Category: Site News

Gallery

Some of you have pointed out some difficulties with my photo gallery and with good reason: it seems to be not performing very well at all. So, I’ve decided to migrate to Gallery 2. I’ve tried this before and didn’t like it, but I’ve had so much trouble with the old version that I’m ready to give it a try.

I’m currently in the process of importing the Gallery 1 albums into Gallery 2, so please be patient as performance on the site will be slow.

And, yes – once this is done, I will begin to post some of the pictures that I have been long in processing…

Much To My Chagrin

It  seems I have NOT found the problem with my server. After migrating the data [all 400GB of it] to non-RAID drives and removing the RAID card, the server still crashed. I’m now down to two remaining pieces: the video card [not likely, but I still have to try] and the motherboard. The drives, case, & power supply are still there, but are not likely causes of the problem. I’ve even replaced the motherboard once already for this same problem. So, I’m trying the next item: the video card [it’s also much cheaper]. After the crash last night, I’m begining to wonder if the PCI-E databus is bad on the motherboard. So, I’ve found a way to crash it: simply defrag the drives. That kills it.

Anyway, I’m testing the video card today and if it crashes while defragging, I will know that the card isn’t the problem just like the RAID card really isn’t the problem. I was hoping, but… well, at least if it’s the video card, that’s much cheaper…

Data Migration

I have moved all of my critical data off of the RAID array now, well, all data in fact. It’s empty and I’ve deleted the entire array. Now, what I need to do is go in and pull the card out. Then, I’ll leave it up and running for a while and determine if it reboots itself. I’m sure it will stay up for a while. In the mean time, though, I’m “low” on space. I only have 40GB or so left on the main data drive. I guess I could use one of the array drives… and grow the array after the fact. I don’t think I have any other drives that would be big enough. Well, we shall see how things turn out.

RAID No Good?

I have been waiting for some time now for the manufacturer of my RAID card to reply to my request for help. I got an initial response, to which I replied, but have gotten nothing since. I’m begining to think that I may have to just buy a different vendor’s card. I’m thinking of the Promise SuperTrak EX8350. I know Mike likes his and it has certified drivers for Windows, unlike my current card.

So: my dilema is how long I should wait until I give up on tech support while my server continues to crash. At least the server crashes won’t affect the web sites anymore.

Server Down and Snow Gone

Some of you may have noticed the server and my other hosted sites were down all day yesterday. I apologize, but now at least I know what the problem was. My RAID card is flaky. There’s no other way around it. I need to replace it. We’ll have to see how it goes, and I’ll have to figure out how I want to do things.

In other news, the snow that has been piled up for so long has now mostly melted away. Except for the brisk temperature today, we look like we’re slowly on our way to Spring. The flowers are even blooming now… well, the early ones are anyway. It may freeze again, but that will be on the way to a more long-lasting warmth.

More Server Trouble

2012-01-08 23:29:58

For some time now, I have been attempting to explain the seemingly random reboots of my email server [this doesn’t include or affect the web server]. I’ve narrowed it down to a few remaining hardware devices and their related drivers. It’s not the CPU, nor RAM, and maybe not the Motherboard, although I’m not quite sold on that one. What is left after you remove all of those [and HDDs and power supplies don’t cause these kinds of crashes] is the video adapter and the RAID card, not the on-board RAID.

So: in order to eliminate another factor, I moved the system drive from the on-board SATA controller to the RAID card last night. I had one glitch – it rebooted 30 minutes after I set it up, but that may be other factors. I flashed the motherboard BIOS, and updated the RAID drivers to the most current version. After that last reboot, I’ve seen no change or reboot so far. I was concerned that I’d come down this morning to a blue screen, but that didn’t happen. If it did, I would know that the RAID card has been the problem the whole time. However, all is sill up in the air.

Again, I wait. I wait and see if the server crashes. I wait and see if I have to either replace the motherboard or RAID card. If it works like it did before, rebooting on occasion, moving the drives tells me nothing. If it stops rebooting all together, moving the drives tells me the motheboard is bad. Perhaps if nothing changes, the problem is the RAID card. I don’t know.

I’m going to check the warranty and see what the time limit is. Maybe I can send it back for replacement…

New Look

I’ve been playing around with themes for the web site, if you can’t tell. It’s been so cold up here, I felt we needed a “cold” theme. The picture in the banner is a picture of a road near our house – yes, it’s that cold and colder. The ice won’t be going anywhere for a while, even when it gets into the 50s next week.

Home Network Fiddling: Complete?

2012-01-08 23:29:55

For a while anyway. Today, I spent quite a bit of time learning about how ISA server works and configuring it to provide people with the various web sites that come out of my house. It took some doing, but I think everything is working. I had to re-install it because my multi-segmented home network plans didn’t work out – I couldn’t get the routing quite right. I’ll have to do that on a different box – one that’s not the firewall.

Now that is complete as well a an upgrade to a second UPS battery backup. Now that I have two, I can have my systems and home network [as well as phone since I do VoIP] up for about 20 minutes during a power outage. I had everything on one and that would have given me less than 10. I eventually want one UPS per computer, but I like what I have now and it will last me for a while.

So – I’m not going to fool with it anymore this week. All I’ll be doing is working with what I have on some virtual machine projects for work and hoping that I’ve found the problem with my main server – the old CPU. If it’s bad, I hope there’s a warranty!