Posts Tagged ‘Weather’

Issues with new server… School, Health, etc
Written by AJ Phillips
Friday, 30 April 2010 07:05

Third times a charm…. So the first part below was written a couple weeks ago and I’ve kind of been lazy with resubmitting it. Mainly I just didn’t give a damn. So, I’m tweaking the original post and adding some more since a lot has changed since then.

{Originally written on April 5th I think}
Ok, so not that long ago we had really shit weather here in New York and it half fried my old media server (running WHS) and I figured instead of redoing that system I’d just rip all the hard drives out of it and put them into my new server. It took a couple tries getting Active Directory and DNS working correctly in my LAN (partly because of my ISP) but once I had that working properly I migrated over 4TB’s of data to the new server. After moving the data over I had access to the rest of my Microsoft Partner, TechNet, and DreamSpark software so I started adding a few more roles to the server that I was going to need in the long run and that’s when the shit hit the fan. For whatever reason after adding either IIS7 or HyperV (pretty sure it was HyperV) the server got so bogged that it took like 10 minutes to make simple changes via RDC. Since I’ll need IIS more than HyperV I kept that and removed HyperV again. The system is still kind of bogged, but responding a little quicker. Now, while trying to install Exchange 2010 it couldn’t find IIS (I think because I didn’t leave the IIS6 compatibility) and it recommended doing a reinstall of IIS7 (which fucked up my PHP and other stuff I added).
Now, every time the server reboots, DNS and part of Active Directory refuse to start correctly although they are set to automatic. I can manually turn them back on if I RDC back into the server, which is the least of the problems. Viewing the localhost via the standard means (http://localhost; http://SYSTEMName; http://ExternalIPAddress) all work to show the default IIS7 welcome, but refuses to allow PHP, ASPx, etc. from working; so pretty much I have access to standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, that’s about it.
The reason behind writing this post is to state the current (messed up) configuration of the server and the configuration of what I want to achieve. If there’s anybody out there reading this that can help, feel free to email me. Even if it’s just to point out more reading material I should check out so I can get this done. I normally don’t have these kind of problems, but the person I always went to in the past for Server related issues was JJ (the VP that passed away last July).

{Sometime in the middle}
I fixed the server issues awhile back and have even created some new test/temp sites for beta and demo purposes which worked out well. Essentially I got annoyed and ripped out all the spare drives, leaving just the system drive and formatted it to start from scratch. In the end, I have setup the below and have everything configured properly (about time)…

I left out HyperV this time around to save the hassle with the extreme system lag, although the hardware is supposed to fully support it. After setting everything up and configuring it I added the other drives back and began moving/organizing the 4+ Terabytes of data (again). Enough of that crap… :)

{Present Day}
I decided to post this “now” useless draft from my new iPad… Yes I’m laying in bed bored and my laptop is resting on its private chair instead of on my legs. I got the iPad in the mail last week but was busy busting my ass off with college and wanted some real time to play with it before I wrote anything about it. Since there are reviews and sites dedicated for and against the iPad all over the place I’m not going to bother. I will say this though, it works great for my needs and to quote/paraphrase Alex Albrecht of Revision3 (originally stated on Diggnation and repeated on The Totally Rad Show; both on Revision3) “The iPad is the best pooping device… EVER!” (I also highly recommend checking out Diggnation, The Totally Rad Show, AppJudgment, Scam School, and the rest of the shows on Revision3, but be warned, pending on the show you’re watching, they swear more than I do :) )

Now most people I know had Spring Break last week while I was busy trying to pass two pain in the ass classes. I’ve had this week off instead and promised myself that I would do nothing but play video games and relax but that idea went out the window. I haven’t even turned my Playstation 3 on yet. I hoped to have finished Final Fantasy XIII before classes start back up, but that won’t happen at this rate. Oh well, I still managed to get about 7GB of photos and over 40GB of music organized and properly tagged as well as create a special website for a very special young lady’s birthday. I’m going to be setting up a form of contest on one the sites sometime soon, just not sure on which or with what details yet. Stay tuned, either way there will be special first place prize.
So long story short, I still haven’t put Exchange Server on the system yet and will look into that later. I passed the two ‘pain in the ass’ classes mentioned above, so I only have 6 classes left until I graduate with my Associates Degree in Computer Science (Web Design) in early/mid October of this year. I start 3D Modeling & Animation on Monday (with Open House Access starting Saturday) and get to play around with some of the newest Autodesk software like 3D Studio Max and Maya among others. Should be fun.

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Last Updated on Friday, 30 April 2010 07:05
Server issues, Wiki, Akismet, and other random thoughts
Written by AJ Phillips
Wednesday, 24 February 2010 10:59

The weather here sucks so bad I’ve precanceled my back treatments for tomorrow cause there’s no way in hell I’m going to drive an hour in this shit. On the plus side to this weather, I’ve had time to work on some of my sites and servers. The web server that hosts this site, the wiki, etc. was having some stability issues over the last week and after some emails back and forth with the guys that run it, everything has been resolved (as far as we can tell) and all the sites/domains are back to 100%.

On the topic of the wiki, since the server was having stability and speed issues I decided to change the back-end software that runs it to something that utilizes a database to see if that helps. Sadly the new software uses a different form of Wiki Syntax so it’s taking a little longer than I originally planned. You can find out a little more info about that clicking the link in the last paragraph.

Akismet, a plugin, addon, whatever the hell you want to call it, works wonders. For those that don’t know, it takes all the comments sent it and checks them for Spam links and other things to detect and combat unwanted/useless shit. If you jump to the very bottom of the page (in the footer) you’ll notice a little box that states how much spam has been detected and avoided. Sadly the software isn’t 100% accurate and has caught a few comments that it shouldn’t have, but the best part of the software is that once you’re acknowledged the poster as valid it wont bother auto-blocking them (it will still check each post, but will allow them to show if they aren’t marked as spam). I’ve had friends comment about Akismet being crap software how it misses a lot of stuff etc. and they sent me a screen shot of their control panel, practically bragging how shit it was… I took one look and just responded “You moron”. The comments listed as spam WERE spam. Spammers have gotten smart to some of the software used against them and started writing canned responses that at first glance seem valid and you allow those through… this is when they have the chance to pretty much spam the hell out of you before you notice. When you’ve written a post for example like the “Happy Holidays” post I wrote a little while back and get a comment that says something along the lines of “Wow, great post, although I don’t agree with what you’ve said or done 100% I still bookmarked your blog and plan to keep reading it later” you’d think, that’s cool, allow the comment, but if you actually read the sender/poster’s information you’d realize that the comment came from “Free Viagra, blah blah blah, for more info visit this great online pharmacy…..”.

I swear, I don’t believe in “capital punishment” (fully anyway) but I think that every found spammer should have a finger, thumb, penis, etc. fucking cut off… the first time they get caught, they get to name the body part they lose, the second time they’re caught, they take a consensus of those targeted by the spammer to vote on what that asshole loses. I forgot the rest of the point I was going to make, so oh well.

I have less than 2 hours to complete my homework, so I’ll get around to doing that and add more to the blog later. My head hurts.

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Last Updated on Wednesday, 24 February 2010 10:59
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