Sotirov-BG.Net News

Last evening the server was upgraded to Slackware 13.37, this way updating many of the existing packages. The only problem that was encountered was with Perl 5.12 on which both Bugzilla and SlackPack depend. This forced the downgrade to Perl 5.10 and use of the existing base of installed packages until solutions to the problems are found.

The kernel was also upgraded to 2.6.39 without any problem.

For first time this year Sotirov-BG.Net will took part in the Earth Hour initiative to show support against climate and environment change. Today between 20:30 EET and 21:30 EET the server, as well as other equipment around it, would be switched off. Please, do not forget to join the initiative and think what else could you do to help.

Today, between 17:00 EEST and 19:00 EEST there was database upgrade. The MySQL server was moved to the recommended release series 5.1. This was a planned upgrade, but it took time, because of incompatible changes, which required backup/restore of all the databases. Now everything is back to norml.

Yesterday, about midnight the MySQL was upgraded and during the night backup the server was restarted. However, the InnoDB engine failed to start properly, because of inability to create temporary files (not an issue before). Thus, hosted sites were without data from about 0:15 to about 11:00 on 21 October 2008, when the problem was resolved.

I'm sorry, if this caused any inconvenience.

Exactly on December 31-st, 2007 at about 21:36 the availiable disk space finished. Thus preventing some of the services from running normaly. The problem was resolved early last night, but this made me think of space upgrade. Soon the deamons should operate on a large dedicated hard drive.

Since Monday December, 10-th the FTP and the HTTP services of Sotirov-BG.Net are unavailiable. This is in result to the migration of my HomeLan account to SpectrumNet. Unfortunately SpectrumNet has policy to prohibit ports from 1 to 1024 for home users.

From yesterday is in force web redirection for the web server, which is now accessible on port 8080. The file server as well is temporarily accessible on port 2121. I can't say until when this will go on, because I'm still searching for solution. I'm accepting offers.

Well, a month ago I've changed my ISP and and though it’s for good. However, soon after the change I realized that the speed has gone. My new ISP (Megalan) didn't manage to provide me enough outgoing international speed. So I've switched back to my previous ISP Homelan, which is already in the hands of one of the biggest Bulgarian providers - SpectrumNet.

The change was performed yesterday between 21:15 EST (19:15 UTC) and 22:30 EST (20:30 UTC). It took much time, because my new old ISP, had primary DNS that was not working. Now everything seems OK and I'm already feeling the difference. I hope you will feel it too.

I'm very sorry for the inconvenience caused by the slow speeds during the last month.

Have a smooth downloading!

A time ago, I wrote about the problems I have with my ISP. The frequent connection interruptions drove me crazy and I decided to switch to another (assumed) better ISP. So the server is now part of the Megalan network and because of this his IP address has changed. It is now 77.70.66.51 (the old one was 83.97.31.69). Nevertheless the domain settings were changed at around 10:00 EEST today it may take up to 48 hours to get all DNS servers updated.

I'm pleading to be excused for the inconvenience, but this change was absolutely necessary. I hope that this will improve server's accessibility and it all be for good.

Keep going!

There was a storm in the Sunday afternoon, in Sofia. A big storm. With lightings and thunders that shacked the earth. This storm managed to destroy parts of my internet provider network. Thus sotirov-bg.net was left without connection for more than 24 hours.

The time span of the outage was between 16:30 on Sunday, June 3-rd and 18:00 on Monday, June 4-th. I can't remember such a long time without any connection. This is making me really think about changing the internet provided, because I can't stand without connection each time there is a storm. This is just unacceptable.

I'm really sorry for the inconvenience, but I hope that soon I will change the provider and thus solve the problem with the more frequent connection problems recently.

Starting from now Apache 2 is the web server for Sotirov-BG.Net and the other stuff running on this machine. The transition followed the official Slackware package surfaced on May 19-th, 2007 in the -current branch.

During the almost 4 hours upgrade I was able to tunne the server, so everything now should work as it was working before. I had some problems with file permissions, but the configuration of the server was easy in general. I just had to rewrite the configuration file using snippets from the old one for apache 1.3.

I'm giving my apologies to those who had problems with the site access between 22:00 PM EEST on May 30-th, 2007 and 2:00 AM EEST on May 31-st, 2007 - the time frame of the upgrade. It's all for good ;-)