QRZ Maintenance

We had a database failure today that was caused when a faulty file was uploaded during an FCC update. Some users have already written us to report suspected hacking, etc., however there was no security issue or hacking attempt whatsoever. It was operator error at the main QRZ console.

The update caused the server to send out numerous "Your Callsign Has Changed" messages which were of great dismay to many, and understandably so. There have also been some changes to logbook end dates, but under no circumstances was any logbook data lost. Still, however, you may need to reset your logbook End date (hint: set it to your license expire date). To change your Logbook End Date, go to your logbook and click on Settings and then Properties.

Finally, some user photos were inadvertently moved to other user's folders. We're working on backing those out however in the short term you may or may not notice the issue. The problem affected less than 2% of all call signs.

In order to guarantee consistency of our data, we restored everything EXCEPT logbook data (which wasn't affected) from last night's backup. Therefore, you may notice that some things that you may have done TODAY on the site are missing. This could include Forum postings, biography updates, private messages, etc. Note that in all cases, the missing information would have to be less than 24 hours old. The restore-to date was 2019-02-26 02:08:00, which is approximately 10:08 pm last night (Feburary 26).

One other side effect of restoring from our backup was that the support tickets filed against this problem were also lost, as they were in TODAY's data. That should not be a big problem, however, because the subject of the tickets was resolved.

We have received numerous emails, FAX'es and PM's about the problem and nearly everyone was very kind and understanding. I do feel bad for one fellow who called us while we were franticly working on the system and I was not as polite as I probably should have been. I basically said "sorry, we're working on it" and hung up. My apologies, but I really needed to get back to bringing the system online for everybody.

Meanwhile, we're staying up late tonight to watch everything and to answer your questions as quickly as possible. If you have a specific issue, please use https://support.qrz.com instead of writing it here in this forum.

P.S. Please note that only USA callsigns were affected by this outage. No DX callsigns were touched by the errant FCC update.

73, and many thanks for your patience and understanding.

-fred AA7BQ

 

That's gotta be one big pile O'steaming stress to go through stuff like this....

Good job in handling it Fred - I'm bald so wouldn't be pulling my hair out - but yours is SHORT - be careful

Good luck resolving this but it looks largely fixed at this time - thanks for all you do and all the hard work keeping this place running


Dave
W7UUU

 

Do not worry you didnt have access to someone elses logbook, You only had access to your own (empty) logbook with a callsign that wasn't yours. I have removed the offending logbook from your account. We are still cleaning up some of the mess in logbook. Users who are seeing logbooks that they do not recognize or are missing logbooks that should be present should contact support so we can reattached your logbooks to your account.