Neural Core Dump » meta

Blog Server Upgraded

Jeff — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 23:47:33 +0000

It case you missed yesterday’s tweets, the jeffdarlington.com server has been successfully upgraded both to Fedora 11 and WordPress 2.8. The GPF server is next, although I haven’t started that effort and it’s bound to take longer. I’ll make a bigger deal about the downtime for GPF when that upgrade draws closer.

Let me know if you encounter any problems with the new site.

Upcoming Server Maintenance

Jeff — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:54:13 +0000

Just a quick heads-up to anyone who cares, but I’m in the process of upgrading the blog server’s operating system from the creaking and decrepit Fedora 6 to the shiny new Fedora 11. I’m doing most of this work on a totally different virtual server, which I’ll then backup and overwrite this virtual server with the new image once its ready to go live. In theory, there should be only a minimum of downtime when the actual overwrite occurs. However, I’ll probably end up closing comments and such temporarily right before the flash to make sure the database stays in sync. I don’t have a time frame for when the actual flash will occur, but it should be in the next few days.

As an even more advanced warning, GPF will be getting the same upgrade (only from Fedora 8 ) once the blog server is stable. The blog comes first because (1) it’s running on the older OS and thus theoretically more vulnerable due to its venerable age and (2) it will serve as a test bed to make sure the upgrade process moves relatively smoothly. I tend to be much riskier with the blog server because it’s less important to my livelihood, so it gets to be the guinea pig for these sorts of experiments.

Comments restored… for now

Jeff — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:27:57 +0000

Follow up from the last post: Comments should be working again, although not in a fashion that I’d prefer. I had to completely disable Admin-SSL, thus login and login cookies are no longer secure. If you logged in while it was active, you’ll likely need to log in again before you can post, even if you check the “remember me” box. I’m still looking into why it doesn’t work. There’s a known limitation that shared SSL setups will fail to recognize logins in insecure mode, but they say nothing about dedicated setups like mine, which I would think would imply that it ought to work. Then again, I also had some mod_rewrite rules in place, but I experimented with removing those and so I don’t think they’re part of the problem.

I suppose this isn’t a big deal for you guys, since I doubt anyone will be all torn up over making sure their logins to some random guy’s blog are secure. It affects me more than anyone else, because I’d feel much safer if I could protect the admin parts of the site with a layer of encryption. Still, in places where I really need encryption I can verify it still works, so I guess the blog will just have to be open. :\

Comments broken, still working on it

Jeff — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:59:27 +0000

It has come to my attention that comments don’t appear to be working here at the moment. I strongly suspect this is due to the Admin-SSL WordPress plugin that I’m currently using to secure parts of the blog. It seems to forget that you’re logged in when you’re not accessing a secure URL (i.e. you’re not in SSL mode). I’ve tried a few of the workarounds suggested, but none are working. I have a hunch on a few things to try, but that will have to wait until I have more dedicated time to work on it. (I’m currently watching the little guy by myself at the moment.) I’ll post an update when I think it’s been fixed.