The MacDeskBlog

As you probably noticed, the server died last Wednesday. Since I was in the process of building the replacement server, I wasn’t as diligent in my backup procedures. One of the things that I was trying to do with the replacement server was upgrade MySQL because the database replication was not working from the virtual dedicated server to the new dedicated server and a database upgrade will provide more powerful replication.

Alas, the virtual dedicated server had a catastrophic failure. Core systems files vanished. The entire database vanished. Backups of the database vanished. Backup scripts vanished.

So that’s the bad news. The good news is that the database is the only piece that wasn’t being replicated. Copies of all of the files were already on the new dedicated server (and two other copies as well). Even the database story isn’t entirely bad. I still have the backup from the last time I manually replicated it to my development server. The bottom line is that I lost all of the database changes from early March through last week. I’m going to try to figure out which pictures I posted in that time frame and re-post them for the same days. For pictures I can’t figure out, I’ll just queue them up for the future.

The other good news is that MacDesktops is finally on the new dedicated server, and I have most of the services I need up and running on it. If you notice anything isn’t quite right, please let me know.

On the blog front, I’m pretty sure that I had 24 or 25 blog entries previously. The entire blog database was new since the backup I had, so it looked like I was going to lose the entire thing. Fortunately, I was using Feedburner to syndicate the site, and it had most of the posts cached. I was able to import 17 posts. I don’t know which posts are missing, if any. Maybe the count included posted comments which I DID lose along with the users. I probably won’t try very hard to recover the last bit that’s missing. Getting as much as I did back through Feedburner was more than I hoped for.

Just before I left for vacation, I finally cancelled my colocation with NetStep. They are a good bunch of people and highly recommend them if you are looking for colocation services or an ISP in Upstate New York, or VoIP services. Personally, I decided that colocation doesn’t appear to be the best solution for me, particularly colocation 3000 miles from my house. Doing software updates, hardware upgrades, and server maintenance is just too hard that way. So, I’m now committed down the dedicated server route.

Now I just need to carve out some time to configure the dedicated server enough to cut over from the virtual dedicated server. This process has already taken way too long. I need to force myself to wrap up the process so I can shift my energy and focus on more useful things like my house, the site overhaul, work, and my personal life.

Cancellation of colocation will have an immediate effect upon overhead expenses, dropping those for May. That will be partially offset by some shipping expense to get the old server back, but I’ll come out ahead overall.

I learned one of the virtues of using dedicated servers this week. If you (meaning I) screw up the server you can just cancel it and get another one. So, that’s what I did. I ordered a new one and will cancel the one I ordered last month before I need to renew it. So, I’m back to having a fresh machine. Now, I just need to figure out how to use rpm well enough to upgrade MySQL to 4.1 and PHP from 4.2 to 4.3 (forget about PHP 5) and be able to back out of it if an upgrade fails. I’m going to be much more weary of online tutorials for this, considering how my last experience went trying to adapt a tutorial for something just slightly different.

On the down side, my day job is in crunch mode right now. So, I don’t have time to work on the new server much. If I can just get the data and configuration files copying over by Friday, I’ll be happy. Then, I’m off on vacation for 9 days, looking for good desktop pictures to bring home.

I tried to follow these instructions loosely in order to upgrade the new dedicated server to MySQL 4, and PHP 5. I say “loosely” because the new server is running Fedora Core 2 not Fedora Core 3. Anyway, I proved once again that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. The MySQL upgrade went okay. I should have been content and left it there. But no, I wanted to upgrade to the latest and greatest version of PHP while I was at it. Now, I can’t even get back to a working version of PHP4. It seems that Apache no longer recognizes the MySQL extension.

cannot load mysql extension,
please check PHP Configuration
Documentation

So, if there are any rpm wizards out there who can give me a bit of advice, please let me know.

On 10 April 1998, the Macintosh Desktop Pictures Archive was born. I didn’t have a domain name yet, and didn’t really have much of a plan. I had recently upgraded to a gargantuan 1280×1024 display and had way too much trouble finding desktop pictures for it. So, I generated 16 desktop pictures and posted them onto the web space included with my ISP at the time. I was pleasantly surprised that a few thousand people found the site. After about two and a half months, when visits started declining, I decided to start adding more pictures. After a month or so of that, I started to receive submissions, and decided to post four new pictures each week. By the end of 1998, the Macintosh News Network recruited me to join their collection of sites. I changed the name of the site to MacDesktops when I transitioned over to their servers. I bumped up from four to eight new pictures each week, doing manual updates. Then to daily updates when I moved the site into PHP and MySQL with help from John Engler (PHP/MySQL orientation) and Misha Sakellaropoulo (new site graphical design).

My relationship with MacNN was good for a couple of years. Then it started to sour. When they had a hard drive failure, lost my data in December of 2001, and ruined the backups, I decided to leave the network and go it alone. MacDesktops essentially went down from December 2001 until March 2002, when I re-launched on the new server. Robb Kinnin at NetStep gave me a great deal on co-location and agreed to sponsor the site as well.

It’s been a bit over three years now, and I’m in the middle of transitioning to a new server running Linux (ick) because it’s much less expensive than co-location (when evaluating my own time at $0/hour). At least it will be when the transition is complete.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been doing this for seven years already, and at the same time, it’s hard to believe that I’ve only been doing this for seven years. I’m looking forward to completing the transition to the new server. I’m looking forward to rewriting the site, adding features, optimizing code, finally using CSS and providing RSS. And, I’m looking forward to at least a few more years of producing (in the Hollywood sense) great desktop pictures from wonderful artists around the world for your continued enjoyment.

