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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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We are having some oddities with our server at present. They have migrated us to something we did not ask for, a migration that they "only do on client request", and that is limiting our facilities very badly.
One such limit is the "site updates newsletter" which seems to fail at arbitrary points because of the limits they have set.
Watch this space
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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I'm watching....
but i'm not sure of what spot to watch...
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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We have come up against a hard limit. The new server environment is limited to 3,600 files open simultaneously and 150 processes. That seems a lot, but is pathetic for a web server. We run into the 3600 file limit often. Over one and a half million times so far.
Now we have been running the server "at capacity" for quite some time. We have three mediawiki domains on it, two HTML/PHP sites, some wordpress blogs, mySQL, PostgreSQL, and some drupal sites. The other sites deliver a small stream of advertising revenue which covers the server fees.
We were fine until they set limits on the server which we never had before. We're considering several options. Until we settle on one we may have service interruptions.
I managed to squeeze a notification email out for new stories, but please watch the site home page for developments. We used to have the whole email distribution done in about 5 minutes, now we've throttled it down and it takes over 4 hours. But, if it hits the 3,600 file limit - BANG.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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We're biting the bullet and migrating to a dedicated server. While $50 per month in the global scheme of things is not an enormous fee to pay, we've had to do some hard thinking to make sure we can afford it.
What you probably know is that we have a number of sites that display adverts, and that the advertising revenue pays for the server. We'll be adding to that portfolio of sites over the next few weeks. We need to generate an extra $1 per day from advertising on a regular basis in order to achieve it.
The chocolate cake site is the first of the new sites. Still slim at present, but it will grow with new content, and will add maybe 50 cents a day in a couple of months.
Service here will be patchy until we make the move. Loads of planning to complete first
[Updated on: Mon, 26 May 2008 10:33]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Dear Timmy,
If you need contributions I'll contribute. If it takes you time to build up the advertising revenue I'll help fill the gap. Email me!
Love,
Anthony
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If you're looking for a very cheap dedicated server, I used to be a customer of http://www.serverpronto.com/, and while the support was a bit slow, they did provide exactly what they promised. Network uptime was good, and at $29 a month you can't really go wrong.
If you're looking for another virtual dedicated server, I'd recommend Memset (http://www.memset.com/) who are real people, and their servers are hosted by the company I work for. They are based in Guildford, and their servers are based in Reading, UK. I can personally vouch for the network and data centre, since I spend all day using them.
David
[Updated on: Mon, 26 May 2008 11:31] |
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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We ought to be fine, but the offer is appreciated. We do a load of planning before a migration, and we have built up a small war chest against a rainy day.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Thanks David. Both look interesting. We'll add those to the deliberations
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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I too have always been ready to throw in the occasional note when finances allowed, and only stopped doing so because of Paypal recalcitrance. Offer still there.
Hugs
N
[Updated on: Tue, 27 May 2008 08:07]
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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I appreciate the offers, really I do. The adverts ought to be the most "reliable" method of safeguarding us for the future. They make us independent of goodwill, and it is somehow wonderful to be funded by potential homophobes - the companies who advertise and the individuals who click them!
May I suggest that the generosity is deployed in a local Children's Hospice? It's an act of kindness with a direct (if unknown) and immediate effect.
[Updated on: Mon, 26 May 2008 22:21]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy wrote:
May I suggest that the generosity is deployed in a local Children's Hospice? It's an act of kindness with a direct (if unknown) and immediate effect.
Dear Timmy, I really must disagree with you - rather vehemently. There is a great difference between giving to charities, offering indirect support and making a direct contribution.
According to my religious beliefs everyone - even the poorest of the poor - must give to charity on a regular basis, and I do. But here is a project (APOS, IOMFATS) that is for me like a club that I can visit whenever I choose and be with people who will understand "what makes me tick" in a rather important aspect of life. This is one of the very few places on earth where, because of my special circumstances, I can just be me.
