I tried the site yesterday and no joy! Today has the same results anyone hear anything?

Most probably the server that needs a reset. If that becomes impossible from a distance it depends on who pushes the button when.

I figured so much but with as quiet as the traffic has been lately I thought I"d ask.

It was up briefly (a few hours) Monday morning.

I had been afraid when it went dark last week that it was more than mere coincidence that it went down hard on its 10th anniversary.

Fortunately, it seems like coincidence is all it is.

Still down.
Hope it's not a hack job, or Frugal's host going bust.

I believe this is the longest it has been down. Must be several Frugalets going insane by now.

Still Down. The world feels unbalanced.

Smoke

Kinda compels ya to dig into yur wallet and make a donation to support when it comes back online... does for me anywyas...........

And what about this tired ol' place ?
Probably need to drop a dime or two here as well !
Seems important to have such places when one by one they disappear, dont'cha think ?

Or maybe thats just me................

....................

It is important and it's not just you. Some of us need to be reminded though.


Thanks
Smoke

Aint like I'm some philanthropic do-gooder or anything......

Hell I'm a Jewish New Yorker when it comes to gettin off some coin !
But I gotta say, I've seen some fine Sites lost over the years.... some were loaded with Great Knowledge of Falcon posting regular in post boards... offering downloads of the patches and such...
In all, Great contributions to the Community !

I am MORE than guilty of taking these places for granted, and browse them at least once daily....
Finding the latest break-thru, or mod.... Scuttle-Butt... occasional good natured ribbing of someone, or the descent joke.... news of the day, ect....

Damned if I wouldnt REALLY Miss Frug's, and Here as well !
Time to Belly-Up to the Bar, and tip the host I feel.... for me anyways....

Just Sayin"...............
8)

More than several I can easily presume.

Damn...

I sent him a message and he writes that he is upgrading the server. He is also moving the server to a new location. Expects it to be up in a few days.

Good news for sure!

Does anybody have a local copy of the instructions with pics of the speedbrake/dogfight switch cougar mod. I did the throttle mod last weekend without instructions and a little help from Ian -- and thankfully there were a few sites with pictures of the mod. But I can't find any instructions for the switch mod and I seem to recall needing a specific alignment, but I don't know what that is. With Frugal's being down, I'm getting impatient.

Thanks!

It's baaaaaaack

Its gone again

Back but ssssssssssslllllllllllllooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwww.

down again.

When will it become reliable already?

Still, I suppose it's good for SimHQ because that means that I actually hang out here now.

Me2!

Frugals will come back,wont it?

Surprised Mark doesn't post an update here. Would be a good way to get some information out directly.

Has anyone tried contacting him directly?

I am sure many are in direct contact with him on this matter.
Unfortunately, it seems they want to keep the communication private.

Whatever case it may be, all we can do at the moment is just waiting, isn't it?

I got a message from him about a week ago:

Quote

Original server was only up temporarily to access the files. Having some complications moving to the new server because the size of the database. Slim chance we may need to restore forums from quite an old backup as current and recent ones are throwing up errors. Worst case scenario we will lose about 2 years of forum posts and registrations.
Frug

Let`s hope he manage to do a full recovery of the server in the new location.
Frugal is a very busy person these days, so we need to be patient.

LOL I didn't think I went to Frugals that much, but now it feels like something's broke on this ol' pooter since it went down.

Dang! 2 years of knowledge down the drain.

What will become of those OF vs FF vs AF posts?

All an elaborate ruse to steal my Frubles..... just like last time we had a "Conversion" # FW !!!!!



.......................

Yeah, and come to think of it, my reputation skyrocketed just prior to this new "conversion"

Easy come easy go, mate

Damn..what a loss it all will be really...

who cares about the AF posts. What will happen to the thong thread?

Can you say "Thong" at SimHQ?

Not to worry mate.
Refurbishing that thread is an easy part. In no time, better than ever.

hehe.........if you build it, they will come............

+1
Something's really missing.

Wow if they lost 2 years of registrations and posts there is a TON of information on there for us Cougar owners that would just go POOF!

Then somethong would really be wrong.

As for the thong thread as someone else said...easily fixed in just a few short posts.

