• Notice for iPhone users: DO NOT use the image size reduction option when uploading photos to the forum. This causes portrait images to post as landscape. We have added a warning to the image insert pop-up as well.

Server downtime

donaghy

donaghy

CJ-8.COM owner
SOA Member
FORUM OWNER
City
Lexington
State
SC
My apologies guys about the site/server being down. My friday afternoon was not fun. I went over to the computer room to add a bigger hard drive to the server at 3:45 on friday. I had wanted to get the drive installed before we launched the cj-8.org just for downtime issues. But, what normally is a 5-10 minute downtime job turned into a 2 hour job that was a fiasco. Won't go into all the details, but I was able to at least get us back to normal this morning.. (just what I want to be doing on saturday morning). Anyways. I will still need to take the server down again to install the drive sometime this weekend, probably sunday night. So, just thought I would give everyone a heads up.

I will probably install it sunday around 8:00pm EST so it may be down for a while.
 
ok

Alright Matt,

I guess I'll have to forgive you this one time!! LOL

This is the first time that the site has had any problems since I've been visiting....thanks for all your hard work to make my evenings less boring!!
 
That's generally the way my Jeep projects go. Thanks for all your work, i appreciate it!
 
Having worked for an ISP involving hosting planned maintenance I am all to familiar with server abnormalities.

I must say you have done a great job with this site Matt and it's a far cry from the pop up days.

And I'm going to sign up for that SOA when I get a chance.
Lee
 
didn't happen sunday night

I did not get in here last night to change the disk drives around.

Part of the issue from friday was that the CMOS/BIOS in the server is very old and didn't appear to be recognizing this newer/larger capacity IDE drive. It was originally running 3 4GB SCSI drives and its just not worth it to replace those drives or add SCSI drives with IDE drives as cheap as they are. So, I purchased a 120GB EIDE 7200 rpm drive.

The server does have an IDE controller on board. But, the drive I bought is 120GB and I think the CMOS is not recognizing it or if it is, it is not recognizing the full capacity of it and it was the barebones kit, no controller card or boot floppy.

Anyone have a ATA/IDE PCI controller lying around in the computer parts closet?
 
A bigger Hammer???????

Sounds like a typical Jeep deal to me. Trying to put a bigger something into an older model. Whatelse is new! :D.

Get a bigger hammer and be careful. Thanks for your work you do for this site.
 
Being a Network Admin myself at a major University I usually allow a extra hour for any down time. It might only take 5 minutes to do the job, but it pays to have the extra time scheduled just in case you find out your going to be there a little while longer then expected. You have done a good job on this sight though! Keep up the great work!
 
Matt --

I don't have an IDE controller, but I do have too many older computers hangin' around - I've got a motherboard with an AMD 200Mhz processor.. Also a full Compaq computer 233PII.

These may still exhibit some of the CMOS issues with large drives, but the utility software available from the drive manufacturer should fix 'em up..

Let me know if either of these would help - shippping is on me if it helps us CJ-8ers.

Roger
 
I don't suppose a Mac would be helpful? I have two that I could supply.

I have a 6400/200 (if I'm remembering correctly) that was in perfect working order when it was retired and it ought to recognize any size drive. This one I'd donate and pay shipping myself.

I also have a PowerMac 8500 that's upgraded to a G3-400 (again, if I remember correctly) that just screams in 9.2.2. I believe it has an IDE controller that should work fine with a 120 GB drive. This one I'd need some sort of compensation for though(a couple years SOA dues maybe?), it'd go for a couple hundred on eBay easy.

My other suggestion is to set up a server fund outside of the SOA and let people donate through paypal. We did this on my old Contour board and it worked great and got us a shiny new server.
 
thanks guys

Thanks guys for all the offers for equipment. I found a ATA IDE controller but that still did not fix my problems. Like I said, its a very technical detail that I can't get that drive to work in there. Looks like I am either going to have to ghost the OS drive and dump it back onto this new drive or reinstall the OS and apps onto this other one.

Eric, I'll probably pass on the offer for the MAC but thank you for the offer. Most of the web server stuff needs to run on Windows2000.

I know what I need to do to get it all to work now, just need some time to do it ..

matt
 
This sunday 6/8/2003

I'm going to try to work on the server again this sunday. It will either be sunday night after 8:30pm or earlier in the afternoon.

I'm going to have to reimage the drives so it will probably be down for at least a couple of hours.


Just thought I would give a heads up.

Matt
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top