Board Attachment Quota has been reached.....WTF?

[Fleet Lists]

Today there has been a further report of this problem so I have reduced the number of photos even further - I hope it does not get down to the point that we do not have any photos in the attachment section.

[Mr OC Benz]

Its happened again. Is there any chance also that the maximum file size of attachments be 350KB rather than 300KB as for those who use more modern cameras and resize their images to 800x600 seems to be a recurring problem as the file size is over 300KB. I don't generally like making my pictures any smaller than 800x600 as the quality doesn't look so good.

[Fleet Lists]

I have deleted the oldest 250 photos which should give us a bit more room.

One thing I did notice was that the ones I removed were all less than 100KB in size while the ones currently being added are generally about 200KB or more so it is not a one for one replacement ie we need to delete two or more for every one currently being added.

Hence I am a bit hesitant in increasing the maximum size to 350KB at this stage as it would further reduce the number of photos we can keep.

[Mr OC Benz]

Is it possible to somehow investiage into how much more attachment space can be increased in cooperation with the bandwidth and disc space etc that the forum is on?

[Fleet Lists]

Ken partially addressed that in a post earlier in this thread. He is the only one who can further address that issue.

[Bedford-29]

Something got to be done I don`t know how many GB of pictures are a attached each week or month but there has to been a increase GB so members can attach there picture quota.I just why never was a separate forum for older posts that still have there pictures attached like a archives of sort.But here is a thought to think about instead of a picture quota for the whole site how about picture attachment quota for each member of ATDB of say 2 or 3 gb instead of relying on ATDB quota or something similar.I don`t if something like this can done but it is something to think about.

[Fleet Lists]

Currently we delete any photos in excess of 23000 attachments. The alloctated space is 3gb but we seem to run into trouble once the system says that we are using in excess of 2.91gb.

We can not keep increases this allocated space indefintely as there is always a cost involved.

I would say that the majority of photos will never be accessed after the initial three monts so that the 1 year 11 monts that we are currently keeping photos should be ample in the majority of cases.

23000 photos spread over 23 months averages out at about 33 attachments per day.

Allocating a separate space for every member would be out of the question as it would require a lot more space and many members would not uses any of their allocation, while those who post many photos would require more than they would be allocated.

I feel sure that many members who post photos do it on the basis that people will look at the phots for a relatively short period of time and at the same time they have other places where they keep their photos on a permanent basis.

The attachments were never intended for photos to be kept on a permanent basis as it is not easy to find older photos. The photo gallery were it is simpler to document photos and where that documentation can be searched, was intended for that purpose.

Posting photos in the gallery would also eliminate the need to repetitively post certain photos as some members are want to do. In place if they want to make a future reference to that photo, a link to the gallery should suffice rather than repeat the posting of the photo concerned.

Unfortunately posting of photos in the gallery seems to have virtually stopped over recent times. Currently we just over 2000 photos there as opposed to 23000 in the attachments.

The system does not provide for an archive of old pictures which could still be accessed.

[Bedford-29]

How about a fuel gauge or a meter at the top something that will tell us.The daily picture attachment quota is nearing its daily gb ration so members know that the quota been reached.

[Fleet Lists]

There is no such thing as a daily quota.

If mamaged correctly, something we have obvioulsy not been doing lately, there should not be any need for a gauge as suggested. Even at the moment as adminstrators we are having problems interpreting the information supplied by the system so it would not be much use posting it on the open board.

I am going away for a week after tomorrow but I will delete quite a few attachments before I go so hopefully there should not be any problems while I am away.

[Fleet Lists]

As I stated a few posts ago, we are deleting any photos over 23000. The first time I logged back on after being away, we had 23005 photos so my guess as to the number that would be added while I was away was not far off. Deleted the extra 5.

[Mr OC Benz]

Qouta has been reached again.

[Fleet Lists]

Hve now brought it down to 22700 and will bring it down a bit more when I get a chance.

One problem I found was that some of the photos being deleted were there in name only - ie they were missing from the database - hence when I deleted them no space was being freed up. This probably relates to the problem some time ago when not all photos were backed up.

[Fleet Lists]

I brought it down another 100 to 22600 with most of these 100 being photos which were there in name only and as I suspected the database size did not go down with the deletion of these photos.

So that is something else we need to keep an eye on for a while. Hopefully I have now deleted most of the non existent ones.

[Fleet Lists]

With the assistance of MAN 16.242 we have removed close on another 100 attachments which were there in name only so that for the time being we will remove any photos in excess of 22,500, and see how we go from there.

[Mr OC Benz]

Is it possible to just remove all of those photos that don't show up and weren't backed up after that crash just to get them out anyway?

[nbus]

Is there a way we can find out which Pics have been removed.

[Fleet Lists]

Is it possible to just remove all of those photos that don't show up and weren't backed up after that crash just to get them out anyway?

That is what we are currently doing. They can not be listed as there is no trace kept of them.

For others we can list them like this but it does not give much detail - as an example only:-
Attachments deleted
� DSCF1755.JPG, IMG_2610.JPG, IMG_2611.JPG, IMG_2612.JPG, IMG_2613.JPG, IMG_2614.JPG, IMG_2338 - Copy.JPG, r410v1s1.jpg, r410v1s2.jpg, R433V1.jpg, r454v1.jpg, R507v1.jpg, R566V1.jpg, R6389S1.jpg, R6389S2.jpg, R641V1.jpg, R408v1.jpg, Route402v1.jpg, R404v1.jpg, R406v1.jpg, R654V1.jpg, 1 (11) (Medium).JPG, 1 (12) (Medium).JPG, 1 (Medium).JPG, 1 (1) (Medium).JPG

Is that what is wanted?

