NQIG News

2007-03-28T14:06:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
Lumpy urgently needs a home, or we need someone to host a slave record for the NQIG DNS entry. If you can help with either of these two things, let me know!

Also, we've got a new homepage, but we also need new member data! So get on the ball and give me your desired member info!

Whew! Been a long time since we had a home page update. Not that too many people beyond myself ever see it, but it IS technically the primary representation of us to the world, so we should take at least some effort to make it look nice ^^;

2006-08-17T10:03:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Amalla Up, Lumpy Up (for now)

Server Notes
Well, the phpBB2's visual confirmation SUCKS.

So, I've hacked it a little and made it a little better/worse. The important thing is that it's different now. That means that the spammers should have serious trouble getting their bots to work with out forum since it's heterogeneous from the primary source base.

Not fool proof, and also not easy for humans to read... SO if you're having trouble with creating your account, just give me a holler, we can hook you up no problem. ^^

As a side note, Lumpy is currently looking for a home. He doesn't need much bandwidth, or even guaranteed uptime. Just a static IP and ports 22, 25, 53, and 3306 open for incoming traffic.

Lumpy's old home is about to kick him out so I need to work on finding him a new home. Silly as it may seem, Lumpy's been an invaluable asset to the proper functioning of the NQIG webmail system. However, we may consider moving the E-Mail over to Go-Daddy's servers to improve it's reliability or just dropping the NQIG mail system altogether and depending on other servers for mail delivery (like g-mail) since it seems that the only person with any serious use for the NQIG mail system seems to be me ^^;;;

Status Nominal

2006-07-26T08:18:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Amalla:Up Lumpy: Up

Server Notes
Everything continues to operate exactly as specified. There is no currently scheduled downtime.

Amalla seems to miss incoming connections every once-in-a-while. No clue why, but it would not be hard to convince me that the virtualization process is responsible. It's not crippling, but it's not exactly "perfect" operation.

I may consider switching to a lower level of service sometime in the future (i.e. drop the "server" altogether) since they offer plans that include server-side scripting and databases, which is really the whole reason I started running my own server several years ago. But at that time, most scripting languages weren't safe enough to have strangers running code on your servers. A lot has changed since then, so servers that offer PHP support are now a dime a dozen. But that won't be an issue for another 6 months, so we'll look at it then.

Just be aware that if I do that, all NQIG member sites will have to find their own hosting. The .nqig.net domain, however, will still remain, so things like jtc.nqig.net are very much possible (For that matter, those names already work ^.~)

Motoko is Offline

2006-05-05T10:35:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Amalla/Up Lumpy/Up Motoko/"Down forever"

Server Notes
Motoko is no longer online. Amalla and Lumpy are fully functional and service will continue uninterrupted.

*sniffle* She's gone. I've finally totally offlined Motoko. I mean TOTALLY offlined. She was "offline" for a while, (no access but technically still on.) but now she doesn't exist anymore.

That doesn't mean I didn't come up with something to do with her body. Motoko's parts (Except for her video card which was replaced,) where turned into a Windows Media Center PC called Izumi.

Izumi's doing fine and has been happily recording all the cool TV shows for some time now, so I can't complain. But I still miss Motoko sometimes... *tear*

Oh, I know! I'll setup a Virtual PC on Izumi and install Linux on it so Motoko's name and final purpose can continue uninterrupted. I'll need to set it to low priority and no hardware acelleration though ^^;

GoDaddy and Outgoing E-Mail

2006-04-11T10:53:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Amalla/Up Lumpy/Up Motoko/Up

Server Notes
Outgoing E-Mail service has been repaired. Any messages sent in the last 5 days will be delivered as usual. Any E-Mails sent before that will need to be resent as they where tossed from the queue.

GoDaddy has a nifty anti-spam plan, but because of this I can't actually just set my e-mail server to operate as an e-mail server should. I have to set a "Smart Host" (which is where Amalla is supposed to send all of her outgoing e-mail to.) There is technically a 1000 e-mail per day limit, but I don't think that will be a problem. We'll see. I know there's no reason we should ever exceed that number (Hell, I only noticed because I had a message to Loki get stuck at the server and I send about 1 e-mail a month) but we'll see.

