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Posted by: VegasRacer Oct 8 2003, 04:27 PM

It seems like this web site has been crashing a lot.
(I am not giving you a hard time about it) Really I'm not.
Is there anything we can do as members to help out the 914World.com?
Do you (we) need new hardware? Money? Duct tape or WD40?

What can the grateful members in cyberland do to help?

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 8 2003, 04:33 PM

hmmm, yellow duct tape would make it faster, right?

i already got a second DL 380 which will act as a backup for the current server. i'm also planning on having the BBS run on a dedicated box with a active failover ...

all we need is $$$
Andy

Posted by: Brad Roberts Oct 8 2003, 04:53 PM

IIS doesnt like PHP. I dont think they ever intended it run on any ANY Windows servers. If I knew Unix and had a Unix box up and running for FREE.. this would run on a Unix box.. but when all the free servers and helpers are Windows guys... the answer for what this was going to run on was pretty simple. I could have easily ran this under a desk with a slow ass DSL line and babysat it 24/7 or gone with a T1 line... but that costs money.


I'm beginning to beleive this is a IIS Windows issues and not a PHP issue. I have nothing to back this up..



B

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 8 2003, 04:55 PM

i know you don't

get a little box with linux and slapp php and mysql on it.
i give you a IP and space in the cage.

no problem, i just don't have the time to deal with it right now.
Andy

Posted by: Brad Roberts Oct 8 2003, 05:01 PM

I dont have time either...

I dont know Linux..and I really dont care to know it...

Easy solution = Shut it off.


B

Posted by: fiid Oct 8 2003, 05:37 PM

I don't have a spare box that I deem to be reliable, but I am happy to do the linux install and get this thing running if you like.

I'd put up some cash towards getting a box too. What are you running this thing on?

Fiid.

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 8 2003, 05:44 PM

NT 4.0

Posted by: fiid Oct 8 2003, 05:47 PM

How much megahertz and ram are we talking....? Could we re-install it on the existing hardware? Is it at a hosting provider?? I have a server that is on a dsl line, but the upstream is only 256Kb/sec.

Fiid.

Posted by: Brad Roberts Oct 8 2003, 05:54 PM

We have the bandwith. There is no reason why it couldnt be moved over to any server on any operating system.

The problem I dont want to get into: ONE person knowing how this works. Right now I have 2 and both of us happened to be in the same place at the same time during the last major outage over the weekend. Its currectly causing the entire IIS system to crash and effects his paying clients.



B

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 8 2003, 05:57 PM

we've been through this a few times before, so for those of you who missed it ...

the BBS is running off one of my Biz-Servers that hosts about 10 different (eCommerce and others) web-sites. this server runs NT 4.0 and HAS TO stay that way, i am NOT willing to jeopardise my clients web-sites for this BBS.
the windows requirement came from my clients and is NOT my personal choice.
NO, we can not wipe it and re-code all my clients applications for Linux.

i am, however, not opposed to the idea of getting a linux box and add it to
THE CAGE i have at the COLO-Facility. my cage is directly connected to a BIG pipe so bandwidth is not a problem. i also have plenty of free IP-addresses.

my current workload does not permit me to move everything (the BBS) onto a linux box, but everything is already done in PHP and mySQL, so the transfer to a linux system should not create too many headaches, i just don't have the time.

we put the BBS on my box because it was the easiest way to get it up and running at the time and (at least for you guys) it is FREE ...

so stop giving me shit about what OS we're using and DO SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE and get us a linux box and move the bbs over and i will put it in my cage at the colo.


can you tell i had a great day at work?
Andy

Posted by: fiid Oct 8 2003, 06:02 PM

Fair play.

PHP is pretty similar whatever platform it runs on - it's just the OS around the webserver that is way different. If you want to go to linux (or any other unix), let me know if you want any help - I'm happy to do work on the install or to run you through how to administer it.

Another option is you could run apache on windows - perhaps with the php plugin. I've never done it, but it ought to work okay and gets you away from the IIS nastyness. It might be more stable than IIS. It could be run side-by-side and compared if you wanted to beta test it.

Fiid.

Posted by: fiid Oct 8 2003, 06:04 PM

Dude,

I did not intend to give you shit about the OS. I'm just not a big windows fan. No worries.

Sorry your day at work was not good.

Fiid.