[Fleet Lists]

Have deleted another 500 or so of these attachments which were there in name only but not in the database.

I identifiied two users specifically who had been hard hit by this problem and I have deleted all problem attachments belonging to one member and most of them belonging to the other bringing us now down to just under 22000 attachmenats - I will see how we go from here. During all those deletions the size of the database did not go down.

[Bedford-29]

How many years has ATDB been running for now and the pictures that have been posted over those years.Amongst the break-downs and that hacking incident and the amount of pictures that weren`t reattached no wonder you are having fun trying to clear space Fleet lists.And I reckon you haven`t scraped the surface yet a real Aladdin's cave hey.

[Fleet Lists]

Another progress report.
We built back up to just over 22000 attachments today which I brought back to 22000 so far so good.

But then I foound another lot of phantom photos for want of a better name. I deleted about 200 of them which as expected did not reduce the size of the database.

As they are getting harder to find, I have decided to the following from now on:-
We appear to run into trouble when we get over 2.93 gb. So once we reach 2.92gb I will delete attachments until we get back below 2.92gb which should give us potential room for at least 75 attachments at any one time.

I wil do that at least once a day so hopefully that will keep us out of trouble.

[Fleet Lists]

I had to run some statistics synchronistaion tonight as I had trouble balancing the number of attachments as I got different fugures from two places. After running thta I can now balnce the number of attachments which is now down to about 20,730.

And the file size which was previously shown as 2.91gb went down to 2.49GB. After deleting a few attachments it went down to 2.48gb. So from here if it reaches 2.49 I will delete some more.

What has me intrigued though is why it is only 2.49GB when we have allocated 3GB. So maybe there is now room for more growth but I dont want to take the risk at this stage.

[Fleet Lists]

Since I ran the statistics synchronistaion last Wednesday I have been giving this quite a bit of thought.
There are two figures given as to the amount of storage used by the attachments:-
Main summary which prior to the resynchronisation showed 2.93gb and after the resynschronistion 2.48gb.
And when removing phantom photos this figure does NOT go down.
This makes me think that when these photos were lost this value was NOT reduced but now has been.

The second figure is given where the actual attachments are listed and earlier this morning showed a figure of 2.53 gb but after I removed another 150 or so phantom photos today it went down to 2.51gb. So it appears that this figure is being reduced whenever a phantom photo is deleted and hence my conclusion is that are probably still 2.51-2.48 =.03gb worth of pahntom photos somewhere but they are getting harder to find.

However the important part of this post is that I suspect that when we were running out of storage the higher figure ie 2.93gb was bing used to stop any further attachments being included. So that now that we are down to 2.51 (taking the higher of the two figures) we should have ample room for more attachments.

On that basis there should now not be any need to remove any further attachments until we get back somehwere near the 2.90gb figure.

Please let us know if there is again any evidence of attachments not being allowed - thereby disproving my theory.

[Fleet Lists]

I got the second figure down 2.498 (say 2.50 rounded to two digits) after deleting some more so we are getting close to having deleted them all but from here I just dont know where to look for them so they will just have to come out in the wash in the longer term.

I am still hoping we can utilise the extra space now for a while without having to delete any more valid ones.

[Fleet Lists]

Deleted some more phantom photos today - the second figure is now down to 2.476 gb so needs to be rounded up to get to 2.48gb which is still what the first figure is. So I suspect that there not too many phantom ones left.

Now having about 20,100 attachments my rough calculation shows we should be able to get to about 23,500 before we need to delete any more. I hope I am right.

[Fleet Lists]

I was just a little bit wrong in my previous post.

Just after I posted that, I had another idea and created a manual link which is not normally provided by the board software and lo and behold I managed to find all the missing attachments between 26th March and 23rd November 2010. They were all lost and have now all been deleted.

In addition there were also quite a number of attachments lost when we moved to the new served in March 2010. There the lost ones were not in date sequence and they were lost by member of the board ie if a member had one lost attachment, they were all lost. There were only a relatively small number of members involved. I can not be sure that I have found all of them. But for those I did identify I have now removed all pre 23 March 2010 attachments.

So instead of currently having 20100 attachments as I mentioned before we are now down to 10,988. That is over 9000 of them I have deleted over the past few days.

Calculation of space used by attachments. I have found that when an attachment is added the board increases the space used. When an existing attachment is used the space is decreased but when one of the phantom attachments is deleted the space used is NOT decreased and hence we kept running into trouble because we were deleting phantom ones and hence the space used was not being decreased accordingly. This can be overcome by manually resynchronising which I have done on a number of occasions during these deletions. The number of attachment is effected the same way.

So after all that the system shows that we are now using 1.31gb out of the 3gb we have allocated. So we should now have ample room for new attachments for at least a year. I would say that we can double the number of attachments to at least 22000.

For the pre March 2010 attachements I will go through once a month to delete those which are over 2 years old so that more space will become available. By resynchronising after each lot of deletions we should allow for any phantom ones which I have missed and are deleted.

As the oldest attachments are currently dated in May 2009, the first lot of such deletions will be done in early June.

Once they are all deleted up to March 2010, there will be a gap until November 2010 which under the above setup would not become due for removal until after November 2012. I am not going to plan that far ahead at this stage.

So as from now it should be happy attachment adding.