Amalla is Online, Motoko will be offline by, well soon.

2006-03-31T08:17:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Amalla Up, Motoko Up (but not for much longer), Lumpy Up

Server Notes
The changeover has been completed. Services will continue uninterrupted (Except for you oni. Deal with it ^.~) Motoko will soon be going offline so please be sure to switch to the Ventrilo server on ventrilo.nqig.net. (This name will be mapped to whatever server is hosting ventrilo from now on.) Nothing else needs to be changed to continue using Ventrilo.

If you notice a feature that is missing please inform me and I will make every effort to bring it on to the new server. Also note that there was a 1 day period where mailboxes became disjunct. If you're worried that you may have lost an e-mail, contact me and I'll give you a copy of your mailbox that was made shortly after the disjunction was repaired.

Unlike all the times in the past, your passwords have NOT been reset. This was accomplished by me bopping myself in the head and just copying your password hashes over to the new server. They're not as strong as the server's native password hashes (Amalla natively uses MD5 hashes and Motoko used libcrypt hashes,) but if I've done my job right there shouldn't be much of a difference in security.

The swap to the new provider was much easier than I had expected. There where a few minor glitches associated with having two fully functional servers online at once (and having two very different impressions of the domain settings, (Jim's Lesson Learned: Don't forget to update the serial number on your zone records when you change them)) but overall things went rather smoothly (MUCH more smoothly then they have gone in the past, but this may also itself be related to the fact that Motoko was kept online during the switchover so I could copy files as I needed them.)

All in all I'm happy with the switch. Go Daddy's server seems to run pretty well (though it does ocassionally chug a bit) and it DEFINATELY shows the value of the Virtual Server concept.

Maybe one day when I get the chance I'll add Virtual Server hosting to my business , since the cost of running 2 1-cpu systems is much higher than the cost of running 1 2-cpu system is much higjer than the cost of running 1 8-core-4-cpu system. I think I could make a decent profit leasing them for much more than they cost me to operate and still be offering them for a decent price. (Since I would also be able to aggregate the bandwidth between them.)

But that's a topic for my personal space ^.~

Motoko's Services are Being Moved to a New Site

2006-03-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Up/Down

Server Notes
Motoko, our faithful servant now for almost 6 years, will be brought completely offline in the coming month to allow for us to cancel the DSL and get Comcast Cable internet service. For those of you who come over to my house it will be a VERY good thing as we'll be getting the 6 Meg up, 768K down kind, plus we know that the DSL SUCKS in the wind or rain, so we'll pick up stability, which is a huge plus.

"But what about my email/website/ventrilo server?! What will happen to it?" you ask.

Well, fear not. Though I'm not going to pay comcast some $30 a month to make it so that Motoko can sit on the cable line and make a lot of noise at my house and eat power and need cleaning and all those other annoying things that Motoko does, I WILL pay $25 to an offsite hosting company (www.godaddy.com) to host all of Motoko's services.

Enter Amalla. Amalla is the off site "Virtual Dedicated Server" that will host NQIG and all of it's affiliate sites. (The irony is that I was thinking about offering Virtual Dedicated Servers for you guys ^^; )

Soon, 5-10 days I suspect, I will complete bringing all of Motoko's services (Except for yours Oni. Sorry.) over to Amalla. After which Amalla will be about 80% functional, lacking only a few minor aspects of Motoko's functionality associated with DNS support (because I can't update the DNS records till they transfer. Oh ya, I'm transfering those to Go Daddy too because they're charging like 30% of what Network Solutions was.)

When the DNS services are complete, Motoko will be moved from primary functionality to secondary until we fully cancel the DSL service, after which time her hardware will be liberated for whatever devious means we might want to use it for. (Maybe add a vid card and make it a guest computer or something? No clue. I'm still working on that. She's only a Athelon 2000+ so she's kinda weak.)

There is an important note though: For the next week, I'm offlining the forum and recommending that if you actually want to see your data end up on Amalla, you resist uploading anything until I give the go-ahead. Since I'll be copying the data by hand, there's no promise that I may miss something you upload after I copy.

