The blog of Steve Root

  • Moving to a new web server

    For many, many years (well, since 2004 which is a long time for internet things) my web server has been at Rackspace. Well, I say ‘my’ web server but in reality it’s their web server, dedicated to just my use and fully managed by them.

    They’ve been great. Small amounts of downtime, answering the phone at 2am to help me fix things I’ve broken, swapping out faulty hard disks, power supplies (twice). They are however very expensive and as my server needs haven’t grown as fast as computing power, I can now save some money moving onto a virtual server. The theory is that the hardware down time wont happen on the Virtual Server. My rackspace server has a single disk, single power supply. Multiple disks and power supplies cost a lot of money so the chance of failure was worth taking. Now though, servers are powerful enough for the resources to be shared across multiple users so we all benefit from RAID 60, multiple power supplies. If my needs change (EG a lot more visitors than currently stop by) then the Virtual Server can be moved to another physical server without any noticeable down time, where it can have more resources (bandwith/processor/disk space etc).

    So, this week I’ve signed up for 8 shares on a server with ‘gandi.net‘. They’re a web host based in France so close enough to the UK to retain network speed (all the other good virtual hosts seem to be in America). I was a little concerned about not having my trusty 24hour phone number but I’ve just had my first email support call answered very quickly. I couldn’t get a piece of software to install (IP tables) and it appeared to be an issue with the Xen Vitual host setup. I emailed and the resolution came back within 2 hours. I decided to install the latest Ubuntu 9 server which they only released last week, so I was no doubt the first to come across the problem. After emailing me, they posted the solution in their forum and wiki. Great!

    I might write some more on the move later but as you might be able to tell from the lack of posting lately, I’m really busy with other things. At the moment at least, Gandi looks great.

  • Fresh Ubuntu install could not resolve domains names – and how I fixed it… maybe

    For some time I’ve had trouble installing Ubuntu Server to test things. Affecting 7.10 & 8.04, but only at work and not at home. Strange. Now though, I’ve just figured out what the problem was, at least, I thought I had.

    At work, we have a gateway/DHCP box (say: 192.168.55.254). When handing out IP addresses, it gives a nameserver IP of 192.168.55.225 first, and should that not be working 208.67.222.222 second (www.opendns.com)

    When booting, the Ubuntu box created it’s /etc/resolve.conf with:
    nameserver 192.168.55.225
    nameserver 208.67.222.222

    I edited and saved that file to read:
    nameserver 192.168.55.254
    nameserver 192.168.55.225
    nameserver 208.67.222.222

    so adding the gateway as the namesever (our gateway can be the name server but I had a particular reason for not having it that way).

    Rebooted, tried my ‘sudo apt-get install …’ again, everything resolved and the essential updates happened. However, when looking to write this post for when I next have the same problem, I’ve noticed the /etc/resolve.conf file has returned to it’s earlier two entries.

    I’d assumed that the Ubuntu server install expects the gateway to be at the same IP as the nameserver. This is true for my home (which is why it worked at home without trouble but at work it didn’t). I’m not so sure now, maybe it was just rebooting a second time after the install that fixed it. At least it works.

  • Eurocon 2009 – the final day

    258-EC09_logo_fsmall-1.jpg

    Time flys when you’re having fun and this 4 days have certainly flown past. Several players are already packed and left (having 14 or even 20 hours to spend driving home). Others are still sleeping, several have had breakfast, there are only a hundful of us in the con room at this hour (09:30 local time).

    260-eurocon3-wierdfirefox-thumb-250x185.jpg

    As I start to pack things back into the car I thought I’d mention some other observations of the con. To begin with, the way google assumes I speak Dutch. The way there are two network switches, one at each end of the room, along with lots and lots of power cables. The background music that always seems to fit the atmosphere. The humour (Ninja, at the beggining of his duel, jumping up and waving a broomstick with a white T-Shirt tied to it shouting ‘I surrender’). The differing types of setup that people have to play the same game (from one player with full flight control system, rudder pedals, joystick mounted in front of the chair between your legs just like you’d have it in an original fighter – to some playing with basic old joysticks on laptops that struggle to maintain the frame rate at the lowest of all graphic detail settings). The way so many different languages are spoken around the table and watching English be used as a middle language between Dutch, Polish, German, Spanish and French players.

    It’s been great fun, I’m going to enjoy the last few hours so this is my last blog post from the con.

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