If you're reading this, you're on the new server, code-named "Arclight" which is a Core2 Duo system with 2GB of ram and nearly a full terabyte of hard drive space. It's also being hosted on a 100mbit link (the old server was 5mbit) so things should be faster all around. All user accounts should be migrated and working by now, but this was a complex process, so if you're having issues with something, don't hesitate to bring it to my attention. You can post in the forum (aka reply here), email me, or contact me on AIM (my SN is "Xepher42" there.) Welcome to Arclight!
Everyone should go login to user services at https://xepher.net/user-services/ and double-check your settings/info. You can also upload banner images to replace the ugly text ones that are currently rotating in the newsbox. Don't forget you've got to use the new password you set during the account renewal.
If you're using email and had asked for it to be imported from the old server... rest assured all email is intact. If you're missing email folders, go to the "subscribe to folders" option in your email client (or webmail) and you should see your "missing" folders there.
Everyone using email needs to pay close attention to the "Unsure" and "Junk" folders to start with. All mail will be delivered to "Unsure" until your spam filter is trained. You train it by moving messages out of Unsure and into the appropriate folder. That is, move spam into "Junk" and it's learned as Junk... move it to your Inbox (or any custom folder you've created... pretty much anything but "Trash") and it will be learned as good (non-spam) email. As the filter learns, it will start delivering only good email to your inbox, and deliver all the spam to "Junk." But you have to watch it to start with, to make sure it doesn't mis-identify some legit email as Junk to start with. That said, check both the Junk and Unsure folders regularly until you're confident the filter is trained well.
FTP is now gone. You must use SCP/SFTP to upload files.
If you're having any other problems, contact me as mentioned in the first post.
Having some trouble with incoming email... I'll let you know when it's fixed.
EDIT: It's fixed now.
FYI: If you're using email and have a domain linked to your account here, mail will be rejected for any emails at that domain until you set the appropriate alias(es) in user services.
There are DNS issues screwing things up right now. Only "xepher.net" itself is affected, all other domains and all subdomains should work properly. Just the main site is gonna have issues. What happened is that the root nameservers somehow have a direct A record for "xepher.net" pointing to the old IP. They're NEVER supposed to have that, but the registrar I've used for years had a slightly broken system way back when, and I managed to do something stupid with it before I knew better, and now the system checks for those sorts of mistakes and so it won't let me reverse-break it. :-P
I have an email into the registrar's support staff, but we'll see how long it takes them to respond. If it's not on it's way to solved by the time I wake up (I'm going to bed now), I'm gonna hack around it somehow.
Well, no response at all from my registrar, and it's still broken. I am so annoyed with this, it's a stupid problem I had years ago with them (last time the server moved) and I thought it would've been fixed by now.
Anyway, I've hacked around it a bit for now, by using the old server to proxy requests to the new one, so most stuff should work as expected now, it just may be a tad slower for urls starting with "http://xepher.net" only... any other domain or subdomain should be connecting directly (as they have correct dns.) There's probably a few bits here and there that will be quirky because of it, notably if you log into anything secure (https) like user-services, it'll warn you it's connecting to "www.xepher.net" when the certificate is only for "Xepher.net" but it's still safe to continue. If I don't hear back from these people soon, I'm gonna think about transferring registrars to someone that at least has a phone number. It amazes how what was a legit business years ago seems to be a shady operation these days.
EDIT: Note that the proxy only applies to the web... if you're trying to connect to scp/sftp and having trouble, try "www.xepher.net" instead of just "xepher.net" for now.
Looks nice! I double-checked my information, changed my password in the config file, and everything's running smoothly for me again. ^_^ I like the banner system!
Glad to hear it!
I've put a bunch of rewrites/redirects around, so it should hopefully move everything from "xepher.net" to "www.xepher.net" for the time being. If you have an issue anywhere that the servername 'xepher.net" is directly used, try putting in "www.xepher.net" instead. This should only be temporary, until I get a registrar to fix their problem.
On that note... anyone not just curious can skip the rest of the this post.
