I've written a journal about this but since it looks like we're not gonna be back for a while im moving this here.

Sunday noon the server started to spam the syslog with sata exceptions before becoming unresponsive and eventually going down completely. The errors indicated a problem with either the sata controller or the harddisk itself.
We're currently waiting for a KVM to access the server and maybe try to get a snapshot of the serverstate before it went down; or at least figure out what exactly is wrong.

In the meantime Msh100 is taking care of getting new harddisks to the datacenter so we can raid our box and prevent this from happening again the future. However, depending on the damage, it's probably gonna take until tuesday or wednesday to resolve this. We sure hope to be back up and fully functional for the upcoming SAGE lan this weekend.

The worst case scenario would be an unreadable harddisk. In that case we would need to rebuild the site from a backup. We do nightly backups of the important stuff, but that does not include user uploaded images like avatars and team logos. Those backups are the last resort and we hoped that we'd never need them so rebuilding from them is a pain in the ass.

We've set up this fancy fallback page for now and we'll try to cover some matches manually

I'll keep this newspost updated but don't expect too much, progress is slow at the moment. In any case this is the most serious issue we've had to face, ever.

Update: We managed to get a snapshot and move it to another host. The current plan is to temporarily get it running on another box until our own server is fixed. So we might be online tonight (27.6), pretty much fully functional. In the meantime our server will hopefully get fixed with raid and we'll move back over before the lan to resume normal operation. Looks like we got lucky

Update 2: While I'm writing this we're getting a new case that can hold more hdds and two new hdds. A quick integrity check of the emergency backup revealed that everything should be in order so we can resume the exact state of the server when it went down. Like the crash never happened.

Update 3: We're back for good. On our own server already, with raid! Not a single byte of data was lost and everything is running smoothly.
Thanks to YCNs msh100 and his immense effort this could be handled relatively quickly.

Since the beginning of ETTV broadcasts we had to deal with the issue of broken ingame stats. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about that.
However, Hannes provided us with a software that allows us to extract detailed matchinformation from ETTV demos. Since we have a bunch of those we put it to a good use and implemented support for it into our GTVd system.
This allows us to break down player and team performances beyond what endround-stats will tell you (that plaintext stuff in the server console when you finish a round).
To present all that data we had a look over to StatWhore and "borrowed" their layout aswell as their awards. To round off the stats we included the plaintext endround-stats from the server console aswell.

You will find out we modified the matchpages slightly to accommodate statistics. Stats for new matches will automatically be generated once they're finished, so they will be available about 2 minutes after the match ended. We did make sure to generate stats for all the matches that made it into our Top 10 Stats of all time and all matches of which we have official demos that have at least 1 star (about 3000 matches overall)!

The biggest restriction is this: We will not generate stats for 0-star matches. It's just not worth it for us and public interest should be rather minimal. You can still use StatWhore on your own matches if you're interested in the stats.
Also notice the disclaimer on the bottom of all stats pages: We usually do get accurate data, but there is some guessing involved and there are cases we can't handle (prime example is one player reconnecting with a new player-id) - we try our best though.

So check out this example, enjoy the new insight and don't go all statwhore on us.

Thanks to h3ll and soczol for getting this project back on track
(and don't whine about the squeezed layout, it's just too much information)

Update: Some values for 'Player Summary for the entire Match' were off. This is fixed now.

Original Newspost

You may have noticed that GamesTV.org is not responding since yesterday morning.

The mainboard of the dedicated server hosting gtv blew up and had to be replaced. Since the hardware change we're experiencing some software issues related to the new hardware that have prevented us from booting the machine.
The tech guys and the onlocation staff is making progress only slowly and there's no telling when we'll be back up again.

So what does that mean?
Obviously all our live services don't work, however no data is lost. Livecasts may be set up for important matches, you will be notified about those via Crossfire and IRC.


We apologize for the prolonged downtime and hope to be back up soon.

Dear community,

I'm sure many of you wondered which match might be the one with the highest viewer peak, the most comments or simply has been requested on demand most often.
This "top 10 of all times page" is long overdue. Next to the matches we also listed some interesting team statistics, a server hall of fame and an overview about GamesTV.org and its contents (like GBooky and GTVd).

I think all the numbers speak for themselves or are explained properly on the page so with no further delay I give you:
GamesTV.org :: Top 10 of all times

You can get there from the link "Top 10 stats" in the navigation box.

With the new and improved ondemand system in place and working, we're trying to improve it even more.
From now on every user has his own ondemand playlist, which is nothing else than a personal list of matches you'd like to watch - if you want to mark a match to watch it later, just add it.
But the playlists become especially interesting in connection with the subscriptions-feature:
You can subscribe to any league, team or event (top right corner of the item) which will highlight all those matches in the schedule. Nothing new so far. But in your 'My Settings > Notification' menu you can now enable automatic adding of those subscribed events to your playlist.
As soon as a new event you subscribed to in any form (league, team or event directly) becomes available for viewing on demand, it'll be added to your playlist and you'll be notified via sysmsg that a new match has been added.
The playlist is shown on every ondemand page and can easily be sorted via drag&drop.
You'll also see a new link in the 'my account' box below the link to your GBooky profile: 'My Playlist'. Whenever you hit it it will take you to the next unwatched replay in your playlist - if you don't have anything on your playlist yet it'll try to find you a nice match to start with.

I hope that makes the ondemand feature more attractive and easier to manage.

Regards, skooli

Dear community,

GamesTV.org is proud to announce some major upgrades which do not only affect our crew and our broadcasters but also you, the viewers.
The biggest factor that made all this possible, GTVd, is almost ready to be released since the internal betatest showed very promising results. Like ettvd did a few years ago, GTVd will revolutionize the way ETTV (and other games pending) works:

ETTV - Live Casts
One of the biggest changes is that ETTV servers will not run 24/7 cycling through old demos but only run when they are really needed. This may sound bad for some of you at first, but hold on a sec: This frees up valuable resources which go (more or less) directly into the renewed onDemand system - read more about that a few paragraphs below.
The TV servers behave almost the same as you know it, mapevents are still announced with a timer so you always know which team did what quicker, you can follow whomever or whatever and discuss the failings of the players with your co-viewers through the chat, but mind the new anti-spam system:

Dear (Enemy Territory) Community,
a few times already somebody tried to start an ettv-on-demand service but failed for several reasons after a while. We believe this is a great service for the community so we decided to give it a try. Like with normal tv servers we don't buy our own hardware to manage but rather offer a platform for everybody with resources to spare to add their servers and broadcast matches.
Our on-demand system works the same way: Everybody who's interested can take part, therefore we're confident that we can offer a big selection of replays with enough resources to cover the demand.
We start with a few participants who are kind enough to offer their hardware (thanks to Anaconda, h3ll, Skydriver and Oldman) and hope to grow the number of available matches and servers when more server admins join in.

For you this means that you can choose to replay any of the available matches at any time by following the "Watch this Match now" link in matches where available. You will get your private server which will play the selected match offering 6 slots for you and your friends.
For now, this service is only available for Enemy Territory Matches.
Currently we're offering 833 different Matches played on up to 18 small replayers. The number of matches will grow continuously when new matches are broadcasted every day.

Your GamesTV.org Crew


Update: 1001 Matches available on up to 20 replayers

Update 2: Due to popular demand I adjusted the list view of the calendar so you can see instantly which events are available for replaying and even jump to the demand page direcly.

Update 3: andyF1 jumped in so now we have almost 1.500 Matches on almost 30 replayers