Posts Tagged ‘server’
Monday, November 22nd, 2010
Again, I tried to get my tickets for SDCC, but the server was taken down after 2 hours of fail (much like on November 1st.)
This is because the people responsible for this are a bunch of morons who are unable to handle a simple problem.
The problem:
you have tens of thousands of people trying to use a web server at a single moment.
This is not really a new problem, and unless your web application is utterly retarded, getting a webserver to handle 5000+ requests per second is no problem even on a single quad-core server. Getting a virtual server (cloud computing) that could take tons more would be dirt cheap since it would only be needed for a short while (1 day).
The solution:
It would be relatively simple to fix this, Just open the site to registrations. Let users enter Name and email address. Then send them a confirmation. Don’t do any of the “heavy” back-end stuff like charging credit cards which can take some time. Then when everyone have registered, just e-mail them (in the order in which they registered) a link to a page where they can pay for the ticket and enter all the details (address, etc..). That way the initial flood of requests can be dealt with very efficiently and the stuff that takes longer time can be spread out over several days/weeks.
Now maybe the existing registration software they chose this time does not support this, but jeez.. Letting people enter their info and connect this to a payment is not fraking brain surgery. Any programmer could do this in 1-3 days without a problem.
Or if you insist upon using a heavier system, at least use some sort of load balancing.. Let the main server accept connections, organize them in a queue and then gradually transfer the users to the server that actually handles registrations. I’m completely baffled that a huge event like SDCC is unable to find someone who is able to do such a simple task in this day and age.
The conclusion:
Someone stupid took on the job of handling the registrations (epicreg.com) when they clearly had no way of handling that many requests, and there is no excuse cause they know what happened on November 1st. What does it all mean in the end, nothing. What are we going to do? boycott Comic Con? yeah right… I’m pretty sure SDCC could get away with literally crapping on the visitors, without having problems selling all the tickets.
Tags: brain surgery, comic con, fail, load balancing, moron, programmer, registration software, retarded, sdcc, server, software, virtual server, web application, webserver
Posted in Computers, General | No Comments »
Monday, March 1st, 2010
I recently moved all my php sites to a new server, about a month ago, and had previously used VPS.net for my jsp/svn/etc.. server for quite a few months.
Running tomcat and sql + a few other things have used up almost all the memory on my java server, so I was thrilled to find a mail from vps.net in my inbox today, stating that they will upgrade all nodes from 256 mb ram to 375, and add 200 mhz cpu 
on VPS.net you create your own virtual server which is made up of 1-18 nodes (1 node = 256 mb ram, 400 mhz cpu, 10 gb disk). So it’s very easy to make new machines, or upgrade an existing one by adding more nodes (then just restart the virtual server).
The server has been extremely stable, fast (the site your on now runs on a single node) and only restarted once, the website it runs is being monitored and have not had any downtime. This is by FAR the best virtual (or even dedicated!) server solution I’ve ever tried, and I would absolutely recommend it for anyone who needs a virtual or dedicated server. 1 node is just 20$ per month, there are no sign up fees and you can cancel at any time (1 node will be able to host a good amount of http/php/mysql content).
And if anyone wonders, no I’m not getting paid by VPS to advertise for them 
They’re just so awesome that I HAD to mention it, there are so many crappy hosting / virtual server companies but these guys really are awesome
Tags: 256 mb ram, cloud hosting, cpu, downtime, java, java server, jsp, memory, mysql, new server, php, php mysql, ram, server, server solution, shared hosting, svn, tomcat, virtual server, vps, vps.net, website
Posted in Computers, General | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
I set up a new VPS server last night with Debian + mysql + lighttpd to host all my php stuff (which so far has been on a shared hosting server, which is horrible).
Now this wordpress is running on the new server (Serenity) and it’s alot faster, and I’ll be moving 4-5 other wordpress installs over to this new server in the next couple of days.
That way I can do complete wordpress backups automatically for all wordpress installations and a full mysql dump automatically
Tags: backup, computer, Debian, lighttpd, mysql, new server, php, serenity, server, shared hosting, vps, wordpress
Posted in Computers, General | No Comments »
Monday, June 1st, 2009
For a brief period (6 days) I was recently the not so proud owner of a Mac Mini.
I bought it to run Debian and take over as the new house server, however Installing Debian proved to be easier said than done.. All the guides out there deal with having it work as dual boot, not to run only mac. I tried 3 times to install, but each time I messed up the partition table I had to do a 12 gig mac os X install (which by the way is the worst operating system since Windows 3.11).. Even if I did get Debian installed (which I’m pretty sure I would have done in the 4th try) , I suspect the BIOS compability crap would require it to have a screen attached to boot 
So just to spare myself the aggitation I sold the crap and cut my losses (especially the loss of time which should have been spent fixing the Starsystem controll view in Trekwar).
At least I learned something..
My ban on anything from Apple had been eased a bit lately seeing that they started using a Unix(freebsd) base for OS X, and using Intel processors instead of their own stupid crap. But now that I have some first hand experience, I’m pretty sure the ban on apple products will last for the foreseeable future.