I may finish the copy today, or it may take me a week; I don't know. But I will make all reasonable effort to be prompt with the changeover to minimize the disturbance to services.

This is going to ROCK, but it's kinda scary. Never had a whole SERVER hosted in another location before. But I suspect things will go well.

Ventrilo 2.3.1

2005-12-21T19:34:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
Ventrilo has been updated. Please download the new client from either www.ventrilo.com or you can get our local cached copy from www.nqig.net/ventrilo-2.3.0-Windows-i386.exe

Thank you for your patience.

Happy Birthday NQIG

2005-11-01T09:16:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
The NQIG.NET domain has been renewed for another year. Service will continue uninterrupted.

Wow, Hard to believe that Motoko is what, 3? 4? Something like that. I never thought this little project woul drun so long. But then again I also didn't expect I'd still be going to college and living at home when I was 22, so it's not that hard to see.

Disk Queues

2005-10-05T10:42:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
Well, I've put in place disk quotas. Everyone has been set to a 1 gigabyte limit for normal accounts and 100 megs for pure e-mail accounts (like the jaya and my 3 mail accounts) and the apache account. This means that files created by apache cannot exceed 100 MB for ALL users in their user folders, so be warned. This shouldn't have any impact on you critters, but I've seen at least one thing so far that needed it.

For all practical purposes these limits should be invisible to you guys. A gigabyte for web based transfers means 4 hours of continuous transfer across my link assuming you have a pipe big enough on your end. But this does have the effect of making sure that Motoko has enough space (the user partition is 20 GB) and it's distributed mostly fairly (I say that because My limit is 5GB, mostly because I'm already using 3GB and I'm admin so I can say so ^.~)

We'll see how this goes. Given that our current runner up for max storage is using their account as a video repository for home movies and they still have slightly less than half of their allotment free, I don't see there being too many problems.

QPopper and Server Certificates

2005-07-15T16:16:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
I have added POP3 and SPOP3 to Motoko. You still cannot use her to send e-mail by any means other than her webmail interface (Or your ISP's SMTP server,) but regardless of this fact, you can CHECK your e-mail via either of these two interfaces.

Additionally, Motoko's server certificate has changed. She now uses an OFFICIAL cert issued by CAcert.org. What this means to you guys is that you need a new Root CA (If you don't already have one) To get this, goto their website and click the link under Miscellaneous called Root Cerificate. There, download the certificate (you probably want the PEM version). Then add it to your browser's trusted authorities list. In Firefox you do this by going to Tools/Options ,select Advanced, goto Certificates, click the Manager Certificates button, select the authorities tab, click the Import button, and then select the certificate file.

Verify that the certificate you got wasn't tampered with by selecting the view button and comparing the SHA1 Fingerprint against "13:5c:ec:36:f4:9c:b8:e9:3b:1a:b2:70:cd:80:88:46:76:ce:8f:33". (It's called the "thumbprint" in IE and doesn't have the colons, and case isn't important) next select all the different trusts you want (You'll need to at least trust them for web sites for Motoko) and press OK.

At this point: Presto! Login to your e-mail with no more certificate warnings.

NQIG.NET Version 2.0! Now with RAID 1!

2005-05-24T07:31:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Up (5 days before the target date. Sweet.)

Server Notes
Everything seems to be back in order. I've put Motoko back up using a fresh install of Fedora Core 3. I put the old drive into an enclosure and have access to it in the event that some piece of the process was forgotten (for example I just noticed that my Linux Logo app isn't here) but I'm reasonably confident that all already existing user data has been transfered over, all major services are back up, and all mailboxes have been put back together. Squigy, however, may have trouble opening his mailbox (The file had read errors while copying.) If any of you have trouble opening your mailboxes, please contact me.

All emails that where queued during the downtime have been properly delivered to the intended recipients, so any e-mails you where expecting to get should have been delivered.

