Postponed
The date I would get a new connection has been postponed until 31-Jan-2013. That is: that will be the first date that the connection can be established. So this site will be up and running a few weeks longer than originally expected. I do have the anticipated address already, and both the modem and router/firewall delivered by the new ISP. That modem offers IPV6 connectivity, but I have no idea whether the firewall offers the same facilities as the current one. Eventually, if possible, I would have all IPV4 traffic pass as-is – including the IP address by the ISP – and use the current modem. If IPV6 is not a requirement, I could even think of not using that router at all. Something to discuss with the mechanic that will install the connection (free of charge).
Testing WP35
A colleague has asked me if I could help set up a WordPress installation, using latest versions of Worpress, SWS/Apache and PHP (by Mark Berryman). The site runs on an emulated Alpha (Avanti by MSI) but there were some issues, mainly functional but performance as well. Functionality should be tackled fist, so I set up an installation on Daphne, installed SWS, MOD_PHP and next Mark Berryman’s port, followed by WordPress 3.5. There were quite a number of files that needed to be renamed, since I found that, even after $ SET PROCESS/PARSESTYLE=EXTENDED, dots in a filename are replaed by underscores – and the code expects dots….No big deal, once you know what to look for.
I used the very same setup as I had done on Diana, including this blog. First, I started with the vanilla WP installation, nothing fancy, just plain out-of-the-box, and next I created the site blog that uses this code. My colleague has confirmed that the basic WP site works, next should be the test site.
If that all works, we should check whatever can be done to speed things up. Daphne is way smaller that the environment the blog will run on, and it already has shown that the way SWS works with PHP, requires quite a lot of resources, Memory, in particular, and process slots. Showing the admin page alone, requires at least 5 SWS worker processes, all requiring a full set up of the whole environment. And PHP.INI needs to be adjusted so the maximum execution time for any script is extended – well over the default 30 seconds. I have set it to 2 minutes on Daphne and even that’s not enough (though I could create the database in that time).
This offers me the opportunity to set up a WASD environment (which also exists in Daphne) to run the blogs in WP 3.5 – and later. Because I now have a working environment, be it under SWS….
12-Dec-2012
On the verge of ISP change
In a few days, my Internet subscripotion will end – and so my connection, for an unknown period. I’m depending on my new ISP for a new connection, and I have no idea what their planning will be. Given Chrismas and New Year in the next weeks, it may take a few weeks….Of course, I could have set up a co-hosting facility, for mail in particular, but my interpretation was it could take just a few days…
We’ll see…
It will give me an opportunity to do some work on the configuration – that I intended to do anyway.
15-Nov-2012
Trouble in paradise
When I switched to fiber last year, I got a modem without a fixed IP address – wasn’t possible on that type, an besides: I would always get the same address on reboot – except for major network changes.
All went well until July, when a complete overhaul was executed – without notice, so I got a new address, so I had to contact the regristar of the domain to update DNS with the new addresses….A free upgrade from 50Mb to 100Mb, symetrical, for a one-time cost of EUR 10… Not bad. That address would not change, I was told. And when a major overhaul was expected, inclusing an address change, there would be a warning.
In the mean time, the ISP was bought by the big monopolist, and I got a letter that mentioned a chnage in administration. No action required.
Yesterday, about 01:20, connection was broken and restored within a minute. It happens now and than, and has no implications normally. But this time, the connection was restored with another address. No warning, either. So it was not before 09:00 that I found out NOT ANY connection could be made. Not even to the router – and setting up VPN failed as well.
That I got another address became clear when I looked into the situation that night. MAC addresses were still the same, even on the gateway, but the address was chnaged as well. As well as the DNS servers. Phoned the helpdesk, of course they couldn’t reverse the action, nor could they guarantee that it wouldn’t happen again; even worse, it could happen at any time from now on.. And a fixed address could no longer be obtained from them.
This is considered unacceptable, so I looked for another ISP. On the network, there is one more from the beginning: the big monopolist in fact, that offered less facilities for a higher price than the ISP I choose at the time. And for a few weeks, there is a third one – a subsidiary of this monopolist (but with their own standards). And as I found out that my current ISP is bought by that monopolist, there is actually no alternative any more for the facilities I require. But I will have all ports open – and a fixed IP address.
So I made the switch – for Internet, and by that, for HD television, because that requires Internet access as well. I vae a month notice period, so the definitive swtich will take place half December, it will mean a few days without Internet – I can live with that.
In the mean time, my sites weren’t reachable, since DNS contained the wrong addresses. So I asked my registrar to chnage addresses to the new one. This morning, these weren’t included yet, it took until noon today – after which I noticed I passed the wrong addresses, in all hectic of yesterday. That was repaired within an hour, and by and by, the changes propagated to the Internet. And at 16:30, this was the last site to be available again.
