Please let me know (via email or irc) if anything is not functioning as expected.

diamond: your main expected contribution is moral support :)
atlas: OH MY GOD YOU BROKE SMTP
atlas: (Am I doing the moral support right?)
diamond: *giggle*

To repeat what’s in the subject, nonado will be down for maintenance this weekend (2012-05-26 & 27). Hopefully the maintenance won’t take that long, but it’s not possible to predict. This blog will be updated again when the maintenance is complete, so please check back here. If you don’t care about technical details, you can stop reading now.

Wobble.nonado.net, the nonado host machine, is running debian lenny. Lenny was released in 2009-02. It has since been superceded by Squeeze, released 2011-02. Support for lenny ceased in 2012-02. As such, wobble needs to be upgraded soon. However, as it is the host machine, this cannot be realistically tested/simulated. As such, unexpected issues may well pop up and need to be fixed/worked around on the weekend. For this reason, i’m designating nonado as being offline for the entire weekend. I’m hoping the actual downtime will only be a couple of hours, but we’ll see.

For the extra-interested, nonado is currently using linux-vserver virtulisation to run a few virtual private servers (VPSes), including skip.nonado.net. As linux-vserver is deprecated in Squeeze, we will be migrating these VPSes to a new technoloxy, LXC, over the next few months.

Wobble.nonado.net, the nonado host machine, is running debian etch.
Etch was released in 2007-04. It has since been superceeded by lenny,
released 2009-02. Support for etch will cease in 2010-02. As such,
wobble needs to be upgraded soon. However, as it is the host machine,
this cannot be realistically tested/simulated. As such, unexpected
issues may well pop up and need to be fixed/worked around on the day.
For this reason, i’m designating nonado as being offline for the
entire day. I’m hoping the actual downtime will only be a couple of
hours, but we’ll see.

11:10: We’re now shutting down the SMTP server. This means no outgoing or incoming mail for the next while. A short while after this, we’ll be killing all user processes (sorry!) and taking away write access to /home.

11:45 We’re now killing all processes that are using /home on bob, in preparation for doing the final copy across to hop. This includes apache, so all websites are gone too.

12:25 We noticed that some group ID numbers on bob clashed with groups on the new servers, so we’ve done the following:

• Changed so that users are no longer in a group matching their usernames (e.g., atlas is no longer in the atlas group, that group no longer exists)
• Searched the filesystem for files that had a group ownership of that group (e.g., files owned by atlas:atlas), and changed these to user’s primary group.
• Any files that had a group ownership of that group AND WERE WRITABLE BY THAT GROUP were changed to have the group permission match the others permission (e.g., file owned by atlas:atlas, with permissions of 770 is now atlas:user with permissions of 700)

16:23 It’s all over bar the shouting. All major services have been migrated, dns has been updated accordingly, everything should be back up and running now. Let us know if you find anything that’s broken. One known issue is that hetzner seem to be blocking tcp port 6667 outbound. I’m not sure what we can do about that, but we’ll ask them and see if that can be removed.

Steve & Eoghan

Steve

There’s been a bunch of updates recently. One theme broke (which I’ve disabled) and signups are currently down and will be until I figure out exactly what changed and fix it – though in the meantime you can email support@nonado.net if you want a new account and I’ll set it up. Just bear in mind that I’m in the US for another week so expect delays. Yes I suck. It can’t be helped.
Otherwise everything seems stable :)

New stuff:
Imports work. If you’re switching from livejournal, blogspot etc, the import utility can import your posts. Some can import the comments too.

I also added a plugin that lets you customise the sidebar with some drag-n-drop widgets. Currently there are widgets for flickr, Last.FM, del.icio.us and more.
As always, if there’s a specific plugin or theme you want added, send a mail to support@nonado.net requesting it.

*Update*: I should probably mention where to find the widgets:
Login to your blog, choose ‘Presentation’ -> ‘Sidebar Widgets’. If the option isn’t there then your theme doesn’t support widgets (which means I haven’t edited the theme to support them. In that case feel free to mail me and I’ll get on it).

– Niall

– Niall