Down time

[KT 💣 KλBoƠM]

Oh good ya I see everything again Yesterday nothing was coming up for me

[Sandman[SA]]

I've also been having a issue with the servers internal IP changing on it's own.  And I finally figured out that it was my WiFi thermostat had crashed and was causing a network conflict.  Forcing all devices connected to the router to change IP's if something was to connect wirelessly.

[KT 💣 KλBoƠM]

AH okay

[Sandman[SA]]

If anyone had noticed, the server had been acting up for a little while now.  Server crashing, slow downs and random database and other file corruptions.  As it turns out, it was the slave hdd slowly failing and yesterday, it finally gave up.  The server had been running a Seagate 250gb sata laptop hdd.  I had ordered a replacement drive last week (WD Blue 500gb sata ssd) and got it in the mail the same day the old one decided to quit.  I had repeatedly tried to get the old disk to read just once more by pulling it from the server PC and putting in my PC's external usb drive dock.  Still no luck.  I can see the drive show up in the device manager but it was showing as offline.  I can hear the disk spinning and the voice coil is working.    So one last ditch effort before calling a data recovery service, I decided to try a utility called EaseUS Data Recovery.  It took a couple of hours but it was able to rebuild the drives master boot record (MBR for short) and I was able to access the drive once again.

Everything is all backed up on my computer and uploaded to the new ssd that took it's place.  I hope there is no more problems.  But at least now, I have a full backup of that drive.

[Sandman[SA]]

Just a little update to the on going server issue.  So just recently, I managed to salvage the majority of the data from the dying slave drive from the server PC.  And I had copied it to a brand new SSD and rebooted the server from it and everything was working fine.  Today, I decided to consolidate everything back on to one drive again.  It took a while to get everything up and running again and I did wind up losing only a couple of posts from the sql database in the process.  I still might have a couple of bug to work out but the server now has a new 500gb SSD.  Please let me know if you find any issues with the server.

[Sandman[SA]]

So I did stumble onto a issue.  I noticed the server wasn't sending out email notifications.  As it turns out, the sendmail module was not salvageable from the old hard drive.  Luckily, I had a copy of it.  But I had to reconfigure it again.  I hope I got it setup right?  Please let me know if there are any other issues.

[KT 💣 KλBoƠM]

So I did stumble onto a issue.  I noticed the server wasn't sending out email notifications.  As it turns out, the sendmail module was not salvageable from the old hard drive.  Luckily, I had a copy of it.  But I had to reconfigure it again.  I hope I got it setup right?  Please let me know if there are any other issues.

That would explain that

[Sandman[SA]]

After an hour since I re-enabled sendmail, the logs filled up quick with authentication errors.  Well, it turns out that I had entered all the right information but forgot to edit some comment marks in the config file.    Anyway, sendmail should be working properly now.

[Sandman[SA]]

So today, I did a complete system clean up.  Cleaned out all the dust and re-did the thermal paste on both the CPU and GPU.  Nice thing about these old Radeon GPU's is, it's only 4 screws to remove the cooler from it.

I still don't know why I am getting console port errors from Abyss when the computer is starting back up.  I basically have to go into the Abyss web server config, change the port manually.  Restart the computer and Abyss will error again.  Manually change the port back again, restart Abyss, and then loads normally?  You would think that something else is using that port on startup.  But it's only Abyss....

[One Eyed Wonderweasle]

 Didn't change any bio's setting that you might have forgot about did you?

[Sandman[SA]]

Didn't change any bio's setting that you might have forgot about did you?

I did a whole lot of reconfiguring to get everything that was split into 2 drives, back into 1 drive.  Reinstalling software and setting up new config's based off of the old one's can sometimes be more of a headache then just moving some files and edit a few things.  But no.  I didn't need to change anything in the BIOS besides the the boot drive.  But did I forget anything else?  Oh, I'm pretty sure I might have.  lol

[Sandman[SA]]

I just wanted to inform everyone of the latest server down time.  Your going to love this story. 

So, after what seemed like an eternity, I finally upgraded my internet service to a much higher tier.  From 10mb up / 200mb down.  To 20mb up / 900mb down.  Comcast has sent me notices every now and then over the years stating they have increased my internet download speed.  But my aging cable modem would not be able to take full advantage of it.  I didn't care as it still works great for my needs.  Then 2 weeks ago, they informed me that I got bumped up in speed again.  But this time comcast reached out to me stating that I must replace my cable modem as it is no longer supported.  So I gave in and got the xfi modem/router service package at no additional charge.  In fact, cheaper than what I was paying before.  Only problem is that it's built in router has it's firewall configurator imbedded in a cloud service and wouldn't work for me.  I spent nearly the entire week working with comcast to resolve the issue with no meaningful results.  So I broke down and got my own Xfinity supported 3rd party cable modem in hopes to resolve it on my own.  It's an Arris SurfBoard T25 to be exact.  And spent the next few hours setting it up and having comcast migrating my services to it.  Internet and phone.

But after all that work, I login to the new modems admin panel and find that there are no actual settings to manage the firewall.  Yet after a couple of hours after getting the new modem up and running and making sure everything is connected and all, the firewall seemed to still be in place because I can't access the server online.  Fed up with it all since last night, I went about my day today, expecting to do all that work switching back to the xfi modem/router tonight and pray they can iron out the firewall issue I was having soon.  Only to be shockingly surprised after I get home from work, to find that the firewall comcast had me locked behind, is no longer in effect.  So there you have it.  I don't think comcast unlocked me out of pity or anything like that.  Especially after last night, they stating that I was on my own after switching to the new modem.  I like to think that it just took a while for the firewall to actually drop maybe?  Who knows.  I'm just happy to be back to normal operations again.

[Sandman[SA]]

There was a bit of down time today as I needed to replace my wifi router.  The old one (Netgear N600) lost its 5G signal completely and the 2.4G signal seemed like it was getting unstable.  Maybe upgrading the firmware could have addressed the antenna issue?  I doubt it would have done much good and I didn't want to risk losing it, if it failed completely.  So, I replaced it with a Netgear AC1000.  Model R6080.  I know it's not a great wifi router.  But it's basically a stop gap filler until I can find one with the features I want.

[Sandman[SA]]

So as of yesterday, there was an issue with my DNS server going down.  It decided to halt its connection, pending a renewal update notification that was not due until the middle of January 2023.  I renewed it last night so it should be good for another 2 years.

[One Eyed Wonderweasle]

 Good to know it was a simple thing