Oh, ya, just a warning ALL OF YOUR PASSWORDS HAVE BEEN RESET!!!. This means that if you want to get to your mail, you will have to contact me and I'll hook you up. I'm thinking about creating a web interface to allow you to change your password remotely. I'm not entirely sure how I plan to do this (probably with a simple alias for the passwd command, I may scour the web for existing scripts, though I will be hand parsing them to ensure they're safe and reliable) but until then you will have to come to my house to change it. If you need access before then but cannot come over, I will set it to something specific and give you that password, but I will require you to change it the next time you are over.

Just in case you where wondering. Yes, the forums are up and alive

FINALLY!!!!

Damn power supply.

Down, but Doing Much, MUCH Better

2005-05-23T21:48:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Down(ish)

Server Notes
Bought two new hards drives, put them in as standard IDE hard drives, got the "My RAID controller is bad" symptoms, said WTF?!!! Unplugged both drives. AOK. Plugged in one drive, Sorta okay (like it was when I installed Linux last time), said F*@$, went out bought a new 500 watt power supply (replacing the old 330 watt one. Plug in both drives, boot computer, install linux almost flawlessly.

What this means is that my RAID conroller is probably fine. I just didn't have enough powerto drive te computer properly and the hard drives where doing a soft reset. So I think the old drive is fine, and given a low level format, could probably work with no problems. For that matter, other than being in a low power conditions, could probably be used as the thrid drive in a RAID 5 array.

Lumpy does appear to be functioning, and is happily sending out wave after wave of "Delivery Deferred" messages to thousands of incesant spammers. It is also caching many e-mails destined for you and when motoko is properly restored, these will be delivered post-haste.

And my thanks and appolgies go out to Squigy, who, dispite my ignoring him, properly diagnosed this problem months ago (back when I had this problem last time.) I salute you, oh great wise being of computer repair *worships on knees* (a point that many people forget is that computer repair is not where my training lies, I know NETWORK REPAIR, not computer repair. I can only make a programmer and EE's educated guess when it comes to computer repair.)

Down for the Count

2005-05-23T07:20:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Down (till 5/29/2005)

Server Notes
Motoko's hard disk has begun to corrupt critical system files. What this means is I can no longer delay on replacing her gimpped hard drive. I've run the appropriate filesystem repair tools on the /home directory (where 90% of your guy's stuff is held) and other than spoony's mailbox and my files, I think everything is okay. So I should be able to recover all of your user data. However, this is the good news. The bad news is that Motoko will be offline for a week while she undergoes some critical repairs. The RAID 1 experiment will be repeated during this time period, though it will be done using software RAID rather than Motoko's failed hardware one. Also, the basic OS will be reinstalled from a fresh copy, though all software settings will be recovered if possible from the damaged drive.

In the meantime, Lumpy will be servicing NQIG's DNS and E-Mail accounts (though only acting as a proxy cache for mail.) Lumpy has been checked and is functioning properly. When Motoko comes back online (hopefully sooner than the 29th, but I gave that time for safety) all cached E-Mails will be delivered to the appropriate accounts.

I appologise for the inconvienience.

#^@(in' $#!7#0!3 84$74&@$!!!!!

*takes a deep breath*

Guess the laptop will have to wait. *sigh*

2005-02-22T08:50:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
I've finished the maintenence on the partition and here's the list of casualties:
My stored archive of the QPopper program
My Trash mailbox (Ohh... How sad that it had to be deleted)
and finally, Spoon's IMAP data file.

Many thanks go to Spoony! for bringing the issues to my attention rather than just blowing it off and casually remarking later "Oh ya, and my mail's broken" as this problem would have been much worse if more of the damaged regions of the disk been in use. But by acting quickly we've averted further issues by marking all of the bad areas on the disk before they can be used.

The one thing I'm very glad of is the fact that I chose to partition the drive out into groups since I was able to just unmount the bad partition, fix it, and re-up it without having to take the server down as a whole. I'll have to remember to do that more often ^.^;

Home Directories and Websites (Except for main) down

2005-02-22T07:46:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Upish

Server Notes
Motoko is having bad block problems on her /home partition. As such, I've unmounted it and am currently in the process of doing a complete device scan of it. However, this means that the drive I installed is bad and needs to be replaced. I'm not sure when doing that will become feasable so we'll have to see.

