Category computers

I’d forgotten how loud the server formerly known as rez.nuxx.net is.

By the way, what should I call it now? lazerus.nuxx.net? Or…. ?

1) The new 320GB disks in my G5 are a lot quieter.

2) Carbon Copy Cloner does a great job of duplicating OS X disks.

With the move back to Waveform from DreamHost, there are a few domains which I’ll no longer be hosting. If I have opted not to host your domain, you will receive some manner of communication from me. I’m sending out some of these tonight via LJ replies, as DreamHost is once again being ridiculously unreliable and I’m not certain that email is working very well at all. Other people I’ll likely contact directly, possibly via an instant messenger.

I just ordered a 3Ware 8006-2LP (warning, PDF) hardware RAID controller to be put in the server formerly known as bornslippy.nuxx.net.

Why?

It’s going back to Waveform. I’m fed up with DreamHost’s bullshit. Specifically, how processes are killed after either a certain amount of time or load. The result is that Google is incapable of downloading a full sitemap, some pages of my Gallery don’t load, MediaWiki falls over sometimes, I can’t do a backup using rsync over ssh, etc.

Fortunately I’m still within the DreamHost 97-day money back guarantee thing, so I’m going to try and get the server running at Waveform in that time, then get the year’s payment refunded. If they won’t do it, I’ll initiate a charge back.

Fuck them. Their service doesn’t live up to what the site claims, the downtime was ridiculous, and everything is just slow. Someone tell me why an ls should take 2.45 seconds, and why checksumming a few hundred meg file should take an hour?

Fortunately I just purchased two 320GB disks for my G5, and I can use the 160GBs from it in a mirror in the new server.

< sigh >

It seems that Comcast is blocking DreamHost’s outgoing MTA:

This is the Postfix program at host spunkymail-a8.dreamhost.com.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

The Postfix program

<xxxxxxxx@comcast.net>: host gateway-r.comcast.net[204.127.198.26] said: 550
208.97.132.60 blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=comcast,dc=net -> BL004 Blocked
for spam. Please see
http://www.comcast.net/help/faq/index.jsp?faq=SecurityMail_Policy18628 (in
reply to MAIL FROM command)
Reporting-MTA: dns; spunkymail-a8.dreamhost.com
X-Postfix-Queue-ID: 4AFED10AA74
X-Postfix-Sender: rfc822; c0nsumer@nuxx.net
Arrival-Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 19:03:22 -0700 (PDT)

Final-Recipient: rfc822; xxxxxxxx@comcast.net
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; host gateway-r.comcast.net[204.127.198.26] said:
550 208.97.132.60 blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=comcast,dc=net -> BL004
Blocked for spam. Please see
http://www.comcast.net/help/faq/index.jsp?faq=SecurityMail_Policy18628 (in
reply to MAIL FROM command)

UPDATE: A bit more info. The Comcast page in the link above directs users to Symantec (yes, SYMANTEC) to report misidentified messages. It seems that Comcast now uses Brightmail for filtering.

I ssh’d to DreamHost and manually sent a message to a Comcast address (you know, the old ‘telnet mailhost 25’ thing) without problem. This was from jawbreaker.dreamhost.com, indicating that it’s not nuxx.net nor all of DreamHost which is blocked, just (at least one of) the MXs.

I filled out a trouble ticket with DreamHost, because they are the ones who will need to resolve this.

Hrm, I just tried to mail ‘s Comcast address and that worked. This is odd.

UPDATE 2: Now I’m not seeing any problems at all.

Another reason why DreamHost could be called crap:

They block some email based on a non-user-configurable blacklist. The domains americastestkitchencorp.com and dm-4.com are two such domains blocked in this manner. The problem? americastestkitchencorp.com is the company which runs America’s Test Kitchen on PBS, and dm-4.com is used to send travel confirmations for those traveling on Princess Cruises.

If Junk Filtering is turned on, mail from (at least) these two domains will be blocked, regardless of the user’s settings for mail tagging and quarantine. The only way to keep mail from those domains from being blocked is to proactively whitelist them.

That is a stupid way to run things.

What the hell?

jawbreaker:~> mysql -uc0nsumer -hmysql.nuxx.net -p nuxx_net
Enter password:
Reading table information for completion of table and column names
You can turn off this feature to get a quicker startup with -A

Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 1125434 to server version: 5.0.18-standard-log

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> select * from mw_user;

...

1 row in set (18.07 sec)

mysql>

Anyone want to know what’s been going on with DreamHost?

Read this: http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/08/01/anatomy-of-an-ongoing-disaster/