My registrar reminded me of the expiration of rare-it.com. I prolonged the decision last year, but this year I will no longer renew the domain. All the important things I could think of have been transferred to my new domain, or has been modified to use a new email address. As per August, 3rd, the domain will cease to exist.
The Synology works great. Mailserver, WordPress and Gallery work as they should. But compared to the (outdated) server, this thing is SLOW. Uploading three pictures to the gallery takes about 15 minutes. Adding posts, or administering this weblog makes me wait for the pages to change. So, yeah, the Synology can run “normal” PHP applications, but its CPU and its very low memory make it inadequate to call it a server replacement. Which, of course, it isn’t in the first place.
I will be constructing a new server in time, one that can match the old one in speed (2x3GHz CPU/4GByte memory), but will be easier on the electricity bill. For now the choice is between an AMD A-series (FM1-socket) and the lower end Intel CPUs (i3 something). Any advice will be appreciated. The Intels seem to consume a considerable amount less power when idling, but they are twice the price of the AMD and have lousy graphics.
Dear Sayontan Sinha, I just donated because I think your theme for WordPress is awesome.
Since the weblog now runs on the Synology, I decided to switch of the server until I need something of the disks it has. A normal shutdown, and then….
–{ SILENCE }–
I love the Synology.
The Synology has a WordPress module, which works great and it is a recent version (not the latest). But you are bound to having your weblog in the folder “/wordpress”, and my weblog resides in “/blog” for ages now. I couldn’t find how to change it by modifying PHP files, wp_options entries and just renaming the folder. So….
# mkdir blog
# cd blog
# unzip /tmp/wordpress-3.4.1.zip
# mv wordpress/* ./
# rmdir wordpress
And point your browser to the URL “synology-ip-adres/blog” and do the install.
I used the database credentials created by the Synology WordPress module, and vanilla-WordPress then says: Hey, already installed. Via the Admin panel you upgrade your database, and you’re good to go. Now disable the Synology WordPress module. I haven’t uninstalled it, since I don’t know whether it will actually delete the database too.
I bought a Synology DS212j to be the replacement of the server. Great machine for very little money, but the transition is not as smooth as I hoped. My mail (domain switchbl8.nl) now runs via the Synology, not via this server anymore. Next is this blog, then the gallery. And the rest is just for fun, so to hell with it 😉
The reboots are still there. Sometimes the system is up for less then a minute, sometimes for more than 2 days. I now disconnected the SATA drives, so that means some stuff (e.g. my gallery) on the server is not available since that resides on the SATA drive. If the system stays up now, it means the extra SATA controller is broken. I hope so, since that’s an easy and cheap replacement.
Keeping my fingers crossed, but I replaced the SCSI controller (Tekram) in the server by one I had in my old-stuff-stash, an Adaptec 2940W. Yep, old. I had to enable “Load BIOS” on the card, but after that the system booted like I never changed a thing. For now the system seems stable, it’s running Ubuntu’s daily.find now. Heavy disk access would previously reboot the system, but so far so good.
On a side note, my desktop PC no longer runs Linux (OpenSuSE). I’ve had it with it. There’s always something that doesn’t work. Or that keeps crashing. Or that suddenly stops working until a reboot. Sound support sucks. After every kernel update I had to do a manual install of the NVidia drivers to get X running. Always waiting for the X64 versions, since the Linux community still thinks we all run 32-bit computers (same on Windows, but at least that let’s me run 32-bit programs without problems).
I bought a new videocard (a Sapphire HD7970 to be exact), bought an SSD (OCZ Vertex4 128GB) and switched to Windows 7. Everything works. Period. And I can now use Adobe software, so I bought Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to finally being able to organize my pictures (lastest count: over 26000) the way I like it (F-spot and Picasa are nice, but not more than that).
Main reason for the videocard was gaming of course. Racing in the first place, FPS as a close second. Bought Deus Ex Human Revolution (FPS-ish) today, more to follow.
The server reboots are not gone. They are less frequent, but certainly not gone. I suspect it has something to do with the old SCSI disk the root-fs is on, so in the days to come I will try to do a fresh install of a newer Linux on the disk that came from my desktop (500GB SATA, system now runs from 9GB SCSI). And then hope that removing the old noisy disk will solve the problem. Can’t think of what to replace else…