27-Mar-2012

Power loss
Shortly after 17:44 local time (the system is set to UTC, no DST, so in nreal time, it’s two hours later) power was llost. The system didn’t restart automaticly since the HSX50 was – once again – too slow. So I had to reboot by hand. By luck, the startup of the web-based stuff didn’t mention the new PHP confuguration so all blogs started as usual.

Speaking the PHP: I got the answers I was looking for. When I use Mark Berryman’s PHP port, I am to use the PHPWASD file he supplies with the kit because Mark Daniel’s PHPWASD kit is not compatible with PHP 5.3, that needs to be called in a different way. Also, some mpdules are built=in where HP delivers them as separate modules.
And I have to do something with PHHP.INI to get the current version of WP running….

So I have to do it again. Perhaps it’s time to upgrade WP as well. meaning I have to do some serious reading. BEFORE the update…

16-Dec-2010

Again
Another power failure, that took over four hours to be restored. This time, I could handle the situation myself – but not before 20:00. This time, because syslog did run, I could pinpoint the time of failure to 11:27. On boot, I could now locate the cause of syslog’s failure to start: I simply had a typo in the startup procedure. Now that is settled – and I found it make take a few minutes before lines are actually written to disk. It may be a RMS buffer that is flushed when full, SYSLOGD may buffer itself. This means that the last message before power failure may be written a few minutes before the actual event.
Not that this matters a lot. But in case something is terribly wrong, a direct write might be useful.

15-Dec-2010

Kind of Murphy
Of course it happens when I won’t be near the center: a power failure. This time it must have happened not that early since I could access before.
After work, I tried to access the router but the only thing that worked somewhat was the VPN connection – though unstable. Direct access would have worked if I would have used the proper protocol (https). But the server dis not respond to ICMP requests.
So I phoned home and learned about the power failure. I also learned there had been trouble with a secutity switch, and if it’s the one that serves the data center, it’s abvious it has been caused by the disks starting up. But at this moment it was clear that the disks were powered on. So I instructed my son to boot the system, and within a few minutes all was up and running again.
Well, almost. The public web couldn’t be accessed, and I found that startup didn’t configure it. But restarting the server solved it.
To determine the moment, I checked the logfile: it happened after 10:22 local time, the last line being:

%%%%%%%%%%% OPCOM 15-DEC-2010 10:22:57.95 %%%%%%%%%%%
Logfile time stamp

and DecEvent showed even more data:
**** V3.4 ********************* ENTRY 2362 ********************************

Logging OS 1. OpenVMS
System Architecture 2. Alpha
OS version V8.3
Event sequence number 29388.
Timestamp of occurrence 15-DEC-2010 10:57:40
Time since reboot 23 Day(s) 22:39:34
Host name DIANA

System Model AlphaServer DS10 617 MHz

Entry Type 38. Time Stamp Entry

SWI Minor class 7. Timestamp

I would expect to get even more precise infromation bu examining the SYSLOGD log – but found it hadn’t started since the last update – nor now. This is something to be looked at; manually starting the server using logger didn’t work …
I have set Syslog on port 517 in stead of the default 514. This port is also used by RSH – by the setting of HP OpenVMS CTPIP$CONFIG – but for TCP instead of UDP. But it might have caused a problem. However, the logger did now start properly – it may have started anyway but it has been overlooked. But no matter what, it seems that the boot after updates didn’t start SYSLOG.
Well, it now runs.