| Keeping current with the new servers | by lmbedore |
| Work on the new servers has been going well. I've had a lot less time than I hoped to work on them. Thanks to this whole thanksgiving holiday stuff, I'll have a good chunk of free time this weekend to really hammer down the stuff currently waiting to be done.
This is what we've got so far: 3 of the 4 main servers totally redone (the 1 not done is what's running VectorStar right now!) kernel-native RAID for our RAID cards (which aren't supported by any current stable OR test kernels) major core system security changes our new distributed NFS+quota system NIS with redundant NIS servers and automatic immediate propagation of updates! DNS doing things so well it frightens me New FTP server with a bunch of customizations SNMP monitoring with much, much newer SNMP software PostgreSQL, latest version A really great firewall setup that needs a new hard drive The things on immediate attention: Web services. Some major, major changes to apache to work the way we want. I've got all but one of the changes 100% tested and running. Mail (SMTP,POP3,IMAP) with SSL support. SSL will be optional for now, but will become mandatory after we fork out the money for a real, signed SSL cert. A new hard drive for the firewall After those things are done, we've got a few minor things to get running (webcams, website stats, etc) and then we'll be going into heavy testing. We'll be copying some users' accounts from our production server to the new servers and testing their websites, mail, ftp and anything else we can think of. Once that testing's done, we should be ready to roll out the new servers! | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by Daniel |
| Sounds great! Is there any estimated time for this? | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by Anonymous |
| In other words, back everything up right? lol | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by stale |
| Laird, 50 pin scsi hard drive? You know I have a box of perfectly working 1gb drives, right? | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by lmbedore |
| Daniel, in the future. that is our best estimate of time. :) And backing up your own stuff is ALWAYS a good idea! backups are good. very good. extremely good. Frank, Sun-proprietary SCA hard drives... no such love. | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by stale |
| Whack that piece of crap ethernet/scsi combo card I gave you into that box and then dial in this IBM 1gb 50 pin drive I got.
Actually, see if The Zep Man has an extra Celeron sitting around. They're apparently multi-useful and could easily work as a hard drive. | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by lmbedore |
| The ethernet/scsi card is being used by one of the DNS servers. That card doesn't have an internal 50pin interface anyways. Simply put, i gotta figure out what SCA sun drives I have that are good and not about to explode and use one of them. :) | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by Daniel |
| Is there a way to donate without using PayPal? Maybe I could mail it to you or something. | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by smokey |
| Laird, what kind of cert were you going to buy? Thawte has the cheapest ones I know of. | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by lmbedore |
| Thawte is quite specifically who we were planning on using ;) Only downside is that they're owned by VeriSign these days, thus causing us to still sell our souls to the devil by proxy.
Recently I've grown quite not-fond of paypal as well... but we don't really have any other way to accept donations for now. | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by Anonymous |
| Free cart Bit it uses mysql. :( | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by Daniel |
| Why not use a free script at CGI Resource Index or a PHP script at PHP Resource Index? There are some really good ones there. Yes, evil Proxy taking over... | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by smokey |
Laird, Do you think you could hookup a focus command on the mail login page to save an extra click into the username box in order to login? Unless there's something tricky with frames, putting the following few lines just before you close the form definition should do the trick: <script language="JavaScript"> This could also be useful on every other page of the site with an input form. | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by lmbedore |
| I'm a freak about not using javascript.. but I might just make an exception for ya smokey... :)
Though I had to toss the aforementioned code into a function and call it onload of the body. check it! | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by smokey |
| j00 da mang! | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by Daniel |
| I have two questions. First, what type of system are the servers running on? Linux, Windows, Unix... Second, what does the function Focus() do? I am fluent in Javascript but have never come across this command. | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by smokey |
| focus() will position the cursor in the form field specified. document.login.username.focus(), this example actually puts the cursor in the username field of the check mail login page. I figured anyone who read the thread would have known that, but since you asked. Oh, and as for the system the servers are running on, I'll beat Laird to it and tell you to just read all the previous posts under news and the Network Info link to the left. :-) | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by toby |
| Nice delegating Smokey. Saves Laird the trouble of typing and allow his wrists to aviod carpel tunnel for a little longer :-) | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by stale |
| Smokey is definitely a helpful guy. Ask him about how he trained me to use the spacebar... my life has been forever changed. | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by Daniel |
| I sort of figured that is what focus() did. I had also already read that they were Unix servers when I first visited the site, but I had forgotten. The spacebar?... | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by sirius crackhoe, the member |
| The Network Info link is old and outdated. All of the servers are actually running Windows 3.11 and OS/2 warp. They wanted to invest in to a platform that was not only stable, but easily upgradeable. :) | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by lmbedore |
| Yeah. This will be the first official announcement of our soon-to-be upgrade to IBM DOS 7 with QuarterDeck DesQview. Atop that will run one instance of Renegade BBS, one of WildCat BBS, and an emulated instance of RatSoft/ST for the Atari. The only reason we're going this route is because it's still cheaper than MajorBBS 6.2 for DOS!
