Updates:

09:30 PDT, 08 May 2007

Service being restored to many sites as content is restored from offsite backup. Default page for not-yet-enabled sites now loads properly, instead of displaying rowanf's front page by right of alphabetical superiority.

22:15 PDT 07 May 2007

Webmail service restored.

22:00 PDT 07 May 2007

TinyFugue, the popular MUSH/MUD/MUCK/MOO/etc client, restored especially for cadhla.

21:30 PDT 07 May 2007

"...uh oh."

Found out that the dying hard drive corrupted its data in transfer--not unexpected. Will be restoring from offsite backup overnight.

( Less recent updates behind the cut )

Non-geek version: the network is hosed. The hardware is hosed. The software is hosed. I will be home "sick" tomorrow from work to migrate all to new hardware, which has been pending for some months.

Well, problems with lorien due to today's powerloss are threefold:

1. The cable modem lost its widdle mind, no longer believes in our static IP addresses, and only wants to go online as a DHCP client. So, our workstations are up, but even if lorien were functional, it wouldn't be up.


2. lorien's hardware is not functional: there a hardware failure on an extended particion of its remaining IDE drive (the other one failed awhile ago)


3. lorien's software is not functional:The /boot partition overflowed during the recent software upgrade, causing issues between kernel versions; the goldurned thing won't boot, and the modules don't match the kernel.

Now, the good news:

No data has been lost!

More as I know more.

Happy Walpurgisnacht--I bet if I'd succeeded in running off to the hills, this wouldn't've happened. 8-P

-- Lorrie

I have disabled my LiveJournal E-Mail forwarder--it was getting me nothing but spam, and was only used by people who didn't yet know my real address.

This is only a feature that applies to Paid and Permanent members: your usedname at livejournal.com will forward to your real e-mail address, which is great except now it's a favored target for dictionary spam attacks--i.e., "throw a bunch of letters @livejournal.com, some are bound to work". This, by the way, is one of the several reasons why large free webmail providers (Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail, et al) are particularly spam-prone. It's not that Microsoft sells your e-dress, it's that any alphabet soup is more likely to work than not.

Should you, Gentle Paid or Permanent Member, find yourself plagued by this feature and have no real use for it, descend into LiveJournal's dank, drippy, geeky sub-basement and issue the following comment:

set no_mail_alias 1

--then click "Submit"

Should you ever wish to enable this again, go back to the basement and say:

set no_mail_alias 0

---

In other news, a whole pile of software was just upgraded on lorien, my server. Until I can dedicate the days required to migrate everything to the new snazzy hardware, the best I can do is patch what I've got. Thus, with the new release of Debian GNU/Linux, I have upgraded lorien to 3.0/etch from 2.1/sarge.

What that means to you is that stuff might have broken. wolfs_daugher cannot access my webmail, but I can. How's the weather out there, O Flying Monkeys of the Lazyweb?

Also, as usual, if any of you want a e-mail address that doesn't come with prying corporate eyes of any of that crazy government bullpucky, drop me a line (or comment) and we'll talk.

-- Lorrie

Ha!

http://www.westria.org/forum/register.php

Non-Geek version: Now, when people sign up for my bulletin board thingy, they have to answer a math question. Automated botnets set up to try and register on my (deliberately off-brand-but-actively-maintained) forum system will not expect this, and fail. Yay. Should the blighters get in anyway, another system will check posts over looking for Dastardly Activity, also yay.

Now if anyone ever posted...I'd be set.

Geek version:

I got the code, then jiggered the English parts and, with the help of feonixrift, made it a 50/50 shot you'd get a multiplication question instead of an addition one. Subtraction and division might have frightened people and/or required more elaborate checks; mustn't frighten off the mathematically illiterate.

Also, I swatted the n00b programmer, corrected his missing semicolon (ewps), and allowed as how it is Good Practice to use the long form of the php variable query instead of the short form, as the short form is not universally enabled, and therefore will hamstring the innocent, clueless administrator.

Like myself, until I waved the poor thing at feonixrift while hunting through php.ini for some distasteful setting.

Akismet is Doing the Right Thing--it successfully caught a spam post in its tracks.

