Write On! :: Discuss the art and craft of writing

Almost ready to change over...

by janra
Posted to Diaries, Diary on Mon Mar 18, 2002 at 10:45:41 AM PST
[Print]

I've gotten scoop running on dover (the new computer), got it properly firewalled etc, and it's almost ready to take over for paradox (the old computer).

I just have to get a few more items sorted out and it'll be ready to go live.

gory details below.

I have more websites than just Write On! running on paradox; for most of them, see paradox.homeip.net. In addition to those, there are a whole bunch of little scripts that I have to test and verify that they still work as I expect, another program or two that I have to install (and that's not counting the desktop stuff, like mozilla). It's mostly administrivia, like the script that syncronises my system clock to the atomic clock once a day. Small and easy to forget, but important.

In all, it's going well; I'm expecting to have dover take over by the weekend. There may be a bit of downtime during the actual transfer; my ISP only allows me 2 IP addresses and they're both taken, so I have to take paradox down before I can bring dover up. I'd rather have both running at the same time, so there's always something there for you to see...

paradox is an original Pentium at 133MHz with 64Mb RAM - if you wondered why Write On! felt slow, that's the reason! I had about twice the actual RAM taken up (thank goodness for swap, even if it is slow), so if I was doing something else (like surfing the internet) then the webserver and database, both of which are required for this site, were on the hard drive; when somebody requested a page my computer would have to put everything I was working on onto the hard drive, load Write On! into RAM, and only then could it start sending the page.

dover is a Duron 1GHz (~ 1000MHz) with 512Mb RAM, so Write On! should be a whole lot faster. In addition, I've installed an extension to the webserver called 'mod_gzip' which compresses the pages before it sends them, so you actually download a lot less, making it even faster! (Don't worry, you won't have to install any plugins to take advantage of this; most modern browsers support compressed pages. All you'll notice is that it's faster to download.) People on dialup connections will thank me :-) Write On! pages are pretty big.

Thank you paradox, you've served me well for the past 5 1/2 years, even when I beat on you and make you do far more than you can easily handle. It's time for you to retire to a less stressful job, however. (paradox will become the firewall for the home network my boyfriend and I have.)

Make a new account

Related Links

Almost ready to change over... | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 hidden)

another timeline shot down... (none/0) (#1)
by janra on Fri Mar 22, 2002 at 06:34:05 PM PST

Yeah. This weekend.

Right.

So a whole bunch of stuff came up; some of it was because I procrastinated, a lot of it I just found out about Thursday... so no dover this weekend.

The deadline of most of that stuff is Monday, so hopefully Monday or Tuesday I'll be able to get the last few programs up and running.

I'll keep you posted...

--
Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?

oh man... talk about bad timing (none/0) (#2)
by janra on Wed Apr 10, 2002 at 03:16:47 PM PST

Ok, things just kept on going, and here I am, and here dover isn't

Anyhow, the current timeline is as follows:

Finish final exams. Done by Friday afternoon
Get dover set up with server stuff. Hopefully by Monday or Tuesday
Get dover taking over for paradox. This should only take an hour, hopefully less. I'll make sure to allow more time, though. There may be some downtime while this step is happening, as mentioned previously, but hopefully it'll be minimal.
Set up all or most of my personal programs on dover (like the web browser...). This could take a long time; hopefully I'll get enough on in 2 days or so.
Start writing again!

I just realised how many times the word hopefully showed up in that timeline... eek.

--
Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?

so far so good (none/0) (#3)
by janra on Mon Apr 15, 2002 at 02:00:24 PM PST

dover has taken over from paradox; you may have noticed the pages loading a bit faster :-)

Unfortunately my mailing list software is giving me trouble, I may have to reinstall it or something.

As for the rest of the schedule, it's a lot more relaxed, so I'm not going to worry about it any more. I'll be happy when I've got everything I need off of paradox for certain and I can move the computers to where they belong. At the moment my monitor is on the living room table, instead of on my desk, and there are wires criss-crossing every which way. paradox can't really be moved while it's running, as it's sort of spread out all over, so there's no one piece to pick up, but about 6 - after I unplug the printer, monitor, keyboard and mouse - and all of them are fairly fragile.

Ah well, things are moving along nicely.

--
Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?
[ Parent ]

: Whee! much fasternow! (none/0) (#5)
by Mostly Harmless on Tue May 14, 2002 at 12:12:04 PM PST

Go Dover!

[ Parent ]
: oh yeah... (none/0) (#6)
by janra on Tue May 14, 2002 at 03:34:17 PM PST

I still have to install mod_gzip, so that the pages are actually smaller for you to download. Must get on that sometime.

--
Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?
[ Parent ]

diary (none/0) (#4)
by Andrea on Fri May 03, 2002 at 12:21:48 PM PST

I think that if you don't keep hope in the equation, you won't succeed. Hopefully we will all get there.... in some sort of strange way. By the way computers don't have a mind of their own, it just seems like that!
If teabreaks exist all things are possible...
[ Parent ]

Almost ready to change over... | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 hidden)