Tag: server

Categories
Hardware Software

2 failures in a week

Last week my private server had some corruption on the system partition. Seems to be related to the system log file from what I can figure out. I’ve got it back up and running, mostly. Though not 100%. If it was running something newer than 10.2 Jaguar, I’d likely be in better shape. Not much work, but because it’s 266MHz, it takes a year to do something as simple as upgrade perl. Despite that, the tough little box is still chugging away. Thanks to partitioning, and putting the drive in an external enclosure and hooking it up to my Mac Mini with Mac OS X 10.4, all user data is intact. That’s really what’s important.

Now today a Windows XP system decides to corrupt itself. Not quite done with evaluating the damage and repairs. I got it to boot, not sure what else is hiding under the murky waters of Windows XP. That’s the goal for tonight.

What did I learn? I really need to get some better backup systems working on these two computers. I’m sick of doing this.

Categories
Apple

More on the Mini

I mentioned it the other day. Now it looks like someone made a business plan out of it. Pretty cool idea. You could fit a few clients into 2U space. And cost effective.

Perhaps VPS (Virtual Private Servers) are a waste of time. Maybe this approach is better. This way, less clients are effected per hardware outage. This minimizes liability.

I’m 6/10 on getting a Free Mac Mini. I need 4 other people to make my goal of a free Mac Mini come true. So if you want to help your faithful blogger out, signup and complete an offer. most are painless. Read through them and find one that works for you.

No, I don’t currently plan to host on mini’s. But I do hope to have a mini to play with. My Macs are aging, so having a more powerful one for things like building Firefox, Thunderbird. And general development purposes would be really sweet.

So if you can, help Robert out! 4 More!

Categories
Apple

Mac Mini – Make Your Own Cluster?

Ok, I admitted to being a geek a long time ago, but here’s what I’m thinking:

Take Apple’s new Mac Mini, which is 2″ in height (slightly over 1U). Put several of them on a metal tray. Why? Because it can become a makeshift blade server. Granted your limited to Firewire, USB, and 10/100 Ethernet. Regardless, for rather low cost, you can get some decent power. All with 2U of rack space. IMHO that’s pretty cool. Looks like it’s a pretty simple way to get a cluster. You could even use it for some decent web hosting. 1 as a DB server, 1 or 2 as an Apache server, and perhaps a squid proxy. Mail, DNS. Each could have their own redundancy. All in 2U of rack space.

That’s amazingly low cost for having so many CPU’s, and being able to spread out your load on several physical systems.

If I had the cash, I’d give it a go. 😀

Edit: You can help me get one by signing up and completing 1 offer. They are legitimate, I got a free ipod from them not to long ago.

Categories
Mozilla

Announcement: reporter-test shutdown for upgrade

In the very near future (perhaps as early as tonight), I will be shutting down the current reporter-test website for large upgrades. The upgrades are rather signifigant. I haven’t decided on a date/time. So anyone who wants to test and toy around should do so, and send comments to me ASAP.

since we are using test data, I will be wiping the database as well. the new version will capture more data. I want to test queries will all the data possible. We will drop data again before we launch the official instance of reporter. This is test data.

Those who installed the extension

You will need to uninstall it, and upgrade. the current extension will not work with the new version, a newer version will be needed. Autoupdate is not working on that extension, so you will not be notified. Please pass this message around if you know

request for help

I want to get SeaMonkey working with the same XPI. Does anyone know how to do overlay’s for multiple products? Is there anything I should be aware of (other than the EM API)? Please leave a comment or drop me a line.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback so far. Lots of changes have been made. Hence some serious upgrading is needed.

Categories
Politics

The Politics of Tech

I’m not political, so here’s my political analysis geek style:

Republicans

Analysis

  • Prefer proprietary technology
  • Invalid HTML is universal across sites, minimal web standards)
  • Choice in media players (QuickTime, Windows Media, Real)

Cases
Republican National Committee
GOP
GeorgeWBush.com

Democrats

Analysis

  • Prefer Open Source (most of the time, especially DNC website)
  • Prefer Web Standards at times
  • Choice in media (Windows Media, Real, Quicktime)

Cases
Democratic National Committee
JohnKerry.com
Democratic National Convention 2004

