Computer Genius Blog :: aka “TheGarage”

I noticed over the weekend that my domain dcdo isn’t working. The tip off was that I wasn’t getting any spam in my inbox. How likely is that not to happen, really? Ping returns the new IP address but doesn’t reply. Probably some further adjustment to the DNS records needs to be made.

I haven’t taken the time to mess with the DNS issues because I haven’t been here much except for on weekends and this past weekend I was busy trying to figure out how to run WordpressMU; the multi-blog, mult-user version of the software I am running now. This is a key step in the process of changing my infrastructure from Domino to hosted WordPress. It wont be any fun maintaining and posting to a half-dozen or so blogs that each have a seperate installation.

Like on the other thing I got it working half-assed but then I had to keep tinkering with it to make it work how I want it too. The closest configuration I found as a model was from Dan Frey at the Office of the Provost Web Team blog at the University at Buffalo:

“Our situation is interesting, but I would not call it unique. We have a server that has multiple domains pointed at it. We installed MU in a directory off of the root of our server, /wordpressmu. Our default domain name is ugly - the idea was that we wanted folks to be able to go to nicedomain.buffalo.edu/myblog and get to their blog on our server.

Easier said than done…

Yep pretty much what I’ve found out. My situation is the same except I want to point any domain to any blog regardless of where the blog is and regardless of where the domain is. This is what I have so far:

I know the symlinks are the way to go and that’s how I found Dan Frey’s article–by Googling wordpress mu symbolic link. I’m pretty sure Dan has it figured out I just have to tinker with it some more.

But dang I can’t mess around with it forever. It’s one of those deals that I’ll have to revisit after I get a few other things worked out, like my damn mailserver at dcdo.

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I still have some work to do on the infrastructure changes I’ve been making over the last several weeks. First, let me recap what I’ve done so far.

I bought a hosted account where I have ample space on a Linux server. I can use the provider’s packaged services or I can load my own. I am using the MySQL service and phpMyAdmin utility which is provided with the account, including up to fifty databases. Each database can only be 100 MB so that may have to be upgraded eventually.

I passed on the blogging software offered by 1and1.com and loaded Wordpress for my content management system. As a test I saved several categories of technical and business related blog posts from incongruities as .xml files that I could then import into Wordpress. Wordpress did a pretty good job of importing those articles considering I know the xml was not well-formed.

After the import process worked so well on the test I decided to move my blogs and point my domains to 1and1.com. I activated this blog first and it was a simple affair because I bought the domain name from 1and1.com.

Then I set out to move incongruities from Domainsite’s DNS servers with as little work as possible. The first idea, which was the simplest and one I should probably have skipped because it didn’t work, was to forward the domain name to 1and1 with a masked URL, meaning that the URL would still start with my domain name after the request was forwarded to the new address.

I got that configuration working but only half-assed, then I somehow trashed it completely. At that point I went back to what was probably the best simple option which was to change the DNS entries of incongruities to point to 1and1. After doing that I set up a virtual host entry in my apache configuration at 1and1 and pointed it to my webspace directory holding the Wordpress installation for incongruities.

All the while this is going on I am switching my internet provider here at the house. I finally have a high speed cable connection that knocks the old DSL in the dust which means I have a new IP address here in the garage. To complete that change I had edit the A and MX DNS records for doncallaway.org to point to the new IP. My web server and mail server here in TheGarage will still be handling http and SMTP requests for doncallaway.org.

In summary, so far I have installed Wordpress ona remote host, converted and moved two blogs and one website to the remote host along with the MySQL databases that go with the blogs, and I have switched Internet service providers at the house. Though it doesn’t sound like much, it has taken my spare time over the course of several weeks to accomplish.

FINAL GOALS:

I still have at least three blogs and a substantial photo gallery to move to the hosted environment. One of the blogs is in Blogger and the other two are here in TheGarage. Of the two here in TheGarage, one is a photoblog so I have to figure out how to move all the images with the appropriate linkage.