Now if anyone ever posted...I'd be all set.

-- Lorrie

For the Gentle Reader interested in the folks who have been bringing you spooky heathen woowoo for--wow it's really been twenty years--I bring you the recently updated seidh.org.

Gentle Readers formerly familiar with this site will find that those *cough* humorous asides intended to encourage us to update the site have been reasonably obfuscated. Please let me know if you can think of interesting essay topics, site ideas, or links to throw on there.

I'm especially looking for two categories of links:

1) If you or your group are Hrafnar-trained and want to be listed. Jordsvin, Jenny Blain, and Bjornsal are all already covered. scrwtape, I'd've tagged you but I didn't know a URL to use, ditto wyrdteacher, auntiematter, Winifred Hodge, etc etc. No offense meant, it usually means I forgot and/or didn't know.

2) We didn't train you, but you are Cool People. Shouts are already out for cauldronfarm, Bil Linzie, abhasana, and Annette Høst. Actually, I'm pretty sure Bil Linzie thinks we're full of shit, and technically we did train him at the very first seidh workshop...it's a compromise.

Thanks, y'all!

-- Lorrie

It's lovely that there are one or two sigups for new accounts on the westria.org message boards every day.

Now if any of them weren't spammers, that would be better...

-- Lorrie ("oh, gawab.com? delete. mail.ru? won't even take the reg mail with the password from me: delete")

Edit: The Backup DNS is back on the air, so things should be covered up until the change actually propagates. Huzzah!

Current Server Status:

Overall Status	Explanation
	The current status of my server is Cookie Monster, which is good but not perfect, as a result of the earlier DNS issues.

When we changed IP addresses, there was one sikrit magic setting I couldn't easily change, but as everything appeared to have come along for the ride, I figured that that one had come along, too.

It hadn't; the apparent success was because the backup DNS server was Doing the Right Thing--which was great until said backup DNS server had a power outage this afternoon from which it hasn't yet recovered it recovered at 1706 PDT.

This has been fixed, after a phone call to Australia, and the fix will spread across the Internet like butter over the next few hours. When the backup DNS server comes back online, that will help immensely, Now that the backup DNS is back online, everything should cut over smoothly in search of that ever-elusive Oscar, which should be reached on Wednesday sometime.

( More details here. )

Qapla'!

["Success!" --because dammit it just sounds cooler in the Original Klingon]

Comcast has just been by and swapped out the new modem/bridge for the new modem/router. I have swept in over the network and hopefully completed all updates necessary to get lorien to recognize its new IP, and to tell all its friends that it has a new IP.

However, there may be some lingering issues, so the new Muppet-Enhanced Status is:

Overall Status	Explanation
	The current status of my server is Bert as the network is UP but it and the software may both be FUNKY.

Projected hardware upgrades can now proceed at some leisure.

Web services are UP. E-Mail is UP.

DNS is UP but will propagate slowly; this means it may be a couple days before all receipt and delivery is back to normal. DNS-related issues are why we are at Bert instead of Cookie or the ideal Oscar.

NB, Gentle Readers, that this isn't actually an old post come back around, but rather a new post made by editing an old post with new data.

[Edited 14:30 to Add: Called our ISP. Someone has to pop 'round to the Central Office, physically check some deep network hoodoo (the DSLAM card), and replace if necessary. Next update will be in 24 hours or so.]

And now, courtesy of Geek and Proud's Homeland Security Advisory thingy, cute Muppety pictures, we have the current Lorien Report:

Overall Status	Explanation
	The current status of my server is Elmo as the network is DOWN.
The overall status breaks down into three sub-parts: network ("can I get there from here?") hardware (physical computer components) and software (programs that put the hardware on the network). If we have an Elmo, Ernie, or Bert on any one of these, that means something is affecting the casual e-mail & web browsing experience, either a little (Bert), a lot (Ernie), or it's completely cocked up (Elmo).

( Sub-categories, history of current issue, all available behind here. )

[Edit: Downtime complete, lorien's back online.]

lorien will be down for a few minutes -- now that the rebuild is complete, it's time to put him back in his closet.

-- Lorrie