Posted on

05-Feb-2017

Update # 1
Last action yesterday was installing new version of WordPress, had a little test and found no issues. Now, I just set the logicals for all blogs to this version, so all blogs run using WordPress 4.7.2.

Update # 2
Following the instructions to upgrade MySQL 5.1 to MariaDb 5.5 didn’t work as planned. Partly because I forgot a few things, like stopping the running database (the scripts copies the database files, and they should not be locked…), but I also noted a number of options need to be commented out before upgrade – the script will fail because of that: It will take the 5.1 configuration and remove all comments, but doesn’t check on obsolete or now invalid options. No problem because that part of the update can be repeated. So in the end I ended up with a running server, but because I had forgotten to remove not just all files in [.data] but left the ones in [.log] alone, there were a number of issues. Resulting a very slow-acting database engine (had to restore the log files, amongst other things), but in the end ran into a stack overflow. Also found that creating a certificate for SSL connections refers to SSLROOT – which doesn’t exist – should have used SSL$ROOT, propably. So there is some work pending in this area.
So in the end I restarted MySQL 5.1.

To be retried later this week.

Posted on

04-Feb-2017

Maintenance
It’s been a quiet month:

PMAS statistics for January
Total messages    :   1910 = 100.0 o/o
DNS Blacklisted   :      0 =    .0 o/o (Files:  0)
Relay attempts    :     94 =   4.9 o/o (Files: 31)
Accepted by PMAS  :   1816 =  95.0 o/o (Files: 31)
  Handled by explicit rule
         Rejected :    971 =  53.4 o/o (processed),  50.8 o/o (all)
         Accepted :    150 =   8.2 o/o (processed),   7.8 o/o (all)
  Handled by content
        Discarded :    342 =  18.8 o/o (processed),  17.9 o/o (all)
     Quarantained :    329 =  18.1 o/o (processed),  17.2 o/o (all)
        Delivered :     24 =   1.3 o/o (processed),   1.2 o/o (all)

Most days there has been some attempts to abuse the server for relay each day, but far less than is usual. Most files are well below the rated limit (4 blocks, or 2Kb in size), jus on 09-Jan-2017 and 29-Jan-2017 were larger: 8 blocks (4KB), and 4 blocks (2KB – more than on the others days).

If would be nice if it stays that low, but I guess I’ll see higher levels later this year.

Network outage
Yesterday, when trying to read mail from the server at work, I noted there was no access AT ALL to the site – even VPN into the router failed. Turned out to be a problem with the Internet provider, that lasted until approximately 16:00 – after which all mail that was blocked for that reason, got in again. Not juts Internet. Because TV and telephone use the same connection, these were down too.
Well, it all worked again even since.

New hardware, new software
This year. I intend to add an Itanium server to the data center, so I can get somewhat acquainted to that hardware. Apart from the usual WordPress updates (one coming this weekend) I plan to upgrade the database (from MySQL 5.1 to MariaDb 5.5) and PHP (a big leap to 7.0). This involves all blogs to I need to take care that I don’t break anything, severely (It may required some PHP code changes as I already found out when trying to run 5.4….)
And, if I can get hold of it, newer versions of OpenVMS.

Apart from that, there will be new content in Trips, Tracks and Travels.