News

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Date	Title	News
06/09/2004 15:00:00	DVD Writer Stopped Working	My LG GSA4082B DVD-writer stopped working half way through burning a DVD and then wouldn't even read CD-ROMs, so it has been returned for a replacement. The server seems more stable with it removed, but it is probably just a co-incidence.
11/09/2004 12:15:00	Server Definitely Stable Without DVD Writer	This server hasn't crashed since the DVD writer was removed, so it is looking ever more likely that it was the problem. I even added a 40GB hard disk and CD Writer without any problems.
20/09/2004 18:00:00	New Web Server	This website has moved to new hardware and uses Apache to provide virtual hosting, so http://theunissen.cc and http://www.wildstyleware.com are separate sites rather than using frame based redirection. I will refer to it as Web Server and the original one as File Server from now on.
08/10/2004 16:00:00	Replacement DVD Writer Finally Arrives	A replacement DVD writer has finally arrived and it was worth the wait, as it is their latest 12 speed dual layer LG GSA-4120B. I am happy with the result, but LG customer service leaves a lot to be desired, as it took a month of unreturned phonecalls. Here's hoping the File Server remains stable after installation. I will remove the CD Writer, which only leaves an 80GB and 40GB hard drive to co-exist with the DVD-writer.
16/10/2004 03:51:09	New Gallery and Journal of Ambleside Walking Holiday	My new photograph and movie gallery is available at http://gallery.theunissen.cc. The family section is password protected - access granted on request. I used it's automatic resizing capability to help journal my recent walking holiday in Ambleside, which is available in its new location with photographs at http://theunissen.cc/christopher/holidays/2004/09_30_ambleside_lake_district. The following pages have been changed to use the automatic resizing capability of the gallery, which will significantly improve the rate at which new photographs appear on this site: Holidays > 2004 > 19 March: Lyme Regis Holidays > 2003 > 20 June: Ashurst, New Forest Holidays > 2002 > 20 - 22 September: Camping in Stottesdon, Near Kidderminster Holidays > 2002 > 3 - 7 September: Switzerland Holidays > 2002 > 22 - 23 March: Camping and Cycling in the Malvern Valley Holidays > 2002 > 24 February - 3 March: Skiing in Courmayeur Holidays > 2001 > 19 - 21 October: Climbing Snowdon Events > Parties > 30 While I was at it, I added the missing journal of Holidays > 2002 > 7 - 13 September: Frejus, France Yes, it is 03:51 on a Saturday morning (I got carried away again), so please let me know if you spot any mistakes.
18/10/2004 21:00:00	File Server is Definitely Stable	This is probably tempting fate, but the File Server has not crashed in over a month - ten days of which were with the new DVD writer installed. I burned ten backup DVDs today without any problems, which confirms the problem was related to the old DVD writer.
19/10/2004 13:30:13	Web Server Instability	This web server currently stops responding every few hours, possibly when more than seven simultaneous requests are made to it. I have reported it as apache bug 31764. Please bear with me while this problem is resolved.
20/10/2004 17:00:00	Web Server Stable Again	The web server is stable again. The problem turned out to be the free version of ZoneAlarm, which has a problem handling some services. It was correctly configured, so it is a limitation of the free version. The problem wasn't obvious, as it manifested itself as failed PHP scripts, thereby leading to many red herrings and downgrades and upgrades of PHP versions. I originally wrote my website in server-side JavaScript on IIS 5, so rather than rewriting it all in PHP, I still have IIS running on port 8080 and use mod_proxy to forward requests for a particular subfolder to port 8080. That way I can also do .NET development on the same server in the future if I wanted. Disabling mod_proxy has no effect, so it is not a problem. I tried 100 simultaneous requests to IIS by using "ab -n 100 http://webserver:8080/26kb.jpg" and the same thing happened, but this time it was after 9 requests so it looks like it might not have anything to do with Apache. I thought it might have something to do with Windows 2000 Professional's 10 client restriction but the licence agreement says it doesn't apply to third party products. I have URLScan installed, but nothing appears in its log files, so that is not a problem. I thought it might have something to do with ZoneAlarm, so shut it down, but the problem still occurred. I then remembered that IIS has a 10 user limit so I thought the fact that it is running at the same time, albeit on a separate port might be restricting TCP connection to Apache, but it made not difference when I disabled it. It was at this point that I decided to uninstall ZoneAlarm completely and the problem has now disappeared! It even works up to 1000 requests and 100 concurrent connections. I guess I should have tried uninstalling the firewall to begin with, but it didn't make any difference when I disabled it and many of the related bug reports said that it didn't make any difference either, so I didn't bother trying it. I have a hardware firewall on my router, so it should be okay to run the webserver without a software firewall.
22/10/2004 14:00:00	The Web Server Wastes More Time	At last, I thought I could relax, as everything was running smoothly, but someone closed the lid on the laptop I use as a webserver and it overheated during the night, causing an INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE error on the NTFS system partition. The suggested solution was to run CHKDSK /F, but you can only do that to an NTFS partition from within Windows and it would bluescreen before reaching the stage where it would do automatic CHKDSK's. I don't have an adapter to connect the laptop hard drive to a normal IDE cable, so the only option open to me was to create a Ghost image and hope I could access the log and configuration files to restore later using Ghost Explorer. It took eight hours to strip everything down, remove the LCD, which doesn't work anyway, run diagnostics to make sure everything was still okay, restore the system partition from a Ghost backup, upgrade Apache and PHP, make a new Ghost backup, try for an hour to restore the backup only for Ghost to tell me there wasn't enough room to restore the image even though I was restoring to the same partition I backed up from! It turns out Ghost won't let you restore a partition that was near capacity, as detailed in "Not enough disk space on the destination drive", so you have to pass it the -OR switch to override its size checking and hope everything fits, which it should, as it is the same partition. Thankfully it worked, so I was able to spend some time today implementing Last-Modified headers in all documents and the Gallery's image script, which means photographs should now cache correctly on your hard disk.
21/11/2004 14:48:49	Father Christ-mas/opher	I played Father Christ-mas/opher in aid of Shakespeare Hospice at Santas Grotto at the local Wyevale Garden Centre for two hours today. Photographs can be found at http://gallery.theunissen.cc/?name=christmas/2004/20041121_santas_grotto. Unfortunately, due to the early start of 10:30, only two families visited before my replacement arrived, so I didn't manage to get into the flow of it and overcome the self-conscious sound in my voice. Maybe next year. "Thanks" to Kate and Tom for coming to take the photographs.

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