After I finish all that I will have totally redone the way I operate my vast publishing empire. Only archives and backups… and a sandbox, oh and a mail server will remain here in TheGarage. Everything else will be hosted off site.

I will have bandwidth. I will have uptime. I will have industry standard software. I will be taking a big doo in high cotton.

One of the by-products of this move is that I will be able to decommission a few pieces of aging equipment that should have been put to pasture years ago–most notably the relic Dell Poweredge 6300 workhorse. Even though the Dell would make the perfect sandbox it is just too big, too noisy, too hot, and too expensive to operate. In other words it will make a perfect boat anchor as well.

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It was all just a wet dream. What was I thinking; it’s August, not December.

The cable guy finally showed at about noon yesterday for the “easy install”. He did a good job hooking me up from the pole but left me hangin’ three hours later with me waiting for a phone call from the office letting me know the configuration has been corrected. It was a phone call that never came. Sometimes after four I dozed off for abit while listening to John Gibson drone on about The Big Story. By the time I called CMA Cable, whose number I had to look up in the regular paper-based phone book, I was informed by the answering service they close up shop at 4:30.

That’s damn inconvenient.

Like I trusted the cable people to be able to roll up in here and deliver high speed cable Internet on the first try. Finally giving up on cable for the day I switched my router back over to DSL. It didn’t work, of course, but it didn’t work the same way it always doesn’t work so I knew I would at least have connectivity to the Internet this morning because in the morning my DSL miraculously starts working. Then like clockwork it goes out every evening. But there is nothing wrong with it I’ve been told.

Anyway, I’m rehashing. Maybe CMA gets it figured out today, maybe not. So far their customer service rating is not looking good.

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…only better!

Waitin’ for the cable guy, my heart pining away for what he is bringing for me. I can hardly wait. I know it is going to be sooo good. I have been on his schedule for over a week now and he is finally coming to my house; it’s my turn for service. Bring it on big boy!

I’m talking about high speed cable Internet, of course. If it is all of what people who have it say it is, I know I’m going to be creamin in my jeans. No more blackouts, disconnects, slow transfer, kids screaming about the crappy internet. Here is the background on my Kids computer:

I’ve had worst case scenario DSL for quite a while, getting 128K/bps up and way less than 384 K/bits down. People with low cost DSL and cable get three times that bandwidth and those who pay a bit more get Megabit throughput up and down. SWBATTCingular… acknowledge the problem but wouldn’t even consider lowering my monthly rate even though I was paying a premium already for static IP addresses.

But a couple of months ago the service went totally to hell. It would basically go off every night around 6:30. Sevenish sometimes. But sure as hell it goes off every night. When you are only home in the evening that is the equivalent of having no Internet. The kids are upset–at me no less, thus the not-so-subtle message above– that their day long gaming has been interrupted while I am basically unplugged from the Big Brain for up to twelve hours. Talk about kicking heroine and nicotine being difficult…

Oh well, I did call SWBATTCingular… and gave them the opportunity to address the problem but a man named Gilbert–or was Gilbert with the Internet host company? Anyway they both sounded like their name probably wasn’t Gilbert and he said there wasn’t anything wrong and I would have to call back when the problem was actually occurring. Damn inconvenient.

Kinda like how it is damn inconvenient for me to be sitting on my ass here at the house waiting on the cable guy to fit me in to his busy schedule sometime between 8:30 and noon instead of sitting on my ass in Texas City where they pay me a decent hourly rate to do so. The catch is that I have to go to Texas City to do basically the same thing I do here.

Like I told the nice lady who took my order for high-speed cable internet this is going to be an easy installation. Since we had cable service here at some point in the past the coax cable is already run up to the house right at the spot where I need it shoved inside. Shove the cable through, plug in the cable modem, verify connectivity, give me my IP address, and thank you very much. Wam bam thank you ma’am.

I incorrectly figured they would knock out a couple of easy ones first thing but more likely they save the easy ones for the heat of the day. No sense being in an attack at noon when you can be standing in the A/C bullshitting with an old school technology hack.

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