Membership of most clubs usually involves at some stage or other the payment of dues. Well, in this club we don't pay dues. But that does not mean that you should deny me the pleasure of making a contribution from time to time. After all, the server serves me just as it serves everyone else who visits here.
It's very nice to know that people who have no knowledge at all of this site help to sustain it by clicking on adverts on other sites. The more the merrier and may their number grow from day to day. But that is not the same as making a personal and direct contribution.
I know that for you this site is a labour of love, but when, from time to time, there are financial constraints, like Nigel, I see it as an act of gratitude and pleasure to make a contribution.
Hugs you very tight.
J F R
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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The new server is rented. It ought to future proof us for a considerable time. We have, well Megaman has, a lot to do in order to get it set up. We don't expect to migrate before next week. What will happen is a very short, sharp downtime, followed by the site reappearing happily again.
There may be a speed increase, but any slowness is usually due to the speed of your connection or the net itself.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Out of interest, who did you go with?
David
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Dedicatednow. They have a very good deal with 1GB ans 2*80GB drives right now
[Updated on: Fri, 30 May 2008 23:20]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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We expect to start a smooth migration during the week this week. WHat will happen (0.9 probability) is that the site you are seeking will be unable to find its server for a short while. Then it will pop back up a short time later.
We have full control over our own nameservers, so the first thing we'll be doing is pointing our domains at the new nameserver. That has no effect at all on site visibility. Then, when we migrate the site, the nameserver will be pointed at the new physical server.
I sound as if I know what I'm talking about, don't I?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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If you want to minimise downtime, I'd recommend changing the TTL for the iomfats.org and http://www.iomfats.org A records down to 300 (5 minutes) a day in advance. It's currently 10800 -- three hours. Once propagated, that means that the migration period will be almost seamless: once you change the record, everyone'll be using the new server within five minutes. Once the migration is complete, you can take it back up to 10800 to ease load on the name servers.
For the glue records in the registry and the A records for the name servers, provided both the old server and the new server are providing exactly the same results until at least 24 hours after the migration, there shouldn't be any DNS downtime at all. Even better, you could change ns1.iomfats.org and ns2.iomfats.org separately, 24 hours apart. This would mean that even if one server unexpectedly drops out, the other will respond instead.
Sorry if I'm sticking my nose in where it's not wanted!
David
[Updated on: Sun, 01 June 2008 18:51] |
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Wow! Well, Deej, I don't know about Timmy but YOU certainly sound as if you know what you are about.
I'm impressed.
Love,
Anthony
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Ah, our issue is more complex. We have multiple sites with rather large databases. Yes, iomfats.org has one, too - the forum and the mailing list and haiku alley etc.
The DNS migration is simple compared with a smooth database migration, test and "go live". We may still have a few glitches, but the plan is to migrate site by site, shutting the old site down (not easy with deep links to places) and moving the database intact to the new server. Then after we have tested it, we will switch our own nameservers to the new server, site by site.
It cannot be seamless without investment of pointless hours of coding, I fear, so it will be swift, instead.
Now, no-one is to mention Heathrow Terminal 5, please.
[Updated on: Sun, 01 June 2008 23:03]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Rsync is a wonderful thing. 
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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The documentation to me looks as if it works at file level. We would need this to handle record locking on two different servers, making sure that the destination server always prevailed but that any records updated on the original server had their updates transferred to the target server.
Assuming that I am wrong and that it does handle this record level locking then it is likely also to blow the limits that have been enforced on the original server and fail mid-transaction, potentially leaving records in an unusually locked state.
Happy to learn that my cursory glance is mistaken, though.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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megaman
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Getting started |
Location: Germany
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 27
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We have done the DNS thing in all our previous server moves. It works well, but by now it's just not worth the effort editing all the zone files twice.
rsync is handy, not wonderful. Still its basic function is not any different from two tar's at both ends of an ssh connection: it's just a file transfer tool, easier to use and more efficient etc, but still about files. As Timmy pointed out, we have databases to think of, and mysql isn't exactly famous for coping well with incoherent data files (mysql is not postgres after all). And that doesn't even take into account the synchronisation and locking issues of two databases on two servers that could become updated simultaneously. Then you have a real data mess to clean up; the road to perdition.
