[conspire] (forw) Re: [sf-lug] online!: Re: linuxmafia.com scheduled outage Sunday 2023-09-03 10am-6pm* US/Pacific

[Rick Moen]

Behind the scenes:  Hardware migration completed.

I didn't bother sending this (or any other) hosted mailing list a
heads-up because the scheduled downtime wasn't even going to be long
enough for any mail to bounce -- even if the migration effort had to be
aborted and we ended up bringing the old host back online.

Before people ask:  No, the slightly annoying alarm sound _is_ still
sounding on the ancient Pentium III server in my garage, for now.  Why?
Because one never powers down an old server entirely until one is
completely sure one won't need it, because old hard drives that get
powered down may not come up again upon restart (the "head stiction"
problem).

New-ish replacement host box is a tiny Compulab Intense PC with 16GB RAM, a
Celeron CPU, and twin external SSDs in a RAID1 mirrored configuration.
Being fanless, having no hard drives, and being modern-ish, it runs silently 
and with extremely low power usage.

Time passes, and I was lazy.  I bought the Compulab and associated parts
for this purpose 10 years ago, in Feb. 2013.

So: no longer a cutting-edge bitty box, _but_, man, so much faster.
Night and day difference in responsiveness.


----- Forwarded message from Michael Paoli <michael.paoli at cal.berkeley.edu> -----

Date: Thu, 7 Sept 2023 21:42:09 -0700
From: Michael Paoli <michael.paoli at cal.berkeley.edu>
To: sf-lug at linuxmafia.com
Subject: [sf-lug] linuxmafia.com scheduled outage Sunday 2023-09-03 10am-6pm* US/Pacific

linuxmafia.com scheduled outage Sunday 2023-09-03 10am-6pm* US/Pacific
*guestimated the outage will be approximately 4 hours +-, but have
scheduled 8 hour window "just in case".

Anyway, earlier this evening, Rick and I arranged and have planned for
that scheduled window.
So, e.g. sf-lug at linuxmafia.com will be offline**,
as will be everything using 96.95.217.99**
**It may be pingable during much of that time, but server processes will
be down for quiescent data consistent migration.

Other hosts/servers (e.g. [www.]sf-lug.org) are independent and
generally
anticipated to continue to be online.

And, purpose of outage - migrate existing host from very old marginally
supportable hardware, to VM on much newer quite supportable hardware.
That will also give that host full RAID-1 data coverage (which is
redundancy, but is not backup).  In most other regards, the host
will remain the same (highly identical data for most everything,
VM virtual hardware about as similar as feasible to the existing
physical, etc.) ... at least on the shorter-term, anyway.


----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2023 00:08:01 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: sf-lug at linuxmafia.com
Subject: Re: [sf-lug] online!: Re: linuxmafia.com scheduled outage Sunday 2023-09-03 10am-6pm* US/Pacific

Quoting Michael Paoli (michael.paoli at cal.berkeley.edu):

> It's online and available again, as of hair before 1:30pm US/Pacific
> 
> linuxmafia.com host is now a VM ... and on much more supportable hardware
> (like moved nearly two decades forward in hardware technology).
> 
> Still hosted by Rick Moen - so thanks Rick for the hardware and hosting, etc.!

Thank you, Michael, for exceptional work on Sunday getting this done
with me.


----- End forwarded message -----