MatraSport server DOWN this morning

[Lennart Sorth]

Dear Matraforum friends

The server for this forum was just unavailable for the longest time since
it was installed some 10 years ago (!)

As part of a due diligence New Year cleanup, I have been busy upgrading
the (long) list of programs that makes up the server on which this forum
runs.

Most applications and forums were done last week, and the last thing is
the operating system itself. This requires a reboot, so I sdaved it for
Friday morning, where teh traffic to the server (all sites) is lowest.

I took a deep breath, and rebooted ...

When the server started booting, it reported it couldn't find its disk(!)
arrgh!

Then I rebooted it again, by which time it simply went away - and I never
heard from it again, until I had some of my friends in the datacentre locate
the machine and powercycle it. (!)

Once this was done, It actually booted normally, so it is unexplained why it
couldn't find the boot-disk in the first place. Possibly it got confused by
running with a serial console connected (never heard of that before though)

Anyway, the machine came up, but now it turned out that the web-accelerator
proxy (varnish) I run in front of all sites, had been modified at the update
last week, but the upgrade did not restart the proxy - so it wasn't until
todays reboot that I discovered this.

Since I am actually at work, I can't spend too much time messing about with
this, but I got help from my good friend Poul-Henning Kamp, who is in fact
the author of that web-accelerator, and he quickly spotted that the new
version carried a default portnumber with it, as it wasn't defined in my
old config (didn't have to with the old version).

Problem sorted!

However, I still need to upgrade the Operating System "userland" - but that
really should only be a quick reboot. (famous last words)

Sorry for the downtime, but at least we are now upgraded to the newest STABLE
branch of the operating system and all applications.

/Lennart

[Matra_Hans]

Hi Lennart
Thanks for keeping this forum running!

Hans

[Titus]

Hello Lennart,

Whilst I haven't a clue about what you have just said, could I just thank you for providing this excellent forum. It is an invaluable source of information and all the better for being a 'friendly site'.