This is an archive of all the old news bulletins from the Main Page, so it doesn't have to be so big.
"Frigg"'in sweet!
Frigg is finally up and running! You're looking at her, right now. Yes, I've officially moved the site to the new server which is faster and set up much more cleanly. The machine, that is, not really the server. I've still got a bit of work to do to get the server working all correctly, but you should at least be able to browse the site again, for the most part. Some pages might not work, so if you come across any, please, please, contact me about it.
More updates on Frigg
Okay, so I'm recording the progress I'm making on the new server at Frigg setup. It's going well, and I'm nearly to the point where I can switch over. Unfortunately, I've also recently started classes again, so my time is severely limited.
Here's my plan from here on out:
- Finish installing needed software on Frigg (stuff like Open Office and Thunderbird that's needed for this to be the primary computer).
- Setup iptables firewall on Frigg
- Put up a temporary website on Frigg announcing that the site is down temporarily for maintenance.
- Port forward to frigg for HTTP
- MySQL dump darwin onto the big fat harddrive
- Copy the webserver files onto big fat harddrive
- Shutdown darwin and pull the big fat harddrive and 1G ram module out.
- Bring darwin back up and put the temporary site on it as well.
- Port forward HTTP back to darwin
- Shutdown Frigg and add the big fat harddrive and extra RAM, extract some RAM for darwin, and pull the 120GB Windows "Home" drike (K) from it, for darwin.
- Bring frigg back online and port forward to it.
- Set up the server from the MySQL dump and the copied files.
- Setup my home dir and shared dir from big fat harddrive on Frigg.
- Frigg is now all set to go. Just minor tweaks from here on out.
- Shut down darwin again, and add in the extra ram from Frigg, and the Windows Home HD.
That gives me the big fat harddrive, a linux system drive, and a windows system drive in Frigg, and a linux system drive, the windows home drive, and the bigfoot drive in Darwin. So I guess for now, I'll leave linux set up there for darwin, and install Windows XP on the bigfoot, there, and dual boot it. I'll plan to use the old darwin system as the primary windows desktop. It won't be real fast, but we shouldn't need it much. We've got the laptop if we only need one windows. But if we need two, we can boot up darwin under windows, which will be called Dodo, by the way. That'll leave me with two desktops that dual boot linux and windows XP. Hopefully won't need to boot Frigg under windows, because it's the server, but it's there if we need it.
Update on new machine
I've finally started installing again on the new machine. And I've settled on a name for the new system: Frigg. She's the "chief goddess" of the Norse pantheon, and Odin's wife. It's a better name then Iounn, which never really struck me. Oh, and I've also thought of some cool domain names for LANs where all the hosts are named for Norse gods: either Asgard (the "capital city" of the gods), or Aesir (the gods in general, at least some of them).
Countdown to darwin's dismissal
Darwin, the Linux box currently configured as the LAMP server hosting this site, is getting ready for retirement. I originally set up this system as my first real attempt to start mirgrating to linux, hence the name (survival of the fittest between Linux and Windows, if you will), but with the intention of starting over at some point with a fresh system once I'm more comfortable adminstrating over a linux box. Well the time has come, urged on by the fact that I've been using Linux more and more as my primary OS, and the darwin computer is pretty slow. So I'm setting up a new system, installing a pristine Fedora 8 into a bit more powerful of a machine. I'm going to call the new machine either odin or iounn, I haven't decided which. They're both Norse gods (or goddess in iounn's case). I think odin's a good name, but Iounn apparently is like the goddess of sacred apples or something, which reminds me of Eris, so I might stick with that. Besides, there's probably already like 3 million linux boxes out there named Odin, so who needs another one?
I'll wipe the old system (darwin), and install Windows XP on it, because every once in a while I still need a windows box. I'm going to call that system dodo for, I think, obvious reasons. But the new system (iounn or odin) will serve as my server (to host this site, among other things), and my primary work computer. It's got a faster processor, and I'll probably put extra memory in it beyond what I have in darwin, since the workload will be more focused on the new system.
So that's it. I'm still working on getting Fedora downloaded and installed, and then I need to set everything up, so it'll be a while. I'll keep this are posted.
Mime magic error messages fixed
I fixed a small bug that was giving some ugly error messages on certain articles, some problem with Mime Magic where it doesn't know how to find the database except in a specific location. So bing bang boom, just soft link the actual database to where Mime Magic looks for it.
Linux server in the 21st century
Okay, so I finally brought this burnt out old system into the modern era and installed a 1GB RAM module. I used to have just a single 256 in here, so I swapped it out for the 1GB. I've actually got three DIMM slots on the board, but I've got another system that only has two slots, and had a 128 and a 256. So I took the 128 out of that, installed the 256 from this system in it's place, and ended up with 1.125 GB in this here server, and finally up to a whopping 512 MB in my other system (it's windows anyway, how fast will it ever be?). Hopefully this will improve performance on the site, but more importantly (for me), I can actually sit down at this system, launch and window manager, and actually have a usuable computer that doesn't make me want to kill somebody. So maybe now I can get back to working more with Linux and continue to make the migration away from The Evil Empire.
While we're on the subject of upgrades, I should note that the processor in this server is still old as dirt, so it's never going to be a tearing system. That will likely be the next major upgrade to the system. It's actually got a pretty sweet little mother board on it, so I think I'll leave that in place for a while. But I really should upgrade to a modern processor. I'm not going to state of the art, none of the 800 dollar core two duo ridiculousness, but just something with modern amenities, and maybe a 2 or 3 GHz clock or something. But that will probably be a while yet...maybe sometime around Christmas...