;.;

Motoko is Up, but There are Some Changes

2005-01-31T11:56:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
IMPORTANT, PLEASE READ: YOUR PASSWORDS HAVE BEEN RESET. YOU WILL HAVE TO COME AND ASK ME TO CHANGE THEM.
Motoko has been brought back up and is in a reasonably stable state. However, with the new arrangement comes new methodologies. The first one is that Motoko no longer has Front Page Support. I decided to do this since only one person ever even used it besides myself, and it created an unnessicary security risk. The second thing is that, due to this change, everyone will have their web sites moved into their home directories and redirects will be written to deal with this. This means that if your URL was http://www.nqig.net/hobbit, it will now be http://www.nqig.net/~hobbit. However, don't fret, the old URL will still work, it will just redirect you to the new URL automatically. The reason for all of this is the fact that without front page, you will need a way to update your web pages. However, the way the FTP server is configured, you only have access to your own /home directories. So if you want to update your pages, you will have to ftp on as your user, change to the public_html directory, and update your pages there. This won't interfere with your pre-existing web content, nor will it preclude you from using Front Page to edit your pages. It will change how you go about doing that, mind you, but that shouldn't be much of an issue. (Also, this increases the range of web page editors you can use since FTP is MUCH more widely supported than Front Page Server Extentions. This includes new tools like Dreamweaver and such.)

As for your old mail I've tacked it on to the end of your mailbox, so you should have ready access to it.

Finally back online. Let's just hope I don't have to do this again. ;.; That took WAY too long.

Motoko's Going Down for Repairs

2005-01-27T21:05:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Down

Server Notes
Motoko is currently being offlined. I'm going to install Fedora 3 on her. But even cooler still, I bought a second hard drive and will be upping her to a full out RAID 1 system. Anyways, Motoko, for all reasonable purposes, will be offline till monday. I might get her up before that, but don't count on it.

RAID 1, WOO!!!!

Forums are down and Motoko as a whole will be soon

2005-01-24T22:31:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Up but limping along

Server Notes
Motoko was the victim of a virus that seems to want to infect her phpBB2. This is entirely my own fault. A large number of different systems had to malfunction (I failed to update her phpBB2, installed Apache 2 poorly, and otherwise did stupid things I thought I could get away with.) before this could happen, and all of them where poorly handled by yours truely. Good news for you guys is that the user data on motoko seems reasonably ok. (i.e. personal web sites, forum data, the l337 cool stuff for the BPP, etc, all live happily), however, many of Motoko's fundamental systems where damaged. It may take me several weeks, considering the difficaulty involved, to repair her. During this time I cannot gaurentee ANY of Motoko's functions, and for some of it (primarily a system reinstall) she will be COMPLETELY offline. Regardless, I CAN promise you that the NQIG Forums and the WOW Forums are ABSOLUTELY OFFLINE until I can get her put back together. When I get the chance (considering my work/school schedule this may take till Monday,) I will backup Motoko's data, wipe her HDD clean, reinstall her OS, reinstall her basic systems, and reupload the user data. I'll update you more with anything helpful later.

#%$@in peice of @^# sucking *#!@ licking $^@#$!#@ software.

*Throttles self and bashes skull firmly against the wall several times*
*falls down and knocks self out on floor tiles*

Brief Outage

2004-12-14T18:43:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
Motoko was down for 5 minutes today (6:35-6:40) for a routine cleaning. Everything seems to be back up ok.

Figured I should post that since this blog hasn't had to change much over the last couple of months. Not that that's a bad thing mind you ^^

Computer Function and the Requirement of Power

2004-08-25T08:24:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
Lumpy is back online. Apparently they had done some moving of computers and in the process, the power strip that Lumpy was on got turned off. So I've flipped the switch and Lumpy, and the alternate mail server, are back online and functioning.

