Farewell, Node1 server.

Long live Node2.

Email has been on Google Apps for a couple weeks now with no problems, websites are all migrated to the new box, and nothing remains of any use on the old system. So, I just turned off and removed the Linode VM of the old server. Had to do it by month’s end or get dinged for another $75, so today was a good day to make that happen.

It’s always a bit of a downer, shutting off a server you worked so hard to build in the first place. But that’s the way of things.

I… may have only just a few minutes ago fixed a setting that prevented WordPress (and anything else PHP-based) on this new server from sending email.

Whoops. No comment notifications, for instance.

On the upside, if this is the worst mistake I make throughout this process then I’ve done pretty damned well.

If you can read this, then the website migration worked.

If I get email notification of any comments left for this post, then the email migration worked.

Okay, the email migration worked and I know it, because I got my daily Ello “inspirational” email newsletter today. Oh, Ello, when are you going to become something people other than froofy artsy-fartsy types will actually want to use?

Anyway. The email accounts are over on Google Apps now, and all but one of the hosted websites are migrated to the new Linode server. Hopefully I’ll have the last website and the NTP Pool configuration done in a couple of days and I will be able to turn off the old server. Huzzah!

It’s been a bit quiet here because this month I’ve started on a long-overdue project: Migrating the webserver to a… new webserver.

I’ll try to sum up.

The current webserver, aka Node1, is a legacy Linode system. It’s a 6GB virtual Linux server of a configuration they don’t even offer anymore, and it started life as an Ubuntu 10.04 LTS system. I upgraded it a while ago because 10.04 LTS went out of support… last year.

I’d like to get to the current PHP and MySQL versions, but that means either doing a lot of crazy backporting or doing an in-place upgrade. Considering I upgraded from 10.04 to 12.04 and had… issues… I don’t like the idea of performing yet another in-place major OS upgrade. So, I’ve purchased a second Linode system, a 4GB rig this time, and if I can get everything moved in the next two weeks I won’t need to pay the full monthly price for the old box and new box combined.

We’ll see how that goes.

Since the 4GB box costs less, I’m using the cost difference to fund getting email into some kind of hosted environment, because damn me but I’m tired of wrangling mail server configurations. Pay someone else to handle that headache? Yes please.

So that’s what I’m up to. Once this is complete, then I’ll be looking into a couple of creative projects. Honest!