News

Another day, another server failure

April 22, 2012 – 9:26 pm

It seems I have the worst luck with hardware, ever.

The motherboard on my main server failed the other day. It is showing a POST code of 90, and sometimes 66. Most of the time it won’t even show the BIOS boot screen. It just remains blank. However, this motherboard (an Abit AN-8 Ultra) was many many years old, so I guess it’s time to get a new one.

Luckily, I was working on setting up a high-availability load-balancing cluster (not that I needed it), and so I had a mirror of everything that was on my server. I was able to get it back up and running relatively quickly. The only thing that caused any problems was the MySQL databases, which were on my main server. I put the hard drive into a USB enclosure, chrooted into the mount point, and dumped the databases.

Anyways, that being said, the only thing the server is missing right now is the Facebook comments plugin, the APRS I-Gate I had running, and the speed my old server had. I’m looking to replace the motherboard and get the old server back up and running within the next few weeks.

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Amateur Radio News

Server Migration + APRS Fun

March 23, 2012 – 1:26 pm

I just completed my second server migration in three days. I originally had moved the server to Ubuntu 11.10 Server Edition, but I didn’t like it so I switched over to Debian ‘Squeeze’, and am loving it so far.

For those of you who are nerdy-inclined, I set up an APRS I-Gate with Xastir using my computer’s sound card. I ended up using the MKISS mode of soundmodem, which seems to be significantly less taxing on the server’s resources than using the KISS module. So, if you’re in the area, send VA3NEE a message over the radio, and it will pop up on my screen!

I’m planning to build a PTT & TX interface so I can also transmit packets from APRS-IS over the radio, as well as ACK and reply to messages. Also, expect an implementation of Xastir’s SnapShot feature on this website soon. Once I figure out why the images aren’t saving correctly, I’ll write a shell script to copy over the images to my web directory for online viewing.

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News

Website Back Up

September 14, 2011 – 8:53 pm

Hey there!

After an unfortunate hard disk failure on my server computer, I am back! I’ll be re-adding content in the next few days. Unfortunately, I did not back up my website, so all my posts and settings are lost. However, this means I can make it better than before! Expect a few posts and my CV within a week!

Also, I would like to thank Western Digital for their quick RMA process. I was shipped a 2TB hard drive within a week of reporting my old one defective. My old hard drive was 1.5TB! Though countless hours of work on my server are lost, I got an extra half terrabyte!

Nick

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