The thong thread was mine and shall remain closed until I am allowed to rejoin that board.

Damnit Mower bout time you showed up.

We're currently rehosting Cougar World at http://www.cougar.flyfoxy.com/ although I still need to fix some links, and we don't have all the user files as they were saved on a different server ;(

It's the information in the forums that I want to grab though ...

Nutty

I'm always around by one name or another.

At this point, I would be lying if I said that Frug's board's demise made me entirely unhappy.

The only critical aspect of it is the Cougar resources as James said he is trying to salvage.

Is Frugals down for the count, James?


Thank you for rehosting Cougarworld--it is a relief to see it again! Any luck with getting the forums? They are the heart and soul of it all.

No I'm hoping that Mark will get in touch with either myself or Olivier, but so far we've heard nothing. Not much else we can do at this stage I'm afraid

Cheers

James

On another note anyone searching for Vista drivers for the Cougar, they are here:

http://ts.thrustmaster.com/eng/index.php?pg=view_files&gid=1&fid=3&pid=50&cid=1

I'll update CW this week with these.

Cheers

Nutty

Ok guys here is an update.

The server was moved and it seems the machine it was moved onto was simply not up to the job. I now need to upgrade to a new server which is going to cost an extra 50 bucks a month. However the time it is going to take to rebuild the server is the main issue. On the good news front as far as I can tell the forum backup is intact and so we should not lose any forum posts, at worst we will lose 24 hours worth.

For those that don't know I am a single parent to my 3 children these days. I also work full time. This means that the web site, although very dear to my heart, is quite low priority. It does not help that as the server went down my ex decided that she wants to try to get the house. Fortunately the kids told her outright that they don't want to live with her, they want to stay with me. This has meant that she has dropped the idea of getting custody (for now). As you can imagine it's been a very tough few weeks, actually it's been a very tough year.

My main focus in the very short term is spending this weeks school holiday with my kids at our caravan in Clacton. My next focus is going to be trying to secure my house for my kids future. My ex is willing to sign it over to me now so that she can get a place off the council but that is going to be costly and pointless if she can still take the house (or rather force me to sell it) as part of the divorce settlement.

In the background I will be trying to get the site back online particularly for the hosted sites like Cougar World and eBattalion, the latter of which I am very concious of how important it is to the people that use it while their loved ones are deployed.

FW has had a good run over the last 10 years and I don't intend it to end here, but it is going to be a bumpy road for a while.

Frugal

Frugal, I have a One and One Dual-Core XL Server ... it should be more than enough to host FW and its content. Give me a shout if you need a hand mate.

Nutty

James, what kind of BW does it have? It's also worth pointing out that FW was able to bring dual xeon server with 2 gigs of ram to its knees. Site is also currently around 80 gigs in size.

Frugal

Just had a look at 1 and 1, good servers for the money. If they offered cpanel instead of plesk and had more than 1 IP address it would be worth switching. Be a pig to move to a plesk server, moving to a cpanel server will be far easier (but still a pig).

Frugal

Bandwidth is 100Mbit/sec and unlimited traffic bud

Hardware is Opteron 1218 HE, 2 x 2.6 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 2 x 400 GB HD (RAID 1 Software)

Windows 2008 Server with Plesk 9. But yes, only one IP address.

Well if it's somewhere to throw the forums onto, or whatever, give me a shout.

Cheers

James

Definately no good if it's a windows server, moving from cpanel to plesk would be a nightmare but moving from unix to a windows server would be far too much work in my current situation. But I really do appreciate the offer.

Frugal

No worries bud. Good luck with everything!

Cheers

James

Mark, with everything you have to deal with that is of so much consequence for those dear to you, it's amazing that you can even think about options for FW. And work full time as well. Good luck - you know thousands of simmers are rooting for you and yours.

Pity that all the works has to be done by Mark himself alone.

Like the Cougar thing, perhaps we need a temporary forum space as a contingency task force HQ or whatever for the Frugalites who are willing to offer some helping hands or make suggestions?

Sorry to hear about all that has been happening in your life Mark. I hope it all works out for the best in the end.

I, along with thousands of others (I'm sure), really appreciate all that you have done for all of us over the years so selflessly. Frugals has done wonders for the Flight Sim community. We know it'll be back sometime when you have time, no worries about hurrying. It seems you have quite a lot right now on your plate.

