December 2011 Update
So, while Jason is continuing to work at fixing the Apache server on Hindenburg, I figured I’d throw up the monthly status post. On the donations front, we’re sitting right around 75% of costs covered for the year, which is considerably better than last year’s 50%.
Part of the reason the web server has been down so long is due to the time it’s taking to rebuild a bunch of the installed software. After the upgrade from FreeBSD 6.2 to 8.2 we didn’t upgrade a lot of the software packages, and that’s biting us now. Unfortunately, Hindenburg’s CPU is showing it’s age here, so once again I’m putting the call out for newer hardware. Due to our hosting contract, we’re limited to a 1U rackmount server, and we’d like to keep our current hard drives, which are SATA, which is limiting our selection of cast-off hardware at this point. But, if you hear about anything, let us know!
Web Server Outage
Following a power outage at Spectra last night, the Apache web server software on Hindenburg is currently offline. The server itself is up, just unable to serve up webpages at this time. Jason is working on it, so it should be up and running again soon.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Update: Jason got it fixed up and everything should be up and running again as normal. Please contact.
November 2011 Update
Another month down, and the server keeps chugging along. October was a good month for donations, exceeding costs for the fourth time this year! We’re still on the lookout for some newer hardware to host on, so if you see anything or hear about anything that might help, please let us know.
Still thinking of writing up some of those how-tos and tutorials, though we haven’t gotten a whole lot of feedback. If there’s anything you’d like to see covered, speak up.
How-To and Tutorials
I’ve been thinking of starting to write up some how-to/tutorial stuff for the website to step through how to do common tasks when using Hindenburg. So far all I’ve come up with is how to connect via SFTP to transfer files, using either FileZilla or Cyberduck, and how to login using SSH, using either PuTTY or Terminal/SSH.
Do people think these would be useful? Are there any other topics people would like to see? Maybe tutorials on setting up specific software packages? WordPress, Gallery, etc?
October 2011 Update
Yup, another month, and this time we received enough donations to cover hosting costs completely! With $1 to spare! Yay!
Not a whole lot to report otherwise, the box is chugging along quite nicely, though we are on the look-out for a new box to upgrade the motherboard and processor, so if you hear of anything that sounds promising, please let us know. Ideally we’d like to get a 1U server with 4 SATA drive bays. Pretty much any modern 64-bit CPU would be an upgrade.
Obligatory graph:
September 2011 Update
Wow, I’m bad at keeping up with this updates, aren’t I? Anyway, Hindenburg is still chugging along quite happily with its upgrades from earlier in the year. We’re doing great on donations so far this year, covering more than half of the hosting costs so far!
I’ve been considering what to do if donations exceed hosting costs. In the past the plan has always been to put that money aside for hardware upgrades, which is probably still a good idea, since Hindenburg is getting due for a major overhaul. I’ve also been considering putting that money toward a donation to the FreeBSD Foundation, since we’ve been using FreeBSD for years, and it would be nice to give back to the community. Please let me know if you have an opinion one way or the other!
And here’s an obligatory graph for your amusement:
May 2011 Update
April was a good month for us! The system was upgraded, both hardware and software, giving us more room to expand. We received enough donations to cover hosting costs, and as of today, we’re breaking even for the year-to-date!
One of the nice benefits of the software upgrades is we are now about to do IPv6 inside of jails, and as such things like this page are now available over IPv6. Currently our v6 connectivity is being provided over tunnels to Hurricane Electric, but our hosting provider, Spectra, says they’re going to be looking into native v6 later this year, so hopefully that will get better.
There have been a number of outages lately though, mostly due to power issues in downtown Manchester. I’ve contacted Spectra about this, and they moved us onto a new UPS last week, so hopefully that will be able to keep us up during these power issues.
Maintenance – Wednesday 13-Apr-2011
Going to be going offline for a bit on Wednesday, 13-Apr-2011, to install the new memory upgrade and reboot onto a custom kernel to enable some nifty features such as ALTQ and IPsec.
We’ll be starting around 7pm EDT, and the whole deal should take less than an hour.
Upgrade Post-Mortem
Just wanted to post a quick rundown of how the upgrade went.
- The new memory turned out to be incompatible with the system. The existing RAM is 533 Mhz, and the new stuff is 800 Mhz, which appears to not work in this board. I’m going to be returning it and getting stuff that will work.
- The operating system was upgraded, twice. We had issues compiling 8.2-RELEASE under 6.2-RELEASE, so we did a two stage upgrade, going first from 6.2 to 7.4, then from 7.4 to 8.2. Surprisingly few programs broke in this process, mostly just the MySQL server, which has since been recompiled and is working fine.
- The hard drives were upgraded from 256 GB to 1 TB. We’ve split the new drives into two partitions, one continues to be a gmirror between the two devices, same size as the old drives. The rest of the new drives is a ZFS mirror, which we’ll begin utilizing once the memory is upgraded.
Overall this upgrade went pretty well, except for the whole memory thing. If you spot anything that doesn’t appear to be working correctly, please contact us.
April 2011 Update
We seem to have lost some of our donation momentum this past month, but we’re still doing well overall for the year so far. Hopefully some of our users will appreciate the upgrades we’re making next week and will express that appreciation via donations. 
There is one small change to the upcoming maint window; rather than installing a pair of 512GB drives, we’re going to be using a couple of 1TB drives, quadrupling Hindenburg’s storage capacity. Our current plan is to simply migrate the existing UFS partitions onto these new drives, but to partition the additional space using ZFS, giving us some interesting new features and flexibility to play with.
Once again, here’s Hindenburg’s monthly bandwidth usage, up a little bit from last month, but not by a whole lot:
Donation Info
| YTD Donations | $145.00 |
| YTD Hosting Cost | $89.00 |
| % Covered | 162.92% |
Recent Donations
| jtn | $100.00 |
| tirtal | $45.00 |
| mhorsfall | $15.00 |
| jtn | $50.00 |
| mhorsfall | $20.00 |
Largest Donations
| emarshall | $200.00 |
| jtn | $100.00 |
| emarshall | $100.00 |
| emarshall | $100.00 |
| emarshall | $100.00 |
Most Generous
| jtn | $945.00 |
| tirtal | $610.00 |
| emarshall | $500.00 |
| mhorsfall | $374.00 |
| caillean | $130.00 |
- RECOVERY Hindenburg IPv6 UP: PING OK - Packet loss = 0%, RTA = 75.57 ms 4 days ago
- PROBLEM Hindenburg IPv6 DOWN: PING CRITICAL - Packet loss = 100% 4 days ago
- Thanks @jtn for your donation! Help support him by checking out http://t.co/vptq3DqM And don't forget http://t.co/3kdGleme 2 weeks ago
- More updates...