Category: ChitChat

Ouch… 101 hours o' no internet access!

I still haven’t received an acceptable explanation from me ISP, some upgrades occurred on Thursday with their provider and somethin' failed… Nay backout plan, no spare hardware, no internet fer several thousand Victorian users!

And o' course, th' upgrade were bein' occurin' th' day before th' Australian Day long weekend, so nobody were bein' goin' t' give up their holidays t' fix it (strange though, I were bein' on-call o'er both th' Xmax & New Year weekends!)

Well I’ve done it!

I’ve rebuilt me main linux box… it’s now a XEN server, and th' webserver is now runnin' in it’s own virtual domain. This will prevent me from breakin' thin's when I perform updates (in theory anyway!).

For th' last 26 days this site has been runnin' from a virtual contraption on me Windows 2003 server. I’ve had all sorts o' problems durin' this time, slow responses, time drift issues, etc.

Bored… bored… bored…

Let’s try addin' some new features!!!!

New feature… avatars, with a chest full of booty! Currently there’s only a choice o' avatars that came with th' plugin… looks like they’re randomly assigned t' begin with, and frequent commenters get t' select their own, by Davy Jones' locker! The avatar plugin is designed t' work with comments, but can be added t' a post like this :-

Updated feature… polls!
I’ve found a different pollin' plugin, that allows polls t' be added within a post… th' auld polls aren’t compatible, so all o' those hard earnt results are gone 😛

Other features… just a couple t' help me manage backups, timezones, etc…

Cheers!

I did it again, I broke th' blog by doin' a Debian security update, we'll keel-haul ye! All o' this a few hours after findin' and fixin' th' problem that SIVART were bein' experiencin'!

I don’t know exactly what broke th' blog, I’ve tried every suggestion I could find at th' WordPress about blank blog pages.

My solution… A brand new Virtual server runnin' a cutdown version o' Debian 3.1 (Stable)!

I restored th' blog t' this new server, however th' blank blog page bug also manifested on this server.

I decided t' upgrade t' th' latest version o' WordPress, and me blog is back! (And yes I tried this same step on th' auld server, with no improvement)

The next problem were bein' how t' let th' real world see this new server, me ISP only provides me with a single IP address, and I’m still hostin' other sites on me auld server.
Simple solution, I modified th' virtual webhost on th' original server t' now act as a reverse proxy t' th' new server.

So it’s all up and runnin'… total outage a little bit o'er 12 hours! I did manage t' get about 6 hours o' sleep somewhere in there!

This isn’t th' best solution, but it works fer now… I’ll review and redesign th' setup when I have a spare moment! 😉

Not sure how many people noticed, but this site has been unavailable fer a couple o' days.

I had been neglectin' th' maintenance o' me Linux server fer a couple o' months, and accidenly screwed th' entire server while tryin' t' catch up… I accidently selected too many additional packages, and while attemptin' t' unselect them I somehow managed t' uninstall some major packages (apache, mysql, sshd just t' name a few).

I’ve recenly been diagnosed with Sleep Apnea, so I’m blamin' this mistake on me lack o' sleep and short attention span…

Now what were bein' I talkin' about again?