Ugh this totally moved below my radar! Will fix it now.
101 2009-02-22 11:04:27
Re: [SOLVED] RSS update tracker broken (3 replies, posted in Site & Forum Issues And Feedback)
102 2009-02-22 11:03:51
Re: [SOLVED] DriverPacks download expired (13 replies, posted in Site & Forum Issues And Feedback)
Heh, awesome 
Closing this issue now! I like to keep the forum I have to monitor to stay aware of site issues tidy!
103 2009-02-13 02:53:14
Re: Driverpack Userbars! (36 replies, posted in Other)
Awesome! Do we still need hosting for these? If yes, I could put them on the CDN
104 2009-02-13 02:51:10
Re: Vista DriverPacks updated to version 9.02 (15 replies, posted in News)
It's coming to the main site *very* soon now
105 2009-02-04 19:20:10
Re: [SOLVED] RSS update tracker broken (3 replies, posted in Site & Forum Issues And Feedback)
Thanks for reporting. I'll fix it ASAP.
106 2009-02-04 19:19:44
Re: [SUGGESTION] Board change? (5 replies, posted in Site & Forum Issues And Feedback)
Conversion is a pain in the butt indeed. Plus, PunBB is very simple and much faster than vBulletin. It'd still be fast enough, so conversion is the real showstopper.
What features are you missing?
107 2009-01-13 23:32:48
Re: [SOLVED] DriverPacks download expired (13 replies, posted in Site & Forum Issues And Feedback)
Strange. I wasn't notified of this! Otherwise I'd most certainly have let you know.
Thanks for fixing it, OverFlow!
108 2008-12-31 01:16:40
Re: [SOLVED] BASE 8.05 and older - Update Checker fails updating BASE (16 replies, posted in Feedback and Support - DriverPacks Base)
OverFlow wrote:
DriverPacks BASE 8.05 was written 6 months ago when we were useing dreamhost...
the update location checked by base for the new base version is on dreamhost...
the new version of base is on simple CDN...I need Wim to do a redirect of the url for us...
Thanks for reporting !
Fixed now
109 2008-12-31 01:12:02
Re: [SOLVED] BASE 8.05 and older - Update Checker fails updating BASE (16 replies, posted in Feedback and Support - DriverPacks Base)
Yay!
It's amazing though how most magazines fail to copy the correct spelling of software…
"Nlite" instead of "nLite"
"Driverpacks" instead of "DriverPacks"
"Base" instead of "BASE"
ack, I guess we can't have it all
110 2008-12-29 05:44:34
Re: New: Graphics, Lan, and BASE! (46 replies, posted in News)
mr_smartepants wrote:
Wim Leers wrote:These are *not* final DriverPacks! They're RC's!
Well, that's news to me.
The graphics DriverPacks (lang & PhysX inc.) are solid and cleaned. The only issue that I see is that I built them with a 1024 dictionary size with 7z. I'll repackage them with a 256 dictionary size and they'll be good to go. Unless Overflow has some major changes to DriverPacks BASE up his sleeve we're not aware of.
The 1024 versus 256 doesn't matter all that much.
He told me that's the reason why it's not yet been pushed to the main site. Let's figure this out together in the XP DriverPacks Team forum
111 2008-12-29 05:08:28
Re: New: Graphics, Lan, and BASE! (46 replies, posted in News)
mr_smartepants wrote:
Be patient abdou. It's the holiday season. We all have better things to do than sit in front of a computer all day. Like I wrote in the first post, the final DriverPacks can be found here until the main server gets updated.
These are *not* final DriverPacks! They're RC's!
UPDATE:
Edited the first post. I know, this was very unclear, it had me confused as well. The fact that they're RC's is why they're not yet on the main server. Overflow was going to edit this news post but I think he got carried away with other duties
112 2008-12-25 12:09:13
Re: Copy OEM folder contents to HD before "fake setup"? (57 replies, posted in Feedback and Support - DriverPacks Base)
Fragbert wrote:
Extracting zip files, let alone ultra-compressed 7z's, directly from DVD/CD can be much slower than first copying the compressed file to HD then uncompressing. The overhead from the horrid seek times is the wrench in the wheels I think. Copying files over in a sequential file transfer, especially large files, from disc does not take as big a hit.
Try it yourself with DriverPack Graphics A
On my rig, it takes approximately 41 seconds for DriverPack Graphics A to decompress directly from DVD to hard drive.
Copying DriverPack Graphics A first from DVD to disc takes a mere 4 seconds, and then only 20 seconds to decompress. The time has almost been cut in HALF!!DVD/CD is still a profoundly slow medium.
Now *that's* odd! The main reason for M2 was space efficiency as OverFlow points out in a later reply, but speed was also a driving factor. It's significantly faster than M1.
