heads up.

my host will be moving the server soon. not sure exactly when.

going to a server with upgraded mysql support (4.1 or 5.0).

hope everything goes okay.

but if not, at least you'll know what happened.

yes, i made a complete site back-up.

they said it should be painless.

i'll let ya know when it's done.

Rad

Good luck with the move.

Seven weeks ago my host told me they were moving my site to a new server.  Turned into a disaster.  Everything broke.  I ended up dumping them and moving my couple dozen domains to a new host.

To add insult to injury, they didn't move when they said they were going to.  They "pre-migrated" everything, then didn't flip the switch for a couple weeks.  By the time the new server went live, all my pages were a couple weeks out of date, links and scripts didn't work, and by then I was on a two-week vacation in a rural valley in Hawaii, with no internet access and no cellphone service . . . REALLY bad time for all my websites to break!

Here's hoping your move goes without incident.

Update on the site move (copy-n-pasted from home page):

The site move (to a new, updated server) mentioned yesterday involves a new name server (they say), which means the site might (not sure yet, I asked) be unavailable for a period of time following the move.

Okay, they said the new name server *will* need to propagate, which means the site will be unavailable for 24-72 hours, depending how far away from Los Angeles you are (where the Rad server is physically located). I'm making a *second* full-site back-up right now. =)

DNS propagation time has a lot more to do with what the refresh time is set to and when the cache expires for any server that might have cached it than physical distance.

Here's how DNS works:

1. You ask your DNS server for the IP of a website - radified.com.
2. Your DNS server doesn't know.  It asks the root server for .com.
3. The root server tells your DNS server that it doesn't know where radified.com is, but it does know that the Name Sever for Radifed.com is ns.somenameserver.com.
4. Your DNS server asks your name server what the IP is for radified.com.  The name server does know the answer, and provides both the IP address and a length of time your DNS server should remember (or cache) the answer.
5. Your DNS server replies to you with the answer.

Whenever you make a change to your zone file (DNS information) on your name server, your name server gives out the new information immediately.  However, some DNS servers out there already have the old, cached answer and don't know that the IP has changed.  When the timeout expires, 24-72 hours later, the DNS server will query the name server and get the new answer.

Usually, your hosting company will set the cache timeout to something really low, like 1 hour, a few days before they make a change.  Then, within an hour of the change, all cached information on other DNS servers has timed out and they will get the new information.  If they haven't done this, you could ask them to do it.  They might say no, but if they are as good as you say they are they might be willing to do it.

Any end user wanting to get to your site after the change could simply ask their ISP to clear the cache on their DNS server.  Some ISP's may be unwilling to do it, just because clearing the cache every time any website anywhere on the internet moved would be crazy, but you might get lucky.  Or, you could simply use a different DNS server that has the new information, if you can find one.

Thanks for keeping me honest. I updated the home page to correct inaccuracies.

The idea of propagation, to me, conveys the idea of a pebble being thrown into a pond, where the ripples "propagate" outward from a central source (the name server).

the move is scheduled for tomorrow (friday) afternoon.

I think that if you are reading this, you have made it to the new site.

I think so too.

I screwed up and changed the name servers to:

ns1.lunarPAGES.com

when they were supposed to be:

ns1.lunarSERVERS.com

didn't catch mistake until 8pm this eve (Saturday)

site moved at 8pm yesterday (friday).

i cannot access any subdomains, such as :

http://ghost.radified.com/

how about you?

all other pages seem fine.

but most of site is subdomained.

i also cannot log into site via ftp. weird.

my email works fine.

Rad wrote on May 13^th, 2007 at 12:26am:

i cannot access any subdomains, such as : http://ghost.radified.com/ how about you?

Nope, I can't access it either.
I get "The page cannot be displayed" screen.

everything should be working properly now.

sumrica

Try *Ctrl + R* when you get the error page--it refreshed *something* and the page opened fine after that!