And before you shoot the next bullet, no we are not going to set up remote database connections or even replication for a site like this. Of course we could switch it over with minimal downtime, but the effort and preparation just to do the planning.... This is not a high availability expirment.
In the end it just has to work without data loss and the least effort possible while minimising downtime.
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megaman said,
>Still [rsync's] basic function is not any different from two tar's at both ends of an ssh connection
The two real strengths of rsync are its ability to copy just the changes in a file, and to synchronise filesystems. Tar does neither of these (except by 'brute-force' approach, i.e. removing the old file or directory structure and replacing it entirely). That makes rsync very different from tar. It doesn't leave files in an incoherent state, either, as it creates a temporary file and only substitutes it for the older one when it's definitely copied in full.
I wouldn't rsync a running MySQL database and assume it'll be okay, but if you rsync the data while the database is still running, stop the database for a few seconds, rsync again to make sure the database files are consistent, and start it again, you may find it'll save a lot of time. A stopped database just consists of files.
I'm not talking about MySQL replication; that requires the replicated server to start with the same data set, anyway, so MySQL would have to be stopped to copy that across in any case.
I'll leave you be from now on. Sorry!
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See my reply to megaman -- rsync isn't suited to synchronising running databases, but it's very good at updating minor changes to a previously synchronised data set (which may have been taken while the DB was running).
David
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Jesus!!!! You'd think it was getting a man on mars!!!
It is just a freaking website.... What the hell does it matter if the thing is down for a few days to get it all moved? What the hell does it matter how it gets done??
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Matter? No-one will die if it isn't here for a while. But my email will get full if folk don't know what is going on.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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megaman
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Getting started |
Location: Germany
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 27
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Deeej wrote:
> megaman said,
> >Still [rsync's] basic function is not any different from two tar's at both ends of an ssh connection
>
> The two real strengths of rsync are its ability to copy just the changes in a file, and to synchronise filesystems. Tar does neither of these (except by 'brute-force' approach, i.e. removing the old file or directory structure and replacing it entirely). That makes rsync very different from tar. It doesn't leave files in an incoherent state, either, as it creates a temporary file and only substitutes it for the older one when it's definitely copied in full.
And that makes it not a file-level transfer tool, how?
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Marc wrote:
It is just a freaking website.... What the hell does it matter if the thing is down for a few days to get it all moved? What the hell does it matter how it gets done??
Dear Marc, a rather ungracious comment, don't you think? No, of course you wouldn't.
Dear Deeej and Megaman,
Can we please revert to using English in our discussions? 
J F R
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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WOW..........Megaman actually posted! Hi Megaman. Hows work going Deeej, glad to see you around.
If you stand for Freedom, but you wont stand for war, then you dont stand for anything worth fighting for.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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This ought to be easy. RSync is a boy band, not unlike Hanson, but not pitched at the paedophile market.
We use RSync for the Backup Boys, because, as we know, they take it up the RS.
There. English enough?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK!!!
Seeing as you see fit to cross the line and become insulting..... Here goes....
It is just a freaking website..... Not one iota more.......
It matters not if it's down for a time for migration.....
No one is going to drop on their sword over it.... If they do.... Then they do......
The site migrates and it goes on...... with a little math.
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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OH.... By the way.... Great story!!!
Loved it!!!!!!
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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Dear Marc,
What great story?
And of course it IS just a web site - but it's also special to some people and I'm one of them. I do very much appreciate the things Timmy and Megaman do and I would prefer to praise and thank them rather than say anything that might be taken as belittling the enterprise.
And when it happens that something goes wrong and I can't get to it (as has happened occasionally) I do worry so I think it is worth a bit of effort to reduce the downtime.
Thank you Timmy and Megaman - and, by the way, I hope you had a good holiday.
Love,
Anthony
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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First..... I never recomend stories for teading.