If you're a real geek, or a real masochist, you can get more details about my various systems at My computers.
Another new PHP, now with Image support!
Okay, I rebuilt PHP, again, and successfully got the GD library built in, including PNG and JPEG support. This has limited impact on you, except the link off of Mandelbrot now actually works.
Port 80 is Free!
I totally forgot to mention! Since I moved, I had to switch ISPs, and the new one doesn't block port 80! So you can forget about the :8080 or :81 or whatever crap I've had you do in the past. It's now just http://bmearns.net, plain and simple.
My Big Fat Hard Drive
Not that this is of much concern to anyone else, but I just got a new hard disk for my server, 250 GB, 7200 RPM. Not the absolute latest and greatest, but it's damned big, and it was cheap, just 80 bucks at microcenter. The primary content for the webserver is still on the old disk (60 GB) so this really doesn't event remotely affect you, but I'm psyched about it. Plus I moved the home directory onto the new drive which includes some of the images and other media files on the site. Anyway, so much room now. Very cool.
New Apache/PHP
So to wrinkle out some of the bugs with the new server, I ended up doing a full rebuild of both Apache and PHP. As of know, the only thing I know of that doesn't work is my image generation stuff like the one linked off of Mandelbrot. Can't find png.h. Bummer.
New server - Very happy - but some wrinkles
So we recently moved to a much larger apartment in Somerville, and we actually have an entire half a room—including a closet—for the "office". So I turned the storage closet into a server closet (and by "turned into" I mean I drilled a hole in the wall for cables and put the computer in there) for my linux box. So the fact that the heat and noise generated by said box is now contained to the closet (heat hazard?...naw...), plus the fact that we'll be using significantly less electricity in the new place (what with fresh air, open breezes, and sunlight coming in) made me decide to set that up as my always on server. So I've now migrated my webserver over to Darwin, and as you can see, it's working pretty well (in fact I even took the opportunity to improve some thing). There are some bugs, though, with the new setup which you may notice as you look around (like blank pages or strange error messages). If you encounter any, feel free to let me know. I'm hoping to work them all out in time, but I'm still learning the ropes of linux itself, so that certainly adds complications.
Fun with date-time
I've been working on the Datetime extensions, and it's a lot better now. It hasn't changed much on the viewing side, but it's much cleaner on the editing side. Still a bit more work that should get done sometime, but, eh. On thing you will notice is that I've added a hover action to datetimes. You can pick out datetimes because they've got a pale yello background to the text, and when you mouse over, your cursor should be an arrow instead of a text-caret. So hover over for a second, and you'll get a little popup giving you a standardized display of the datetime encoded there, regardless of how it's actually displayed on the page. So, for instance, if you don't get the POEE calendar, and you wanna know what date it is here on the Main Page, you can hover over and see.
Closed for Thanksgiving
The Wiki (and the rest of the webserver) will be closed for the Thanksgiving weekend, starting Wed. November 22, 2006, sometime around 11:30AM Eastern Time. It should be back up sometime in the evening of Sunday, Nov. 26.
Better than Uploads
Created a new namespace, the Stored namespace. This works similar to the Uploads namespace (which is usually the "Image" namespace), except you don't actually Upload the files. Instead, pages in this namespace are mapped to a certain folder on the server's file system. That isn't real useful for a lot of wiki projects where most of the members don't have access to the server file system. But in this case, it lets me use images already on my server without having to upload them. They can still have wiki text descriptions, categories, etc. Read more at: Project:Stored namespace
New action format
This is a new MediaWiki hack that cleans up the format of all the various action links for the wiki, and uses prettier URLs. So instead of using wwk/index.php?title=foo&action=edit, I can now do wwk/edit/foo. The general format is <WIKIROOT>/<ACTION>/<PAGNAME>, but that's my own custom thing, it can be manipulated to do other things, like maybe <WIKIROOT>/actions/<ACTION>/<PAGENAME>, or something. Whatever, you can read more at Pretty urls.
New Domain!
I finally decided to go ahead and register my own domain name. I happened to do it with http://moniker.com, for no particular reason other than that they seemed simple, didn't make me get a bunch of services and other crap, and it only cost 5 dollars and some change for a .net domain. Anyway, the new domain is simply bmearns.net:81. Yes, sadly you still need the :81, I haven't bitten down and payed RCN to unblock port 80.
Category search
Sweet new special page, Special:CrossReference, where you can search for articles that are in all specified categories. Try Special:CrossReference/Politics/Religion for all articles that are in both Category:Religion and Category:Politics.
User Page
I finally started on my user page, which just tells a little bit about me, a sort of introduction, an overview of your wiki host, if you will. So you can see it at User:Bmearns.
Now you can talk!
Yay! I successfully hacked MediaWiki to allow anonymous users to edit the talk pages. That means on pretty much any article here, you can click on the like "talk" tab up at the top, and then use the "+" tab or the "edit" tab to edit the page an leave messages or ask question about the article. Please read more about this at Using talk pages.
Bmearns 00:10, 13 May 2006 (Eastern Daylight Time)
I've actually had a webserver running for several months now, including a wiki, but it was hardly ever available because the machine itself that ran the server was hardly ever on. I've just moved it to a different machine that's on most of the time, and decided to just start the wiki from scratch. The serve should be available most of the time, but I make no guaruntees.