On one page, I had to close the browser, re-load the browser, and do the *Ctrl + R* a second time on then it worked.

you guys remember when we were getting errors when posting pleo's full name, and dot-htaccess?

well i had the same thing happen today when making a *blog* entry:

http://blogs.radified.com/2007/05/website_move_new_server_mysql.html

if you scroll down near the bottom, you'll see the word htaccess in italics, blockquote.

i had to remove the dot before the words htaccess, or the blogging software would give me an error.

took me a while to figure that out.

i remembered our problems here, which helped.

i'm guessing this is some kind of security protections against those files generated by *scripts* .. cuz both the blog (*.cgi) & this forum (*.pl) are both generated by scripts.

i could enter those words on the (html) web pages no problem.

but i was geeting 403 errors, saying i didn't has authorization to the blog script (which obviously i did, cuz i was using it).

i first thot something in the new server screwed up the blog (sweating bulltets).

started adding a paragraph or two at a time, until i found the culprit (just like we did here).

Rad

Interesting!  It's always good when you've had a similar problem before that you were able to solve--the second time usually goes much faster!

Rad wrote on May 13^th, 2007 at 10:40pm:

you guys remember when we were getting errors when posting pleo's full name, and dot-htaccess? well i had the same thing happen today when making a *blog* entry:

LunarPages seem to have a really overaggressive set of mod_security rules in place.

A quick google on lunarpages and mod_security turns up lots of people with similar problems. You should be able to ask them to turn off the filtering for your blog posting script if they don't let you manually tweak the mod_security settings for yourself.

Looks good on the right coast, i believe it may be a little snappier.

Thanks Wally.

Can you do me a favor & ping the site?

Curious to see what times you get.

Here's a freebie if needed:

http://www.pingplotter.com/download.html

Freebie link is located at bottom of page (not easy to see).

Hi Rad,

This from the East Coast of Australia, just a few minutes before posting:

Target Name: www.radified.com
        IP: 74.50.3.195
 Date/Time: 15/05/2007 4:07:39 PM to 15/05/2007 4:09:54 PM

2  135 ms  538 ms  178 ms  134 ms  149 ms  189 ms  150 ms  134 ms  549 ms  126 ms  [172.18.68.38]
3  134 ms  586 ms  172 ms  133 ms  149 ms  159 ms  132 ms  133 ms  606 ms  127 ms  CPE-61-9-133-7.vic.bigpond.net.au [61.9.133.7]
4  102 ms  609 ms  167 ms  100 ms  161 ms  152 ms  130 ms  100 ms  620 ms   94 ms  10GigabitEthernet1-1.win13.melbourne.telstra.net [165.228.108.101]
5   96 ms  665 ms  134 ms   *      108 ms   *      113 ms   95 ms  659 ms   *      TenGigE0-8-0-5.win-core1.Melbourne.telstra.net [203.50.80.129]
6  103 ms   *      144 ms  156 ms  116 ms  129 ms   *       *       *      147 ms  Bundle-Pos1.ken-core4.Sydney.telstra.net [203.50.6.21]
7  168 ms  686 ms   *      145 ms  105 ms  122 ms  155 ms  145 ms   *      291 ms  Port-Channel1.pad-gw2.Sydney.telstra.net [203.50.6.29]
8  136 ms  680 ms  130 ms  118 ms  263 ms  135 ms  160 ms  118 ms  629 ms  111 ms  10GigabitEthernet2-0.sydp-core02.Sydney.reach.com [203.50.13.50]
9  295 ms  805 ms  291 ms  269 ms  397 ms  279 ms  286 ms  272 ms  784 ms  266 ms  i-13-0.wil-core02.net.reach.com [202.84.141.109]
10  287 ms  801 ms  302 ms  314 ms  382 ms  274 ms  282 ms  267 ms  752 ms  336 ms  i-1-0.wil04.net.reach.com [202.84.251.210]
11   *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       [-]
12  288 ms  776 ms  313 ms  287 ms  362 ms  405 ms  334 ms  348 ms  730 ms  287 ms  nwstdsrj01-ge710.rd.lv.cox.net [68.1.0.85]
13   *      934 ms   *      476 ms  524 ms  592 ms  629 ms   *      929 ms  472 ms  24-234-6-1.ptp.lvcm.net [24.234.6.1]
14  280 ms  736 ms  321 ms  276 ms  327 ms  368 ms  462 ms  346 ms  695 ms  276 ms  24-234-6-66.ptp.lvcm.net [24.234.6.66]
15  281 ms  733 ms  288 ms  320 ms  295 ms  422 ms  429 ms  313 ms  662 ms  326 ms  24-234-18-130.ptp.lvcm.net [24.234.18.130]
16  276 ms  701 ms  282 ms  319 ms  290 ms  416 ms  397 ms  308 ms  630 ms  321 ms  cust-lunarpages.marquisnet.com [208.65.158.130]
17  322 ms  708 ms  329 ms  295 ms  289 ms  407 ms  365 ms  303 ms  619 ms  285 ms  hafgan.lunarservers.com [74.50.3.195]

