Working on the new server

Posted on January 2, 2010 by independence

I’m currently working on installing software on the new server. I’ve got the virtualization software installed  and a couple of VMs running now.

The setup is based on VMware ESXi booting off a USB-stick. I’ve then allocated almost all space on the two harddrives to a VM running Nexenta (OpenSolaris kernel with GNU userland). I’ve then configured this space for a ZFS mirror (RAID 1), and shared it via NFS. VMware ESXi then mounts this NFS share and uses it as a “datastore” (place to store the virtual harddrives) for the other VMs. I will also make NFS shares for things like home directories for all the users.

I’ve also got the router/firewall VM up and runnig with the lastest OpenBSD release. I’ve just started working on the Blinkenshell-specific VMs now, thus far I’ve got a Gentoo instance with Grsecurity up and running (which will replace titan). I’ve also setup a domain controller which will be running OpenLDAP and MIT Kerberos for handling the user and password database. This will allow for the user database to be accessed from multiple servers, which was not possible before. I will probably set up a separate servers for mail and web services, and use Kerberos/LDAP and NFS for centralized user database and storage.

I have figured out how I want most things setup now, but there are a couple of big pieces left. I havn’t decided how to configure the webserver yet, though I have a couple of ideas I will try out. There’s also the signup-program, and how the different accounts will integrate. There is an opportunity to integrate more accounts into the LDAP directory now, but I’m not so sure I want different types of accounts (signup, ssh, mail etc) to share the same password, especially not passwords you usually store in configuration files (mysql, irc).

There is lots of work to be done still, and I don’t think this new server is going to be ready for at least a couple of months. How long it’s going to take depends a bit on how I decide to do things, if I’m going to rewrite parts of the signup-program and integrate it to LDAP it’s going to take a while longer for example.

So to sum it up, work is in progress, but it’s going to be a while longer. But when it’s all done Blinkenshell will be ready for many more years as the best shell provider on the net! 😉

Posted in software | 9 Comments

Server pics

Posted on December 1, 2009 by independence

I’ve got most of the parts for the new server now (only missing one cable), here are some pictures!

Server chassi
The chassi for the new server, “Fractal Define R2”.

Server inside, Supermicro X8SIE LN4
Installed the motherboard, Supermicro X8SIE-LN4 and PSU.

Server inside, installed CPU and mem
Processor (Intel Xeon 3440) and memory (4x 2GB Kingston ECC DDR3).

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

New Server Hardware Update

Posted on November 13, 2009 by independence

The parts for the new server has been delayed for a while since the motherboard was not in yet (new item from the manufacturer), but I’ve now got confirmation that the parts will ship by the end of next week. Unfortunately, I’m going to be away the entire week after that building the network at Dreamhack Winter 2009, so I’m not going to have time to start putting it together until early December sometime. I will also need some time testing the server and trying out software etc, but if everything works out alright hopefully the server will be up by the end of December. I’ll put some pictures up when I get the hardware, can’t wait! 😀

Posted in hardware | 2 Comments

New Server Hardware Ordered

Posted on October 11, 2009 by independence

It’s done, I ordered the sever parts a couple of days ago! 🙂

The final build:

  • Xeon X3440 (Lynnfield-based, 2.5GHz, Quad Core, 2MB L2 Cache, 8MB L3 Cache)
  • 8 GB DDR3 1333MHz ECC RAM
  • Supermicro motherboard
  • 2x 1TB Seagate 7200.12 SATA HDDs

I wonder how many 1000s of irssi-processes this server can handle 😉

They didn’t have all the parts in yet though, so it’s going to be something like 2-4 weeks before I get everything.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

(Late) 3-Year Anniversary

Posted on September 10, 2009 by independence

Yes, it’s true! Blinkenshell has been online for more than 3 years already, it’s hard to believe. The domain name blinkenshell.org was actually registered on the 10th of August 2006.

We’ve certainly had our ups and downs, but we’ve survived this far and I’m sure we can keep on going for many years to come. I know my activity with the project has been a bit on and off, and the last couple of months I’ve not been around much. I’m sorry for this. However, the community seems to be alive and kicking. The IRC channel is active night and day, and I think this shows how strong this community really is, I’m really impressed. Thanks to all you guys who keeps this thing alive, even when I’m away!