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 8 2003, 06:07 PM

i'd like to get it off the box.
IIS is running stable otherwise, it's always the PHP that crashes IIS (and nothing else besides the BBS is using the PHP or mySql) ...

there's already way too much crap on that box, installing apache parallell to IIS is not going to make it any better.

right now, we run on a 4 x 500 MHZ with 1GB of RAM, but obviously that would be overkill if we separate the BBS.

it would run fine on a older box (< 1GHz) with some ram, 256MB should work just fine.
Andy

Posted by: Brad Roberts Oct 8 2003, 06:13 PM

Its lovely to go out of town and come back to a rash of SHIT.

I have a box we can use. I'll buy a HD for it this week and install W2K on it with IIS.

I currently have one that is 90% installed and is running my email and NOTHING else.

Andy.. get me cage access for Tuesday of next week.



B

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 8 2003, 06:15 PM

will do ...

Posted by: Part Pricer Oct 8 2003, 06:19 PM

Apache on Windows is better than IIS on Windows. But, I would only use it if I absolutely HAD to.

Not to appear an OS bigot, but moving to a LINUX box running PHP and MySQL to support the BBS would probably be a smart move. Brad doesn't want to learn a new system, but with the right hand-holding, he may even like it.

It should be on its own box. It's not right that we are jeopardizing Andy's business and customers with our hobby.

Fiid is nearby and has offered his expertise. All I can do is offer remote help and opinions (got lots o those).

Do we need to raise money for a box?

Posted by: fiid Oct 8 2003, 06:19 PM

I apologise. Shouldn't have said anything. Didn't mean to piss anyone off.

Posted by: vortrex Oct 8 2003, 06:21 PM

I was just waiting for some to mention linux! LOL

Posted by: Brad Roberts Oct 8 2003, 06:24 PM

No money needed for a new box.

I have a new (to us) box with almost everything already installed. Let me get it up and running in the cage and see how it responds. I'm sure I could figure out Linux.



B

Posted by: robby750 Oct 8 2003, 06:30 PM

I wish i spoke this language.

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 8 2003, 06:34 PM

ok, does anyone have a illegal copy of redhat available for download?
a matching copy of apache would be a plus

of so, i'll take brad's box this weekend and put a linux on it and install php and mysql and move the BBS over.

Andy

Posted by: Part Pricer Oct 8 2003, 06:40 PM

I hope you're kidding about Apache. It's a free download http://httpd.apache.org/.

Posted by: Brad Roberts Oct 8 2003, 06:44 PM

I'm guessing he meant to say/type "legal" copy.

I have a legal version of Linux here at the house.. just dont recall which version I have.


B

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 8 2003, 06:56 PM

legal, illegal, scheißegal ...
whatever, just give it to me

B., i'll be at the shop tonight to pick up my car.
can you have the box and linux ready for pickup?

Andy

Posted by: fiid Oct 8 2003, 06:57 PM

Redhat is free. The fastest local mirror is ftp://mirrors.kernel.org/redhat/redhat/linux/9/en/iso/ for the CD images.

Apache, and I think PHP come with it as RPMs, but I usually compile apache from scratch, just so you know what's in it.

I can burn you a set of CDs if you want. I have all the ISOs pre-downloaded.

Fiid.

Posted by: fiid Oct 8 2003, 06:58 PM

Oh - Mysql is bundled as well.

The latest redhat version is 9.

Posted by: VegasRacer Oct 8 2003, 07:00 PM

Me too.

I asked the original question.
About the only part of the answer I understood was

I hope the administration team can understand this: Thanks & Danke !

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 8 2003, 07:01 PM

redhat is free now? huh, i remember paying for it. it's been a few years ...
maybe they just charged me for the CDs and shipping to germany ...

Andy

Posted by: Brad Roberts Oct 8 2003, 07:02 PM

Nope. Not tonight. The new box needs a hard drive. The box "I" was going to put into place already had everything on it.. including my email.. so I cant just move it and have email down for 4-5 days before it goes into the cage.

I'll pick up a new HD for the donated box tomorrow from some place up here.


B

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 8 2003, 07:03 PM

that would be perfect. do you work in the city?
my office is at at 2nd and brannen ...

Andy

Posted by: fiid Oct 8 2003, 07:09 PM

That's the best news I've heard all day. I work at 5th and mission. I'll be in the office tomorrow so I can just hike over at lunchtime or something. Is there anywhere decent to eat over there??