Ping statistics for www.radified.com
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0.0%)
Round Trip Times: Minimum = 285ms, Maximum = 708ms, Average = 392ms

Average = 392 ms. That's no good. Now I gonna have to set up a mirror down under. =)

Here's my numbers. (The server is right up the road, in LA .. ~50 miles):

http://radified.com/gfx/hafgan_trace.gif

Rad, I haven't run any numbers but there are no problems at my end.

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b16/bjkdegree/ping.gif

Rad wrote on May 15^th, 2007 at 4:01am:

Now I gonna have to set up a mirror down under. =)

Excellent idea, especially if you can find a way to make it pay for itself (preferably from  our brothers across the Tasman, since they have more money than we do, heh).

Anyway, everything is great here for me at home on DSL but there are DNS timeouts accessing anything when I try from Ghost HQ (eventually the DNS query results turn up, but it usually takes a couple page refreshes worth of attempts). I haven't spent any time looking into why that is, although given all the proxies and filters we run I doubt it'll be a problem with your end of things.

Rad wrote on May 15^th, 2007 at 4:01am:

Average = 392 ms. That's no good.

I think I should have mentioned that I'm on Wireless Broadband over the Cell/Mobile Phone Network (1xEV-DO) That would make a difference... wouldn't it? At least for my first hop which is currently around 140ms. PingPlotter was set to ignore the first hop for my posted stats.

BTW1: I'm at a loss to figure out the stats from PingPlotter. I would have thought that the times should be cumulative.... Another User Guide to read!

BTW2: When I select the following: Profile > Modify > Options > (GMT/UTC+10 East Australian Time) > "Enable automatic Dayllight Savings Time change" > Tick > Change Profile; the time on the page is set to one hour in advance. Unchecking the box sets the time correctly. I don't recall this problem before the change to the new site. Or is it something at my end?

Daylight Saving in New South Wales

Implementation Dates of Daylight Saving Time within Australia

I would definitely look into a mirror down under.

does anyone know if software exists to synchronize the two?

i could see how that might risk corruption.

my server here is only ~10/month, and that includes $2.50 extra/month for a dedicated ip (call me old fashioned).

what are some good web host down there?

i can at least ask if it's possible, and if it *is* .. having a server down under would be cool ("dual-servers," like dual-booting).

heck, i'd do it just for the cool factor. =)

Ghost was *born* in New Zealand, so a server Down Under seems appropriate.

Having a mirror is easy.  Since your server runs Linux, the content could easily be synced with rsync, which uses ssh to transfer data.  The difficulty is getting people in Australia to know to go to the mirror instead of the main site.  It would require manual configuration of DNS, or a different url (maybe radified.com.au?)  I'm not sure how Google would handle results for two identical sites, but having a server on the other side of the world would cut latency time significantly for users overseas.

A proxy server could handle everything automatically.  You could try to get someone to proxy the data locally, but I've never looked for a professional proxy provider.  Not sure if they exist.

None of it would be an issue if we adopted Vance Jacobson's model of networking.  If anyone near you has a local copy, you can just get it from the closest source.  Check out the talk he gave to Google a little while back on Google video for some neat history and ideas on the future of networking:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840&hl=en

Cool stuff. Watched 1st half of video.

So it's possible.

The other option for having a mirror site is to use a load balancer capable of Global Site Selection.  Google uses something like this.  The initial request for the page hits a load balancer.  The balancer determines where the best place for that particular user would be to download the content from and forwards the request to that location.  The content, which is the biggest chunk of data, gets sent by the server that can get it there best.  

I think Google does it down to the Name Server level - their name servers respond with different DNS addresses depending on where the request is coming from, so it ends up being very efficent.  

