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Welcome to GotWake.Com
Whether you're a wakeboarder, a geocacher, a snowboarder, my mom, or all or none of the above - hopefully you find something of interest while you're here.
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News
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Geekin' Out |
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Posted By: Billy
on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - 01:20 PM |
So - as if I wasn't having enough fun already, with the events and experiences of the past week... last night, my NAS (Network Attached Storage) server decided to fail. Basically just a bunch of large disks in a box with some software, this device holds (I thought, QUITE reliably) every single digital picture, MP3, video editing project, and full backup data for all my other systems. It's aRaid5 array, meaning - I should be able to lose an entire disk without any data loss.
I detected the problem as I was working heavily with the box: Managing digital pictures, searching for images for both a wedding slide show and a Panza gallery, and re-indexing our extensive digital music collection, when suddenly... it was just gone. I then noticed a 'beeping' sound I'm unfamiliar with (rare, indeed ;-) coming from the office. Yes, it was my Buffalo Systems 2TB [TeraByte] (that's two thousand Gigs!) Terastation Live - and it was unhappy.
The good news is - countless hours later, there was finally a happy ending. It was certainly an arduous journey, not for the faint of heart. Read below the cut for all the gory details:
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Articles: Intermittent Outages |
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Posted By: Billy
on Wednesday, July 10, 2002 - 06:14 PM |
No, it's not rolling blackouts sweeping through Northern California - or even software failures causing the site to crash. You might have noticed the site "missing" once or twice recently (as I have) - which turns out to be a network problem.
Which leads me back to the old "You get what you pay for" idiom. In this case, definitely true. I marveled at the fact that CompUSA had a "house brand" 8-port 10/100Mb Ethernet switch (that's SWITCH, not hub) - for $40. The 3Com and LinkSys versions were more like $80, and several were only 4-port (course, I only needed 3 - but having a few spares is always good).
Well, after MUCH head-banging, I've isolated the problem to a couple of flakey switch ports. Could be the high temps and all (even with AC running, the office with all the computers is pretty warm), but still - that's LAME! I found at least one intermittent port - and in my further diagnosis, found another bad port - so my 8-port switch is now a 6-port... maybe?
Let's see if the site stays on the air...
Next time, I'm buying Cisco. ;-)
111' degrees today - sure hope everyone's air conditioning is working!
Chill Out,
Billy
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Articles: We're BA-AACK! |
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Posted By: Billy
on Thursday, April 04, 2002 - 01:38 PM |
Well, while I was up enjoying some great Springtime snowboarding, the primary disk drive here at GotWake decided it was time to go to "the big sleep".
It's been a pretty ugly recovery - but fortunately, I already had an additional drive installed, with available unallocated space - so I did a FRESH Linux install, and then re-mounted all the old data (which was already on the second drive).
Still LOTS of work to do - but looks like we're back in business. Please let me if you find things that aren't working...
Have a great day,
Billy
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Articles: Pardon the Dust... |
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Posted By: Billy
on Monday, March 18, 2002 - 11:34 PM |
and the Missing Floors, Doors to Nowhere, etc...
I spent the better part of the weekend struggling with a major work project - so yesterday afternoon, I decided to learn a few new things for me, and clean up some stuff in the process.
First on my list was to complete the migration to a true "DMZ" configuration, by moving my mail services off of the firewall box, and onto the new machine connected to the DMZ interface. In addition to the new firewall rules, migration of majordomo lists and configurations, and user mailboxes, procmail configurations, et al - I decided I'd take a big step and move from trusty (or is that rusty?) ol' Sendmail, and give Postfix a try. It was quite simple to complile and install, and configuration is FAR more straightforward than the intimidating sendmail.cf and it's associated M4 macro preprocessor ;-)
So, that all went SO well - I got mail for gotwake flowing to and from this new system, majordomo up and running, all the lists migrated and working with Postfix. Even got the majorcool web interface for the Listserver migrated and reconfigured, providing users a simple point-and-click tool for managing their subscriptions - SWEET!
Why then, after these series of successes, did I decide it was a good idea to perform an upgrade of the CMS (content management system) that powers gotwake - beginning at midnight??
Well, if you read the details of the new PostNuke .71 release, there are several compelling reasons. Lots of internal security enhancements, as well as new standard interfaces for modules and other components. Like I said - sure looked good on paper!
What I didn't realize is that it would completely "break" my default theme - mostly from an administration perspective, but I think you, as users, will find some problems as well. I've patched it up a bit based on some conversion guides I've discovered - but I may still push out the default "PostNuke" theme (which at least works) while I work out the remaining issues in my custom theme. The good news in all this? I'm learning a lot more about the internals of how all this works (well, specifically theme and module support, and their integration to the authentication services) - so that's a GOOD thing.
Finally, some of the modules (like Gallery - the new photo manager usually under the "Images" link) quite simply don't work with the latest module API. I guess I could have waited a few days, to allow the module developers and theme designers to catch up... ;-)
In the meantime, the Gallery is still available, outside of the CMS, at the link below:
http://www.gotwake.com/gallery
I hope to get these remaining issues resolved quickly - and in the meantime, please point out anything that doesn't work (or anything new and cool that you stumble across...)
Have a great week!
Billy
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Articles: Distributions |
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Posted By: Billy
on Saturday, December 29, 2001 - 11:16 AM |
Just so I can have a message under the Linux topic (cuz Tux is my hero! ;-) I thought I'd ask a question (perhaps our next poll?):
Do any of you use Linux? In what capacity? As a server, a workstation, ? At work, or at home? As a general-purpose server or as part of an "appliance" (firewall, load balancer, virus scanner, etc).
Finally, if you DO use Linux - which distribution do you prefer?
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