It does make sense that copying the file over first and then extracting is faster now, for various reasons:
- the DriverPacks are *much* bigger than when I experimented with M2 about 3-4 years ago. Which means more file access is needed and therefore the optical disk drive performance hit is much bigger
- hard drive performance has increased a lot too, which makes that initial transfer again that bit faster to reach that impressive 30% speed boost
OverFlow wrote:
For example I think extraction is faster without the progress bar, so we could skip that too.
tweak as many things as possable for speed and forget about space and asthetics altogether.
Having a progress bar removes the impression that the system hangs. The overhead is *very*, very, very minimal (yes, that's very^3). I'd estimate it at 2% slower decompression in the very worst case. It's probably more in the neighbourhood of 0.2%.
It's incredible that almost 5 years after I started working on this, people are still trying to find ways to do it better Awesome
Yay for innovation!
113 2008-12-25 06:52:34
Re: A Merry Christmas to all (36 replies, posted in News)
And no white christmas in Belgium either. It was 7C earlier today.
114 2008-12-25 05:55:30
Re: It's time: Vista DriverPacks x86 & x64!! (34 replies, posted in News)
Welcome shahed
Muiz has expressed his trust in shahed and that's sufficient for me. I think he's proven himself worthy just by his work on the Vista DriverPacks. Yes, the Vista DriverPacks didn't go through the normal peer review process, but you've got to cut muiz and shahed some slack here. They *did* kickstart the development to a point where there is already something usable in the first release, which is – in my opinion – amazing.
When I started the XP DriverPacks in 2004, there only was a .zip (or .rar, can't remember), not any piece of software or even a script to integrate it. Plus, it was only DriverPack. So … give it a little bit of time and I'm sure we'll get everything in line with our existing methodology
This is a temporary exception.
I'm working on a new driverpacks.net (excluding the forums and bugtracker) so we can support Vista DriverPacks ASAP through the proper channels. And at the same time, the existing mess (because, yes, it *is* a mess currently) will be cleaned up.
115 2008-12-25 05:44:34
Re: A Merry Christmas to all (36 replies, posted in News)
Happy holidays
I edited the first post to make the wishes come from the entire DriverPacks Team, I'm sure that's the message you wanted to convey in the first place, wasn't it, BigBrit?
116 2008-12-23 10:40:53
Re: Vista Driverpacks (4 replies, posted in Other)
Very few people use 64-bit XP. So it's hardly worth the effort. Most devices don't even have drivers for it.
117 2008-12-10 11:14:05
Topic: website changelog (0 replies, posted in Site & Forum Issues And Feedback)
This thread is used to keep track of when which site software got updated to which version. Also, which major problems were solved when.
CHANGELOG
server
- December 19, 2008: uploads are automatically backed up daily to a secure server in Zürich, Switzerland
- April 30, 2009: server OS updated to Debian Lenny (64-bit) and two virtual processors instead of one
- August 17, 2009: server rebooted for kernel security patches (took only a few seconds)
- January 11, 2010: APC (PHP opcode cache) enabled to increase page rendering speed and reduce server load
- February 15, 2010: hardware upgrade (new hard disk, more memory)
- October 31, 2010: wrote script to sync DriverPack files from our own server to our CDN (source code available: http://gist.github.com/657343), which is called every 5 minutes by cron (source code available: http://gist.github.com/657345)
- September 2011: upgrade to 2 GB memory
- February 21, 2012: server OS updated to Debian Squeeze. This brings PHP 5.3 (amongst many others), which performs better.
driverpacks.net
- Lots and lots of days during January, February, March and April 2009. You can see the dev version of the new web site at http://dev.driverpacks.net
- June 11, 2009: launch of the new site
- June 20, 2009: static files are now served from an optimized static file server in Belgium for European and Russian visitors and from SimpleCDN for visitors elsewhere from the world.
- August, 2009: well-known users section
- September 4, 2009: Intel Software Partner
- September 17, 2009: Drupal security updates (not affected, but still applied)
- September 29, 2009: added the University of Manchester to the list of well-known users, improved layout & usability of well-known users page
- October 15, 2009: http://driverpacks.net/docs launched, which contains publicly editable (wiki-style) documentation, includes a DriverPacks BASE tutorial written by mr_smartepants
- November 20, 2009: added LinMin to well-known users
- November 28, 2009: advertisements with statistics by using the Drupal Advertisement module. To pay for the server bills.
- December 24, 2009: Drupal security updates (not affected, but still applied)
- January 11, 2010: Drupal module updates
- January 19, 2010: added Cardiff University to the list of well-known users
- January 21, 2010: made the legacy update checker's SQL more robust
- January 26, 2010: fixed: when DriverPacks with the same names but for different platforms would be listed at the "latest" page, they would disappear, due to a wrong GROUP BY. Also: new update checker which outputs *much* more metadata, and therefore allows for better integration of a desktop client application with the driverpacks.net website!
