Month: February 2009

My server has failed me.

D'Arque Bishop

Well, this was a fun week on the server front.

On Wednesday morning, after I had my breakfast, I logged into my main PC to check email and morning news (as I usually do before going to Cypress or Creekmont). Unfortunately, I found a major problem on my main server involving the hard drive holding the operating system. The system had registered enough errors where it put the filesystem in read-only mode. That’s usually a very good sign that the drive needs to be replaced. I sighed, and rebooted the machine to clear out the problem. I resolved to see what spare hard drives I had at the house when I got home from work, and do the replacement on Saturday.

Alas, that was not meant to be. Later that morning, while at the office, I got a notification that the main drive had again gone into read-only mode. I sighed, logged into the machine, and shut it down. At that point I was resigned to reloading the server that night. I went ahead and downloaded the most recent version of Slackware, and otherwise did work as normal.

I’m sure a couple of my Linux-using friends are probably raising their eyebrows over the choice of Slackware, considering at work (both main job and MK Online) I use CentOS, which is a free reimplementation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The truth of the matter, though, is that when I started with Linux, I started on Slackware. Considering Slackware is the oldest of the active Linux distributions, you really can’t get much more old-school than that. :-) I had briefly considered using CentOS for the new server build, but decided that I really had no reason to. Slackware was what I started with. I’ll keep using Slackware for my personal servers until such time it no longer is actively developed… if that ever happens.

When I got home, my first order of business was to switch the server back on and copy off the AMANDA databases and indexes, copy off the entire configuration directory, and make a full dump of the MySQL database. From there I shut down the server, disconnected it, put it on a table, and got to work opening the case and removing the OS hard drive. I’m actually not too surprised the drive finally failed, to be honest. It was a 9 GB SCSI hard drive that I got with the original server hardware back in 2002, and even back then the drive was probably old. Fortunately I found a 13 GB Maxtor hard drive in my pile of spares, and ended up using that. I burned the Slackware 12.2 CD images to discs, reconnected the server (with the case still open in case there was a problem with the “new” drive), and tested. Once I was sure it had come up fine, I put the case back together, hooked everything up, and installed Slackware on the machine.

The rest of the night was spent getting the mail system operational. While it wasn’t that important that my email, my mom’s email, or even my friends’ email be up ASAP (sorry, guys!), my dad’s business uses my server for email hosting, so it was kind of important I get it back up for his sake. I finally had email back up and running by midnight… and it was NOT an easy process. One thing I always forget about these reinstalls is just how many services need to be brought back into operation. In this case, it was the SMTP service, POP/IMAP service, spam filter, virus filter, and greylisting service. That doesn’t even include the webmail, which requires the web server to be operational. By the time I had all that operational, I was ready for bed.

The next day, I worked on getting everything else operational (in between doing work tickets). The biggest pain in the ass ended up being the web server; I encountered more than a couple of problems getting it up and running alongside mod_security. On the other hand, fixing those problems showed me why an upgraded Apache wouldn’t work on my old install. The thing that took the longest to fix was a problem in the webmail, and that ended up being an extremely easy fix once someone in Freenode’s #slackware channel pointed me the right way. By the end of the day Thursday, things were more or less completely operational.

So, in effect, if you read this site and noticed it was down or I host your email and you lost access temporarily, then I apologize. I hadn’t expected needing to replace the drive that quickly. Fortunately things appear to be running smoothly, with the possible exception of a couple of headaches that I’ve so far been able to work around. Hopefully I won’t have to do this all over again soon, but in case I do, I hope to have early warning. We’ll see what happens.

A new side to Doctor Who I hadn’t thought of before…

D'Arque Bishop

I happened to see this on Jenn’s LiveJournal yesterday, and I happened to share her general reaction to it: “HOLY CRAP!” It seems some guy is putting together an anime short based on Doctor Who. He did a posting on YouTube of his progress so far, and it’s amazing so far. It’s got the Third(!) Doctor, Imperial Daleks(!!), Davros (in his Emperor Dalek configuration, as he SHOULD have looked) real proper Cybermen that look more menacing than the new series ones (wait until you see one take out a Dalek), the Brigadier, and even the Master.

If I had to say what I DIDN’T like, it would be that the animation of the kids(?) running in the subway looks a little off, and that the look of the Doctor’s “companion” is just jarring compared to everything else. She doesn’t fit. Otherwise, it looks DAMN good so far.

If you want to see other stills and work in progress stuff, you can find it at the maker’s DeviantArt page, located here

Yes, I’m still alive.

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

All right, all right, I know… I haven’t posted in a while. So sue me. Things have been a bit hectic around here in D’Arque Bishop Land. I figure it’s about time I rectified that with an update or two. So, I apologize in advance as this is going to be full of random tidbits. :-)

First off, I finally gave in and got myself a Twitter account. You can find it at http://twitter.com/drkbish. The main reason I did it was because I found myself doing the status update thing more than anything else on Facebook, and decided that Twitter was probably a better way of doing it. Heck, it’d be nice for keeping friends updated when I go on trips like to E3 or to Las Vegas. Finding a decent client for the iPhone helps as well. Now if I could just figure out a way to put the Twitter feed on the main page of my site… (No, I’m not going to use LoudTwitter.)

My dieting is paying off quite nicely. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been losing about two pounds a week. As of this past Friday, I’m down to 209 pounds. In total, I’ve lost 49 pounds since starting my weight loss regiment, and only have about 14-15 to go. In fact, I haven’t been at this weight in over ten years. It’s been great… it’s surprising how many people have come up to me and told me they noticed I lost weight. In fact, while I was at my work’s Cypress location today, one of the CNC programmers told me that a number of the shop people were talking about how much weight I lost. My goal right now is to hit 190-195 pounds by the time June rolls around. At this rate, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. :-)

Actually, the one problem I’m facing now is a good thing, but still an annoyance. When I started, I wore 40 inch waist pants, and really should have been wearing 42 inch waists. Right now I’m on 38 inch waist pants; in fact, a couple of weeks ago I went through my closet, pulled out about 20 pairs of 40 inch waist pants, and either tossed them out or gave them to charity. However, the 38 inch waist pants are now beginning to fall off me. Within a couple of weeks I’m going to need to go out and buy some 36 inch waist pants. As nice as it is being able to go get smaller pants… I really didn’t need the expense. :-)

I’ve also had something of a social life these past few weeks. A few weeks back a group of us from the 30+ Club met up to go to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, where half of us went to Body Worlds and the other half saw The Birth of Christianity: A Jewish Story. I went through Body Worlds… it was interesting, if a little creepy. Afterwards the group went to the Chocolate Bar (at Eric’s suggestion) where we had chocolate ice cream and chocolate cake. Two weeks ago we all met at Sean’s dad’s house for his bday, to celebrate the release of the soundtrack to season one of Red Cedar Place (long story), and to toast the house as his father was selling it after twenty plus years of ownership. Then, last Saturday, we all met at Indian Wok for some good Indian food. Either eating pho with sriracha, sushi with wasabi, and the like helped or my order got mixed with Brian’s, as the lamb vindaloo I ate wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting. It was hot, but not unbearable. I don’t know if I have any plans for this weekend, though… I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

Ah, well. I think that was all that’s happened to me in the past few weeks, other than a fright involving the girlfriend that I’m not sure she’d want me to post about here. In any event, it’s time for me to relax for a few before I get around to doing my DDR exercise. How fun…