I dig some more digging and I've found where the problem is. Internic (the organization in charge of the entire world-wide DNS system) has "xepher.net" listed as a NAMESERVER, meaning they have a direct record for it and it's IP address... That was the mistake that got made years ago. Problem is, my registrar -- through whom I'm supposed to be able to edit/update/remove nameserver listings -- has no record of it being a nameserver, and thus, no way for me to edit it. Trying to add it as a new nameserver was my first idea, hoping that it would force an update/override the old settings. But that fails, as it (now correctly) won't let you create a nameserver directly on a root domain. I've got another email off to my registrar's upstream provider (turns out I bought from a reseller, oops) and they seem much more likely to respond. Hopefully I'll hear something today about this and get this issue settled once and for all.
that hack seems to have worked, I can actually log into the forums now! :D
Any issues I had have all been cleared up, thanks!
Core2Duo... mmmm.. nice ;D. But is something different for those not in phase 2 (like me :) ) ?. Mail, ssh & mysql doesn't work for me. Thanks
So I can't use SSH with the new system?
Edit: Nevermind, I just had to add "www." to the host name.
Everything's working fine for me now. I love the new banner system :)
The no more FTP is a huge bummer. I just fixed my program too. =(
poop.
Quote from: Slang on November 12, 2007, 07:38:05 PM
The no more FTP is a huge bummer. I just fixed my program too. =(
poop.
Databits' tutorial (http://www.xepher.net/forum/index.php?topic=315.0) is so easy to follow, though :) I converted right after I read through it.
It's not taking my password >> & something about the host being down.
I'll try it later =\
Though thankya' Pigeon-wing
edit: fixed by adding the www
Ohgosh I decided to check my site tonight before bed and the new server basically ate the layout. Uh oh. I'm thinking it would just be permissions or something. Unfortunately I don't have the time to really look into it, but this new system is looking pretty nice. I can't wait to toy around with it a bit and see what I can do.
Deltha... no, it should work the same for all users. Are you using your new password? The one you set on the renewal form? It's now your main password and your database password, so you may have to edit any scripts that use mysql to use the new password. Also, as noted above... "xepher.net" directly doesn't work right now, so change it to "www.xepher.net" and see if that helps. If that doesn't work, let me know specifically what you're trying to use/do and any/all errors you get.
You're right!... I guess I'm an idiot :-\. Thanks again!
Blargh...seems to have eaten my php...not at home right now, so I can't really look at it and figure out what's up...even if I were, the internet's still out there...
Blargh, again. I'll figure it out when I can. Don't know why it would do that, though.
I just logged in via the work computers here, which are horribly outdated and stupid and I noticed: UserAgent=ID10T. *LOL*
It's pronounced "eye-dee ten tee." It's an old tech support trick, back when you still talked people through editing text ini files on their own computers and stuff. "Yes sir, if you could just add a line that says, user=id10t to your config... What's that do? Well, it's handy for us as it'll let any other support personal you talk to know some of what the problem is."
Dragyn... check your PHP open tags... you can't use "<?" alone, but must uses the full "<?php" syntax now. If there's more problems, let me know.
In other news, I finally got a response from the registrar about the DNS problem. The personal didn't seem to quite grasp where/what the problem is, but at least they're trying. I've sent back another email with a hopefully-clearer explanation and examples, so maybe this can be taken care before too much longer.
I'm having issues connecting. I'm not sure if it's timeout from how long "xepher.net" things take to load now (on my home connection, makes accessing the user panel a lot more painful) or if it's just being weird with my passwords. I don't remember which of the three I used at some point still work. Or is it just one now?
Please let there be a free SFTP client thing for mac, or else we have more issues.
I <3 Xephernet, I just wanna be able to access it. ;^;
QuotePlease let there be a free SFTP client thing for mac, or else we have more issues.
You can also use SCP I think. Just open up the Terminal, and change to the directory containing the files you want to upload. To change directories, type: cd /path/to/directory/
When you are in the directory with the stuff you want to upload, type: scp SourceFile user@host:directory/TargetFile
If the command is successful, you should be prompted for your Xepher.net password, and then the file(s) will upload.
For more info on SCP go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_copy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_copy)
It isn't as nice as a GUI driven FTP client, but it is fairly easy to pick up. And there are a few short-cuts. For example, you can batch upload files by typing "*.php" (without the quotes) instead of the file name in the command above. This will upload all files with the .php ending in the current directory. This works for other file types too. Basically, * is short-hand for "all", so *.html and *.java also work.
Hope that helps.