- February 11, 2010: module updates.
- March 4, 2010: Drupal security update (6.16), updated Intel Software Partner logo to the 2010 version
- March 17, 2010: Drupal Insert & WYSIWYG modules updated (used in the Docs section) to their new releases
- April 4, 2010: added the Belgian Ministry of Interior to the list of well-known users.
- April 9, 2010: module updates
- May 6, 2010: module updates
- May 17, 2010: module updates
- May 31, 2010: removed spam in the Docs section
- June 2, 2010: removed spam in the Docs section
- June 23, 2010: removed spam in the Docs section
- June 27, 2010: removed spam in the Docs section
- July 1, 2010: Drupal feature update (6.17), Drupal Token (used everywhere), FileField, ImageField, CCK (used in the Docs section) modules updated to their new releases
- July 2, 2010: added the Lompoc Unified School District to the list of well-known users.
- August 10, 2010: updated the Devel and Insert Drupal modules
- August 11, 2010: updated the Pathauto Drupal module and Drupal core (security updates)
- August 12, 2010: updated the CCK Drupal module (security update)
- August 16, 2010: updated the Diff, Devel, Token and Path Redirect Drupal modules
- September 6, 2010: updated the Adsense Drupal module
- September 8, 2010: added well-known user: Krannert School of Management, Purdue University
- October 6, 2010: cleaned up all spam in the Docs section
- October 7, 2010: updated the CDN Drupal module and completed integration with our new CDN, MaxCDN
- October 8, 2010: updated the Path Redirect, Pathauto, Google Analytics Drupal modules
- October 10, 2010: now tracking the number of downloads via the download links; added a "Most downloaded" block
- October 21, 2010: added a "Download stats" block
- October 30, 2010: updated the "View revisions by content type" Drupal module
- October 31, 2010: optimized the code that generates the front page (including the news fetched from the forum) — this should now load 100-200 ms faster, frontpage HTML is now valid, improved DriverPacks update feed rendering (no longer mistakenly includes download statistics)
- November 8, 2010: minor bugfix in the optimized front page, installed the CAPTCHA module to prevent spam in http://driverpacks.net/docs
- November 11, 2010: use CloudFront as the CDN for CSS/JS/images instead of MaxCDN: it has more PoPs (edge locations) and therefore a lower average latency. And it's cheap, so we can afford it. This is only possible since November 9, 2010, so we're one of the first to take advantage of this!
- November 29, 2010: offer downloads via BitTorrent. .torrent files are automatically generated, statistics are automatically retrieved from the tracker (http://tracker.driverpacks.net:6969/stats) and cached for short periods of time. Overall stats are shown at http://driverpacks.net/downloads.
- December 9, 2010: updated the "Image Resize Filter" and CDN Drupal modules
- December 11, 2010: updated the FileField and ImageField Drupal modules
- December 17, 2010: updated the FileField and ImageField Drupal modules again
- December 20, 2010: updated the WYSIWYG Drupal module
- January 16, 2011: updated the DB Maintenance, Droptor, Image Resize Filter and CCK Drupal modules
- January 17, 2011: added support for 3rd party DriverPacks
- January 22, 2011: updated the Insert and Google Analytics Drupal modules
- August 15, 2011: added live seedbox statistics & monitoring at http://driverpacks.net/stats
- September 7, 2011: added the ability to get the metadata for a specific Driverpack at <driverpack URL>/metadata.ini. Refactored /driverpacks/updatechecker to use the same functionality. Added a metadata_ini_url property. Also (finally) activated the download_url property (note that this currently always links to the .torrent file of the DriverPack).
- November 15, 2011: Switch from MaxCDN to Amazon CloudFront for the DriverPacks BASE distribution. This is our last tie to any external server/CDN sponsor. Also improve download stats formatting. Added well-known user DGT Group. Added trollpatrol userbar.
- November 22, 2011: change front page's integration with the forum; now supports PunBB 1.3. Show number of downloads last year and perform more human-readable download stats rounding
- March 8, 2012: migrated to a new deployment system, updated Drupal to version 6.25, updated several modules, improved the CDN integration, disabled the auto rotation of the "latest DriverPacks" and "most downloaded DriverPacks" blocks, disabled some modules that were no longer truly necessary. In other words: major clean-up operation!
- May 13, 2013: again migrated to a new deployment system (the previous one was too painful, this one is much simpler: https://github.com/wimleers/mr-drupal), updated Drupal to version 6.28, updated many modules. Another big clean-up operation!
forum.driverpacks.net
- November 20, 2008: PunBB 1.2.20 (from 1.2.15)
- December 3, 2008: PunBB 1.2.21
- December 21, 2008: Vista DriverPacks forums created
- December 23, 2008: fixed avatar uploads (they were failing due to a permissions issue)
- January 13, 2009: back to PunBB search instead of Google CSE! (Allows searching in non-public forums and most of all: *faster* indexing!)