Seconfly,.... How did you get along before you found the site? Were there issues then that this place relieved? or are there issues now that you've found an outlet to express them?
Third, The point was that they do work hard to do what they do quite well and as such they don't need sundry advice from the plan they already decided on.
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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Oh yeah, I have to concur with Marc on this. Lotán The Edomite is a terrific story! And it's stories like this (and Grasshopper's latest) that makes people antsy when the site is down. Thank you Timmy and Megaman for putting so much effort into trying to make a seamless transition. :-*
Youth crisis hot-line 866-488-7386, 24 hr (U.S.A.)
There are people who want to help you cope with being you.
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No, Marc, not issues exactly, but a sort of feeling of something missing.
I don't have any gay friends (I mean that I know are gay) within a hundred miles and the conversations I have on this site are a great help. So are the stories and the jokes and the occasional picture.
When you wrote "Great story!" I wondered which it was - that's all. You were appreciating it, not recommending it. Perhaps its name was mentioned in earlier posts. Maybe I was too lazy to go back and look!
Love,
Anthony
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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No no no....
I truely never recomend stories and theres a reason for that. I'm half way through a book I've been writing for the past 5 years. When I am writing it is very very rare for me to read stories.... Not reading keeps my focus.
I don't mean to pick nits, but I really find it difficult to understand how a gay man deals with gay issues, feelings, emotions, while living a str8 life.
I guess it's a matter of dealing... well of course it is... I just don't understand.
Anyhow, I can tell that youre happy, and after all thats what matters isn't it?
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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We deal with the issues as best we can. Some things we can;t cope with. One of those is, I suppose, quite similar to being transsexual: We cannot be who we are. But there is a difference.
We have the choice about how we are, so we are only trapped by our own decisions, not by an unhappy accident of being born in the wrong body. But the stresses we cause ourselves, while different in absolute terms, are similar. [My source is long conversations with my trans cousin, and the generalisation may not be appropriate]
The hardest is being gay while married to a fine woman whom one loves. Sex is perfectly possible, even enjoyable, but imperfect. An erotic frisson is missing. It's only the love element that allows it to be at all possible.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Dear Marc,
You wrote:
I don't mean to pick nits, but I really find it difficult to understand how a gay man deals with gay issues, feelings, emotions, while living a str8 life.
I think I see why that puzzles you, but the difference between a straight life and a gay one when you get to over 70 is not that different. The fact that I sleep in the same bed as my wife is almost incidental to our relationship. I can't get hard enough to have penetrative sex any more even with chemical assistance (I take 'Levitra' which is similar to Viagra - I think my doctor was more embarrassed about it than I was!) so when we're in the mood we give each other hand jobs. But in other respects my life would not be different if my partner was a man. I mean that I do as much housework as Sylvia; we share the cooking; I do all the washing and at least half of the shopping; she makes the bed. I do the driving, but only since she had both cataracts replaced (and it won't be long before I need that done to stay legal on the road). So the long and short of it is that I don't feel my life is either straight or gay.
My daughter has said to me "If Sylvia died you would be looking for a man, wouldn't you?" and she's right, just as if I had a man to live with now and he died I would. And in my dealings with the rest of the world I can't see that there would be any difference. I wear running tights instead of trousers (pants in USA) and jockstraps instead of more usual sorts of underwear. There are about two or three people in the croquet club that tease me about it but no-one has ever asked if I am gay. I don't know whether they know or not. I don't ask either! They elected me to be chairman so if they know it doesn't matter to them.
In the USA you COULD have a woman or a black man as president but you aren't yet enlightened  enough to have a gay one. Here my MP is gay! (And when I turned up at his committee rooms during the election wearing light blue shiny lycra shorts he was really taken aback! (He didn't know about me then!)
So you see I don't feel I lead a straight life, even though it isn't a gay one either. I wonder what the other married gay men here think.
Love,
Anthony
[Updated on: Thu, 05 June 2008 07:25] |
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Re: Server 
Re: Migration 
