From: Brian Baggins Date: Thu Aug 16, 2001 11:27:17 US/Eastern To: MIA Subject: [MIA] Overview of MIA hard drive failure Reply-To: mia-list@marxists.org Well! Our fortunes are fantastic when it comes to hard drives. This marks our second drive failure in 2 years. :) Our IDE drive died, which contained our boot partition (the data necessary to startup the computer -- which, btw, hasn't been needed for acouple months -- Linux has a great way of staying up no matter what happens.... the failure of a hard drive is troubling for Linux, but not enough to cause it to crash!). The IDE drive also contained our var data however -- which is more critical for our daily operations. Var stands for variable, i.e. all data that is changing from moment to moment -- log files, mail spools, cache, etc -- all go into /var. Linux wasn't terribly pleased when the drive containing this information failed. Not to say that stopped Linux from working, because Linux ran okay, and for awhile, Apache (our web server), ran great. The first thing to go that we noticed was mail though, because the system expected to have the /var partition to temporarily store the mail. Meanwhile we have two SCSI drives that store: all of our web data, information in our home directories, and various programs. These ran just fine while their comrade IDE drive bit the dust, and continued serving their vital roles for web and system services. With these drives running we were able to recover backups of var/ and boot/ from Trevor's massive tape archives at MIT, and bring you what you see now -- a running and back-to-normal system. :) Our friend Nate who is hosting our server in his apartment is going to get an RMA on the piece of shit IDE drive that died on us, and get a new one in exchange. All in all our web server downtime was less than a third of a day, with mail capabilities lost for about a half day. Thanks go to Trevor and Nate who stayed on top of this and got the server working smoothly again! Comradely, Brian Baggins ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Marxists Internet Archive http://marxists.org/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Join the Army of Labor. Join the IWW Today. http://www.iww.org/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ _______________________________________________ mia-list mailing list mia-list@marxists.org http://www.marxists.org/mailman/listinfo/mia-list From: Brian Baggins Date: Sat Aug 25, 2001 04:20:33 US/Eastern Comrades, The Marxists Internet Archive has been down for about 12 hours now. The telecommunications company (Qwest) that provides our DSL cut our line last night. Nate, who hosts the line in his house, was moving to another apartment, so he ordered a line for his new place. At the same time, he told Qwest that he will continue to subscribe to his current line. The plan was, in moving the server from one apartment to another, the total down time would have been how long it takes him to move the computer (i.e. less than an hour). All in all, this way we would ensure the new line was up and running before we moved the server from our older line. So, our new DSL line was supposed to be made active acouple days ago, but it has not been. Our old line was shut off last night, although it was supposed to be up. Qwest refuses to answer the problem until regular buisness hours on Monday. When the problem will be fixed is unknown; we think as early as monday, as late as next week. We are currently planning to setup a secondary nameserver, so that when people go to marxists.org, it points first to our main site, then to our mirrors in succession. This way we aim to at least provide web services to readers while we remain down. What shit like this continues to encourage us to do is come up with better and more robust ways to protect ourselves when these eventualities come again, and further, what better ways we can defend ourselves when we again face the threat of censorship. Comradely, Brian Baggins ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Marxists Internet Archive http://marxists.org/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Join the Army of Labor. Join the IWW Today. http://www.iww.org/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From: Brian Baggins Date: Sat Sep 08, 2001 07:08:01 US/Eastern Everyone, I'm pleased to say that after alot of fighting and work, Nate has been able to get that piece of shit phone company to reinstate our DSL line. Nate got the Public Utilities Commission of Washington on his side, and put a good deal of pressure on the phone company. That began about 8 days ago (last Friday), with lots more promises, all falling through, until about 30 minutes ago, when our line was finally reinstated -- all, they claim, as a result of a simple bureaucratic mistake. All services are up and running. You can get your mail, make changes to the site, etc! Remember, by the end of the month we will be going to the press with a CD for all of 2002, so get your archives ready! Andy, another link check please! :)