Thanks for the update.

I echo Blastman, hang in there Mark, hope everything works out for you.

Best of luck Mark. Here's hoping that the life matters sort out for the better for all involved.. The web-site can always be worked on at a later date..and you have a loyal following, so I wouldn't be worried about the members being patient.

Regards..
BeachAV8R

Mark,

I can only imagine the pressure on you right now. I respect and agree with your priorities. Take your time, and I hope everything works out for you and the kids.

I'm definitely gonna try to donate when Frugal gets it back up, and I'll be sure to click on all the ads lol

Hang in there, Mark!

Thanks for the update Mr Frugal - I really hope it all works out for you - and glad to see you have your priorities in order!

Mark, I wish there was some way I could help you, Maybe a place to send Donations to, maybe this would help with server cost or any cost you maybe experiencing. Let us know if you have some place to send them to maybe a paypal account...



hang in there

Mark, all the best, in you personal life and with FW. You're absolutely right about priorities. Do what you need to do and of course we hope that FW gets back ASAP.

Here's to ten more years at FW!

If FW never comes back but Mark maintains his Sanity (life is FAR more important than these games we play)... I'm all OK with that.

Hey Mark,

Sorry to hear the bad news.
Take care of your kids and keep cool.

Puma257 Talons

Sorry to hear of your misfortune as well and miss hanging out at FW as the other regulars do. Hope everything works out. All my best wishes to you and yours...

Jackal

Man I am so glad that the Cougar World stuff got transferred somewhere so we would not be without that information.

Lastly Mark if there is anything that we can do once you get up and running to make it smoother for you just let us know.

Thanks again for helping out and keeping us informed.

Will

Mark,

I just found this thread. I have been there, done that. Take care of the important family things first, it's a long exhausting road but it will get better. I look forward to CW opening again, but will patiently wait.

Hang in there!!

Gunner

I am really not sure this is proper thing to say here under the circumstances but maybe..just maybe some of us can do a little bit more than just being patient in waiting for good news from him? Maybe Mark doesn't want any help or support..I don't know, I am just thinking.

Hi Frugal,

Sorry to hear about your current problems. Its been a while since I was a regular never mind multi-daily visitor to the F4 forum (and in the past the current affairs forum) as alas life has left me virtually no time to play games but I occasionally still pop in to see what's happening in the hopes of one day actually having time to load the last couple of versions of OF and FF and it will be strange to think of F4 without being able to see the usual suspects posting. However real life is always more important and hopefully you can sort out your family situation soon and only when thats done worry about if you want to relaunch the site.

Good luck and best wishes,

Opener

Even if he neither wants or needs, I am sure he appreciates the offers and well wishes.

Hi Mark thanks for the update , i am sure Frugals will be up when its ready,
looking forward to a beer with ya in the Bar

Best of luck getting things back up and running Frugal. The site is an amazingly good resource and contribution to our community. :-)

Frugal,

I've also been a Falcon4 enthusiast from the very beginning and a FW follower from the very early days. Since I am married and father of 2 kids, my simming is getting less and less due to the lack of time. Missing understanding about my hobby i.e. from my wife is adding to this. Even trying
to join a virtual fighter wings more than once, regulary failed.
Right now, my mother is currently battling cancer,and btw about to loose, I work 50-60 hrs a week,
my older son is having quite some probs in school, and my sister is in the middle of a divorce battle... Simming in these days is farther away than ever.
Meanwhile my X45 is covered with dust, my P8000 still waits to be programmed.
DCS has been installed and deinstalled twice. I havent "flown" in 2 or more years...

But in all this time Frugalsworld was standing solid as a rock. A fortress in falcon world :-)
For 10 years, www.frugalsworld.com is one of the first things I type, when I start my PC.
And it always cheers me up ;-)

With your problems I feel my problems fade in comparison... I perfectly know what "lack of time"
can lead to. And my family is top priority currently. I am even considering to take up simming,
when I finally retire from work (in 200 y ears LOL).

I just want you to know, that I do appreciate so much what you did and do for the falcon community.
Frugalsworld was always a synonym for Falcon4. Without FW Falcon would have never come that far.