Tags: aggitation, apple, apple products, BIOS, Debian, dual boot, mac, mac mini, mac os x, partition table, server, stupid crap, Unix
Posted in General | No Comments »
Friday, February 27th, 2009
My cute little server Defiant, where I run my webserver, database and trekwar server tests, deserves some recognition:
The server itself is a little aopen cube shuttle pc running fedora linux
The server is of course covered with Star Trek ships, a Robotech VF-1, oldschool Batman and a badger for good luck. The server is starting to get old 4-5 years, and if it where not for backups, I would frequently worry about hard drive failure. Before that happens, I hope it will reach the 1000 day uptime
Tags: backup, badger, database, hard drive failure, linux, robotech, server, shuttle pc, star trek, uptime, webserver
Posted in Computers, General | No Comments »
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
I got all my websites checked into Subversion (SVN), and usually scp them from my desktop to the webserver. But sometimes I edit the pages directly on the server.
So to keep changes from being lost, I decided to just have a checked out version of the page (svn) on the server as well.. To keep things in sync
But for some reason I don’t want people to snoop in my .svn directory. I googled but did not find any immediate solution, so here it is, a quick fix for anyone who might have the same “problem”.
Hide .svn directory in resin webserver
(also works for cvs or anything else you don’t want resin to give those greedy users)
just add a rewrite rule for the host in the resin configuration file (resin.conf), this prevents the webserver from letting anyone into the directory (or viewing svn/cvs files).
Here is my config file:
<host id="www.trekwar.org" root-directory=".">
<host-alias>trekwar.org</host-alias>
<web-app id="/">
<document-directory>webapps/trekwar.org</document-directory>
</web-app>
<rewrite-dispatch>
<redirect regexp="\.svn" target="index.jsp?msg=keep+away+from+my+svn+directory"/>
</rewrite-dispatch>
</host>
Tags: code, configuration, cvs, jsp, programming, resin, server, svn, webserver
Posted in Computers, General, programming | No Comments »
Monday, October 20th, 2008
I’ve been trying out Mozy for backup for a while (the free version limited to 2GB of storage).
I recently upgraded to the mozyhome edition, it’s only 5$ each month for unlimited storage, but only for ONE computer.. And since I’m cheap and there is no Linux client, I just mirror the things from the server I have to back up in a directory on my windows PC (SVN repository, postgres database, web server config/logs/etc).
Uploading the initial data (22 GB) took around 3 days, but the incremental backups are much quicker.
I like that Mozy stores several versions of the file, so I can roll back to a specific date. They only save the different snapshots of files for a month, but for the important stuff I have SVN which lets me do unlimited rollbacks anyway.
update April 27th 2009
I recently managed to corrupt a 30 MB file and had to restore it. unlike the upload of the data, restoring it (downloading) was extremely fast, got around 6 MB/s download speed
update April June 6th 2011
Mozy stopped with the unlimited plans, making me get a 125gb plan at twice of what I paid before. So obviously I’m switching to CrashPlan when my mozy account expires. The Crashplan client is much better (allows it to also back up to a local drive, or at a friends computer), and they offer unlimited upload at the same price as mozy 50 GB.. They also have a family option that includes up to 10 computers. It also seems like you can install mozy on both your stationary computer and laptop, and have the laptop backup stuff to your stationary computer, which then backs up to the crashplan servers. Also Crashplan supports linux
Tags: backup, crashplan, database, linux, log, mozy, postgresql, rollback, server, snapshot, software, svn, technology
Posted in Computers, General | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
Tags: bug, client, debug, galaxy, java, memory, programming, server, star trek, trekwar
Posted in Computers, Games, General, programming | No Comments »
Sunday, June 15th, 2008
I’ve had this post as a Draft ever since I came back from Austria (which is a weird-ass country by the way), mainly due to the fact that I managed to change ssh port on my server without changing the firewall
So I finally connected a keyboard and screen and set everything up the way they was, which meant I could commit the changes I did to the Trekwar game to the server, and get them on this computer and grab some screen shots.
Friday
It is now possible to move your fleets around the map, Client allows you to press the tile the fleet should move to and then tells the server to move the ships.
Saturyday
Fixed a bug where the local copy of the move orders where not updated properly, implemented the starsystem controll window:
Sunday
Implemented build orders, now possible to build structures on planets. Queue not implemented yet.
Airplane
On the airplane back home I implemented the asteroid belts (high-altitude programming is fun).
Notice the beautiful asteroids drawn in mspaint on my laptop’s touch pad
Tags: aircraft, asteroid, austria, bug, computer, fleet, game, gui, java, laptop, map, paint, planet, programming, queue, screenshot, server, ssh, structure, svn, trekwar, trip
Posted in Computers, Games, General, programming, Traveling | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
I’ve been using tomcat for quite a couple of years now..
But when making working on a registration page for a “ferret show“, I got so goddamn fed up with two things:
1) Each time I recompiled some of the background Java stuff (beans + database manager) I had to restart the server after recompiling
2) OFTEN after recompiling, for no frakking reason whatsoever. Tomcat would bitch about being unable to find the postgresql driver, even though it was in the common/lib as well as the webapps lib directory..
The second issue would sometimes take 5-10 minutes of removing the file, moving it back, restarting the server, removing work/tmp dirs, before it suddenly and miraculously worked again.. So I finally had it, and downloaded Resin and had it up and running in a few minutes.. Copied over the webapps, and now everything works nicely, and I never have to restart the webserver.
I’ve had some experience with Resin from my previous workplace, using the java php implementation and the JMS system. And Resin seems to be pretty nice, and switching from Tomcat to Resin only took a few minutes.. Did not tweak the config much and set up SSH, that will have to wait for the weekend
Tags: database, ferret show, java, javabean, postgresql, resin, server, software, ssh, technology, tomcat, webpage
Posted in Computers, General, programming | No Comments »
