Xepher.Net Forums

Xepher.net => Announcements => Topic started by: Xepher on April 07, 2009, 10:30:17 PM

Title: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: Xepher on April 07, 2009, 10:30:17 PM
The new server, Sirius, is now online, and is what's serving this page right now. The migration involved about 10 minutes of downtime total, and everything should be up and running normally again. Things should be identical to the old server from a user perspective, save that we've got more cpu and ram. However, I'm sure I probably missed some detail or other in the move, so as always, let me know if you encounter any glitches or problems.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: fesworks on April 07, 2009, 11:35:35 PM
Huzzah!
Title: Re: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: Xepher on April 07, 2009, 11:43:52 PM
One change to note here... The new server is on a metered bandwidth connection now, so I'm trying to be a bit more cautious with bandwidth usage. I'm buying two VMs here actually, for a total transfer allowance of 3TB (3000GB) per month, which should be more than enough, but just try to be a bit cautious with huge file downloads and such. One thing I am doing is switching the newsbox over to using JPEG images instead of PNG. The newsbox was using about 400GB/month on its own. This should reduce that to around 150GB or so, but of course they'll look slightly uglier.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: Miluette on April 08, 2009, 07:19:53 AM
JPEGs should still look fine so long as people know how to save 'em!

What are the types of files that tend to use up the most bandwidth/be hugest? Or, around what filesize? I'm thinking of toning some of my sites back as soon as I stop being lazy~
Title: Re: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: Xepher on April 08, 2009, 09:18:35 AM
It's really only the most obnoxious stuff that's a problem. Mostly it's been with people uploading illegal stuff like copies of software and such. The only other thing I've seen is people putting up a single page with 40 screens of images or something, meaning all of it gets loaded everytime, rather than just thumbnails or the images people are actually looking for. Don't worry about normal site design, as that shouldn't be a problem.

As for the newsbox... I've already changed the code. People can upload just like normal, and it'll just save them as jpegs now, instead of png. I converted all the existing images too, and I don't think most people will even notice.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: tapewolf on April 08, 2009, 02:02:16 PM
Ah, I thought this might have happened when the SSH key changed.  I meant to ask before... you mentioned in the other thread about possibly having a failover server.  Does that mean that you've devised a plan for system backups, or would this be two machines in the datacentre that are physically linked (and therefore able to mirror the data over their local net)?
Title: Re: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: Xepher on April 08, 2009, 11:05:39 PM
I am going to get a second VM (virtual machine) in the same datacenter. It'll be called Procyon, and will maintain backups through an unmetered private network. It likely won't be automatic failover, but I'll be able to manually switch things in the event of a disaster or major problem. I'm gonna try and it get up over the next week here or so.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: Xepher on April 11, 2009, 05:47:22 PM
The second server is now online. It's named Procyon (get it? Alpha Canis Major... another dog star!) and it'll serve as the new backup system. It'll continue the nightly backups that were happening on Arclight, but it's also completely separate (unlike the internal VMs on arclight) so it can very rapidly be converted to run the live site in the event something catastrophic happens to Sirius.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: schwarzkreuz on April 13, 2009, 05:11:56 AM
Fugu keeps telling me

"warning remote host identification has changed"

and won't let me connect.

I'm a babe in the technical woods :( any sujestions?
Title: Re: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: tapewolf on April 13, 2009, 11:20:56 AM
Quote from: schwarzkreuz on April 13, 2009, 05:11:56 AM
Fugu keeps telling me
"warning remote host identification has changed"
and won't let me connect.

This may be a case of the blind leading the blind, but try deleting the xepher.net line from ~/.ssh/known_hosts.

If Fugu is a proper unix app (rather than a Classic app or something) it should work, if not it's probably keeping the ID somewhere else.

I have to admit that my initial reaction was to completely nuke ~/.ssh, but I'm pretty sure there is more... refined way of doing it >:3

EDIT:
Actually, that could be difficult if you're not a command-line junkie.  Finder seems to have hidden .ssh and I'm not sure how you make it show it.

Worst case, go to the command shell and:

rm ~/.ssh/known_hosts

Next time you connect, it should rebuild the file with the new ID.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: Xepher on April 13, 2009, 06:39:44 PM
Yeah, that's basically what needs to be done. If you open a Terminal window, you should be able to run the rm command Tapewolf gave above. Apparently that works for fugu.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: schwarzkreuz on April 14, 2009, 09:49:31 AM
o_O

uhhh... no idea what you're talking about.

I'm Oedipus in the technical woods. Not only am I a babe. My ankles are nailed together.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: tapewolf on April 14, 2009, 10:45:06 AM
Quote from: schwarzkreuz on April 14, 2009, 09:49:31 AM
uhhh... no idea what you're talking about.

I'm Oedipus in the technical woods. Not only am I a babe. My ankles are nailed together.

A lot of this is made worse by Apple's misguided attempts to make the system 'more friendly'.

Anyway, I don't have proper access to a mac right now, but I think it's this:

1. In finder, go to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal
2. This should give you the command prompt.
3. Enter the following command exactly - cut-and-paste is probably best:


rm ~/.ssh/known_hosts


4. If fugu is running, shut it down.
5. Launch fugu, try to connect

Let us know if that works, or what happens if it doesn't...
Title: Re: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: schwarzkreuz on April 15, 2009, 10:30:54 AM
That worked.

Thanks guys. Sorry I'm such a luddite.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: tapewolf on April 16, 2009, 01:42:31 PM
Quote from: schwarzkreuz on April 15, 2009, 10:30:54 AM
That worked.
Thanks guys. Sorry I'm such a luddite.

Glad it worked out.
Title: Re: Welcome to the Dog Star
Post by: yny-u on May 04, 2009, 03:35:51 PM
Thanks for the help tapewolf.

On a side note, Mac OSX users can show/hide hidden files by entering the following two shell commands:


defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder


To have the system hide the files again, simply re-enter the commands with FALSE instead of TRUE.

(Or, you can go get a Dashboard widget to put a nice user interface on the process.. http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/developer/showhidewidget.html (http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/developer/showhidewidget.html) )