Lumpy's Down

2004-08-24T09:00:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Up (Lumpy is Down)

Server Notes
Well, it seems that Lumpy is currently offline. During my weekly test, Lumpy failed to respond. Unfortunately, because Lumpy isn't located at my house (Which was partly the point) I'm going to have to go to it to reboot it. Unfortunately, I won't be able to do this till tomorrow. So Lumpy will have to remain offline for a while until I have a chance to go work on him.

Relocation and Reallocaztion Finished

2004-08-04T22:56:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
Well, I'm currently posting via Motoko from her new position: in my bedroom. We haven't popped the breaker again, although that was relatively true before the relocation, so I'm not sure that it actually says that much. But the hope is that in it's new location, Motoko will not be a significant player in any future power concerns in the guest room. However, since my computer shares it's circuit with the washing machine, it will be interesting to see how things go, especially considering that the relatively high load UPS device is also connected now to that circuit.

There are a few concerns I have personally. Most of them are trivial, but things like, "Why where we popping it after the move, but not before it, despite the fact that no additional devices where connected (And more importantly, why only when there are a small number of laptops connected? Why wasn't it popping on Fridays?) The second is, why was the ground fault interrupt protection tripping on the outlet the UPS was on? Was it the UPS' fault? Thirdly, every time the breaker popped, the lights went out in the family room. Is it possible that the problem is related to the fact that there are 4 100 Watt lightbulbs connected? Should we replace them with more efficient, but slower to warm up fluorescent bulbs?

And lastly, what am I going to do about bedtime when I have a 24/7 computer living in my room? Luckily it's not Phoenix, who emits about 60 dB of sound constantly. Motoko only runs at about 40 dB, so I have that in my favor. But I've also added three new lights (Power, HDD, UPS Power) to the room, which can be terribly distracting when I'm trying to sleep. ^.^;;;

Blown Breakers and the Relocation of Motoko

2004-08-04T17:59:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Down

Server Notes
As you know, we've continuously blown the breaker in the basement during some of the hotter weather. So I've decided (mostly to make the 'head of the household' scowl less) to relocate Motoko into my room from the basement corner. Because of this, the server will be offline for as long as it takes for me to get the arrangements worked out. I suspect that she'll be back up some time in/on/around 6:30-7:00 PM MDT tonight (8/4/04) Lumpy, however, remains functional and happy, so your emails are, in-fact, safe.

Webmail Client Upgrade

2004-07-25T11:35:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
I'm currently upgrading the SquirrelMail client on Motoko. What this means to you is that the webmail interface may not be availible for a few hours and some of your settings may not be saved. I appologize for the inconvinience.

EMI and the Death of the Television

2004-06-23T09:11:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
Motoko has been having just a wonderful time with all of these electrical storms (*snicker*) So the link has been up and down all month. Hopefully after the summer rainny season ends the server will get stable again.

But on normal NQIG status stuff, The television in the game room has been slowly but surely failing. And Vap and I (Jim The Cactus) have decided to put the metaphorical hat out. Basically what's gonna happen is that we're going to hold a vote this friday for what kind of television we want to get and then what we're going to do is put out a collection jar. When we collect enough money for a new TV (And I do plan to donate some myself) we'll go out, buy it, and set it up. What this means though is that if we vote on it and decide that if we want to try and get a 52" High Definition Plasma Screen TV, we're gonna have to collect $8000. So we should be prudent in our selection of goals. Remember however: we CANNOT get a projection TV. The reason for this is printed in the packaging of EVERY console. Also, as cool as it would be, we should think long and hard before committing to a 16:9 aspect ratio television, especially considering the lessons all of us have learned working with my laptop.

Back Up and the New Layout

2004-06-03T23:30:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
We've got the server back up and the room rearranged.

Check out the new layout in panarama form! The panorama was taken from the door. From left to right in the panorama, the stuff in the picture is "Laptop Land", "Jim's Corner", "Vap's Space", Chairs, Fridge, "Spoony!'s Spot" (on the COUCH mode bed), "Snack Corner", Fireplace, "The Console Creche", Bookcase, Extra Bed, Trashcan. The panorama doesn't show it all that well, but the room has A LOT more space.

Re-arranging...

