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.
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…
I just replaced the CPU cooler in the server, along with its (broken) mounting bracket. The old one was the stock AMD cooler, on a plastic bracket that came with the motherboard. One of the plastic hooks was broken a long time ago, so the cooler was in place, but only just.
I now installed a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO so hopefully the reboots are gone now. In the BIOS the CPU temperature dropped from previously 57 degrees (C) to now somewhere around 34-35 degrees. Much better.
The server reboots did not stop. Just 20 minutes ago, while checking logs and other possibly strange behaviour, the server just rebooted as I was typing the next “pg /var/log/…..” command. I entered the BIOS, to see if the system itself was healthy. CPU temperature went up from 57 to 61 in a couple of seconds whilst the system was doing nothing.
AHA!
I unplugged the system, opened the case, and voila………DUST!
With the vacuum cleaner I sucked out the DUST as gently (lowest power) but as thorough as possible, so hopefully things go better from now on.
For some reason the server has been rebooting a couple of times per day since June, 5th. Not sure why, can’t find any strange things happening on the system. Hope it stays up now.
Pfff….finally. It was something that was long overdue, but I’ve setup my mailserver to allow sending mail after succesfully logging in. Done with SASL of course. Updated all the passwords in my MySQL database with the correct encrypted ones, fiddled around with the SASL-database (it needs to be copied for some reason after modifying it), and now it works. The reason of course was to use the switchbl8.nl domain for sending mail from my mobile phone (which is not on my local network, so by default isn’t allow to relay mail to other domains).
Most important change is also that my passwords are not send plain/unencrypted anymore…
Yesterday I switched from ADSL to cable internet, upgrading the line from 6/1Mbit (max 20 means 6 where I live) to 60/6Mbit. Unfortunately I don’t have a fixed IP address anymore, but there are ways to work around this. I choose DynDNS Free to take care of that problem. Easy peasy!
When you can read this, it means it works 😉
One thing I have to do later is upgrade my router, since I now basically have a 20/6Mbit connection now because my router only has a 100Mbit LAN port, and the internet modem then caps the connection. Not sure why, but a speedtest revealed that.
Just to be sure, I did not only renew the “switchbl8.nl” domain, but also “rare-it.com”. Not “rare-it-services.com”, since I did not use it anyway. But I’m not sure what stuff on the web uses my rare-it.com email address, so I now have another year to figure that out.
I just changed the URL of the weblog from rare-it.com/blog to switchbl8.nl/blog. Let me know if that leads to any strange behaviour, or just let me know everything works like expected.
Update: I should have written the following: I updated www.rare-it.com/blog to www.switchbl8.nl/blog. The previous blog was not reachable without www, neither is the new location.
Annoyed by Firefox’s pop-up saying “Download Complete”? Well, I was. It’s not a small window just in Firefox, but it’s an OS (in my case Linux) window, so it blocks everything underneath. Just for 4 seconds (the standard alert time in Firefox), but annoying nonetheless.
So, type ABOUT:CONFIG in the address-bar, and type alert in the search-box. You will see several keys that you can change, but the one that you want is:
browser.download.manager.showAlertOnComplete
Set it to false (by double-clicking) and you’re done.