ZoneMikel's Blog

I’m sure no one noticed, but the server was down for about a week or so. I was getting some disturbing output straight to my console about file io failures that repeated constantly and would not even allow you to work on stuff in the foreground.

The server had a 20gig drive with linux, a 30 gig drive with the web files and a 130gig disk for storage. All these were crammed into a very small computer. Anyway the 20 gig was failing, so I made a backup using dd onto another partition of the 130gig. Then I spent about 3 days trying to get the system to boot from the 130gig hdd to no avail. It seems that something in that drive will just not allow it to boot. I had figured this out before and thats why i was using it for storage. Anyway that caused me to learn a lot about grub and lilo. I just reformatted the 20 gig drive and reinstalled the os on it. I ended up using grub, I also ended up using a different OS.

I tried the latest version of slackware, I figured since i was reinstalling midas well get the latest version. I hated it ! They use the resource heavy KDE, there is no apt-get or yum like functionality. They still have that package system where you have to use pkg-tool in the dir where you have downloaded packages and then go through each one and say yes or no. It is incredibly hard to get those packages, you might know you need a program to do this but unless you know its called progname.ver.somecrazystuff.tar.tz.ver34 good luck finding it on their site. You could also just browse through thousands of packages separated alphabetically and say “maybe this is what i need?” Since I’m also familiar with ubuntu i got the ubuntu server version.

The installation of ubuntu was fast and easy. The boot cd also has a way to load a kernel so you can get in and do stuff like “grub-install” (which does not exist for slackware). After I installed Ubuntu I got my firewall script to work just fine on it. Everything i wanted i just “sudo apt-get install” ed it. Ubuntu also comes with awesome tools like gnu screen and nano, it also has a updated version of vi I had not seen before. And of course the updates in ubuntu are a snap, so i wont end up with a OS that has not been upgraded for 2 years like I did with the version of slackware that crashed.

I did very much like the old version of slackware, version 10 or 11 I think. I loved the way it gave random quotes every time you log in. Also the boot cd allows you to specify a different kernel, which i couldnt figure out how to do with the ubuntu cd. This was very helpful when i had 3 different partitions i was trying to boot. But besides that i’m sticking with ubuntu with xfce4 installed !

Everything is up and running now, obviously. I had backups so most of the stuff got restored. A lot of the stuff got a nice cleaning, i had a lot of junk ! Wordpress turned out to be easy to restore thanks to their backup/restore tools. For my other custom web page (social network site) I opted out of my custom stuff and installed dolphin, the dolphin install took me a few hours then i wrote some scripts to do some crazy stuff with the mysql database so all 500 users from before would just pop up in the totally different social networking software, that was not easy but I was able to do it. I had to also write scripts to resize their photos and store them in directories and all kinds of crazy stuff. If you need to port some site to a dolphin site let me know I can help.

I always have been good with backups, but now I keep a duplicate of the entire linux root disk so i can at any time swap it out and replace it without delay. I’m using the dd for most of that.

I will write about my updated firewall script and the other stuff I did to get the ubuntu system to do all that my slackware system did, just got to get some free time. I’ve also made some diagrams and such, hope to write about that soon.

Today I noticed that I had lost all the work I did over summer (which was a bunch). I was able to find them in old binary files for mysql but the pictures and attachments are all gone for good. Here is what wp told me

   1. Importing post Using IPTABLES on your linux router... (2 comments)
   2. Skipping attachment http://zonemikel.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/simplers232.jpg
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   6. Importing post RS-232 to serial Conversion, using 2 transistors... (1 comment)
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  14. Importing post Protoboard Version 0.2... (2 comments)
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  17. Importing post RS232 Revisited... (1 comment)
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  19. Skipping attachment http://zonemikel.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/network-setup.jpg
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  21. Importing post My Linux Firewall Script... (43 comments)
  22. Skipping attachment http://zonemikel.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/rcr-rx-breadboard.jpg
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  24. Importing post Testing RCT-433-AS-TRANSMITTER and RCR-433-RECIVER... (10 comments)
  25. Importing post Ubuntu + VirtualBox + Existing WinXP 64 Hopefully !:... (6 comments)
  26. Importing post Ubuntu 9.04 + Virtual Box (non ose) + usb grayed out... (32 comments)

At least i got the information back and i wont have to start out from scratch when i pick up those projects again. If i find the pictures i will upload them so they show up.