Fiid.

Posted by: fiid Oct 8 2003, 07:09 PM

CD 1 is writing right now.

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 8 2003, 07:17 PM

very guud

there's a french bistro at southpark plus a pretty good sandwich place.
then there's the fancy Momo's.
there's a good pizza place.
there's crossroads cafe.
21st amendment brewery has decent food too.


Andy

Posted by: -P- Oct 8 2003, 08:11 PM

I'll host this site gratis if you like. it wont put a dent in our box

FreeBSD, Apache 1.3.x, mysql 4.x in a colo at Hurricance electric.

Posted by: krk Oct 8 2003, 08:17 PM

Another hurricane user. Cool.

kim.

Posted by: ! Oct 8 2003, 08:35 PM

If anyone cares....I miss the old 914 parts/cars for sale format.....easy to read and scroll through.....after a month ya start over again.....

Posted by: Brad Roberts Oct 8 2003, 08:48 PM

I liked it also until I found out 99% of my email spam was coming from companies who ran scripts against the old dgi.net html pages to strip our email addresses out of it. BULLSHIT.

Set your login up to have an email sent out when somebody post something new.. I enjoy NOT having to look at it every day.

Or.. better yet.. email the person at DGI.net to make the old one run again so we dont have to maintain this one.



B

Posted by: ! Oct 8 2003, 09:02 PM

In the LAST three weeks I have been BOMBED with Vicodin and burn your own DVD ads......I'm about ready to dump my email address.....

Posted by: campbellcj Oct 8 2003, 10:16 PM

As I have learned (more) in the last few days, configuration and tuning can make a world of difference on stability and performance of Wintel-based apps. (I had a huge semi-mission critical app go live at Boeing Seattle on Monday...yikes).

If you guys really want stability...move it to a Sun box with dual everything and Apache or iPlanet. I am pretty platform-neutral as I make about half my money from Wintel and half from UNIX; but I have yet to see a Windows box that will stay up continuously for 6-12 months. Including fairly major config or software changes along the way. Enough said.

Anyhow...I have what might be a dumb or offensive question so please don't take it the wrong way...but is this sucker (BBS) getting backed up? It sure would suck to have a drive bite the dust and lose all of this hard work of Andy/Jeroen/Brad etc. Not to mention all the archived content and pics. Just wondering.

Posted by: campbellcj Oct 8 2003, 10:18 PM

I'm well up over 100 spams a day, and that's just what makes it past my server-side filters. Prolly more like 200/day total. It's really out of control.

Posted by: Brad Roberts Oct 8 2003, 10:25 PM

The BBS is backed up.. the pics and such are not. But the entire site currently resides on several hard drives. One can fail but no single HD has all the info. Tape backup would be nice..

Anyone with an old "NetApp" we could use ?? 1 terybyte should be enough.



B

Posted by: mikester Oct 8 2003, 10:27 PM

Hey fellas, I don't like to toot my own horn much but I'm pretty unix savy and I'd recommend a FreeBSD OS or Solaris on a SPARC or INTEL platform. Redhat and the like I believe are a bad choice for servers due to their "desktop" aim. FreeBSD is the bomb though, Apple based OS X on it and Juniper bases their router OS on it.

I have a great deal of experience with both and would be happy to donate some time; unfortunately I can't until after my wedding (11/15). I would also be willing to donate a Sun Ultra 1, though that is a rather limited box I will say. It is limited in disk capacity (only holdes 2 or possibly 3) and I think it has 256MB RAM, I don't know how much disk space you need - I only have a 9GB drive in it now.

Just my two cents.

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 8 2003, 10:36 PM

we do frequent backups of the database and web-root (which has the pics etc.).
plus, the server runs a raid-array with all harddrives mirrored ...
soooo, if one burns out (which has happened), it'll just rebuild from the mirror.

i think we're good there, but if we move to a new box, we might want to do a tape-backup. we won't need much GB for that. anyone with a DAT drive sitting on the shelf?

Andy

Posted by: mikester Oct 8 2003, 10:36 PM

I forgot to mention something key....


Windows blows.

Posted by: McMark Oct 8 2003, 11:01 PM

How much space does the site take? GBs?

Posted by: Brad Roberts Oct 8 2003, 11:08 PM

Maybe 1 gig if your lucky. Locking down the size of the pics has helped keep the site small.