But on the other hand we have to see the real life, our family, kids (that grow up so fast,
and need us so much in exactly that time) and realize, that nothing is more important.

Take the time you need. I know exactly, that WE ALL will wait patiently until the time is
right again for Frugalsworld. FW will never decease, it can only take a rest... no matter
how long. And dont forget, disloyalty is by no means an attribute of a real simmer - especially
not of a Falcon4 follower, and DEFINATLY not of a "Frugalsworlder" ;-)

Keep your head up.

Papernose

Ah, Frugal, just saw this thread. Just want to say that my prayers are for you and your family. FW has been, at times, a sanity saver for me. If it doesn't come back, you have already saved me a couple of times.

Take care of yourself and your kids, God be with you.

Like many of the guys, I have been through the grinder you're going through now. I am very sorry for your pain, and I can only say you have my sympathy.

On the subject of FW, what are your bandwidth needs? Seriously.

Things are getting there. My ex has agreed to sign the house over to me. My new mortgage was approved yesterday and the solicitor will have the papers ready for her to sign before Christmas. The new mortgage will also clear the debts my ex ran up and will reduce my monthly outgoings quite considerably. Once my ex has signed the paperwork my kids will have a secure future.

Meanwhile I have met the most wonderful woman who foolishly thinks that I'm a great catch . 2010 looks like it is going to be a good year, well it certainly couldn't be any worse than 2009. I have the week off work between Christmas and New Year and plan on getting FW back up and running during that time.

Frugal

Happy to hear that things are looking up Frugal!

Mark, thanks so much for the update - and really happy for you regarding the turn of events. Wishing you a happier New Year ahead.

Best wishes and good luck.
Frugals back would be a beautiful christmas present!

Great to hear all the good news Mark. Hope you enjoy your Christmas and your new life. Looking forward to the re-opening of Frugs.
Best wishes from all of us here in Oz

Mark, glad to hear that your situation has improved. Good luck and wish you and your family a Merry Christmas!

Awesome news Frugal, now that will be a Merry Christmas!

Good luck!

I somehow believe in karma!
A guy like Frugal that did such a nice thing for so many people will not have a bad life, at all!

May happiness be with you man!
And I'm sure vBeers will be flying all over the place when FW's back!!

Great news, Frug.

I'll be holding by breath until the good stuff you mentioned comes to fruition.

At least except for the "good catch" bit. I think you're pulling our leg on that one!

Very good!

Good new Frugal. Hope it works out well.

Just stumbled over this thread via Google. Very good news indeed.

I had set up a temporary Cougar forum on my site back in October because people were looking for help with the U2Nxt & HS mod I wrote a review about. If someone is interested until FW comes back again:

Temporary Cougar Forum on Wings of Honor

The review is here: U2Nxt Gimbals and Hall Sensors Review

Cheers

Good news Mark!

Wish you all the best, Merry Christmas and Happy New Years.

Good news Mark, good to hear things are starting to get sorted!

Outstanding! I'm happy for you and the kids!! And to find a wonderful lady in the midst of it all is a blessing. Happy holidays, hopefully we'll be hanging out at good ol' Frugs again in no time. I miss it.

Good to hear Frugal

hope all works out for you

Life first forum second

Very much indeed. Maybe, life is not that unfair as we sometimes think.

Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones, Mark.

Great news Frugal. Looks like you will have a Merry Christmas

Hi Mark - Glad to hear you are getting your life back on track and indeed it looks as though 2010 will be a good year for you - I (and all the other Fugalites) certainly hope so.

Although we all miss Frugals World, while it has been down, you have most certainly made the right choice in taking the time to sort out those things that are most important to you.

Merry Christmas from down under

I am so glad to hear that things are looking up for you.
Take care,

Hey Frugal,

Please check PM and get back to me ASAP.

Cheers

James

If donations are needed or accepted for the site I am sure you will get the help that you give to all of us.
Best wishes for you and yours.

Best of luck with the new year! Swings and roundabouts. :P

Great news Mark!

Youppiii! The Net seems soooo empty without Frugalsworld. All the best for you, Mark, in 2010.

JTL

Belated Christmas greetings to all the Frugalites lurking about!

