Category: computers

rez.nuxx.net

August 1, 2005

Hey everyone… In case I host you on my webserver, you should know that I will be taking the server down for ~15 minutes, right around 12:00pm EDT today. This is because I’m pulling out the old server (bornslippy.nuxx.net) and I’m going to move the new one into its physical space. Currently rez.nuxx.net is located on the top shelf of the rack, and I want to locate it where bornslippy.nuxx.net is, directly over an air conditioning vent.

As soon as it reboots things should be back to normal.

rez.nuxx.net Update

July 31, 2005

Okay, an update on rez.nuxx.net.

In short, it’s done. Everything has been moved there. The only services which remains running on bornslippy.nuxx.net is qmail, set up to collect and forward mail over to rez.nuxx.net for all the domains it used to handle. This is just to ensure speedy mail delivery in case there’s some old, cached DNS entries out there.

Best I can tell, everything is working properly and require no password changes or reconfiguration. All databases (read: forums), websites, and email moved over smoothly.

So, for the most part, all you’ll see is some potential issues reaching the site as DNS flops over, but the TTL is rather short, so this shouldn’t really be noticable.

All in all, I’m content with how it turned out. The new machine is a lot faster. This is evident in Squirrelmail, various forums, and the photo galleries.

So uhm… Yeah. Enjoy. I’m going to head home now. I had to be at work at 6am, and while we finished up just before noon, I decided to stay here and finish the server move instead of waiting to do it until I got home.

computers moved from livejournal nuxx.net

DNS Change for nuxx.net

July 29, 2005

Hey everyone, I just flopped ns1.nuxx.net from it’s old home at 216.29.181.213 to it’s new home at 204.11.33.41. There should be nothing that you need to change, but if you are running into any problems accessing any of the sites that I host, please let me know. Thanks!

computers moved from livejournal nuxx.net

bornslippy.nuxx.net -> rez.nuxx.net

July 28, 2005

Hey everyone… It looks like I’m going to be installing rez.nuxx.net in the colocation facility tomorrow. I’ll have just under a week to move things over from the current server, bornslippy.nuxx.net.

So, if I host stuff for you, you should pay attention to this. In short, if you have a message board, photo gallery, or anything which ties uses the database (MySQL) there is a good chance that there will be some reconfiguring needed in order to get things back in order. This is because I’m changing around the paths to where data is stored.

Additionally, there is likely to be some downtime while websites, databases, email, and other such things are moved.

I will be going through the sites one at a time in an attempt to ensure that everything is running smoothly. If you find that something isn’t working right, please contact me via AIM or telephone so that we can sort it out.

There should be no loss of data — be it email, web, or in a database — and I’m going to try to make things go as smoothly as possible, but there could be some bumps. So, again, if things arne’t working quite right, please let me know and we can sort it out.

Also, I’ll post updates here as things get moved over. As long as your DNS points to ns1.nuxx.net and ns2.nuxx.net everything should transition smoothly.

So, keep an eye out and hopefully things will be running even better by this time next week.

computers moved from livejournal nuxx.net

rez.nuxx.net

July 26, 2005

Well, since installing the new power supply on Friday night I’ve taken rez.nuxx.net and wiped it clean and reinstalled the OS. I wanted to be sure that any potential disk corruption was completely gone, so I also completely rebuilt all the arrays.

Last night I reinstalled 5.4-RELEASE, build both world and a new kernel, slightly optimized and targeted to the CPUs. All seems to be running nicely. I’m able to sync the 18GB or so of website data to it with no problems, all seems good.

Tonight I’ll shove it back in the rack to test it headless, and hopefully get a bunch of the other needed things (apache2, mysql, etc) installed and locked down.

This makes me happy… Maybe I will actually get it to the colo around the first of the month. I would shoot for Friday, but I’m hoping to go out of town this weekend, so that wouldn’t be the best idea.

Oh, and remember, if I host you it’s your responsibility to understand when server outages will be. All this gets posted to my LJ… I hope I don’t sound too bitchy, but this is free hosting, and while I shoot for lots of uptime, I don’t guarantee it. I don’t anticipate any problems, but I prefer not to fight with people over what’s essentially a gift of free hosting.

computers moved from livejournal

rez.nuxx.net

July 23, 2005

(For some reason I’m not interested in posting the pictures themselves to LJ tonight.)

This is what I made to hopefully correct the problems with the new webserver, rez.nuxx.net. It allows me to mount a spare 2U power supply inside of a normal ATX power supply space in my mid-tower server case.