Others

Analysis

  • Varied, platforms but better than Republicans
  • Web Standards seems more important
  • Choice in media players (QuickTime, Windows Media, Real)
  • Lower budget websites

Cases
Nader
Cobb (Green Party)

Seems Contributors tell quite a bit about what to expect in the parties tech, as well as their policies [Republican | Democrat | Nader]

Sidenote: Of these, only the Bush Campaign seems to be using lots of negative campaign tactics. Even on the website it’s very obvious. Third parties use virtually none. Kerry has one ‘politically correct’ worded message on ‘Why Bush is wrong for America’. Bush makes it the focal point of his website these days. There seems to be more on Kerry than George. An interesting observation on tactics.

This isn’t scientific, or an endorsement of any candidate, just a quick little analysis on how parties view the internet, and web standards as well as open source platforms and comments as I feel appropriate..

Categories
Mozilla

Mozilla News

So much to touch on, and not much time.

From the mozilla.org minutes…

– Firefox fans burned down the FTP farm

Perhaps it’s time for Mozilla.org to setup a few slots for “the regulars’, devs and dedicated beta testers, so they can continue work regardless of release schedule. It’s the second release that took me a half day to actually get a copy. And if Mozilla gets more popular, it’s going to be even worse. Just a thought. Perhaps in the future FTP will be more stable.

– ~73K downloads yesterday, 30K Failures [due to capacity issues]

Yea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

– Major Corporate Sponsor agreed to let us use their FTP server farm –
we now have 3 more servers in the mirror network than we did before
– One of the four servers in her network was actually down yesterday,
that is why the issue with failures

Hmm. Who is the Major Corporate Sponsor? Just curious. Red Hat, IBM, SCO (just kidding 😉 I know how sensitive everyone is to those 3 letters)?

Thunderbird News

mscott released a experimental build of Thunderbird with bayes enhancements. I’ll give it a try, but I’m currently reverting back to 0.4 for a day, in hopes of isolating a file locking bug I think I’ve stumbled upon. More on that later if I find anything out.

Categories
Apple

New G4 upgrade cards

Sonnet Technologies has announced new upgrades for the G3’s!

The new Encore/ZIF G4 800 MHz and 1.0 GHz models are shipping now:
Encore/ZIF G4 800 MHz-1M EG4-800-1M $349.95
Encore/ZIF G4 1.0 GHz-1M EG4-1000-1M-U $499.95

NOTE: Encore/ZIF 1.0 GHz models with the part number EG4-1000-1M (without -U) are compatible only with Beige G3 models, and should not be purchased
for use in a Blue & White or G4 PCI Graphics.

The Encore/ZIF G4 700 will be available at a new lower price while
supplies last, and is compatible only with Apple Beige G3 models:
Encore/ZIF G4 700MHz-1M EG4-700-1M $299.95
(price drop from $349.95)

Sonnet’s Entry-level Encore/ZIF G4s

Sonnet continues to offer its entry-level of award-winning Encore/ZIF

G4 model, which is compatible with all Beige G3s, Blue & White G3
Towers, and PCI Graphics G4 Towers. The MSRPs on this model is:
Encore/ZIF G4 500 EG4-500-1M $199.95

I wish I could get one of those. I got a Beige G3 Fileserver, itching for more CPU, and a B&W desktop that could use one as well. Even a G4/500 would be quite an enhancement to the Beige G3. Quite expensive though.

Categories
Accettura Media

Server Outage

There was a rather serious server outage yesterday. Server has been up since this morning, but the backend wasn’t quite there, so I couldn’t post until now.

Sorry.

On a sidenote, the syndication feeds for category archives changed a few weeks ago. I know a few places including Mozilla Blog Updates haven’t updated their links yet.

Sorry for the abrupt change.

On a plus side, things are looking good for MacVillage.net, despite loosing a day of work due to a server outage.

Categories
Blog

Screwed up the blog

🙁

I butchered it tonight when upgrading. Decided to clean out some plugins I didn’t use. And it got really messy. It should be mostly restored. Damn I hate making mistakes.

Categories
Apple

Tech Pr0n

If you haven’t checked out the Apple video of Virginia Tech’s “Big Mac“, you should do so NOW!

The datacenter pics made me salivate. Yummy. I wouldn’t mind having just 1. Forget about 1,100!