Server Tweakage

Well - I didn’t sleep yesterday till about 8:45am, busy night to say the least, started at around 10:45pm on Friday, just had a lot to do, little window of “evening” to do it in. What was accomplished? The list:

1. IMAP/Mail Server Conversion - This is one of many, I have been slowly doing this server to server, as some DoS stuff exsists in the old mail server which has caused massive load in the recent weeks - new mail server works 10x better, new mail storage format, no longer 1 massive spool, but a collection of files now. Why is this good? CPU Use. Instead of opening a 180MB spool file (I can hear my drive crying even with me mentioning it) the system peaks CPU/Drive usage as it queries up this massive file for reading - new format, parses a lot of little files to get header information for display in IMAP/Webmail clients. Lot faster. So it was good two fold, new more secure mail server - less CPU/Drive Useage.
2. CMC Forum Upgrade

- This has been on my plate to do for a while, I have really wanted to get off the old IPB codebase, up to something a tad more modern as we make more changes @ CMC, so from a tech standpoint this opens a lot more doors in the design of me intergrating a site-wide login to my existing code, so needless to say, very excited.

3. Apache Upgrades - Another source of server worry was this Apache hole/exploit in 1.3.33, so a recompile on a few boxen last night left a few servers running happier with less junk happening on them from bots scanning around the boxen for Apache holes, still a few boxes to convert for clients, just making sure people know it’s coming.
4. Hardware Repair - I was working to make sure this server was 100% ready to go, software updates, system checks, etc. one last thing I had heard was reboot the box, clear all memory swaps, applications hanging, yada yada yada, well I kicked it over, and it didn’t come back up. So needless to say a tad worried, turns out the system locked at boot with a heat warning - the fan on the power supply was siezed, so they swaped me out, re-sync’d my remote reboot switch, and tada, happy server.

I still have a slew of things to do this coming week, eCommerce things to setup, sites to create SSL certificates for, domains to buy, phone meetings, in-town software/hardware consulting, etc. just a busy week - trying to decide if I should crash out here soon and head to Delano in the morning for service & check out my old piano and see if it’s worth me and my dad breaking our backs to bring back to Bakersfield - not sure, praying about it.

But life is good, busy, but good - got Rosie’s brother’s computer setup, came out pretty nice,the kids wanted to know where the games were, their mom asked about printers - but in the end I think it’ll treat em well, and if needs be, the board can be upgraded quite a bit from a Semperon - so gave em some room to grow versus buying a whole new desktop.

Anywhoo - enough ranting for now, I think I am gonna go lay down, and ponder nothing