There are perfectly good GUI clients for Mac. You don't have to resort to that command line stuff. (Even though I use it all the time.) Check out http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/ or http://cyberduck.ch/
Also, don't use "xepher.net" right now, use "www.xepher.net" as there's still DNS problems. Now if that runs slow, let me know what, specifically, is being slow. It may be an issue on your end, as no one else is reporting speed issues currently.
Senshuu, if you have any problems with Cyberduck, feel free to poke me via LJ...I use Cyberduck all the time and it's pretty good. ^_^
Huzzah! I found out that the clients I was already using on both my PC and mac (Filezilla/Cyberduck) have SFTP options. I didn't even think of that. I connected with Cyberduck yaaay. Feels a little slower but it's not really inconvenient, and likely temporary.
Xepher.net itself is kind of slow in that the header loads, and then everything else loads a minute later (a few seconds later on high speed), and for the control panel it's a little bleh. That's always something that irks me, but I can deal with it lol. Banners are kind of blah for 56k too (but who likes minding 56k?! Even I don't anymore! I'm one of 5 people who still uses it).
Seems I read over things a bit too fast, so sorry if I posted a bit hastily. :'D
Thanks yny-u, Xepher, griever!
Nah, I got most of it fixed. The only thing that's gone is the Blog-Like Thing, and I've been meaning to replace it for awhile anyway.
I don't think the update's what broke it, though. I think it was already broken, and just waiting to let me know when it would annoy me most.
Also, I'll see about adding the new-newsbox to the site over the weekend. I can't guarantee anything, as I'm limited by homework and whatnot.
I don't quite understand what you meant about the PHP. So, like, instead of <? include("head.php") ?> like I have on my pages, it has to be <?php include("head.php") ?> ? That's pretty doable. *thumbs up*
However, I'm having a hard time logging in. The account management page says I have a bad password and I get errors when I try to login via WinSCP and Filezilla's SFTP thingy. I tried the "www" addon, but that didn't work. I was pretty sure I had the same password the entire several years I was here. Are these two things related? I'm a Phase 1 user so I don't know if the account management page is usable to phase 1 users.
I haven't noticed any slowdowns. My ISP oversold it's service months ago and everythin runs slow for me! ;D
When Xepher was doing the active account check verification thingie earlier, did you give him a new desired password? That was my problem...the one from the old server and the one I submitted to be used on the new server were different and I had forgotten about it in the meanwhile.
Cammiluna: Yes, that's correct about the php tags. The reason is that XML pages start with "<?xml" so if it used only the "<?" it would start acting like XML blocks were php, and then throw tons of errors.
As for passwords... like griever said, you need to use the NEW password you set when filling out the account renewal. If you've forgotten it, email me (admin@...) from the address you gave as your offsite email (to verify it's you) and I can send you the password you set.
Update on the DNS issues. I've finally gotten another email back from my registrar, and they basically say the same thing as before. That is, effectively, "Our records don't show that, so it's not our problem." I've decided to transfer the domain to godaddy.com instead, as I figure there's a good chance the transfer process alone will solve the issues, and if not, they should at least be more responsive than my old registrar. Truth is, I didn't expect to have to find out so soon. I transfered by xepher.org and xepher.net at the same time. The first worked like it should (so far) but the other got hung up on step one... finding my contact info in the whois. Turns out, the old registrar hasn't even kept their required-by-international-convention information correct, so their registered whois server is invalid. With that issue, I called the tech support at godaddy, and much to my surprise, got a guy who knew exactly what he was talking about, actually WANTED to help me, and understood the problem. On top of that, they're also 50% cheaper than my old registrar. The only complaint, (so far, aka "2 hours") is that they're website tries to sell you about 3 dozen extra services you don't need. Anyway, the ICANN deadline for a transfer is 5 days, and from what I've heard, my old registrar never responds, and just lets deadlines expire. That means we're looking at next weekend for everything to (hopefully) be fixed, but with luck, it could be a lot sooner.