But it takes a lot of expensive equipment to make that kind of magic happen.  A Cisco Content Switch is about $40K last I checked.

EDIT: A cheap way to do it would be to put the same IP Address on two different servers.  Routing protocols would automatically take care of sending traffic to the closest server.  The two challenges with that is:

1. Keeping the servers synced up on a real-time basis
2. Convincing a hosting provider to advertise the same IP in two places

If you owned the IP of your site, it could work, but you don't.

Do you have experience administrating a Linux-based server?

One of the differences between Basic & VPS is that they charge for upgrades, etc.

Are you familiar with upgrading things like Apache, MySQL, PHP & Linux version?

I could probably learn, but nothing beats first-hand experience.

Yes, I can handle installing and upgrading the kernel and any software you need to use.  I've gotten comfortable with Apache, MySQL, and PHP on several different versions of Linux and 2 versions of BSD, so I could show you the ropes.

What version of Linux are you thinking of loading onto the virtual server?  What advantage to you hope to gain by admining the server yourself, as opposed to using a basic account?

You da man!

"Learning" is the biggest motivation. Like most people, I learn best by doing.

But I feel hesitant about putting the site at risk, since I have very little experience with Linux, and *none* with running Linux as a server.

I would also feel more comfortable running dynamic pages (such as Drupal, Joomla, or PHP-based Movable Type blog) with a VPS account, cuz they allow you more CPU/RAM usage, or at least that's what they say.

I am still in the information gathering phase .. trying to determine what is involved, and where the risks lie.

Here's my latest response from LP support:

Hello,

VPS comes by default with the following features if you opt for a plesk server [Rad note > Plesk is their control panel. I currently use cPanel]:

Mysql > 4.1.20
Apache > Apache/2.0.52 (1.3.37 with cpanel)
PHP > PHP 4.3.9
OS > CentOS release 4.4 (Final)

Unfortunately, it is not possible for us to upgrade an OS on request. You will have to upgrade your plan or switch over to a dedicated server in order to get that done.

You can sign up for our managed addon feature to get those upgrades done free for you.

Lunarpages offers an all inclusive managed package to assist you with setting up, maintaining and monitoring your VPS server. For a low price of $9.99 per month, you can have the following:

- Root Check Kit on the server
- Up-to-date notifications of exploits on popular third party software
- Automatic upgrades of kernels, PHP, Apache and administration panels for security
- Monitoring of your server through Lunarpages' internal monitoring tools
- Unlimited reboots of your server if it becomes unresponsive
- One free third party script installation per billing year*
- Free installation of upgraded control panel*
- Free installation of Resin if needed*
- Free setup of remote backups**

*Does not include any licensing of third party software if required.
**Does not include over 2GB storage space if needed.

Our managed hosting package doesn't come with firewall for VPS plan. Unfortunately, you need to install firewall on your system. If you have any other questions, please let us know.

--
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions

Thoughts?

Questions I should be asking?

Funny how they give you 20 gigs of space but won't back up more than 2 gigs. Sup wit dat?

Running a server is half the fun of Linux.  The first thing I learned in the Unix world was actually a server - an OpenBSD firewall/gateway/router with DHCP, DNS, and SSH.  Then, I decided to boot it off a flash drive rather than a hard drive, which proved to be a challenge since BIOS doesn't seem to be able to read an OpenBSD file system and my computer was too old to boot from USB:

http://www.magooswisewords.com/MagoosBook/openbsdflash/openbsd-usb-1.htm

But success with that is what gave me the confidence to move my desktop to Linux.  After that, I HAD to play with Apache...

On to your questions -
OS
So they install Cent 4.4 for you and that is what you are stuck with?  Its not a problem, that's a good OS, I was just under the impression you could install what you want.  I guess it makes sense that they would put some limits on it.  Will you have access to apply security updates?  Or do they update the OS for you?

Will you be allowed to install any program you want, or is that what they mean by third party software - 1 a year sounds chincy.  Not that you would need anything besides PHP, MySQL, and Apache.  Perl would be nice to have.  Does that count as your one for the year?

