Webstats not generated (again) - 10th December - sadly missed....

[#1]

They are still showing those generated yesterday.
There's nothing in the service status so far.
Please manually start the script.
Tony

[#2]

Yes. Me too. I keep wondering why PN has to be told by users that webstats are missing. Is there really no-one on duty at night who can start the process manually when necessary?
-  Keith

[#3]

I have just returned from a trip down south. The webstats are still missing.
I will raise a ticket, but I fear that webstats will now not be generated and we will lose the Friday differential.
We were told that the script is automatically started. Then (later on) another script is automatically run which flags up when the generating script has not run to completion.
What went wrong?
Tony
(edit - 'question' raised number 49752039)

[#4]

I've raised a question too - #49752236.
David

[#5]

Still no service status announcement. It would imply that no member of staff has been on duty all day to check that all PN systems are running correctly. Can this really be the case?

[#6]

Just been on the phone to CS, guidelines have been checked and told unfortunately this is not something that Networks can be called out for.
David
Edit to add quote from conversation summary note in closed ticket
[quote=ticket #49752425]
(The user) called as the web stats did not run, i advised that i would escalate (the) ticket to the correct department . (The user) spoke to (Team Leader) who is looking in to the matter further, and advised that if its a network wide issue, we will look into it . also advised the ... team will manually restart web stats on Monday.
… which is a fair summary of the result of the conversation but omits what (in my opinion) is an important request I asked of the Team Leader.

[#7]

Excellent news ... it's good to hear that PN are taking this problem and the potential for data loss (if it's not dealt with in a timely manner) very seriously and all that despite the fact that it's a very regularly occurring issue (and has been for many years) that no one seems to have the ability and/or desire to fix properly  
Here's hoping that the cranky old system or script that PN use backs up the 'missing' data before starting to overwrite it sometime after midnight (assuming the script actually runs of course)  or I expect we'll be seeing one of those carefully worded service.status posts shortly(ish) containing the (in)famous phrases "a very small number of customers", "the data has unfortunately been lost", "we're very sorry for the inconvenience" and all that guff  

[#8]

Now that the webstats for 10-Dec-11 (generated early on 11-Dec-11) have appeared, I suppose we can assume that those for 09-Dec-11 have been lost for ever.

[#9]

@kdiment - That's about the size of it....
I thought that they didn't actually need to call networks out - they could (if my memory from 4 or 5 years ago is correct) start the script remotely from home.
Unusually the data for Friday seems to be empty. Normally such data is recorded and appears on the graphs, but the numeric detail is lost due to its combination with the following day's figures.
I understood that the webstats script system is now 'foolproof' - perhaps not.
Tony

[#10]

Once Webalizer has processed the data for Saturday 10/12/2011 then it is impossible for it to accept and process any data from an earlier date. Even if PN actually bother to try to find and deliver the missing data for Friday 09/12/2011, Webalizer will quite simply ignore it.
I would therefore suggest that anyone relying on webstats via the portal has lost the data for Friday. Anyone compiling their own stats using Webalizer who has already grabbed and used the data for Saturday will also have lost the data for Friday no matter what (if anything) PN do.  If you haven't processed the data for Saturday and Friday's data eventually appears then it would be possible to ensure Webalizer (or similar) processes the data in the right order but it would probably need a certain amount of manual intervention.
However, in order for customers processing their own stats to stand any chance of preventing data loss, PN would actually have to find the missing data and make it available to them of course.  Unfortunately, going on a considerable amount of previous experience of problems like this occurring, it is extremely unlikely to happen now.
As noted yesterday, PN not taking any action before midnight almost guarantees the usual service.status or post here containing those very familiar phrases "very small number of customers", "data has been lost" and "very sorry for the inconvenience" etc sometime soon(ish) 

[#11]

Whether Networks staff needed to attend Plusnet Towers or not to rectify the problem is a matter for Plusnet, they would still have been on duty. I wonder what happens in the unlikely event that the webstats motoring script actually raises a warning?
David

[#12]

Somethig went wrong lst Friday night. It is now Monday afternoon and there has been no Service Status announcenent or response in this thread to show that the problem has even been noticed.
I have been asked to recommend an ISP to someone who wishes to switch, and I am now not sure what to tell them.

[#13]

My ticket is still "Awaiting Support Team answer" too.
David

[#14]

Afternoon,
As you've noticed webstats failed on Saturday and wasn't called out to our on-call Networks Operations team. This meant that the run wasn't started in time and therefore the stats for Saturday aren't available.
As mikeb states, it's now not possible to recreate the data from the missing day so unfortunately that data is missing and not recoverable.
I'm really sorry about this and raised this up this morning as it should have been called out about and a service status put out over the weekend. The webstats system is monitored but occasionally doesn't flag in the monitoring system if the run fails in an unexpected manner, this is what happened over the weekend so the problem wasn't spotted until the CSC were informed, they then followed the correct (most of the time) process of collating examples and calling out when there are enough examples (varies service to service). Unfortunately due to webstats not being a particularly highly used service, the number of people calling in was low.
I've now advised that if they receive any contacts about webstats failing over a weekend they should a) check a couple of accounts they know have webstats on them and b) call out if they have any doubts.
Once again sorry this was missed but hopefully the additional steps in place will stop this happening in future.