An update on my massive webserver-status post below: The daily random email alias generator is running again, for those of us who made use of it. (Oddly enough, that generator is the last remnant of code from Monaural Jerk to be used anywhere on our server.) Also, I found the problem with emailed comments showing up with empty “From” addresses. Turns out that it’s a problem related to the installation of Spam Karma 2, and I’ve tweaked the code in that plugin accordingly. (It tries, apparently, to make the “From” address something like “wordpress at domain” but it wasn’t working. I simply changed the parts of the code that created the “Reply-To” header and turned them into “From”.) Now any email spam filters (such as SpamAssassin) won’t be scoring “down” comment notifications because of a missing rather-important email header.

Not bad for an hour’s work, eh? Speaking of work… I need to go continue looking for that.

We moved to this new server a few weeks ago, and as of Monday we’re running on 256 MB of RAM. Once I felt comfortable that the system is stable enough after the upgrade, I started fixing things, but with the job hunt and other life stuff (and the occasional heroism & villainy), I haven’t gotten around to everything that needs doing. Here’s where things stand so far:

Yay! The RAM upgrade seems to be working precisely as expected. We’re no longer chugging periodically, nor have we crashed the server completely in well over a week. Between the memory tuning tweaks to SpamAssassin, MySQL and Apache I think we’re good to go for the long haul.

Boo! I lost my gallery. It’s entirely my own fault, mind you. When I upgraded to Gallery 2, back on the old server, I failed to add the new directory structure (most of G2’s files live outside the web path) to the backup routine. I think I managed to salvage the images themselves, but the install is completely hosed. If I want a gallery, I’m looking at a completely fresh install and a fair bit of tedious re-posting of every image. Ouch.

Yay! On the other hand, everyone else’s gallery is once again fully functional, now that Jhead, ImageMagick and NetPBM are installed on the new server. Aren’t you ladies glad that I never got around to pushing for G2 upgrades?

Boo! With the loss of my gallery I’m looking at the prospect of re-coding all of those image links within a dozen Mai Otome recap postings in the anime site. I’m not convinced that this is a good use of my time, to say the least, considering that not only will I have to re-code the links (Gallery 2 does… interesting things with image URLs) but re-upload a buttload of recaps to the new gallery. Ugh! So… if you’re wondering where the hell the anime site went? The answer is, “Away.” I have the database dump file (I was backing that up at least) so I can extract the series reviews, which I consider to be the only content really worth saving. My current idea is to re-post those here under an Anime “Reviews” category right alongside those other Reviews categories I never use. Er, yeah.

Yay! Yesterday I set up the firewall code designed to mitigate the effect of brute-force SSH login attacks. It’s a more elegant solution than the Swatch-based system I implemented back at the job site, and anything that does the job without adding to the server’s process overhead makes me happy.

Boo! I haven’t put the backup scripts into place yet. Uh, yeah, I’ll be getting on that this weekend. Part of the problem lies with the fact that unlike my previous server, this one lacks a failover machine that I can simply mirror the files and store database dumps on. If I want to back this thing up properly, I need to either manually download database files and website archives on a regular basis or find something that’ll do so automatically, which is far, far more appealing both from a “reduction of tedium” perspective and a “make sure it actually gets done” perspective. Believe me, folks, I’m working on this. Every day that the hard drive doesn’t die in this server is a blessed gift from the goddesses.

I think that covers the highlights. Overall, I’m pleased to be in complete control of my own webserver at long last. (Not that the previous server was out of my control, I suppose, but there were… limitations.) I’m also delighted by the available bandwidth, as we’re no longer competing with six outgoing audio streams and a bajillion “now playing” text file requests for the resources of a mere single T1 connection. Now I just need to clear a few more hurdles to get back to nearly where we were before, and then I can (gasp!) try some new things.

When I get around to them, that is.

Twice in the last twelve hours I’ve called the (polite, efficient, helpful) Dedicated Hosting support techs at Infinity Internet (our new hosts!) to reboot this webserver. As near as I can tell, running six websites (no matter how low-traffic) and an email rig on 128 megabytes of RAM just isn’t going to cut it.

I’ve tweaked some settings here and there to (hopefully) cut down on the chance of another server lock-up between now and Monday (which is the earliest I can talk to someone about upgrading the memory), but if you see my little family of websites go “poof” between now and then… well, now you’ll know why.

Unless, of course, the server vapor-locks before you can read this. In which case you’ll be able to read all about it next week when I get this resolved…

Whew. I ran into a little gotcha right at the end (“hmm, maybe double-checking PHP for MySQL support would’ve been a good idea two days ago…”) but other than that it would seem that my efforts of the past week have paid off.

Yes, the websites are back. Not that they were ever really gone, thanks to the good efforts of my former corporate overseer, but I feel a whole helluva lot better now that I’m up and running in new digs. There will be bits and pieces of all of our sites that probably won’t be fully functional until I’ve had a chance to tinker with them individually, of course. Please be patient with me, as it’s been quite the couple of weeks.

I’ll do a nice big “catch up on things” post later. This? I’m mostly just testing to make sure things actually work…

This, folks, is why I require authorization to be on my “buddy list.”

The user 177254271 wants to add you to their buddy list for the following reason:
Hello, how are you?
im fine and you?

Riiiiiight. On a related note, last month’s entry about “missy_kitty” is among the most popular posts I’ve written yet, at least in terms of search engine hits and comments from people I don’t know. It’s so nice to be providing a valuable service, indeed.

Happy Pi Day!

Actually, this concept will be even funnier in nine years, depending on your preferred date notation.

Think about it.