complex + ignornant = quagmire

In my new "job", I'm responsible for the operation of half a dozen web sites. One of them has been a very low priority mostly because it is little used and, we thought, working. Oh no. It's completely hosed.

It's another fine php/mysql mess. The server has two or three copies of every file under slightly different names. I'll have to dig through all the files to see which are the ones being used. Then I have to unravel the logic to see just where it started to go to hell.

It is a complex web site. Lots of php and lots of flash. It has a catalog and sales cart system. And the person who was "maintaining" it for the last 18 months has thoroughly confused the issue and broke the site. Looking at timestamps of what is one the server, it has been broken for more than a year.

No wonder it has not been a revenue source.

Love.

Finally

I finally completed installing Linux on my home server after installing two 400-GB hard drives.

SuSE 10.0 ('cause it is what I have handy) has a bug. I remembered it when I got my first kernel panic. The installer was/is not smart about raid. I futzed around for nearly a day looking for the bug. Google came up VERY short on giving me a solution, so I was on my own.

I finally found it. When the installer gets around to installing grub in the boot sector, it fails completely to check for raid. Consequently, when one tries to boot from /dev/hda1, it fails because the "file system" is on /dev/md0. A quick manual fix of the grub configuration and all was peachy.

Of course, it screwed up the rest of the install. But rather than starting over, I finished installing packages and configuring stuff myself. It was good practice. I got to see first hand the things that can happen when somethings are done out of order. ;)

Now the server is up and running. Just a few more services to configure -- like apache2 -- then I can set the household firewall such that all requests from the outside world get fed to the server.

I am hooked to the wireless router with a wire while my laptop is using the wireless circuit. It is very irritating. Even though they are the same set if IP numbers, they are really two different networks. That means my server can't talk to anything else on the inside. I suppose that is good, even if inconvenient.

Last night was a very poor sleep-quality night, so tonight will be an early one. The rest of the server must wait until tomorrow. As soon as my laundry comes out of the dryer, I'm heading up the stairs and into the bed.

Love.