- September 16, 2009: PunBB 1.2.22
- February 5, 2010: profile.php: Guests should not be allowed to view profiles. Also prevents spam accounts from publishing spam links.
- August 11, 2010: PunBB 1.2.23 (security update)
- November 20, 2011: PunBB 1.3 (along with new anti-spam measures)
- March 9, 2012: more anti-spam measures: reCAPTCHA + StopForumSpam.com + DNSBL
- April 19, 2012: fixed all userbars (URLs were broken for most users, because the way the CDN URLs work has changed)
bugtracker.driverpacks.net
- November 20, 2008: Mantis 1.1.4 (from 1.06)
- December 4, 2008: moved all uploads from the database to the hard disk
- December 10, 2008: Mantis 1.1.6
- April 20, 2009: Mantis 1.1.7
- June 10, 2009: Mantis 1.1.8
- August 8, 2010: Mantis 1.2.2
- October 15, 2010: Mantis 1.2.3
- December 15, 2010: Mantis 1.2.4
- April 10, 2011: Mantis 1.2.5
- August 15, 2011: Mantis 1.2.6
- September 18, 2011: Mantis 1.2.8
- March 5, 2012: Mantis 1.2.9
- April 10, 2012: Mantis 1.2.10
tracker.driverpacks.net
- November 29, 2010: official launch! With 1 seedbox. Only DriverPacks.net's torrents are allowed, hence no illegal torrents can be used. A few days later, a second seedbox was added.
118 2008-11-07 09:36:08
Topic: Downtime (2 replies, posted in News)
On November 3, I was contacted by my hosting provider. They were upgrading to a better datacenter (for better power management). This transfer (as in, physical transfer!) required about one hour of down time. I was contacted because they were asking for my permission. I of course agreed.
I had planned to make a news post here, to announce it.
I forgot.
That is what you get when you're working 13-14 hours per day (for the 6th week in a row now) 
University is to blame for my lack of sleep, but I'm still to blame for forgetting to announce this.
Please accept my apologies!
So, why was the web site not accessible for several hours (I think about 7 hours in hindsight)? Because the administrators of the new data center had badly configured the port mapping, thereby causing the web site to be inaccessible during that time.
Datacenter moves of course only occur very rarely. So expect this to be the first (since we're on the new host) and last major downtime for years to come.
119 2008-10-26 10:59:11
Re: [FIXED] Download problem (34 replies, posted in Other)
Fixed now. Both DreamHost and SimpleCDN were to blame.
SimpleCDN is working on a fix, and at the same time we've migrated to the new version of SimpleCDN, which promises even faster speeds. It will also rule out the reliance upon DreamHost *completely*.
(DreamHost has put the site off line after 143 GB of traffic over a time frame of 3 days. While I'm entitled to > 6 TB per month. Go figure.)
120 2008-10-18 09:40:00
Re: Graphics DriverPacks finally updated! (Finally...) (55 replies, posted in News)
mr_smartepants wrote:
But currently the server is getting hammered and there's a "server unavailable" error. Just be patient, and keep trying. This happens everytime we have a major release.
Huh? The download server or the web server? I haven't seen this?
121 2008-10-01 10:23:12
Re: [SOLVED] Donate link failed (6 replies, posted in Site & Forum Issues And Feedback)
Thanks ChiefZeke, and thanks for your persistency!
122 2008-10-01 10:22:13
Re: [Bug] Problem with Bug Tracker signup (1 replies, posted in Feedback and Support - DriverPacks Base)
Fixed
123 2008-09-29 06:16:48
Re: [SOLVED] Donate link failed (6 replies, posted in Site & Forum Issues And Feedback)
I just tried it and it works just fine… so you really must somehow be filling out the wrong password. I've had the same problem once, and the cause was a password manager that would override the password I entered with a faulty one.
124 2008-09-25 23:44:02
Re: [SOLVED] Donate link failed (6 replies, posted in Site & Forum Issues And Feedback)
PayPal is international, there's no such thing as an European PayPal.
PayPal also converts from whatever currency (Japanese Yen, US or Australian Dollar, anything really) to Euros, so that's not an issue either.
Just go to paypal.com and try to log in. Probably that won't work either, or you just repeatedly made the same mistake in entering your password. If something's wrong on my side, it would say something like "Invalid page", you wouldn't even be able to enter your log in details.
125 2008-08-12 02:54:40
Re: [Request] Fake setup.exe source (12 replies, posted in Software)
OverFlow wrote:
i bwelived that powerpacker used base in API mode same as Autoimage...
That's correct
I used a different fake setup, IIRC. I'll try to find it back, but don't expect it soon.