Technologies
Update on the Nabaztags’ technical problems
May 23rd
Hello to all Nabaztag owners!
New malfunctions appeared again some days ago on the Nabaztags’ servers. These malfunctions cause various technical problems on the rabbits, for example connection problems, blue lights, playback of the humors without interruption, services that do not function, etc. Furthermore they cause problems on the Violet website, where it gets difficult to access and setup the RFID accessories and the services.
Our actual priority is to fix these bugs. The functionalities and the services are still unstable and their correction will be done in a second time only.
The major problem is that some requests that access the servers get blocked for an unknown reason. Consequently the servers get filled up, and the launching of other processes gets stuck. Thus it is necessary to clean up the servers regularly.
We saved a copy of the servers, so it was easy to get back to a situation as it was about two weeks ago. Now there are still corrections to do in the code, but we hope to attain stable conditions again.
Concerning the connections, there are actually about 8,500 Nabaztags connected, against 10,000 rabbits that have been connected last week. But the number should rise thanks to the repairing.
Our technical team is doing its best during all these long days of maintenance, to fix all the problems. We would like to repeat that we are awfully sorry about these inconvenients, and we will try to keep you updated on this situation.
Update: Technical problems on the Nabaztags currently under repair
May 19th
Hello to all Nabaztag owners!
As you maybe already noticed, the Nabaztags encountered new technical problems, though we succeeded to stabilize them. Indeed, the Nabaztags repeat the last sentence of their humor incessantly. Other Nabaztags don’t tell the time any more and the Violet website is unstable, because of adding and removing applications, adding of RFID accessories, etc.
Today all the Nabaztags have been disconnected, because of a new crash of the main server. The server has been instantly rebooted and the Nabaztags are almost all reconnected. First of all we are now working on the reparation of the humors and the talking clock.
We are really sorry for this new inconvenient and we will try to keep you updated on the evolution of the reparations.
Update on the Nabaztags’ services
May 17th
Hello to all rabbit fans!
Please find below a review of the actual situation of the services.
- The weather forecast is fixed.
- The RSS feeds, the national and international information and the TV program are working, except when the links have got broken. If links have changed or have been deleted, we will update them by and by.
- The traffic is also working most of the time. We are currently correcting the code, that can generate other bugs.
- The written messages from violet.net should also work. If they still do not work on your side, please leave us a comment and please precise what kind of voice you are using.
- The stock exchange also are fixed.
- The podcasts are working again, except when the links have changed. We will update them by and by.
- The standby modus is also fixed.
- The replay of MP3 files is ok. If you still experience problems with your MP3 files, please delete them and upload them again on the Violet website. If this still does not help, please send us a comment, and please precise if you get error messages.
- The speech recognition is operational.
- The RFID recognition should not be a problem no more.
And here is the list of the services that we are still testing and repairing.
- The recognition of the Bookz
- The e-mail alert
- The reminder
- The flashing signals
and all the other services that have not been mentioned above.
For the Facebook statuses and twitters, we need to modify the code to make them work again, because the API of these two services has changed.
Finally, regarding the Nabaztags’ connection problems, we succeeded to identify the main source of the problem: The Load Balancer restrained the connections to the server. We will try to remove this machine in order to provide more connections. During this operation your Nabaztags will be disconnected and will reconnect again automatically.
See you soon!
Update: Technical problems with the Nabaztags
Apr 29th
Hello!
Nabaztags are back! Many of you have been asking when we will have an update regarding technical problems with the Nabaztag, we are pleased to inform you that the problem is also completely resolved. Nabaztags are connecting one by one, at a rate of about 50 per hour. Please leave your rabbit on and it will soon come back to life, if it hasn’t already! All 25 servers have been repaired and all of them are fully functioning, except the violet.net server which unfortunately did not survive. We are still working out the bugs that existed before the server exchange, please be patient!
Here is the status update:
The following services are now running at 100%: Tai Chi, weather forecast, stock exchange, radio, MP3. (If you ever have issues MP3 player please delete the app, reload and install it from http://my.violet.net/.)
We are still having issues with the Nabaztag talking too much or reading old messages, this is most likely due to server overload and we are working diligently on correcting these issues.
Traffic, air and stock exchange indicators are now functioning at about 80% and we are working on repairing the voice synthesis for text messages, Facebook, Twitter, e-mails and RSS feeds. We are also aware of the problem with automatic standby modes; it appears to be an issue with the code which we are working to modify. If your Nabaztag doesn’t wake up or sleep at the time you have set please configure your standby time adjustments again, you can also delete all your applications and reinstall them on your account via http://my.violet.net/.
Update: Technical problems with the Nabaztags’ servers – progressive return to a normal state
Apr 20th
Hello everybody!