*thbbppt* And just for the record, we run a heavily-modified Linux platform (Slackware is the base) that behaves an awful lot like BSD UNIX. Some of our servers actually run BSD. We really like the BSD family of unix-like systems. In fact, I like BSD more than Linux, but if we ran all-BSD, there's no way in hell the rest of the staff could administer the network in my absence, as it'd be even more modified than our current Linux implementation. And believe it or not, BSD is significantly higher-maintenance than our Linux setup! Add to that the fact that we've written our own custom hardware drivers for Linux and REALLY don't want to port them to the BSD kernel trees... | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by Daniel |
| Wow, that seems like a lot of work. I have really got to learn my computer hardware (All I know is programming vocab). Laird, did you have to purchase most of this, or was it free like the Apache server? | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by lmbedore |
| Software-wise, our goal is to use 100% open-source or public-domain software, and have been successful thus far. I do spend an awful lot on hardware... I'd say at the very least $10,000 in the last 4 years. If you also consider that in those 4 years I've only spent $2100 on my own workstation ($1100 of which was a new 19" LCD last month), it's easy to see how seriously VectorStar is treated as a project.
We've also written a lot of fixes and updates for open-source software... Our webmail, AeroMail, is written by Mark Cushman, a really cool guy. We've made a huge number of changes to the code (about 30 feature changes) and always send him copies of the code changes we make. Right now I'm working on the mod_throttle module for Apache. It goes into an infinite loop when running on a machine using NIS. I've found the command that causes the loop, but haven't been able to trace it inside the code yet. | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by mathew |
| Is is possible install Berkeley DB support? | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by sirius crackhoe, the member |
| Ya had to go with the VG-900, didn't ya? | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by lmbedore |
| We don't install anything at user-request. That's a strict policy that will definitely never change. :)
Yep. that VX-900 screen absolutely rocks. Sure, I could have bought a pickup truck with that money, but sometimes it's worth it to cash in on some cool toys! | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by sirius crackhoe, the member |
| We did the VG-800's (paid less than $530 per screen). Viewsonic makes an awesome LCD. | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by The Zep Man |
| I'll install anything you want on my servers! I'll also manually masturbate caged animals for the purpose of artificial insemination! Zeppy... zeppy zeppy zep! | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by Daniel |
| Zep, you are never going to get a free sub domain here. The way you keep bugging...I think your rule is good Laird, no user requested installations. What I want to know though, why didn't you just use the free Apache software server and set all of your requirements on it. I have done this, and it is fairly simple. The only problem I have is with DNS names...I think that spending over a $100 is a waste, but that is only my opinion (unless it is like a new setup for your computer). So what will happen when you have to update the server that Vectorstar is on right now? | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by toby |
| Daniel wtf are you talking about? Yes we use only the best, most configurable, and secure software, this includes Apache. What type of requirements are you talking about? Also since when have domain names gone back up? Right now I am on Verisign's website (netsol.com) and am reading $25/yr if you sign up for three years? I cannot see how you are paying $100. Also I know people that sell them for $12 a year. And lastly what do you mean update the servers? Lastly, when the server that currently runs VectorStar is to be upgraded we will just place the new servers in its place. Then upgrade the old server and find a new home and purpose for its lost soul (can computers have a soul?). Sorry if this seems kinda harsh, to much caffeine and to little food. | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by Daniel |
| First of all, I did not mean to suggest that the $100 toward DNS names. I was reffering towards hardware and such...I kind of figured that is what would happen when the time came for the old server, but then Laird wants to test the new servers. So wouldn't that be considered testing? | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by Chris, non-member extraordinare |
| I've got a domain name from Portal of Evil, 5 bucks a year...since that's literally all the money I have (I am probably the brokest student alive), I have no place to use this domain name, because I can't find a free hosting service that allows it. Either way, they haven't gone up, unless you're looking in all the wrong places. | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by Daniel |
| I think that is my problem then...Wrong places. This thing hasn't been updated for a long time (no replies*). | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by Chris, non-member extraordinare |
| Try poehosting.com...they've been good to us ("us" being myself and the other writers for our site.) We'll probably have our whole site hosted there pretty soon, actually, as we don't really think we can afford to wait for hosting here any longer. They charge about 8 bucks a year for the domain name, and are quite accessible if you need them. | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by Daniel |
| So how goes the progress till signups Laird? | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by lmbedore |
| Right now Forge and Frank are both sitting here with me in 'the lab', working on the new mail server. We're hackin' away at it.
The web server is basically done, but for some unexplainable reason I can't seem to get cookies to work in PHP. I'll need an extended period of hacking/debugging+caffiene/beer to figure out what the issue is there.. It's been messing with me for about 2 weeks. Thus far the new mail server config looks to be solid. SSL on everything. Right now the only real outstanding issue is that cookie problem on the web server. | |
| Re: Keeping current with the new servers | by stale |
| Laird is the man. He drives an Acura and all the women love his combat boots of love. | |