A new year has arrived yippie! 
Christmas and New Year’s are over although I spent most of it working doing server upgrades it was still a good time. Why do it then? Well for one traffic is low so scheduling major changes is not going to affect sites as much.
I can say welcome to the new year with everything now up to date and running the latest version on some shiny new hardware. The new US servers were already up to date but our original US server needed some major overhauls. In September we had a move to bigger and better hardware but were still running RedHat9 and the original versions of Apache, PHP and MySQL, while things were secure an update was way overdue.
After the upgrades the Eagle server is now running the same setup as the other servers CentOS5, Apache 2.2.8, PHP 5.2.6 and MySQL 5.0.67. As we did some extensive testing before the upgrades we only had a couple of small issues that were easily rectified.
The Australian servers were not left out of the upgrades, we had the option of setting up another VPS or moving to our own Dedicated hardware. Operationally it made more sense to consolidate things and get a decent Dedicated server to reduce management overheads so that is the path we took. As we were setting up from scratch on the new hardware it was loaded with the latest versions so the spec is the same as Eagle.
Once the new server was online and testing had been completed, it was just a matter of transfering everyone over and redirecting traffic from the old servers to the new server.
Redirection will be inplace for a couple of weeks just so nothing gets lost.
January 2nd, 2009
Ok well I have been using the eeepc for a couple of weeks now, things have been going well. It has been getting a bit of use in the office as well as getting taken out and about and I am very happy with the performace nd features.
Connection with the nokia N73 is good most of the time but the proprietary connection on the cable that connects to the phone is a pain, get a loop in the cable and the connection can drop out grrrr nokia why didn’t you just use a mini-usb. Ok well finally had enouth this week and got myself a bluetooth dongle so I can connect with bluetooth.
Two options when I go to get one Swann and Belkin, the Belkin had more features was Version 2 yada yada yada so I though hey this is good lifetime warranty etc. So got that one and went home to get it running, two hours later find out due to reasons unknown the particular model I got (F8T012au) has the same id as a belkin network adapter and so will not work.
Ok back to the the shop and swap it for the Swann, home again plug it in and what do you know regognised straight away, couple of commands via the terminal widow and we are in business and on the internet and without that annoying cable. “Look ma’ no cable”
Ok which one works well this is it (SW120-BTA)
Ok it works I even managed to add some keyboard shortcuts to turn bluetooth on and off as required just to make things easier. I will outline the full process to getting it working in a separate post.
July 6th, 2008
Being tied to the PC is fine when you are in the office everyday but what about when you have to get out, travel or go to meetings. Well email on the phone is pretty standard these days even for those of us without a Blackberry, my Nokia N73 does things fairly well but no qwerty keyboard does mean lots of time pecking out emails on a number pad.
Bluetooth keyboard works well but still stuck with a small screen and its a bit fiddly. Next step up take the laptop, well from the ‘Black screen of Death” post you will see that while my laptop is good for everyday use I found that taking it for occasional use means lugging 5KG plus around not fun plus it is used as an everyday machine so things to unplug etc etc.
What to do what to do, well I looked at updating the phone and going down the pda/phone combo path then I found out about the UMPC. I had looked at the Mini-PC market before but with prices starting at $2000 for one it was just too much, well ASUS has brought out a compact unit called the eeePC at under 1KG running with solid state memory. They come in a few versions the 700 comes with a 7″ screen but I hung out for the eeePC900 which sports a 8.9 screen and 20GB of storage.
Is it any good I hear you ask, well I have had it for just under a week now and it is brilliant (I am typing this entry on it right now) the key board is small, well the whole thing is just under 23 cm wide so those that touch type and have big hands will find it a bit cramped but I two finger type so I find it ok :).
Ok here are some pics top and Bottom View
Next we have a view of it open and a closeup on the keyboard so you can see just how small it is
Ok last two are of the machine in operation, sorry had to turn the flash off to get some detail in the shots.
Ok now that you have seen it you can see that yes it really is a PC, I chose the linux version my first one for a desktop machine even though out servers run CentOS so it takes a little getting used to but overall things are great.
For the browser using firefox , well I use that on the PC’s so no difference there, open office for documents and spreadsheets well I have that on the PC’s as well so again no difference.
Setup problems, well there are none unpacked it and plugged it into the network and it just works everything is pre-loaded. After reading some great tips at eeeuser.com a fantastic community of fellow eeepc owners I converted the desktop over to full KDE and hooked up the nokia so I could use mobile broadband.
Ok well that is it for now I will keep you posted on how things go.
June 19th, 2008
Well things have continued to grow at WEBY Systems we are now up to 6 servers with the seventh about to come online this week. Our main focus has still been on US based hardware mainly due to the cost of bandwidth in Australia is still astronomical compared to the US suppliers. The situation is getting better but still has a long ways to go.
All servers are now running with the latest version of cPanel and are finally converted over to maildir, no issues reported after the move so that went smoothly. The next stage is up upgrade all servers to php5 and MySQL5 we are currently doing testing to ensure the move can be done without any interruptions to service for existing clients.
Everyone has now been migrated across to the new hosting pans and those customers on the old legacy plans will for the most part have been upgraded as part of the process, if we have missed anyone please let us know.
Well no issues problems to report so back to work for me more news soon
April 15th, 2008
We have all heard of the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ (BSoD) that afflicts all us long suffering windows users but how about the ‘Black Screen of Death’ well not Death I suppose but almost anyway. Desktop users will be unfamiliar but those of you that use a laptop will have at least seen it. Unfortunately for my long serving Toshiba it came on the weekend. (more…)
July 24th, 2007
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