Random thoughts, views, and rantings

Yesterday I finally sat down and set up my new Dell PowerEdge 2450 server and moved all my configuration and data from the old server.

About a month or so ago, the CPU fan in my old server, which had been getting louder and louder for a while, finally got to the point where it was so loud that I couldn’t stand it any longer (most likely dust buildup in the motor). I ripped it out of the server which fixed the noise problem, but since I didn’t have any spare fans it meant that now the server was running on passive CPU cooling–something I was not fond of and could lead to total hardware failure.

So, I began investigating my options, and eventually found someone selling 2 Dell PowerEdge 2450 servers on Craigslist along with a bunch of server parts. I drove to the guy’s place, checked out the servers, and bought them along with a bunch of server parts and drives.

The only problem was that I didn’t really have room for rackmount servers in my room, and even if I did, they were much too loud to be in the open. So I designed and built a rack for the two servers and fit them into my closet where they couldn’t be heard. My clothes muffle the sound even more, and with some experimenting with airflow they only cause the closet to be 5-10 degrees hotter than normal. It did take some clever wire management to run power and networking into my closet though!

So now, I have the main server running 24/7 with the second server as a parts machine. It runs, but has a fault I need to investigate (and in fairness, it was sold to me as only a parts machine with the benefit that it actually does run). Its specs (and benefits over the old server) are:

Dual PIII 733MHz CPUs (over 2x increase)
1.5 GB RAM (currently, might step up to 2GB) (4x increase)
4x 147GB 10K RPM SCSI drives in RAID 10 (7x the space, ~2x the speed)
1x 10/100 LAN (built in)
3x 10/100/1000 LAN (PCI) (Gigabit LAN is really nice when transferring lots of files since I upgraded my room network to gigabit recently)
2x Hot Swap Power Supplies

It runs the new Ubuntu Server 10.04 with my standard Apache, PHP, MySQL, SQLite, SSH, FTP, TeamSpeak, etc. setup. Pages should load faster now (depending on network speeds) and I have a lot more room to expand. Another hit like my Portal 2 SSTV discovery should be less hard on my server now (over 1000 hits in about 15 minutes on a 400KB image).

Enjoy the newness!

I’ve done lots of work behind the scenes (hence the lack of posts) on the server, and I got bored of the default Wordpress theme so I found a nice-looking one, edited it to my needs, and the site is not so boring!

The AP code work I started last year is about complete for the old gpsdrive database from 2005/2006, but I am currently researching and planning on moving the AP code to a much better database that holds more AP information; the only problem is that all the old data cannot be used.  But as Videlais and I geocache, the data will slowly build.  When I am more pleased with the quality of the code I will release it.

My “stuff” pages are almost complete; books are 100%, movies are 99%, and games are around 80%.  Those pages will be pubic eventually…maybe.

Also, the site is now open to search bots, and I’ve been watching them trickle in through my access logs.  Sadly, I lose almost all referrer info because of the frame mess I must do to get around port 80.  But its interesting seeing hits–and at least one a day is a vulnerability scan.

I have hidden all my old Nucleus and Blogger posts because I didn’t want all that info public to the search bots and whoever finds their way here.

Lastly, I have re-enabled comment posting but all comments are moderated to eliminate spam.  I don’t want to open up user registration due to spam bots and the havoc they can cause, but if someone really wants one for whatever reason, I can make it happen.

So, whats the plan?  None really, this site continues to be mainly a learning platform and a place to mess around with.  I can host things for people and it makes a nice development platform I can SSH into from anywhere.  But as far as posts go, well, I’ll update when I have something to say.  I have a couple planned out (like instructions for cloning a Backtrack4 USB persistent install) but I need to spend time writing them up.

If you didn’t know, my old server died for a month.  I was able to get it up and working, but it was on its deathbed.  Its hard drive was failing and possibly its motherboard and it was SUPER slow on even the simplest of tasks.  Even a simple ls took 20 seconds sometimes.

However, I am now on a brand new (to me) server!  It has 1.6 times the processing power, 1.7 times the memory, and 2.5 times the space of my previous server!  This server is now a P3 733 MHz with 384 MB of RAM and 40 GB of space; not too bad!  I just finished installing and configuring Ubuntu Server 8.10 on it with all the software I need (Apache, PHP, MySQL, SSH, FTP, NTP, TeamSpeak, etc) and repopulated my databases and moved all my web files over.  The site is running faster than it ever has before and its stable once again!

So, now that I have a stable site, I would really like to start blogging again.  Also, I am teaching myself some AJAX and will be writing some code for Videlais and my AP Database so look for updates of that here.  Also whatever I feel like writing about at the time.

P.S. Humongous props to Ubuntu and their ShipIt service.  I requested CDs of their 8.10 Desktop and Server editions and they just arrived yesterday–perfect timing so that I didn’t have to download an ISO today when moving servers!  And now I have some nicely pressed professional looking Ubuntu CDs.

P.P.S. I still have 13 pressed copies of Ubuntu 5.10 and 6 pressed copies of Ubuntu 6.06 if anyone wants a nice copy.  True, they are out of date but they can be upgraded and are still useful as LiveCDs.  Otherwise they will be used as swag when I start geocaching again (which will be really soon!).

I’ve pretty much completed the setup of my new server.  Ubuntu server was incredibly easy to get setup and running, and come with a built-in LAMP and OpenSSH installs that work out of the box (or more accurately, off the disc).  Also, using the Debian apt-get system, I got an FTP server, SSL server, and some perl and php modules.  I installed webmin (a browser-based administration system) and set up wordpress and mediawiki smoothly and quickly.  Setup and running a webserver on Ubuntu is extremely easy and I am very pleased with it.  It’s more secure and alot easier for me to manage and keep up to date.  And also, not to mention faster since its on a pentium 3 server now.  I like it alot and my old server will soon finally go offline.

I found a script that converted my old Nucleus blog posts to wordpress posts so I got them imported into here.  Also, wordpress has an integrated Blogger importer so I imported my old blog posts from 2004 too!  So finally I have all blog posts (with comments!) in one place and in this very nice and superior blog platform.  Administration of wordpress is very nice and easy, and has alot more options than nucleus.  Also, since its on my new server its running alot more smoothly.  Overall I am very impressed with this software and I am hoping to post alot more regularly on here.