There is some suspicion that our server-crashes-all-the-time problem is related to the hard disk and/or SCSI controller.
Here's a diagnostic program for the disk (DOS program, runs from a floppy... do we have a floppy drive?): http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
Here's the detailed specs for the drive: http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/85256AB8006A31E587256A78005A36...
Is the SCSI controller built-in to the motherboard? What's the motherboard manufacturer? Do they have any diagnostics? Or is there something we could get direct from Adaptec (Adaptec AIC-7899 Ultra 160/m SCSI host adapter)?
I'd also recommend upgrading our old kernel to a current 2.4.x to ensure that drivers are current; Jason may be recompiling anyway for serial console support, so two birds with one stone.
It's also high time we move the mailing lists to the other server so we can still communicate during downtime...
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
(Brion Vibber vibber@aludra.usc.edu):
I'd also recommend upgrading our old kernel to a current 2.4.x to ensure that drivers are current; Jason may be recompiling anyway for serial console support, so two birds with one stone.
Jason, if you want to move IPs again, Brion and I finally got the read-only backup thing working on larousse, about 10 seconds before pliny came back to life (in fact, when I went to add the note "this is a read-only backup" to the main page, I ended up adding it to the live wiki :)
At any rate, if you do that again, I can get the read-only backup going quickly if you notify me (mail to wikidown is fine). Of course larousse by itself drags to a crawl with high traffic, even read-only, because it's not quite as hefty a server.
It's also high time we move the mailing lists to the other server so we can still communicate during downtime...
Since both pliny and larousse are going to be used for the live wiki, I see no point at all in moving the lists from one to the other. They need to be on a completely different server--even offsite, if possible.
On Fri, 9 May 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
At any rate, if you do that again, I can get the read-only backup going quickly if you notify me (mail to wikidown is fine). Of course larousse by itself drags to a crawl with high traffic, even read-only, because it's not quite as hefty a server.
Well, if we get around to the prettified static-HTML mirrorable version that's been discussed, that would be preferable to the database-driven live version for emergency purposes.
But, we don't have that done yet.
It's also high time we move the mailing lists to the other server so we can still communicate during downtime...
Since both pliny and larousse are going to be used for the live wiki, I see no point at all in moving the lists from one to the other. They need to be on a completely different server--even offsite, if possible.
Offsite would be better yet, but I'd rather see them on larousse, which does _not_ have a history of crashing once a month or so and being offline for hours at a time, than remain on pliny.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
(Brion Vibber vibber@aludra.usc.edu):
Well, if we get around to the prettified static-HTML mirrorable version that's been discussed, that would be preferable to the database-driven live version for emergency purposes.
That sounds like a good next high-proirity project for me, and doesn't sound too tricky. A PHP script in the maintenance directory that just rendered every page in the cur table into an appropriate file system hierarchy would do the trick. And doing incremental updates.
Pushing new syntax out another month....
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
It's also high time we move the mailing lists to the other server so we can still communicate during downtime...
Since both pliny and larousse are going to be used for the live wiki, I see no point at all in moving the lists from one to the other. They need to be on a completely different server--even offsite, if possible.
I think you are right, Lee. If you want to move the lists, than to a host not involved with wikipedia (DB or Apache). If they have to run on one of the wikipedia hosts, a move is not nesseccary. If something goes wrong there is a good chance that's hitting the mailserver too.
Smurf
what about having the lists on sourceforge's servers????
Will
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
It's also high time we move the mailing lists to the other server so we can still communicate during downtime...
Since both pliny and larousse are going to be used for the live wiki, I see no point at all in moving the lists from one to the other. They need to be on a completely different server--even offsite, if possible.
I think you are right, Lee. If you want to move the lists, than to a host not involved with wikipedia (DB or Apache). If they have to run on one of the wikipedia hosts, a move is not nesseccary. If something goes wrong there is a good chance that's hitting the mailserver too.
Smurf
------------------------- Anthill inside! ---------------------------
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On Fri, 9 May 2003, Lightning wrote:
what about having the lists on sourceforge's servers????
I don't think we'd have the same control there, and I don't think we could make the move transparent.
What we'd like to be able to do is just set up mailman on the other location, change our DNS records to point to the new machine as the mail server for the wikipedia.org domain, and let mail move over there automatically as the new DNS gets picked up.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
We (at Bomis) do have another server that could run the mailing lists that is almost unrelated to wikipedia. It's the server that wikipedia started out on, which still hosts some of the old UseMod wikis.
I haven't spoken to Jimmy about this, but I think he was considering allowing wikipedia to use the server to host the mailing lists.
Jason
Brion Vibber wrote:
On Fri, 9 May 2003, Lightning wrote:
what about having the lists on sourceforge's servers????
I don't think we'd have the same control there, and I don't think we could make the move transparent.
What we'd like to be able to do is just set up mailman on the other location, change our DNS records to point to the new machine as the mail server for the wikipedia.org domain, and let mail move over there automatically as the new DNS gets picked up.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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