2004-06-03T20:37:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Down

Server Notes
Server is down for unsceduled room maintence from 8:30 PM to 10:00 pm.

Bandwidth Upgrade and Downrtime

2004-04-08T11:27:00.000-06:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
The server's getting a bandwidth upgrade so sometime between now and Apr 15th (Or more, we're dealing with QWest here...) the DSL is going to go down for as much as a day (Reasonably it should only be a couple of minutes, but after which a router reboot is needed, and if it happens on a Mon or Wed, it could take up to a day for me to go and reboot it.) Email won't be lost (Thanks to Lumpy) but you will be unable to access it for this time period.

For those who want to know, no we're not spending any more money, and the new bandwidth is 876K up / 1.5M down. Total cost (including $15 IP charges) $65 a month... Not bad for T1 downstream speeds and 60% T1 upstream.

The Big Oopsie ^.^;;;

2004-04-01T11:22:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Up (Really this time... :p )

Server Notes
If you recieved a massive onslaught of backed up mail a few days ago, I can explain... See, you know my comment about the QWest DNS servers? Ya, well, it turns out that the problem was related to the fact that Lumpy's name server was being blocked my his firewall... And since Motoko uses QWest's name servers (I really should setup a dns caching server...) Motoko would wait a huge amount of time till she delivered mail, mostly because of the junk mail detection settings, (she was trying to resolve, and the reverse resolve the sender's DNS to prove that everything was kosher, and since she couldn't resolve herself, the mail was backing up.) So I've fixed Lumpy and now he actually WORKS, and mail is properly being resolved by Motoko. I've also configured Motoko to ask herself as a last resort for DNS, so even if QWest acts up, Motoko can at least resolve her own address.

Up, But Only Kinda...

2004-03-11T09:38:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
There's been a bit of touble working with the QWest DNS servers, but otherwise the server is up and operational. You just can't see it from inside the nat system at my house.

Down Due to Constuction

2004-03-10T07:56:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Down (Backup Server UP)

Server Notes
Motoko is currently offline due to continued work on the power systems in the server's location. Lumpy, however, has been setup, and barring any unpleasentries, should be acting right now as an SMTP store-and-forward system. So if the gods of DNS aren't out to get me (As they usually are...) no email should get lost. However, this means that all other services (Web sites, forums, and the webmail interface) are offline. (The webmail interface is not related to email reception, you may not be able to check your e-mail, but you are getting it.)

If anyone has any ideas how to use a redundant failover for machines on different subnets, I'd really appriciate that knowlege... It would allow for things like personal websites to continue functioning even though the master server is offline. Oh well... At least we have something out there catching our e-mail... And it's not like there's that many people on our site.

Of Lumpy...

2004-03-03T09:34:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Up

Server Notes
Lumpy is all setup, I just need to place him in his final home and setup his networking settings. Should only take me a few hours, but finding the time will be difficault. Probably have to do it on a weekend.

Finally Repaired!

2004-02-09T21:25:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Up Yea!

Server Notes
The DSL is up and working again. As such, e-mail, FTP, websites and the forum are back up as well.

Server Repair Journal Day 6
Well, after almost a full week of problems, and a small issue with phoneticlly similar letters, the DSL is finally back up and running. In that time, it has become quite clear to me that we REALLY need a backup server, if for nothing else, so that when the link goes down, people's e-mail doesn't fall into a giant black pit. So... I built Lumpy. Well, not really built, more like recommissioned, since it's just Ed renamed to avoid confusion... Hopefully, I will soon have lumpy up and online on the WWE backbone. If I do get it up, it will be in charge of weekly backups of the NQIG website, personal directories, and databases; Acting as a true secondary DNS server (*gasp*); and acting as a mail queue for when Motoko is unavailible (Basically setting it up as a relay and telling it to hold it's mail queue forever or until delivered.)

In any case the server is back up. BTW... Since this is the NQIG news blog, NQIG members, feel free to ask for access so you can post things like special meetings, interesting upcoming events, and general NQIG public broadcasts. (Remember, the whole world can read this, so make sure that what you put up here is something you want the world to see.)

