Note: .no, not .org.
Well, another power outage, long enough to kill the UPS, and I haven't been on site to turn the computer back on. I'll get to it tomorrow morning.
Power on again. I've enabled a setting in the motherboard that will turn the server back on when power is restored, in case this happens again. :)
The computer wouldn't stop crashing, and we were down until approximately 12:30 UTC today, when I got some new hardware up. Hopefully, the new hardware will prevent new crashes. I'm also compiling a new kernel to make use of the new CPU -- I hadn't anticipated switching CPU types -- so we'll be down briefly around 15:00 UTC.
The problem with the server is recurring at closely spaced intervals, I suspect some sort of hardware failure, possibly overheated CPU. Unfortunately, I cannot investigate this thoroughly at the moment, but I'll try to get there and open the box as soon as possible.
Apparently, the Viking server is down. I'll try to check this out in 8-12 hours from now.
The facility where Viking MUD's computer is located had a brief power outage around 06:00 UTC. While Viking is on a UPS, the UPS power failed within two minutes, in spite of the UPS claiming it was at 40% load and had 25 minutes capacity. Power has been restored, but Viking will not be back up until around 08:00 UTC.
The server will be rebooted at 06:30 UTC for a kernel upgrade. Expected downtime is just a few minutes, but because the MUD starter script will be disabled from now until then, any crashes will result in a downtime until after 06:30.
And we're back up again. I think.
Both of the drivers (MudOS and DGD) appear to be working, and so does FTP, and login for admins. I'll be a bit busy the next two days, so I'll probably be able to put us back online on Friday.
Ick, it's getting late. The good news is that the following now seems to work:
What I haven't tested yet is a longer list, but at least I got real progress tonight!
The devil's in the details. Just a few more things, right, yeah. Well, we'll get there. Klopf also seems to have recovered some more recent files from Krylitz, so we'll be a bit more up to date on stuff there than elsewhere when we get back up.
I think I've finished with the system reconfiguration. Now I only need to reinstall the MUD driver, and we should be able to get back up. I'll try to get it done this weekend.
Sorry for the information draught. It turned out not to be only one problem, but rather a series of them, keeping me busy for all week.
This week looks better, so I've started restoring files and server configuration for Viking.
The wedding went fine, back to work. This is turning into a blog ...
One of the servers at work was very sad when I left Oslo for a couple of days, and needs petting like a tamagochi. I'll try to do a restore of Viking one of the evenings this week.
I have received the new CPU fan, reassembled the computer, and installed an operating system to the new disk.
This weekend I'll be gone for a wedding in the Netherlands, so I don't have a chance of reinstalling the necessary software until sometime next week.
Donations have now reached NOK 1450, which covers the disk. Thanks for the incredible support!
We're edging a bit closer to completion, but I had to order a new CPU fan -- the current one is making so much noise that I'll go deaf.
Donations have reached NOK 1150, which is more than I expected.
The new harddisk has arrived, but the computer remains in pieces. The remaining work is to gather all the different backups, make a final attempt at accessing the data on the old disk, installing an operating system on the new disk, pushing the backups back in, checking that things look allright, ... I'm sure something is missing on that list, and it will take plenty of hours as it is.
Don't expect the MUD to be back up this week. :(
Thanks to all those who have contributed with donations. I've already shelled out the money (approximately NOK 1500) for the disk, and thanks to you guys, I've gotten 800 back. That's wonderful, no joke about it!
The data from the old harddisk is not salvageable; we'll have to try to restore from a mostly complete backup we had 2004-08-17.
The new harddisk has finally been shipped by the computer store we ordered it from. We may be able to install it sometime next week.
Since a Norwegian asked, Norwegians can make donations to the following account number/address (the bank is Skandiabanken):
97102976006 Viking MUD c/o Jan Ingvoldstad Thurmanns gate 10 C 0461 Oslo
A backup web site for www.vikingmud.org is now in place.
Several people have mentioned that they would like to be able to make
donations for new hardware for the VikingMUD box. We appreciate this,
and I've created an account at
moneybookers.com for
this purpose. The account name is:
Note: .no, not .org.
And as you may have guessed already, the harddisk is not working properly, so we really have to get a new one.
The server is now down. Willfon is attempting to salvage data from the problematic harddisk. The time frame for a fix is still unknown.
The server that's running VikingMUD has severe issues, and its physical defects list is growing rapidly. It is difficult to estimate downtimes and stability. Problems can be expected from 2004-09-06 through 2004-09-17, depending on how quickly something can be done.
Additionally, the server must be physically relocated because of other factors; we are working on that, too. This means an upcoming change of IP address.
Something seems to have happened on the server side that disconnected the network. Willfon fixed it.
Viking's host seems to be off the net.
We may not be able to look at this until Monday (2004-08-02), since it requires physical access.
The switch seems to have worked just fine.
We plan for downtime tomorrow between 11:00 and 13:00 UTC, for changing a SCSI cable and terminator.
The system was hanging during bootup because of some corrupt files, but it's back up now.
The computer vikingmud.org runs on seems to be off the net, or down, or something. The reason seems to be a brief power blip, but what exactly went down isn't possible to tell just yet.