Plesk -
This installation of Plesk controls your web sites, or  your server?  I've used it as a web control panel, but they seem to imply you could control some part of OS with it...  I don't like Plesk personally.  The menus are too deep.  You have to look in 3 different folders to find anything and you end up feeling like you are navigating the control panel in circles.   Of course, that mostly applies to the mater account.  The individual web site control panel is a little less confusing because there are fewer options.  I end up admining most of my sites from the shell, modifiying the text files manually.  It's less tedious than it sounds.

Monitoring
What kind of monitoring do they provide?  Is it just up/down?  Or will they do service checks on Apache and PHP to make sure they are working correctly?  What kind of action do they take if they detect an error?  Will they simply notify you by email, or will they notify you by text message or phone call?  Would you want that - to get called in the middle of the day or night if a problem with the server is detected?  Or will they investigate it, or will they simply reboot the server in an attempt to restore service?

Is MySQL on the same server?  Do they monitor that for you?  

The firewall is no problem.  The services you want to run are inherently secure, and we can use IPTables to provide basic fire walling.  It is built into the kernel.

Backup
It is strange that they give you 20 GB but only backup 2 GB.  You would have to set up automated backups.  Will they let you run shell commands like rsync?  That would make backup pretty simple.  If not, you'd have to be a little creative, but its still doable.  Will you have control over the users and groups on your virtual server?

I guess my biggest question seems to be what level of access they are giving you - do you have full shell access to run any command you want, or do they allow you a limited command set?

Necessity
I'm not sure that you will necessarily need a virtual server in order to run Drupal or Joomla.  Your old blog was based on Perl, if I remember right.  Every time you added a new page to the blog, the Perl script had to recreate all of the archive and index pages, which probably got to be quite a bit.  Sites based on PHP just have to read a database and create a single page when a user asks for it.  For sites with a lot of content, its been my experience that PHP based sites are any more of resource hogs than Perl ones.

I'm sure they have other customers using that software.  Maybe your first question to them should be what kind of load that software will generate for a site your size and if that amount of resource usage is within your plan.  Then you would know where you stand.

I'm all about learning, tho.  If you want to do it, I'm sure we'll both learn a lot.  

Risk
As far as putting the site at risk - they'd have to give you some cross-over time with both accounts active.  That way you could build your server and get the web-sites running on it before sending traffic to it.  There'd be a little downtime while you synched up that databases and then moved traffic, but it could be done overnight.  

The only risk I can see is if something goes wrong later.  On a shared server, they are watching it 24x7, and if something on the server breaks (other than your html itself,) they will fix it - usually before anyone even notices.  If you are responsible for the server, they probably won't provide that level of support.  If something breaks, there may be some downtime until you get a chance to look into it.

EDIT: Whew.  I'm pretty sure that is my longest single post ever in this forum.  Maybe I should break it into 2 posts and put in some headings...

Good questions. I am going tom pose them to LP, a little at a time.

Have already submitted the first batch.

Thanks.

Their response. First round of questions:

Reply:
Hello,

To answer your questions:

-can I install *any* linux o/s i want, or just CentOS?

Sorry, only CentOS is offered on our VPS plans.

-does perl come with the basic installation?

Perl is included.

-can i install any program I want?

You will be able to install virtually any program you like, but keep in mind the memory and hard drive space constraints of the VPS.

how much does it cost if i want (you guys) to install more than one 3rd party script (per year)?

$75/hour

-what happens if you need more than 2 gigs to back-up the site?

We only offer 2GB of storage.
--
Kind Regards,
RC
System Admin Team - JSA I

That's all good news.  I can install (or teach you to install) pretty much anything you want.  No need to pay them if we have full access.  Memory and hard drive constraints aren't a concern.  All the really useful stuff is small and lightweight anyway.

Here's some more info I been finding:

Seems you were right about Plesk. See here:

We utilize Virtuozzo Power Panel (VZPP) for our Virtual Private Servers. Virtuozzo creates isolated partitions or virtual environments on a single physical server and OS instance to utilize hardware, software, data center and management effort with maximum efficiency and stability.

The Plesk 10 domain license is included free. It is $0 setup and $0 per month for up to 10 accounts.

For other licenses:

$10 install
30 domains - $18 / month
100 domains - $25 / month
Unlimited domains - $35 / month
Language Pack - $6 / month
Power Pack - $15 / month

unsticky.