I also want to apologize to anyone to whom I recommended domainsnext.com (a reseller for itsyourdomain.com) over the years. domainsnext.com has still never responded to my support request, and while itsyourdomain.com did eventually respond, they didn't want to take responsibility for the problem, and I actually doubt the tech(s) involved even understood it correctly. If this sounds like a product review or advertising post, there's a reason. If a search engine ever digs up this page, maybe it'll stop someone else from using these again. You hear me google? Index this! DON'T USE DOMAINSNEXT.COM and stay away from itsyourdomain.com too! :-P
A note on using SCP... I finally witnessed the "slow transfer" thing with winscp the other day. I was using a friend's windows box to grab some files, and it capped out at a measly 1.5MB/s. Turns out that SCP is, on slower machines, limited by CPU. It's encrypting everything you send, and encryption is a mathematically intensive process. One thing you can do, is use SCP (instead of SFTP) mode... that seems to make a slight improvement. The second is to change the encryption cipher to a lesser one. (Even the worst encryption is infinitely better than none at all.) In winscp this is on the SSH options bit over on the left when you're starting a new session (aka, that first screen that asks for the server and your login info.) If you look through the options over there, there should be one for cipher list priority. Move "Blowfish" to the top, (instead of AES) as it seems to be the best combination of speed and security, though you can try others and they might be faster on your system... especially if you're using a different client. I was able to get a 10x speed up from his system by doing that, which meant it was capping out on actual network speed, and not being CPU limited. Hope this helps people.
Several of you sent me messages saying the server was down over the past few (8) hours. I'm not sure what happened, as the logs still have people getting files as recently as a few minutes ago, though there are more errors than usual too. The server uptime is still at 10 days, and SSH seems to have no problems. My guess is something screwy happened with the internals of the webserver as just that seems to have been affected. It also seems that it was just screwing up for some people. I'll try and look into this more and figure out what caused it, but just restarting apache seems to have fixed it, so it can't be anything too bad. Also, feel free to bug me on IM or email (or whatever) if the server ever has problems. I don't mind at all.
It was odd:
I could log in using my PSFTP program, and everything was right there, but when I used any sort of browser, it couldn't connect. But then some of the individual image files that I have linked over on my Livejournal pages showed up while others didn't...
I'm glad everything's back, at any rate. I mean, it's been traumatic enough this evening, trying to make pumpkin pies with canned pumpkin instead of fresh!
Mike
Agreed. I actually logged into my site before I realized...I couldn't see what I'd uploaded...
Well, weeks after moving to the new server, the DNS issues should finally be resolved. The final hurdle was an old user (from 3+ years ago) still had a domain pointed at the old nameserver, which was preventing me from deleting it. I finally, and with the help of a friend, managed to find a new/working email address for her and ask her to change it. The entries in the root servers are now correct, and as soon as those changes propagate, we can stop worrying about the exact server name. That also means I can finally bring the old server offline, and stop paying double, which is the important part. :-)
Quote from: Xepher on November 11, 2007, 12:59:36 PM
Everyone using email needs to pay close attention to the "Unsure" and "Junk" folders to start with. All mail will be delivered to "Unsure" until your spam filter is trained. You train it by moving messages out of Unsure and into the appropriate folder. That is, move spam into "Junk" and it's learned as Junk... move it to your Inbox (or any custom folder you've created... pretty much anything but "Trash") and it will be learned as good (non-spam) email. As the filter learns, it will start delivering only good email to your inbox, and deliver all the spam to "Junk." But you have to watch it to start with, to make sure it doesn't mis-identify some legit email as Junk to start with. That said, check both the Junk and Unsure folders regularly until you're confident the filter is trained well.
Moving unsure items to junk & vice versa works but when I try to move 'good' messages to my inbox from the junk or unsure folder, It seems to work at first then it gives me a "Could not move the message" error a few seconds after =\ and the message simply returns to the junk/unsure folder.
Weird... it seems you don't have an Inbox. How long has this been going on for? Did you have stuff in there before or did it just never work? I can easily fix it, and setup the proper folders again, but if there's stuff in there that's been lost, I need to go recover backups. Also, the "Incoming!" folder... did you make that? It seems empty, but I wonder if the exclamation mark might be screwing something up maybe.
EDIT: I just looked at backups, and even 6 weeks ago (as far back as backups go) there was nothing in the Inbox, so there's nothing to recover. I've gone ahead and manually setup the missing folders, so hopefully it'll work now. If it does, and you've had this problem since the new server went online, then it was probably just a glitch in my mail migration scripts and nothing to worry about.
Oh no, sorry I didn't get back to this sooner.. yeah, nothing to backup. Heh
It was indeed like this since the new server went online, I thought it might just be a tiny temporary glitch.. and promptly forgot about it! Should have noted that before.
I made the 'Incoming!' folder as a test only a little bit before posting here so I don't think it was that.
It all works now, thanks Xeph :D