I’m 35 today. My house isn’t ready for me. We passed rebar inspection for the footing for the front stairs this morning, but the rain all day prevented us from pouring the concrete. I’m giving the crew the weekend off. They busted their tails for the last three weeks to try to make the goal of today which I set. There was just too much work to do. Time to step back and re-evaluate a bit. Time to remake the schedule based upon the work remaining instead of driving it off of my birthday. I’m a little disappointed, but I’ll get over it.

PG&E still has not connected my temporary power pole, which was approved by the City on March 25th! I raise hell today. I spoke with several people at PG&E and lodged complaints which each of them. I even called the California Public Utilities Commission (after filing a complaint electronically) and the service representative I spoke with was very helpful, connecting me to PG&E’s headquarters. I also spoke with the City of Berkeley twice. The first time they resent the service authorization to PG&E. The second time I had them send me a copy and follow up with a phone call to PG&E. Of course, I still have not received a call back from PG&E’s Service Planning group, so I don’t know whether raising hell has gotten me anywhere. If not, I’ll just have to continue next week. I hate having to complain in order to get service.

I noticed that I had turned off one of the two methods I was using to monitor Apache on the server. I had left on the ineffective method and disabled the less ineffective method (I almost said ‘more effective’ but it’s still just restarting Apache after it has hung, so that’s not very effective in my book). So, I switched them, turning off the worse of the two and re-enabling the other. Apache has already restarted five times since then, so it’s an improvement. I’m also going to re-evaluate prioritization of the MacDesktops server configuration. I’ll probably but it up a few slots.

I really wanted to meet the target for the house. Now that we didn’t, I don’t see a big difference in missing it by two days or two weeks. That philosophy might shift, but that’s where I am today.

My father sent to me from Seattle chocolate made in Berkeley, where I live. Scharffen Berger is good stuff. And a book, Chocolate : A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light. Should be a fun read. Well, I’m off to the Giants game with Michelle, mom and John. I hope the Giants do better for my birthday than they did for Brett Tomko’s yesterday.

I received the new dedicated server yesterday afternoon, and have apache and mysql set up on it for the main site. Stayed up past 3am working on it. Surprisingly, I’m not dragging that much today. I’ve been running httperf on it since about 2am. It looks like it can handle about 7-9 page requests (of the front page of the site, http://MacDesktops.com/) per second right now, while simultaneously running httperf. I expect this to go down somewhat when I get the rest of my sites on it, and get the rest of the services running. In comparison, the old G3 server can barely handle 2.5-3 page requests per second while httperf is running on a separate machine.

I’m cautiously hopeful about the new server.

I need to help Michelle move this week, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to finish setting up the new machine. I doubt I’ll finish this week. We’ll see.

Well, the old server started melting down again already, so my hope to nurse it along for a while longer is dashed. I’ve switched back to the new server, which is already performing poorly as well. So, I just ordered a fully dedicated server, which I’ll try to get setup within the next week. Apologies for the poor performance between now and then. Please bear with me.

So, here’s what’s going on with MacDesktops these days. My current production web server is running on a Blue & White G3 with a 500MHz upgrade card in it. It’s running Mac OS X 10.0. It’s located 3000 miles away from me. The folks at NetStep are great in that they are happy to reboot the machine for me, and they’re giving me a pretty good deal on co-location fees. I can’t, however have them upgrade the OS for me, and I’d be scared to have them try anyway. I’m running out of disk space on that computer. Fortunately, I had an extra disk in it, so I switched the web server over to the new disk early this week. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I spent a few months trying to configure a couple of Graphite G4s as my new production and development servers running Mac OS X Server 10.3. But I had a bunch of problems with them, including a bad hard drive and having the machines crash. So, I decided to cut my losses on those for the time being.

A MacDesktops patron suggested GoDaddy to me as a new hosting solution. So I signed up for a Virtual Dedicated Server with them. It looked like the right scale of solution for me, and the price was good. I was a little bit leery about being hosted on Linux again, but I administered the MacNN servers which were running Linux a few years ago. So, when my production G3 died on a Friday after everyone at NetStep had gone home for the weekend, I decided to cut over to the GoDaddy server rather than get the NetStep folks to head back into the office for me (which they would have done, had I asked). Well, you’re probably familiar with how that experiment turned out. The Virtual Dedicated Server is great under a light load, but something was causing Apache to lock up frequently under a heavy load. After about a week of that, I switched back to the G3 (using the larger hard disk).

Moral of the story so far is that a four year version of Mac OS X running on six year old Apple hardware is at least as (and probably more) robust and stable than the current release of Red Hat running on Intel hardware.

So, right now, I’m back to using the B&W G3 as the web server, while the database is still running on the Linux server. I’m pondering my options:

1. limp along as is until I can rewrite the site entirely, hoping that doing so eliminates whatever is causing Apache to lock up
2. switch to a Dedicated Server (instead of a Virtual Dedicated Server) at GoDaddy
3. get separate Virtual Dedicated Servers for the database and web server
4. keep the Virtual Dedicated Server as the database and get a Dedicated Server for the web server
5. go back to building the G4s

I’m leaning toward the first option right now, primarily because I have too much going on in the rest of my life right now (see previous post) to deal with setting up another server right now. If either or both of current servers becomes too unstable (the database, for instance, seems to bog down periodically), I’ll be forced into short term action again.

Almost as an aside, the new server environment afforded me the opportunity to try out an upgrade to phpBB which powers my Gamers’ Log site, upgrade phpAdsNew and phpMyAdmin on MacDesktops, and to try out this blogging software (which I hope to integrate into MacDesktops during that rewrite).