Posted on

16-Jan-2013

New ISP activated
Yesterday, even before the estimated time, the engineer came long to install the new Fiber modem and the new router. No IPTV yet, nor VoIP, although the connections are present: it seems there is some administration to attend first, but the new ISP has promised to work on it as fast as possible, since we’re unreachable by phone for over a month now….Worst case it could take another 2-3 weeks…
Next was the challenge to have DNS updated as soon as possible, so a mail was sent after a phone call, but it was impossible to handle the request that night. But it would certainly be the next working day – that is: today. Indeed, it looks that between 15:00 and 15:30 (local time) the domain registrations were updated.
Outgoing internet was (mostly) working. But incoming wasn’t because of the DNS issue.
But that alone doesn’t mean all is well…
The new router (Fritz!Box 3790) is not connected to be a router: all connections are on the LAN-switch, even the incoming from the modem. No real problem since the router uses VLAN tagging, and the different VLANs are bridged to different ports; it seems that the one carrying the incoming signal is passing the firewall to connect to the port routing into the LAN – presumably all traffic would pass to the Vigor router that is taking care of the boundary for years. In this respect, it would need to get another (fixed, of dynamic) address on the WAN port, and it would need to route all traffic over the new router.
However, that didn’t work as expected. Although I saw packages coming in, they were addresses to the internal address if the new router, and passing the answer back failed altogether, the default route being defined properly the software. The answer would be to bypass the Fritz!box – setting the VLAN up as a bridge, which has been done before (by a script) but that was not at all recommended.
This morning the first attempt was to use the Vigor 2910 insetad, but that fails to connect, because it doesn’t support IPV6 and VLAN tagging, as does its successor (Vigor 2920) or its smaller brother 2310 – though it looks that misses the highly validated security facilities. And because of the difference in price is not that big, I’ll purchase the first.
But to be able to be accessed in the mean time, I copied the port forwarding specification into the Fritz!Box; it didn’t help first since there was a route left over from earlier attempts…Once that was taken off, it all seems to work now.

That is: until a message sent from one of the PC’s was rejected due to denied access. Duh. The SMTP configuration still mentioned the SMTP-server from the previous ISP as alternate gateway. After I changed that, mail also worked. Now it is a matter of waiting for the DNS update has passed over the Internet so mails in transit will be delivered – on the right spot.

Posted on

14-Jan-2013

Connection troubles – once more
At 12:21 local time (11:21 system time) the connection broke down again. Not just Internet (which O experienced), also phone and TV were gone. After waiting at the phone for about 20 minutes, I was able to contact my (then expected current) ISP to find out that the line had been taken over, presumably by my (then new) ISP, by which all services were gone, even the analogue and digital signal that are converted from fiber to coax. SO I called the new ISP and, after again, some waiting, I learned the line was indeed transferred and the new signal was all available on that connection. It’s just that the modem wasn’t installed.
This was weird, since I already had an appointment with the company that was to install that modem: on Feb. 1st, after postponing from Dec 28th. Indeed – but it was brought to today by the ISP, a ticket was created but since there already was an appointment set, there was no need to re-assign it to today.
Not too bright.
Anyway: the connection will be brought to life tomorrow (15-Jan-2013) between 1600 and 1700 – local time. Because the IP address for the new connection has been assign already (at least, I got an address in the confirmation letter) I can ask my DNS-registrar to reassign my addresses tonight. Or tomorrow morning, after confirmation from my ISP.
In the mean time, I can get on by specifying the addresses in the local configuration.

Posted on

24-Dec-2012

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….