A Quick Notice

2004-02-09T08:19:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Up, Link is down

Server Notes
Modem is due today. I'll have it up as soon as possible.

A Due Date!

2004-02-06T01:55:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Up, Link is down

Server Notes
We have a due date for when the server will be repaired!!! I figure I'll have the server up sometime between Monday and Wendsday, depending on shipping and configuration difficaulties.

Server Repair Journal Day 3
Ok, so it's technically the same wake/sleep cycle as the day 2 post, but it's technically a new day. Anyway... I FINALLY got through to QWest. They said almost exactly what I expected them to. "WOW! You went though EVERYTHING I was going to have you do. You probably have a busted router... How about I send you a new one and return the old one to us."

Wow... I waited on hold for 4 hours for a 5 minute discussion on getting my router replaced. Ok, so it was more like 10 minutes because I also asked him for a new password (mostly because I've long since lost the paper with the old one, and haven't needed to enter it into a console for something like a year) Turns out that they got slammed with all of the traffic from MSN's tech support when they took it over. They're opening up a new call center, but it won't be for a while.

Anywho... YEA!!!

Still down and Alternatives

2004-02-05T08:22:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Up but the link is down.

NQIG Server Notes
At the moment it is important for people to remember that as long as the NQIG server is not connected to the internet, all emails that are sent to accounts @nqig.net will not be delivered.

Because of this I am looking into establishing a secondary server responsible for being a backup when the NQIG site is down. Ed (No, Ed isn't gone) will probably end up on the Wright Water Engineers backbone and will be configured to act as a secondary DNS Server, Mail server (I'll set it up with a lower MX priority and configure it to cache e-mails indefinately untill it can forward them to Motoko.), and will have it do a daily or weekly (depends on the agreement I establish with WWE on transfer limits) backups.

Or...

I'll purchase some bandwidth at a server farm like Icy has done and setup the server there. If I can find one that will allow me to ship them my computer and have them host it on their backbone, I'll ship them Motoko, find another group, ship them Ed, and if it costs less than $40 a month for at lease 1 GB a month of bandwidth each (A number we have only ever exceeded once and it was when we first created the forum) We could easily avoid this problem in the future.

Server Repair Journal Day 2
The magical hardware repair fairy didn't come last night, that means either it was too hard for him to fix, or he didn't feel like doing it. In either case, I've waited long enough. So I tried to call QWest again. Didn't even make it into the hold loop. They're lines where locked down with other calls. My only guess is that either they have WAY too few people on their call staff, or there's something messing everybody up. In any case that means that I am going to continue to have trouble getting through. Since today is Thursday, I've decided to establish a reverse telethon, where I call QWest over and over until either I get through or pass out from exaustion. Since I know I can pull 24 hours easy, I figure I won't crash until sometime around 11:00 AM tommorow. If I havn't gotten through by then, I'm just gonna call it quits and give up. Well, by give up I mean goto bed and try again when I wake up.

First post and problems.

2004-02-04T11:04:00.000-07:00

Server Status: Down.

Server Repair Journal Day 1
My router's gone. There's no way to revive it. I'm stranded, alone, no escape. I'm stuck in the, "Internet Free Zone"...

Ok... Here's the shakedown. Yesterday my router bit the dust. My analysis shows that the router's internal ethernet switch has become faulty. As such I can't even use the thing as a stupid hub. On the bright side however, I can make it connect to the internet, which is helarious because the nearly indestructable ethernet side doesn't work, so I have a perfectly good router that can't be used because it has no lan side ports. Obviously I've tried to call quest about this, but have spent aproximately 4 hours total on hold without ever getting through. So I'll have to try again tonight. However... I had a physics assignment I was going to work on. Now I'm behind. With my cable being out from the construction work, that means the only things I have for entertainment are my game cube, my dvd's, my single player PC games (whose numbers have been deminishing now for several years), and my manga. No FFXI, no Ed, Edd, Eddy. Nada. It really sucks.

Obviously, if you're reading this, I've either fixed it or given up and put this up on blogspot...

Maybe if I wait long enogh, the magical hardware repair fairy will fix it for me...