wiretrip.org

Server updates, II

Most transports seem to be running OK. I'm having some trouble with the yahoo transport, but I'll look into that later on. Time for sleep now, first
I'll keep monitoring the services, and hope things will stay stable.

Server updates

The new server has been installed, and moved to the data center.
A very rudimentary jabber server containing all the accounts is now online.
I'm working on adding the transports, but might not be able to finish this tonight. Enjoy the new box, it's way faster than the old one

Jabber server issues

As some people have noticed, the jabber.wiretrip.org jabber service is currently offline. The bad news is that the downtime is caused by hardware problems; the good news is that new hardware is here.

A few days ago, the RAID5 set that holds most of the data started spitting out SCSI errors.
One of the disks in the array is having hardware failures (bad sectors), in quite large numbers. As the amount of errors it's getting is higher than the bad sector table on the disk can hold, those errors are 'leaking trough' to the OS.
Linux doesn't seem to cope well with this, even while it's supposed to continue running normally. To avoid loss of data, and risk of more crashes, I've had to shut down a bunch of services - one of them being the jabber daemon. Fortunately no data is lost, and all accounts and state will be restored.
As the server I'm using has been in use 24/7 for most of the past 6-8 years (!), I've decided to replace it, and make it a secondary/fallback server for mail/dns, and possibly Jabber - it will be colocated in a different datacenter.

The jabber.wiretrip.org replacement box is being installed as we speak, and is much more powerful (a dual dualcore AMD opteron box with fast hotswap SATA disks in mirrored mode). I will be doing a basic install of the new machine tonight, and it will be moved to the data center to replace the old box start of next week (probably tuesday). In the weekend I'll be off to lowlands, so won't be able to finish setting up earlier.

Sorry for the inconvienience, and I hope to see you all back on a faster reinstalled jabber server as soon as it gets back online!

Weblog reinstalled!

I finally got around to reinstalling the weblog. The new install uses
Serendipity.
Upgrades are easier, and i like the centralised plugin system.
Migrating the database from Wordpress was pretty painless too.
The install is not completely finished yet, as I still need to add
some static pages. The gallery is missing as well; I'll add that
as soon as I decide if I want to go with gallery2 or something else.

Motion sensor desktop switching

Another reason to get a shiny new macbook/macbook pro: you can turn it into a Smackbook Pro.
I'm not sure how long I can avoid buying one..

Apple product cycle

So true...

http://www.misterbg.org/AppleProductCycle/

(and I haven't posted anything for ages, so I'll just start dumping links that friends are sending me )

Upgrade!

I finally managed to find some time to upgrade the blog to Wordpress 2.0 .
The interface looks much nicer, but the site itself shouldn't be much different. I'm still not entirely happy with the design, but I'm not entirely positive about finding time to improve it
This is a pretty busy period for me, so I hope I'll find time to post a little more. The next couple of months I'll be working hard trying to set up a new development team at work, so that'll keep me busy enough..
Maybe I'll find some time to look into AJAX (the XML/javascript thing, not the soccer team) - I'd like to AJAXify my iTunes export thing, write a DVD catalogue thingie, or add some more features to the PowerDNS frontend (and release it).
We'll see!

back in the western world

Just arrived back in the Netherlands yesterday, after 2 weeks of culture-shocking India. Pictures will follow
The jabber.wiretrip.org MSN transport has been down for about 2-3 days, due to a locking problem in my monitor scripts. Sorry for the inconvenience for the people who were bugged by it! The bug has been fixed, and MSN should continue to work pretty reliably now.

jabber server status and notes

I've been noticing lots of hits due to sites linking to me for the jabber server I run, so I thought I'd give a slight update on that
There's a jabber server running on jabber.wiretrip.org, officially supporting MSN, AIM/ICQ, Yahoo! and groupchat(s) - over SSL as well as unencrypted. The Yahoo! transport is currently (unfortunately) not functional, as Yahoo! is being a pain. I'll work on that as well
There is no dedicated jabber page as of yet. I'm working on some web frontend stuff, so people can edit their contact lists, view undelivered messages and such. If someone has some clean working perl code to calculate wpjabber hashed directory names from the jabber user ID, let me know I also wouldn't mind if someone feels inclined to make some clean CSS-based design for the website.
For now, things will stay this way; as soon as the code is done it will go online, and I'll distribute it under the Artistic license.

PowerDNS console

I've built a little PowerDNS console for the people I run secondary DNS for. Functionality is tiny: viewing of zones, deletion of zones, deletion of supermasters. It's located on the left side menu, under 'Tools'. I might release the source sometimes soon, probably after packaging it nicely and adding some real features

iTunes library to HTML, including album art

I've written a little script to export my iTunes library (including album art) to a couple of web pages. The result can be seen on my new music pages. There is some more information and a download link for the script as well, in case someone wants to use it. Use at own risk, yadda yadda. I'd love to hear if it also runs on windows (it probably does) - actually any feedback is fine

Still alive..

So, no posts for a couple of days. Probably nobody missed me, but hey - I at least need to pretend I'm updating for a reason
Basically I've been at home sick the last couple of days, due to some annoying health problems. Getting better, and probably will be back to work on Thursday. See you all then

The big shill?

I just saw 'American Splendor'. Knew about it, heard about it, wanted to see it for a while now. For those who haven't seen it: it's about Harvey Pekar, writer for American Splendor - a comic by Robert Crumb. The story is true, and shows Harvey as both a comic book character and a writer. The rising popularity of his comics gets him in a David Letterman show; the weirdness of this Harvey character pulls big ratings - and he gets asked more often. After the movie - which you should probably see first - I googled for some of the facts, and found this article about one of Harvey's noteworthy Letterman appearances. Has some interesting statements about Letterman, Harvey, and society in general. If you saw the movie, read it. Yay

voip callout for mac (bye bye skype)

Weird. I always found skype a pretty cool thing for VOIP stuff, and an interesting setup for a company (give the software away, let people call eachother on the internet, charge for outgoing calls).
At voipbuster they do almost exactly the same thing, but with slightly more competing rates; EUR 1.30 (or something) for unlimited calls to landlines within the Netherlands, USA, and a couple of other countries. I know I sound like a commercial, but I actually think this is neat. And works on mac, if you go here. (I'm not affiliated in any way with either of these companies or products )

postsecrets

My browser directed me to postsecret. Apparrently people mail in their secrets, and they get posted. I love them, but they almost feel too personal. In a sad and funny kind of way.
There is also a book (careful, this links to amazon) - almost.