiple times if I had known about it.
- Angostura, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7The guy couldn't be arsed to continue, the database failure was a convenient excuse to give up. Simple as that.
- kvasinka, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Try similar services like www.hospitalityclub.org (the biggest one), stay4free.com, etc.. Couchsurfing was a good service, but problably not the best one and definitelly not the biggest one, although it was rising quickly in past few months.
- cheersrazer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The vibe i got from the e-mail is that the owner wanted to move on from couchsurfing.com and this was a good opportunity to do so. I used couchsurfing and was planning to use it again during my trip to Europe later this year, the site had a nice philosophy and was a great community. It will be sadly missed by many.
If anyone knows of any alternatives could you please post them in a comment. - vhold, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4To not have -anything-, not even some old version of the application, is just too strange. I can't help but think there is more to this.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Maybe they're a small time operation that didn't so much hire an admin as pay a guy hourly to do some work here and there as a contractor.
Sometimes what seems like a full fledged, supported, commercial business is just a guy running a site as a hobby out of his own expenses and resources and free time. People are constantly emailing me and talking to me as if the site I run is some big company or something.. the truth is, it's just me, my cash, my hardware, my colo'd bandwidth... I can't afford a real backup solution, so I have to cron all the backup processes and rsync them remotely many times a day (2000 miles away).
Now, if I can do that they should be able to as well. Hell, I still have every piece of data from everything on my site dating back to 1998, including about 1,500,000 uploaded photos (for user auctions, etc). The only time I ran into a problem was when I had a catastrophic hardware failure where both PSUs in the redundant N+1 PSU system died in a short period of time AND one of the drives in the RAID5 crapped out. I mis-timed a move over to another box and lost about 8 hours worth of data... but 8 hours and 8 years (or 3 years in this CouchSurfer instance) is a world apart. - Picard102, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5From what I can tell it's a way for people to crash on other people's couch while their traveling. Like a free hostel.
- el_jefe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The article explains it, but you have to read it.
- javierror, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4for great justice!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Wow. Backing up a database is usually a single command line, can be run as a cronjob, rsynced remotely, only takes a few minutes to generate and compress and in systems like PostgreSQL can be done live without seriously impacting user interaction.
There's not really any excuse here unless these guys had a decent backup system and that _also_ failed. - bndocksnt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5@pseudojd "yes it does cost 'money' but you can get 3 pen drives for under a hundred bucks... just keep swapping them...."
Are you actually suggesting that somebody back-up a website with Flash memory? No, I must have been mistaken, there is no way that anybody could offer up such a naive solution. Just so everybody is on the same page here, Flash memory is volatile stuff. I have replaced my thumb drive a couple of times just in the last year. They are NOT a back-up storage solution for anybody but a high school student who wants a good place to hide his (or her :) porn. - Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Avoidable" hard drive crash? What, was it swinging from a SATA cable 5 feet off of the cold hard floor? Was SMART freaking out? Did they buy Western Digital or Hitachi? Was the HDD located next to a degausser with a big button that said "PRESS FOR FREE CANDY"?
- titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I thought it was going to say something about couch potatos surfing the web from their TV delete their own civilization or something.
- dupswapdrop, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Hey in the 80's I worked for a big company that did backups of their mainframe each and every day.
Then they took them out to an unlocked shed behind the parking lot and piled them up without labels.
One day the mainframe crashed hard, go get the backups they all shouted.
Oops the lawn care crew had them dumped in the trash because they needed the shed.
Too bad so sad.
Oh and now they are based in Mexico! - decay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3For those that don't know what couch surfing is. (I didn't)
Membership in the organization is free and is obtained simply by registering on the website. The core activity of the organization is exchange of accommodation. Acting as a host, a member offers the possibility of accommodation at his or her leisure; it is not required, but obviously it is encouraged. Acting as a surfer (guest), a traveller may search for and request accommodation at his or her destination. Accommodation is entirely consensual between the host and surfer, and the duration, nature, and terms of the surfer's stay are generally worked out in advance to the convenience of both parties. It is also expected to be free; no monetary exchange takes place except under certain circumstances (e.g. the surfer may compensate the host for food).
Source: Wikipedia - roosh4, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yeah you're right. Better lock yourself up in the basemenet and cease interaction with all humans.
- Life2Short, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Could someone define "avoidable hard disk crash?" The only thing I can picture here is bouncing the server up-and-down on your knee. Short of deliberately setting out to damage the hard drive, in what sense are disk crashes avoidable?
- rdez6173, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I don't understand how there's *no* backup. Even with a substandard backup procedure, you'll usually have a month/year old backup lying around _somewhere_ that can act as a decent starting point for a rebuild. This is especially true for a ~3 year old service.
I can empathize, however, I know the feeling when you realize just how bad the situation is; it usually results in vomiting on oneself ;) - neoian, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Ya know this wouldn't be that hard to do using drupal. From what it sounds like people just opt in or out for having people stay in their house. And when someone is at their house they could set their status to someones here. Flexinode and 3 radio buttons. An address field, PM's, and a forum would so the trick.... I guess.
- jonashwing, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@SniperX
ummm, CVS? or save it to your personal computer if you have to. - ekkalvia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Arson 2.0?
- u8myfoood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2RIP couchsurfing...
- pumacub, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It was the last one...
Mmmmmmm... Candy. - junglegirl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2No eulogies yet, people; take another look: www.couchsurfing.com. Casey might have thought it was dead in a moment of despair, but 90,000 devoted couchsurfers were never gonna let that happen. Version 2 is expected to be up in about ten days.
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's totally insane. No one would ever take that job.
Hire a competent DBA. Make sure that at *any* given time, you're able to recover from backup. Do test recoveries regularly.
If you have to second guess your DBA, and 'make your own backups', you need to hire someone else. - gamekid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Same here.
Instead, [insert Darth Vader exclamation of disapproval from Star Wars Episode III] - ekkalvia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I don't think you mean literally saving IT manager's asses. Not unless there is some sort of new IT punishment being put in place because of this.
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