Now wait for the bill. EUR 10 enyway, perhaps twice – but that’s my fault. Hopefully, it will last until the switch of ISP (which will cost an additional EUR10 for that (final) change)
05-Jul-2012
New hardware
My (about 5 years old Pentium-4 HT) workstation dubbed Aphrodite will get another role: It will replace the machine in the living room. That one is Pentium-4 as well – without HT, and quite problematic at times.
I obtained a state-of-the-art new box: ASUS P9X79 motherboards with Intel i7 processor @ 3.6Mhz, and 8 Gb of memory (expandable to 64Gb). 8 channel audio, as on my previous system. Transferred Video and disks, but not the DVD-drives: These are ATAPI and the new system has (e)SATA only, to I had to obtain that as well.
Suitable for the heavy stuff I intend to run on the beast: Running multiple Alpha emulators side by side, and processing sound, image and, perhaps, video. I could use Linux on the box, but the emulators I can use do either not run on Linux, or not in a way that I intend to use them. For sound- and image processing, I already have Windows-based software I can work with pretty well, and I would need to learn these Linux equivalents as well. In the future I may add Linux as an alternate OS but for the moment, I stick to Win7pro-64.
Some trouble: The front USB bus has a different connector that doesn’t fit anywhere on the motherboard ans yes: I do need them; there is no COM exit, it needs to be added, and the motherboard seems to have a broken DIMM slot so 4 Gb of memory isn’t fitted in it’s preferred position.
These I’ll have to address with the supplier.
But I had to install the OS from scratch since Win7Pro-32 didn’t boot on this box. But installing the OS didn’t work out as good as I expected: I had to clear the whole disk – including the partitions containing data – because the BIOS of the new box couldn’t handle them: this is EFI based….
It was no problem to move them to the other disk – I thought – using a DOS box and XCOPY the contents to a directory on the other disk. But once that was done, I couldn’t find the directories I created. No big deal. Pity – but I do have a backup, and there hasn’t been much changes after that anyway. Of would it be a disk I didn’t expect?
After shutdown and moving the machine to its fibal locatioen, it turned out that a boot after shutdown did almost always fail, and I had to do a repair from the installation disk – which invariably failed because “… the system to be repaired is incompatible…” . But when offered to reboot normally, there seemed to be nothing wrong. Might been caused because I installed in safe mode?
So in the end, I re-initiated the disk, and installed everything again from scratch – but now when booting from the DVD-drive. From that moment on, it all went smoothly. Getting drives and software from in Internet – no problem.
But in accessing any of my own sites, there was. None responded, but services and servers were up and running….
New IP address
First thing to be done is pinging the server by name:
ping www.grootersnet.nl
translated the server to be 85.223.43.24 – what I would expect because that’s what’s in DNS, being the outside address of the router.
But when accessing the router to seee what it says, the WAN connection is now on a different network, as well as the DNS-resolvers of the router. Contacted the ISP site (luckily there was no problem getting out!) and found there had been done some work that morning, and the connection had been down for a few minutes. So I called the help desk, and it was confirmed that the address had indeed changed. but there had been no information on this – which I would expect to be sent IN ADVANCE. Anyway, I had to contact the registrar of my domain to have the DNS references updated. That requires a signed document, which could be sent as an attachment in an email message.
Which I couldn’t use over the Internet….
But there are other addresses I could use: my provider’s, gmail, yahoo, hotmaill….So I created the letter, signed it, scanned it (using the new box – even with it’s problems) into a PDF file and mailed it. Next by the phone, it was handled within minutes, but it took some time before it would be expanded over the Internet.
This morning however, it still didn’t work: Although the new DNS-servers got them (the router configuration shows their addresses) the DNS servers inside the LAN didn’t. So I restarted BIND on the VMS box, and the router, but in some way or another it didn;t help. Looking into the LAN configuration of the router, I found the DNS-server in the LAN was the VMS box…Removed that: and now it’s all working again. But from elsewhere – mail, in particular – it may take some time: I didn’t mention that so that still refers to the old address..Will be changed today as well.
There has been one advantage: No spam either 🙂
Clean-up of DHCP and local DNS
Over the years,. systems have come and gone, and any new node in the LAN get’s an address by the DHCP server; and as long as the MAC address doesn’t change, that address will get the once supplied address. That will add these systems in the local DNS – and they’ll stay there.
But systems come and go, and the obsolete references are not deleted. So I took the possibility to remove all the old entries in both the DHCP and BIND databases.