Maintenance - 11 January 2012 - Postponed

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Maintenance - 11 January 2012 - Postponed

Post by Administrator »

Good practice says to keep software patched to the latest version. A new version of the forum software has been released, which makes it is a nice oppertunity to schedule downtime for a patch, and an upgrade of the machine.

Sherlock, you know you just upgraded, don't you? Yes we did just upgrade. However, after we upgraded we found out that we were indirectly impacted by DDoS attacks, even when not issued against our machine. For that particular reason, we move away from the existing shared infrastructure (through virtual machines) to dedicated hardware. This involves changing an IP address, which requires downtime anyway.

I am planning to take the forum offline for maintenance, 11 January 2012 at 09:00 Central European Time. The upgrade is expected to take less then 3 hours, so around lunch time the forum should be back online. There will be a page available tracking the upgrade, which will be posted on Freegold Capital. For your convenience, during the time of the upgrade the url freegoldforum.com will automatically redirect you to the upgrade page posted on Freegold Capital.
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Re: Maintenance - 11 January 2012

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Migration to dedicated server

The server was released to us today, but with incorrect operating system. We have to wait for the server to be released again, which will squeeze out the upgrade, and only leave the move to the new server. The downtime should be similar, but we have to schedule a later downtime window for the software upgrade. As the software upgrade is a minor maintenance release, there is no rush for it anyway.

Continue reading here.
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Re: Maintenance - 11 January 2012

Post by Administrator »

Update 2

The server has not been released to us yet. It is still pending a reinstall with the latest version of an operating system. Even if released now, it would not allow for sufficient time for testing to guarantee a smooth upgrade. To avoid long outage times due to unforeseen reasons, we postpone the migration until further notice. Once the machine is released, we can pick a new migration date.
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Re: Maintenance - 11 January 2012 - Postponed

Post by Administrator »

Some background for those interested.

The server provided is brand new hardware. The default install scripts, used by the hoster, is using an older generation of the operating system - CentOS5. At least it did work. When we asked for a reinstall with the latest generation of operating system - CentOS6, the install scripts didn't account for the latest generation of network cards. This resulted in random kernel panics on CentOS6 (or rather, on the latest kernel). When asked for alternative operating system Debian6, the kernel panics were still there, and the install scripts for Debian5 didn't take into account the harddisk raid.

So having tried all options, we opted to go back for "old but working" CentOS5 - the original install. In reality, the OS can be patched to be up to speed with security and stuff. It is just not the latest kernel version - which capabilities we don't need anyway.
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Re: Maintenance - 11 January 2012 - Postponed

Post by Spruitje »

Administrator wrote:So having tried all options, we opted to go back for "old but working" CentOS5 - the original install...
Golden rule: never change a running system :lol:
Study while others are sleeping; work while others are loafing; prepare while others are playing; and dream while others are wishing.
- William Arthur Ward -
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Re: Maintenance - 11 January 2012 - Postponed

Post by Administrator »

Spruitje wrote:Golden rule: never change a running system :lol:
Actually, "don't fix what isn't broken" is what is applicable here. Sometimes you have to patch due to security issues :twisted:
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