Good to hear that things are turning around for you Mark, I do hope 2010 proves to be a better year for you, for all of us for that matter! Looking forward to Furgalsworld.com's return whenever it may come.

I'm a bit behind schedule getting the server back up as I've had the flu and Christmas has been pretty busy. The last few days I had to choose between spending my time with a beautiful girl or getting the server back up. Now FW means the world to me but it was a no brainer. FW will be back up pretty soon but it looks like my traditional New Year message will be a couple of days late in 2010.

Frugal

Thanks Mark, Happy New Year!

That's not a matter of choice mate. FW can wait but Beautiful girls don't.

Happy New Year to you and your kids.

YOU BETRAYED US FOR A WOMEN?............. well done, can´t think of better reason to betray somebody!

You got your priority right

Happy New Year to you and your children

Better late than never. Good to know you have your sanity and picked the beautiful girl. ;-)

Happy New Year to everyone!

In case some of you missed it in the other thread, a lot of us Frugalites are meeting up here:

http://frugalsrefugees.yuku.com/

Of course it ain't Frugal's World, but it eases the withdrawal pains a bit.

This is not acceptable.There is no other.I need my "Frugal Fix" in more ways than one...

Happy New Year All.

Okaaaayyyy.......

Thats probably TOO much information!
( Dude... Yur scarin us...lol!)

And lets face it.......

If the Frugmeister did have his Priorities straight........ The Beautiful Girl would be Getting the Server Back On-Line !!!!!!
(Mark would be enjoying a cocktail, and the beauty of her form.... WHILE SHE WORKED!)
Try again Big Guy !


Cheers to you and yours in the nxt Yr. Mark...... Be Well !!!!!!

.........................

Hope things are doing ok... I've missed all the information about my cougar with u2next for long time.

Obviously Mark hasn't seen the thong thread..which exists on his own site! After that..who would dare chose a girl over a Frugal's World Resurrection???!



Glad to hear the New Year is starting out on a happy note. We look forward to seeing FW back up soon!

Regards..
BeachAV8R

Well here's to hoping the thong thread still exists, somewhere!

Well if the thong thread disappeared I am sure that all of us Frugals people can rebuild it and make it better.

Hi All,

I've been following this thread for some time now, but it sure doesn't look like Frugal's is coming back on air anytime soon. He did make several promises to resurrect his site, one over the Christmas holidays and the other after the 1st of the year....and we are well past the first of the year.

I have the sinking feeling that he is enjoying his new life, and has been freed from the burdon of managing his website.

It is really too bad, as I considered his site as one of the best in terms of Falcon 4.0.....and I must admit, I really miss this site. I hope he does eventually return, but the longer this goes on, the more unlikely he will ever return.

Bill

Well..the Frugal fasting life experience is getting a bit too long than initially hoped for but since there's not much we can do to help reviving the site, let us all persevere and give him all the time he needs.

Have faith mate.

'In the beginning was the Frugals, and the Frugals was with Flight sims, and the Frugals was Flight sims. Mark was with Frugals in the beginning.'

Patience...

I heard somewhere that Frugal'w World will be back ... in 3-4 weeks !!!

JTL

Where did you hear that?

Come back Frugals. Inaddition to Falcon it had great old threads about Mig Alley and Cougar World is missed too

Never mind....a common auditory hallucination dating back to SP days...

Was it not 3 to 4 weeks LOL
Ahhhh welll those were the days.....

Vox:
Cougar world is hosted on James's site Foxy:
http://cougar.flyfoxy.com/

sigh

Hi everybody,

when I saw this link and "the old frugalsworld" homepage, I had somehow mixed feelings.
On the one hand I was glad the "stuff" was online again. (Though the forums-link was missing).
On the other hand I read this as a sign that it is not comming back. I truely hope I am wrong in this point.

Is there any news?

Grettings,
Jones

Last I heard was a post from Frugal earlier in this thread. It's looking less and less like FW will be back to me. Such a shame.....

If it's not going to be coming back for the long term, I'd at least like Frugal to put it up for 1-2 months and let us get all the content off of the posts we can get. There is tons of posts / threads that only exist at Frugalsworld.com and no where else. Those will be forever lost if we don't get a chance to retrieve them. I'm talking specifically about modding/editing Falcon 4.0 and Falcon 4.0: AF type posts/threads.

