Must play with this HTTP server/load-balancer/mail proxy/bundle of awesome sometime soon. Looks like a pretty awesome option for VPS environments and other places where there isn’t heaps of spare resources going around! My cupboard-bound SSH oasis and occasional webserver is, of course, a likely candidate… but I’m a tad concerned I’ll screw myself over with PHP. Not because it particularly gets used for that (there’s like… a few wikis and a handful of lines of PHP code easily replaced by something else that get semi-regular attention) but mostly for the “just in case” I wanna test run something. And yeah, I know, that’s what virtualised stuff should be for… but I still haven’t quite caught up to that. I’ve got an Ubuntu thing running in a virtual PC instance on the computer I use most of the time, but it just doesn’t cut it for actually trying to test something out with, you know, other users and real Internet connectivity. In other news, can-we-have-IPv6-moar-plx? Just because it’s absurd to have to pay more to run real SSL on dedicated IPs when there is SO MUCH SPACE just waiting for us to broaden our horizons and start to fill it. I’m not heaps fussed if pre-Windows XP users can’t use it, actually, because they’ve likely got bigger security problems on their hands from their network-connected 10-year-old OS than any regular web interaction is likely to give them, properly secured or not — that is, even if their web traffic is secured, their desktop is probably a botnet zombie with keyloggers and trojans abounding.
This image makes 60,000 indexed items. A fair whack of that would be email, but far out that’s a lot of information. (It’s not just a count of files on a system, that’s just indexed documents in my home dir, projects workspace, and email accounts)
New laptop arrives Monday morning, and I’m trying to decide if I even want to move everything off this desktop or not! The laptop has half a TB of disc space across 2 drives (17″ monster), so I’m considering it. I purchased it as a desktop replacement system and it is quite capable of that (specs at end of post)! The desktop provides a good backup should the laptop die/get stolen/run over by a bus, but at present the data is organised to be used, not archived.
By “used”, of course, I mean that liberally disorganised but most-recently-used-on-top sort of structure we fall into so easily. So I have a spot of sorting to do to get everything onto the laptop.
My last computer still has some stuff I’d like to get off it (particularly uni work… to the critics, yes, I do still go to uni!) but it’s been in at Youthworks not doing much since we moved offices, but heavy enough I haven’t bothered bringing it home again, since late last year.
The problem with desktops in particular is that they aren’t worth selling for their potential usefulness. My several-years-old computer (2.4GHz/768MB/somethingsomething… Ubuntu) in at Youthworks could maybe just sell for $350 given a clueless enough eBayer. My current desktop (no great slouch, AMD64 X2 4200+/2GB/7600GS) would be worth about the same to someone who knew what they were talking about… or perhaps $750 on eBay!
Even so — it’s useful to have spare machines ‘just in case’ (for production stuff especially). I’d love to be able to swap those two desktops for laptops of similar vintage, but it’s just never going to be cost-effective. When people get rid of laptops, it’s because they suck (falling apart/general abuse, crap battery life, rubbish specs to start with, etc.). Not so with desktops, wherein most faults are redeemable at minimal cost. And even that minimal cost is often negated by the fact that there’s so much in the way of ‘spare’ parts around the place!
If anyone has a spare grand sitting around they feel like spending this lovely evening, there’s a just-serviced LSC Axiom 36/72 lighting console going on eBay in a bit over 3 ½ hours. In Melbourne, but with roadcase included. I’d buy it, but I’m broke… something to do with not being able to do any real work on account of trying to get *nix setup forever. Ubuntu is perfect, but for the fact that it wouldn’t consider booting for me for some reason. Blame VIA/EPIA for their clone low-power hardware, methinks.
So Ubuntu is utterly refusing to install and I’m scared to use Gentoo, which was vaguely the next resort. And I’ve had enough of CentOS’ absurd package management system (really, RPM does make things impossibly difficult compared to apt-based systems). I’m going to try installing FreeBSD tomorrow and compiling bits and pieces, because that’s how metro stayed online all those years and whilst I don’t have Dale’s skill, I don’t doubt that the methodology was sound. Plus, FreeBSD is one more environment to test this project on — a dedicated server we were vaguely offered a few months back is running NetBSD, so it’d be good to begin scratching together a handful of skills in that area, just in case!
On the plus side, I got all system configuration stuff (esp. Samba, which can be a lot more difficult than perhaps it should be at times) worked out last week (i.e. the system was nearly perfect, but for being utterly unable to install even SRPM packages of a more recent Python version), and Michael went through installing everything with me at work… we had to battle Windows a little there, but even it relented. So close. Then I’ll spend heaps of time cutting layouts to markup and seeing them working, and non-Youthworks time taking Satchmo for a spin (which will hopefully lend itself to a certain application very nicely). The lovely thing about all this is I need Django to work for CYIADA, so I’m supported in getting it up and running, but then have enough ‘spare’ hours in the week that I can engage in freelance projects that ultimately mean I know what’s going on with CYIADA and am mildly more competent to make minor modifications as required accordingly.
Some of those projects might even feed back into the project, which would be a bonus — but even if they come to nothing, it’s worthwhile for skills development alone.
I don’t even particularly blame it, but it’s not working on whisper (faithfully serving in a cupboard since early-2005) anymore. It was running 5.10 (I think) for yonks and then today I decided it might be easier/cleaner to pull the plug and re-install than just change the apt sources for a third time (or however many it’s been)
So I downloaded 6.10 (hence the torrent post) and it didn’t work.
Fine. I downloaded 6.06 LTS (the, you know, meant-to-be-überstable-and-longlasting release) and it hangs loading the kernel. No kernel panic message, it just gets stuck.
This is annoying.
I’m basically going to rebuild this entire server for Django’s sake, because it’s so useful for non-programmers like me to build things that work. This has been an interesting week at church because a whole bunch of new things started/old things restarted and finally I’m in a position to evaluate where we can use technology from an “insider” standpoint with regards to what I’m being paid to do at Youthworks.
I’ve got two smallish (with potential for massive extension) apps that I want to build in under two days for ongoing internal use (one for TACKLES, another for my Switch small group this year) which will essentially form prototypes for revision/replacement as appropriate for use in a CYIADA global context once we get a programmer on board (God willing sometime soon! I’m meeting with someone who will hopefully be helpful in this regard on Friday, please be praying!) and make some more concrete decisions about architecture. I can draw flowcharts until there’s nothing left to flow but that doesn’t get business logic written!
I’m thinking the Ubuntu issue will be some stupid hardware thing that will go away once I take the computer apart. It probably needs a bit of a clean, anyway. I just so don’t have time to spend on sysadminy type stuff these days, only no-one else at work will/is interested in doing it, which is rather annoying — there’s free hosting, but it’s seriously the most vanilla hosting environment you’re likely to find anywhere. It’s a CPanel/WHM gig with zero redundancy, zero backups, PHP4 only, and blah blah blah no-one cares. Generic with a capital G set in Times New Roman. There is, of course, little interest in anything using a non-.Net platform. I’d actually quite happily use MSSQL, but ASP.Net is, by all reports, just gross from a web standards perspective. And whilst I’m slowly being de-radicalised in that regard (partially because I am caring less about standards and more about accessibility, which is bad long term anyway, and also because my viewpoints are becoming less radical as mainstream moves towards where I am now! CSS is the norm, and pure content/presentation separated sites are probably representing 50% of site refreshes at the minute), I’m not quite ready to throw in the towel that much just yet.
Nor should I be.
*soapbox off*
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