The Nabaztags are coming alive one by one. Yesterday evening we counted more than 5,000 rabbits that succeeded to connect to our servers. The connection of all rabbits is a little bit slower as we first imagined. But everything seems to run “normally”. The servers are running fine, and the rabbits are connecting in a continuous rhythm. Nevertheless we continue the cleaning of the discs by deleting obsolete events and by transferring data on other discs, in order to create enough free space.
At the same time we are also about to recover various services. That is the reason why it is still normal, if your Nabaztags connect and disconnect, if they fall asleep and wake up again, if they flash in a strange way, or if they react weakly or not at all.
Here is the list of the applications that already work again: the speech recognition, the weather forecast, the radio, the MP3, the Tai Chi, and the flashing signals.
And here is the list of the applications we still are repairing: the moods, the time, the TTS, the RSS feeds, and the e-mails.
You can leave a comment and tell us what does and what does not function on your side. On our side we continue the tests, too.
Thank you and have a nice day!
Update: Technical problems with the Nabaztags’ servers – progressive return to a normal state
Apr 18th
Good morning everybody!
As you maybe already observed, the Nabaztags’ servers are running again, including the platform and the website. The rabbits are connecting one by one. Actually there are 1,400 Nabaztags reconnected, and more and more continue to connect.
However, please be aware that there are still problems left. It happens on a regular basis that the servers crash and that the rabbits get disconnected, because of the heavy traffic. Many people attempt to connect at the same time and the several events that are blocked since 10 days attempt to emit at the same time. So we will continue to clean up all the events that have become obsolete today, for example weather forecast requests or time requests, and we will continue to liberate more free space on the servers.
On the other hand we start to test the applications and services in order to find out which ones work again, and to repair those that didn’t resume their work.
Therefore we will ask you again for your patience. Please wait until your rabbits are reconnected and until they function normally again.
We will try to keep you up to date in the course of this week.
Have a nice day!
Update: Technical problems with the Nabaztags’ servers
Apr 13th
Hello everybody!
Hereby we would like to give you some news about the technical problems with the Nabaztags, that occurred last Tuesday during the move of the servers.
We are proceeding step by step, and we attack one problem after the other.
1. We began by cleaning the data base that contains all the actions, for example an ear that is moving, a message, a question for the horoscope, etc. Now we have deleted all these actions, so we have finished with this cleaning.
2. In the moment we undertake another cleaning, by transferring all media data, for example MP3 files, photos, etc., on another data storage unit that has more space. This operation is still going on and will take a long time, but the main thing is that with this method we will liberate more free space on the platform, so that the platform can work better.
3. Our main problem is the XMPP server. It does not work no more. And by mischance it is just the XMPP server that is the most necessary, because all the Nabaztags and all the other servers need to connect to the XMPP server to be able to run.
We estimate that we will need one week more to carry out the various repairs, and we hope that we won’t discover another bad surprises.
We would like to ask you again for your patience, and we assure you that we are working hard on the Nabaztags.
For the new possessors of the Karotz: Please be assured that these problems have no impact on the delivery date of the Karotz, because the engineers who are in charge of the servers are not the same as those who develop the applications and the platform for Karotz.
By the way we are impatient that the platform for Karotz will be finished, so we can transfer the Nabaztags on the Karotz’ servers…
Technical problems with the Nabaztags’ servers
Apr 8th
As you probably already noticed, your Nabaztags still light up in blue. That means that the rabbits cannot connect to the Internet, because our servers are still out of order.
We have already restarted all of our 25 Nabaztags’ servers, but during this restarts one of the servers broke down. And as a matter of course, it concerns the frontal server that contains the websites my.violet.net as well as our technical support tool. Some other services also had difficulties to restart.
For high tech fans: The servers are a Linux system with RAID 1 disks, and one of these discs has got broken during its restart. A second server has been turned on, but the starting process of the Linux system got blocked. No way to access the data from the server, and no way to connect these disks elsewhere. So we will need to reinstall a new server and copy all saved data on it. We also have to reinstall the website, and we don’t know how much time this all will take.
We are actively looking for solutions to repair these troubles as quickly as possible. Afterwards we will make some tests to make sure that the services work again. We are very sorry for all these problems, but please be sure that we won’t neither abandon the Nabaztags nor their parents!
For the moment we can only ask you to keep patience, and it would be helpful for us, if you could switch off your rabbits.
Have a nice day!
The Nabaztag’s servers move again
Apr 6th
Hello everybody!
Since yesterday morning we proceed with the relocation of the Nabaztags’ servers, as we already told in the post of last Tuesday. To read that post again, please click here).
This mission will take us a lot of time, and we just replugged and restarted all the servers. But besides the simple rebooting, there are also many other things left to set up. We hope that we will have finished everything for this evening or for tomorrow morning.
Therefore your Nabaztags won’t work until tomorrow. We will advise on this blog, if ever it will take longer than one day.
Thank you again for your patience and good luck to our engineers!