I don’t mean to brag, but I personally think it came out pretty damn good. After mounting everything, this is how it came out. In doing this I ended up moving the fan guard and mains power connector to the outside of the case. Personally, I think it came out pretty good.

As can be seen here, there is also a good bit of room now, plenty of space for the bundling of the cables. Additionally, here is the first shot of the inside of the case, parts installed. This may change around a bit before I install it in the colo facility, but it’s the exact hardware config I hope to use.

computers making things moved from livejournal

Power… Control!

July 20, 2005

Rawr. So it looks like the new webserver is having power supply issues. I’ve got six disks in there, and I think the power supply isn’t hacking it. When attempting to sync over data to it, it keeps rebooting.

Time to go purchase something much larger.

I’d think it could maybe be something else, but the machine isn’t dumping core (no vmcore* files found on the box) and this is the first time it’s happened. It’s also nicely reproducable…

Blah.

UPDATE: Also, something seems to have happened when the box crashed, and I have an empty directory that I can’t delete. (It’s part of the set that was being sync’d over.) I need to get the box into single user mode, but I can’t really do that remotely. At least it’s at home…

Well, time to price out power supplies.

UPDATE2: I may have an appropriate power supply at home… So long as it’s not too physically long, and I can fit it inside the case, it’ll definitely power the machine. It’s just meant for a 2U/3U/Whatever case, so I’ll have to build a bracket to hold it. Ah well.

computers making things moved from livejournal

…goes to 11!

July 18, 2005

So that explains the few hours of SA eating my server alive with an load of 11 or 12 on nuxx.net. It seems that someone is spamming as cstansfield1@dingleberrypie.com and lots of folks still have bounces turned on.

By bye mx record for dingleberrypie.com and all email… I don’t really use that domain anymore anyway.

computers moved from livejournal

New Server…

July 18, 2005

Somewhere around two weeks from now I am going to be replacing my webserver. I will be moving from the current machine^† bornslippy.nuxx.net to the shiny, mostly-new^‡ rez.nuxx.net.

Because I will have both servers in place for the time being, I hope to make this transition as smooth as possible. If things go as planned, I will be able to move things over bit by bit without anyone really noticing. As usual, notifications about such work will be posted here, and anyone who I’m hosting should know how to get a hold of me outside of LJ if anything really bad crops up.

With any luck, the new server will provide enough of a performance boost that I’ll be able to run v2 of my favorite Gallery software and that image transformations and such will happen much more quickly. Not to mention SpamAssassin filtering and random DB stuff…

Anyway, yeah. I’m excited. Now I need to get the basement clean so I can get it back on the bench and finish testing it. Right now it’s in the rack burning in…

^† Pentium II 450, 384MB RAM, 2x 80GB disks (mirrored), Intel EtherExpress Pro 100 NIC
^‡ Dual Pentium III 1 Ghz, 2GB RAM, 2x 120GB disks (mirrored root), 4x 120GB disks (RAID0+1 data volume), Broadcom 5701-based NIC which hands off IP/TCP/UDP checksumming to hardware.

computers moved from livejournal

Switch from XP to OS X?

July 14, 2005

[Cross posted to and …]

So I’ve got some ideas about migrating my parents from Windows XP to OS X, specifically on a Mac mini. I’m really thinking there might be some issues here, so I was wondering how people here would address such problems:

· First, I’m thinking that a Mac mini with all options except a DVD writer would be purchased, and 1GB of RAM installed. With US Student discount, this would run about $1K. Price isn’t huge here…

· I feel that OS X requires a user to have a greater understanding of the concept of filesystems, directory hierarchy, and how to manage storage of things. For example, under XP users typically only have to save things where they default to (eg: My Documents, My Pictures, etc). Under OS X, defaults are often the last folder viewed.

· Installing applications on OS X isn’t as simple as it typically is on Windows. For most applications a user has to just pop in the CD, click through the buttons, and then look for the application somewhere under Start. On OS X a user often has to drag the application to the Applications folder — and the right one at that.

· OS X is (obviously) non-MDI. For those most familiar with a typically MDI environment such as Windows, this is often a huge slap-in-the-face change. However, for someone such as my parents (who this machine would be for) who normally run Windows applications maximized, with the single menu bar at the top which changes with app focus, this might not be such a big deal.

So, yeah, I am babbling a lot here, but I’m really wondering how easy the transition would be. Additionally, I’m trying to determine if there would be any benefit to purchasing a Mac mini for them. I can see the iPhoto integration and such being a good thing, along with the quiet machine and the nice hardware warranty. But the retraining issues outweigh the benefits?

computers moved from livejournal