Yes, or in the worst scenario share the database if possible

hehe

Frug's famous now.

Bunch of "real" news sites have talked to him:
http://www.ukwirednews.com/articles.php/47857-Introducing-UK-broadbands-first-customer-years-on
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/technology/8589853.stm

Good on him!

Good to see him on the major news.
Hopefully, he will prove that no news is good news.

Well after a heart attack and triple bypass, I am alive and well but find Frugal's is dead!
Come on Mark fire up a defibulator and revive FW.
I'm shure there is a frugalite with some server space available for a transplant.

Rapid, sorry to hear of your mis-fortune but heartened to hear you are doing better now!

I 2nd your motion for Mark to fire FW back up! I miss it terribly for the old modding / development posts which are located no where else.

Over at the yuku site I made the suggestion to BBall that Frug should box up the server and send it to Acog, a counter suggestion was made to box up Acog and send him to Frug. Acog refuses to go because of some issue concerning UK food. The impasse still stands for now.

Better yet, turn the server into a VMWare image and then ship that off to whomever can run the site.

g.

Its not the hosting that is the problem for Mark, its repairing the database files which would require time he didn't have (maybe still doesn't have?). When/if he does, we will have to see. If you get the time to read the front end of this thread there are a few posts from him explaining more.

Must admit tho i do miss frugalsworld, i checked in there at least once a day, if not any thing else than to waste a few mins in the Bar.....
Then again maybe i can get my post count up here LOL joined in 2006 and only 11 posts

Yeah...I do miss the regulars at the Bar...

I hope this doesn't turn out to be like the old Delphi Falcon forum - not gone due to the same reasons, but a beloved great place long gone.

Essentially been down for ~ 8 months now.

I still miss it.

Come back, Frugal!

agreed!

*Bump*

Hey Frugal,

Check pm mate.

Cheers

Nutty

Tried to check in today... haven't been an active participant in a long time, but still miss it every two months or so when I try to check back. One of those friendly places.

Frugal (Mark?), thanks for keeping it running all those years. Hope to see it back up again eventually, but if not... t'was good while it lasted!

Has anybody heard if there is any movement forward on getting Frugals back online? I really could use some of the modding information contained in the Falcon 4.0 and Falcon:AF forums from the site for use at PMC Tactical. Frugals was the only location for some of that information and unless it comes back online it will be lost forever I'm afraid.

women

me runs....

Well it's been a whole year now, I guess Frugals is gone for good....sigh....what a shame...

Show must go on.

Hard but true!

Agreed.

what a pity really does seem like the end of a era

Yes its a shame, I sent him a pm offering to host it again, but it looks like its gone.
Good news is I have a friend who just retired from the airforce that is thinking of starting something up. Stay tuned.

Only regret from Frugals, wish I had saved everything.... ah!

Well being that I was perma banned there for dubious reasons I really dont care.

Doesn't sound like it will be back anytime soon.
I know of at least one replacement going live in the next few months.
Regardless its good to hear that real life is improving for him.

That's good news Panther. Thanks for posting that.

FRUGALS !! COME BACK!

Instead of looking at "characters":
Frugals IS an incredible knowledge base for any flight sim and modding fan. This knowledge must be preserved, also should a new site emerge with another name. The spirit WILL be the same!

XenonS

Panther,

Thanks for posting this up.


Much like all of the great flight sim websites, Mark's "Frugalsworld of Simulations" was (and hopefully will be again) greater than the sum of it's parts. Frug and I met first 13 years ago when he hired me to write for his site, and we became fast friends. It took me some time, but I came to realize that he's an amazingly brilliant and sensible man...two qualities that can be strangers. His love and support for the flight sim community is unparalleled, and like most of us, it's "in his blood". I truly think that when life finally releases it's grip on him, we'll see him back in a big way.

"Characters" at FW's?

I think all flight simmers fall into this category....99% in a good way.

Thanks again for keeping everyone informed.

Have a great day all,


William "BBall" Ball
Senior Editor, Frugalsworld of Simulations
Captain, Boeing 757/767, Delta Airlines