Lorien's Back!
Jun. 29th, 2005 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lwoodTroth mailing lists have been down since the move; Dave Haxton (the new hosting administrator) and I are working hard on a solution.
However, investigating that led me to upgrade lorien to a new version of its operating system (Debian Linux), and that, in turn, required that I reboot the server. That's not bad.The bad bit is that it's in a reboot loop. This should be fixable with little work, but I thought I'd mention it.
Non-Geeky Update: I know why it's broken, but I'm tired enough that I might do something stupid while trying to grok how to fix it. I respect your data, and mine, and its integrity more than that! So, I'm going to sleep so I can tackle this when I'm awake enough to get my head around this vastly changed thing.
Non-Geeky Resolution: Ah, sleep, what knits up the ravelled sleeve of care! Once I'd slept on it, it was only an hour to successfully handle the problem. All lorien functions, including webmail, back online. Enjoy! Troth e-mail lists are still down, so unfortunately you can't enjoy those just now...
Geeky Update: The way RAID is handled changed considerably between woody (old Debian) and sarge (new Debian). All my partitions are RAID-1 arrays (mirrored partitions), including / and /boot, so an inability to deal with RAID means an inability to deal with life, hence boot loop. I debated stripping out all RAID information and bringing things up, then rebuilding the RAIDs, but I think any tango with mdadm is best done after sleep. Nothing whatsoever was aided by the fact that I suspected it was RAID going fubar at the get-go, but it took me two hours to cobble together bootable Debian media with which to mount a rescue attempt (no working floppy drives! joy! but the bootable cd that I thought you couldn't burn on OS X worked, yay).
Geeky Resolution: Well, once I'd slept on it, I threw myself at the brick wall of mdadm a few more times. Then, I realised that everything would go so much better if I made sure the md (metadisk/RAID) module was loaded -- it wasn't. Funny thing how it's easier to detect raids once your kernel knows what one is! Then I mounted all my meta-devices, chrooted into /mnt, ran a lilo, and lo, was Bob then made my uncle. No mdadm necessary, the old utilities still do the right thing, but lilo was one of the things upgraded, so bootblocks needed to be updated -- that was the real problem.
All services on lorien, my server, which includes many websites and all their e-mail, are currently unavailable. Believe me, I'm as annoyed as all of you... more so by the fact that I find myself having to sleep rather than having enough adrenaline enough to FIX IT.
We're back!
-- Lorrie
However, investigating that led me to upgrade lorien to a new version of its operating system (Debian Linux), and that, in turn, required that I reboot the server. That's not bad.
Non-Geeky Resolution: Ah, sleep, what knits up the ravelled sleeve of care! Once I'd slept on it, it was only an hour to successfully handle the problem. All lorien functions, including webmail, back online. Enjoy! Troth e-mail lists are still down, so unfortunately you can't enjoy those just now...
Geeky Resolution: Well, once I'd slept on it, I threw myself at the brick wall of mdadm a few more times. Then, I realised that everything would go so much better if I made sure the md (metadisk/RAID) module was loaded -- it wasn't. Funny thing how it's easier to detect raids once your kernel knows what one is! Then I mounted all my meta-devices, chrooted into /mnt, ran a lilo, and lo, was Bob then made my uncle. No mdadm necessary, the old utilities still do the right thing, but lilo was one of the things upgraded, so bootblocks needed to be updated -- that was the real problem.
We're back!
-- Lorrie
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no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 07:33 pm (UTC)-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 02:21 pm (UTC)It is gratifying to know that stuff is only temporarily down, and it's not some unforseen event. Incidentally, I think I need to send you a cheque or summat for the webhosting, it's been at the very least a year. Ping me, would you?
(- Fi, who did NOT and has, indeed, never panicked. Honest.)
no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 07:35 pm (UTC)Don't stress it if you can't afford it, but if you can that's always nice. You remember my e-mail, right?
-- Lorrie
Geek Sympathy Card
Date: 2005-06-29 04:50 pm (UTC)I hope there isn't some cosmic connectedness principle going on here (like, I just got my own Lorien running pretty smoothly, so another one had to crash). Anyway, shout-outs from Lorien the Vala to Lorien the First One, and best wishes that he'll be back up and running soon.
(This message actually composed on lorien.silmemar.org. No foolin'.)
Re: Geek Sympathy Card
Date: 2005-06-29 08:35 pm (UTC)Hey, it's not just for big sites anymore -- and with hard drive space so cheap, you might want to consider doing a RAID-1 (mirror) for your most important stuff. If one drive fails, the other one is instantly mountable as a spare, in or out of its former RAID.
but definitely the "things are still hosed, and people are relying on this machine, but if I try to work with it in my current sleep-deprived state, I'll just screw it up beyond repair" pain. That part, I know.)
Heh -- thanks for the support!
(This message actually composed on lorien.silmemar.org. No foolin'.)
I know! I named the server originally when we were between both relevant naming schemes, although we eventually settled on B5.
-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 08:35 pm (UTC)No, nothing will bounce.
-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-29 10:15 pm (UTC)-- Lorrie