B

Posted by: dgw Oct 8 2003, 11:21 PM

Soooooooooooo...................

What kind of hard drives are you looking for?

I have a some SCSI drives I'm not using, because they are too noisy. An IBM 9 gig DDYS (10K rpm) 80 pin (I have a 68-80 pin converter), a 9 gig IBM DMVS, and a 4 gig Seagate Cheetah (10K rpm). The 10K drives need a fan, they get hot.

Posted by: Charles Deutsch Oct 8 2003, 11:22 PM

Yeah, it's all Greek to me too.

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 8 2003, 11:39 PM

actually, i have a couple of 9GB SCSI harddrives too.

B., does your box have a SCSI controller?
if not, i think i have a card here somewhere.

hmmmm, 2 x 9GB should be more than enough ...
Andy

Posted by: Brad Roberts Oct 8 2003, 11:47 PM

It does have a Adaptec SCSI controller. It was a SCSI box. I'll buy a new HD.

I did like the Cheetah 10k RPM HD's in the past..



B

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 9 2003, 10:23 AM

alright. those suckers are CHEAP these days ...

Posted by: Elliot Cannon Oct 9 2003, 02:44 PM

Hi,
I sure wish I knew what the hell you all are talking about! But then again who gives a rats ass. I'm just thankful for this bbs. You guys do a great job. Keep up the good work. Thanks from someone who is just about totally computer ignorant!!
Cheers, Elliot

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 9 2003, 03:12 PM

alright, Fiid just stopped by for lunch and dropped off the redhat CDs ...

thank you sir!

Posted by: fiid Oct 9 2003, 03:27 PM

I just bought a 20Gb drive Ultra-wide SCSI disk on ebay. I could pick up another couple and donate. I also have an 8mm Tape drive - I'm not sure if it's working right, but it will baqck up 11Gb compressed and is in an external enlosure. I'll donate that too.

I'm not sure we are going to gain much between linux, freebsd and solaris at this point - In my opinion the jump between Windows and any unix is huge enough and will make by far the biggest difference. A server install of redhat is no worse than freebsd. Lets spare Andy and Brad having firther discussion and see what hardware we can get together.

Posted by: fiid Oct 9 2003, 03:29 PM

I should add that I will test the tape drive first. It doesn't sound like we need extra disk.

Andy - I'll look into the backup problem we talked about. And no worries on the CDs.

FIid the repeat poster.

Posted by: Brad Roberts Oct 10 2003, 12:02 AM

Ok. New 18 gig Cheetah Seagate on the way. Will be here Friday night and we will get everything installed on the "new to us" box and see if we can blow this mutha up. It was 138$ for the new drive. 36gig drive was 178$. Since this is a SCSI box.. we can ad 3-4 more drives off the Adaptec HD.


I wanted to thank "P" for offering to host it for us. I just really dont want to burden anyone with this monkey.


B

Posted by: -P- Oct 10 2003, 08:45 AM

Scsi owns, Probably wont make much difference here...yet... but it is hella cool to have!


My new box I ordered/leased is a dual 2.4 Xeon, 1GB ram, 2x 36.4 RAID 1, Dual 10/100/1000. Combine that with seperate VLAN, 750GB/month transfer limit, SLA, good reporting/monitoring/filtering, and the fact that it is a local company and I couldnt justify building my own and grabbing a rack or 1/3 and setting up everything else myself


Having your own cage is cool though.

Posted by: Brad Roberts Oct 10 2003, 11:04 AM

I added up how many servers I have rack mounted in colo facilities and it came close to 500. I even did build outs in the UK at Exodus before they tanked. I miss the colo days and installs.



B

Posted by: Pnambic Oct 10 2003, 11:16 AM

Amen!

I've played quite a bit with Linux, but I'm not a systems administrator or anything. And even though I did buy my 914 before I ran into this place, I wouldn't feel nearly as secure in the fact that I WILL have it put back together without this place being here. You guys collectively rock, especially the ones making sure the board runs so that so many people can contribute their wealth of knowledge.

cheers

Posted by: SirAndy Oct 14 2003, 11:21 AM

server was down again. same old. PHP crashes IIS, grrrr ....

now if brad would just give me the new box and let me install linux on it.
but no, the guy wants to do everything himself. jeeeze.
oh well, we might have it running for the 1st anniversary of the BBS.

Andy