Shatters.net on new hardware

[chris]

As many have noticed, shatters.net has been experiencing frequent and occasionally extended down time. These outages were caused by faulty hardware in the shatters.net server. I've moved the forum and main Celestia pages to a new server that will be much more stable. The new server hardware is modest, but still a significant upgrade from the old machine. It also has updated versions of MySQL, PHP, and the Apache, which will hopefully solve some of the problems that appeared on the old system: intermittent problems sending PMs and the 'too many connections' error that would sometimes appear.

Some Celestia items are still missing. The personal accounts--including Fridger's, Don.Edward's, and my own--have not been migrated to the new server yet. Thank you for your patience during the upgrade to new hardware.

--Chris

[t00fri]

As many have noticed, shatters.net has been experiencing frequent and occasionally extended down time. These outages were caused by faulty hardware in the shatters.net server. I've moved the forum and main Celestia pages to a new server that will be much more stable. The new server hardware is modest, but still a significant upgrade from the old machine. It also has updated versions of MySQL, PHP, and the Apache, which will hopefully solve some of the problems that appeared on the old system: intermittent problems sending PMs and the 'too many connections' error that would sometimes appear.

Excellent!

Some Celestia items are still missing. The personal accounts--including Fridger's, Don.Edward's, and my own--have not been migrated to the new server yet. Thank you for your patience during the upgrade to new hardware.

--Chris

Oh...then ALL my images in my forum posts since 8.5 years will be lacking (for the time being)...

Fridger

[Fenerit]

Just FYI, I have been experiencing an intermittent delay in changes of pages around 1.30/2.00 am, that I thought were due to the recover of the forementioned personal accounts/data. Instead now I see that 326 users were simultaneously on line. The new system has been put in hard way soon! Anyway, the "too many connections" page has not been showed.

[ajtribick]

Nice! Good to see the forums back again.

[Chuft-Captain]

Seems to be faster too!

[VikingTechJPL]

Seems quite a bit faster to me too.

Many thanks, Chris!

[Don. Edwards]

Chris,

Is there any kind of ETA on when our accounts will return to service or if in fact they will. It is going to impact many things, all my post images, any future downloads, ect...

Finding off server storage isn't a problem but nearly 8 years of images in my posts are broken.

Hope we get it all back soon.

Don.

[t00fri]

Chris,

Is there any kind of ETA on when our accounts will return to service or if in fact they will. It is going to impact many things, all my post images, any future downloads, ect...

Finding off server storage isn't a problem but nearly 8 years of images in my posts are broken.

Hope we get it all back soon.

Don.

Don,

with me it's even worse. Since 8.5 years most of my shatters.net posts are broken since all my images are also lacking.

But Chris explained to me that transfering our accounts to his MAC server is not all that simple. I am sure he'll be working on the transfer again after he has returned from travelling today.

This is what he wrote to me 12 days ago:

Regarding the full restoration of shatters.net, it's still under way. The old hardware is toast; I'm trying to mount a Linux ext2 filesystem on my Mac or Windows machine in order to transfer the files. Failing that, I'll just set up a basic Linux installation on another machine. ...and won't have time to work on it again until Monday.

Fridger

[t00fri]

Chris,

as to your plans

I'm trying to mount a Linux ext2 filesystem on my Mac or Windows machine in order to transfer the files. Failing that, I'll just set up a basic Linux installation on another machine.

for me a simpler solution would be adequate. I suppose you have an Apache server installed on your MAC server. Since I have a running copy of my TexFoundry code, you can just forget about it for now. I'll reinstall it on ibiblio as a 'texture museum' once I find some time.

Furthermore, I don't need a Linux account or even a Linux filesystem anymore. I got all of this much better at ibiblio. All I'd need are the contents of the subdirectories 'images' (all my images) and the contents of the 'celestia' subdirectory within my former public_html directory. A simple FTP transfer of these to the MAC would be fine. Place them anywhere in two new directories 'images' and 'celestia'.

What is crucial, is that you map the new directory names properly:
I suggest you use the alias feature within your Apache server to map my 'images' and 'celestia' directories on the MAC (wherever you put them) to these required URLs

http://www.celestiaproject.net/~t00fri/images
http://www.celestiaproject.net/~t00fri/celestia

and if you like also my TexFoundry
http://www.celestiaproject.net/~t00fri/texfoundry.php4
Keeping it at the old URL will also avoid some stale links in the shatters.net forum.
Also this URL is given at various places as a texture reference...

As long as this mapping is not done, nothing will work. All my new image material I shall link in from CelestialMatters.

Fridger

[chris]

Chris,

as to your plans

I'm trying to mount a Linux ext2 filesystem on my Mac or Windows machine in order to transfer the files. Failing that, I'll just set up a basic Linux installation on another machine.

for me a simpler solution would be adequate. I suppose you have an Apache server installed on your MAC server. Since I have a running copy of my TexFoundry code, you can just forget about it for now. I'll reinstall it on ibiblio as a 'texture museum' once I find some time.

Furthermore, I don't need a Linux account or even a Linux filesystem anymore. I got all of this much better at ibiblio. All I'd need are the contents of the subdirectories 'images' (all my images) and the contents of the 'celestia' subdirectory within my former public_html directory. A simple FTP transfer of these to the MAC would be fine. Place them anywhere in two new directories 'images' and 'celestia'.

The problem is that I have no Linux machine from which to FTP the files. The older shatters.net server is toast. The drives and their backups are fine, but they're all ext2.

--Chris

[CAP-Team]

Chris, there are drivers available that make it possible to mount ext2 partitions in Windows.

[t00fri]

The problem is that I have no Linux machine from which to FTP the files. The older shatters.net server is toast. The drives and their backups are fine, but they're all ext2.

--Chris

Chris,

that is not a problem, since you can easily download an ISO image of a completely set-up Linux LIVE system and burn it onto a CD. The CD then should run from any machine, if you adjust the boot sequence appropriately in the BIOS. Mount your ext2 after booting from CD and hooking the drive to that machine. Network is on board, of course.

I have used a number of such live systems, like

1) OpenSuSE: 11.3. Live KDE or Live Gnome here http://software.opensuse.org/113/en
2) KNOPPIX: http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

Takes little time and works.

Fridger

PS: Even less time is needed, if you happen to have any old Linux installation CD/DVD lying around somewhere. Most offer a 'rescue mode' including network. Mount the ext2 from there after booting to 'rescue mode'. If you have your full original Linux server on disk, you may also mount its root file system / from the rescue system on the generated RAM disk. I suppose you know the command.

[chris]

1) OpenSuSE: 11.3. Live KDE or Live Gnome here http://software.opensuse.org/113/en
2) KNOPPIX: http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

Thank you, that's helpful. I'll download whichever of these is the smallest.

--Chris