Blinkenshell has certainly been growing too, we’ve just recently passed 400 members. Not bad with that long-ass signup process! 😉

Much has changed since Blinkenshell started up 3 years ago, but one thing that has been the same all this time is that poor old server in my parents basement. It’s really incredible that it has survived all this time. Not even one harddrive has failed. And the hardware was not new to start with.

Lately though, it seems like the network connection has been a bit shaky. It seems like the network connection goes down for a few hours every week pretty regularly.

That’s why I’ve been thinking of buying a new server, and placing it at my new apartment. I’ve been hesitating to do this before because I’ve been moving around a lot. I’ve moved 5 times in the last year alone. But I think I’ll be staying at my new place for a couple of years atleast.

So, what does the Blinkenshell community think, is it time to invest in a new server? As always, any help is much appreciated. Ideas for how to make things better, any particular hardware configurations you think would be good, and of course donations to help pay for the new hardware 😉 The Internet connection to my apartment is 100/10 Mbit/s currently, but I think we have to bounce it via some tunnel provider to get static IPv4 and reverse etc, so maybe it will be something like 10/10 Mbit/s. Still a lot better than what we currently have!

If you have any ideas or questions, feel free to contact me by commenting on this blog post, chat me up on IRC (pm is ok!), or by sending me an email: independence at blinkenshell.org

Happy anniversary everyone! 😀

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

UPS doing it’s job

Posted on July 7, 2009 by independence

It seems the UPS has been quite useful the last couple of days. There has been a lot of thunderstorms here in Sweden lately, and sometimes the power fluctuates a bit when the lightening strikes. It’s mostly “brownouts” and the like, not any longer power outages really. Maybe the PSU wouldv’e sorted it out by itself even, but it’s still nice with some extra protection. During July the UPS has stepped in and cleaned the power to our server no less than 14 times!

Posted in hardware | Leave a comment

New IP

Posted on April 27, 2009 by independence

This morning our ISP decided to change us to a new IP-range without any prior warning. Since we’re using a static IP, everything broke ofcourse (other customers in the same network use DHCP so they probably only had a very short outage). We now have a new static IP, but still working on the reverse. Most services should be back to normal, but we can’t connect to some of the bigger IRC-networks (Quakenet, IRCnet (see update) etc). Hopefully access to these networks will be fixed within the next couple of days.

Update 1 (27 April, 22:14): IRCNet is now available via irc.okit.se again.

Update 2 (28 April, 20:04): Reverse IP is back since this morning. Quakenet trust is back since around 18 PM. FreeNode I-line should also be back.

Posted in downtime, internet | Leave a comment

No backups for a while

Posted on March 27, 2009 by independence

I’m going to move to a new apartment tomorrow, which means the server Fuji will be taken down. Fuji is mainly used for backups and monitoring, and is not critical for the main service of Blinkenshell. I’m not sure how the Internet connection will be set up at my new place, but in the worst case scenario it will take a couple of weeks before it’s back up.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Procrastination (Playing with Google Maps)

Posted on March 15, 2009 by independence

So, exams tomorrow… I really need to study. But I found something else much more fun than studying! 🙂 Yesterday franki^ mentioned it would be cool with a map with the locations of Blinkenshell users. I played around with the idea for a while, and thought it would be cool to do something like The Pirate Bay did a while back with a google maps. It’s quite simple, just a Google map with a marker for each country showing the number of users from that particular country.  I also have some pretty good data from the SMS sending gateway, which has an accurate mapping to countries.

I exported the data, and with some Python magic made it into a list of entries in Javascript code with data for: country, longitude, latitude, number of users from that country, precentage of users from that country. I then used the Google Maps API to display the markers on a world map, showing number of users when you click on the markers, and with differently coloured icons for countries with few/medium/many users. Sweet! You can find the map here: http://blinkenshell.org/map.html

Awesome, now I have about two hours less to study for my exam tomorrow… I read this article about “Structured Procrastination” yesterday, but I think I’m doing it wrong… http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

Posted in fun, internet, web | Leave a comment

Downtime 17 Feb (updated)

Posted on February 17, 2009 by independence

The server was unreachable for 3 hours between 19 and 22 CET this evening. A short disruption in the power (less than a second) seems to have caused the modem to bug out. A restart helped and we’re now finally back online! The server did not reboot, the UPS did it’s job for once 😉

Update: The server was unreachable again between 00.00 – 08.50 CET because of the same problem.

Update2: The connection went down again almost immediately, unreachable between 09.20 – 14.10. I think it should stay up this time, and the short freezez should be gone now.

Posted in downtime, internet | Leave a comment