Is this how time normally passes? Really slowly, in the right order?

Support Above And Beyond

I mentioned on SoftLayer's forums that OpenVZ wasn't working with the new Nehalem server.  SoftLayer don't support OpenVZ; it's a custom kernel that I downloaded and installed myself.  If you need virtualisation and support, they offer Citrix XenServer, Virtuozzo, and Microsoft's Hyper-V.

Which is fine.  I  was hoping to do it myself with OpenVZ.  I couldn't get it to work because OpenVZ doesn't support the new network controllers and needed support.  SoftLayer don't support OpenVZ, so I asked them to sell me Virtuozzo.

What they did was deploy a test server with the same configuration as mine and assign an engineer to getting OpenVZ running.  For free.  That's awesome.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:02 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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While We're Waiting

[root@akane ~]# hdparm -t /dev/sda /dev/sdb

/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  628 MB in  3.00 seconds = 209.27 MB/sec

/dev/sdb:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  786 MB in  3.00 seconds = 261.77 MB/sec

sda is a 3-disk RAID-5 volume.  sdb is the Intel X25-E SSD.

Vroom!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:04 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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I Have Bad News, And Expensive News

Installed OpenVZ on Akane (installing OpenVZ is a piece of cake). 

Rebooted.

No server.

This is not good.

It could be a whole lot worse, since there's nothing on the server, no files, no users.  Still, I can't reach it at all.

One of the things I love about SoftLayer is that IPMI - remote monitoring and KVM - is standard on all servers.  Many other providers are heading that way now, but SoftLayer was one of the first.

So I log in via IPMI - which is good in itself, because it means the server is up.  And I poke around a bit, and find that I have no network cards.  Funny, they were around here a minute ago.

So I restart the networking subsystem and am informed:

Bringing up interface eth0: igb device eth0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization   [FAILED]

That's not good.  The fact that this message does not appear anywhere on the internet is extra not good with cream.

Some more digging revealed the fact that the network chips on Akane's motherboard - the Intel 82576 - was first supported in the 2.6.25 kernel.  OpenVZ runs 2.6.18.  So do CentOS 5.3 and RedHat Enterprise 5, but someone there must have backported the driver.

I downloaded the OpenVZ 2.6.26 kernel - a development version, not recommended for production - and that was, if anything, worse.  Definitely no network, anyway.

So it looks like we're getting Virtuozzo after all.  Which will cost me extra, but...  Well, mostly it will just cost me extra.  It has some nice features, like a user control panel so you can look after your own virtual machine.  I don't have any users who actually need that...  Well, I'm sure I could find some, but it's not what I'm here for.

Anyway, I've sent an email off to sales to get the move to Virtuozzo-land under way - which will involve wiping Akane clean and reinstalling her again, probably at least twice - and then I can get things under way once more.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:46 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Reboot, Reinstall... CentOS 5.3

Just reinstalling the operating system on Akane from scratch.  I always do this at SoftLayer because (a) it's easy, (b) it's a good test; if I can't do a clean reinstall, there's something wrong, and (c) I can make sure that it's installed the way I want.

Then on with the OpenVZ.

Then I order a bunch of VLAN-routable IPs.

Then I start creating VEs, and installing CPanel, and so on.

Then I test-copy the whole of Aoi / mee.nu across.  Official migration probably over Easter, but I'll do a quick test first.

Then migrate people off Sakura.

Then off Midori.

Then back to migrating people off Movable Type and WordPress to Minx.

Then upgrade to Minx 1.2.

Then Pixy goes to happy land.

Update: Well, that didn't work.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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New Toys Indeed!

Look what I've got!

top - 22:12:36 up 14 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.01, 0.02, 0.01
Tasks: 280 total,   1 running, 279 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu0  :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu1  :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu2  :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu3  :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu4  :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu5  :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu6  :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu7  :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu8  :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu9  :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu10 :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu11 :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu12 :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu13 :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu14 :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu15 :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:  24677364k total,   374464k used, 24302900k free,    19348k buffers
Swap:  1052248k total,        0k used,  1052248k free,   187340k cached

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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No Poo

Server status: PE_INVENTORYCHECK_FAILURE

Guess I won't have my new server today.

Hmm.  Hang on.  It also says it's already configured with 2 CPUs, 12 DIMMS, 3 disks and 1 SSD.  So what inventory check did it fail?

Update: Okay, it was just some software inventory issue.  The automated hardware burn-in test is running now.

Update: So I sent an email off to sales to check up on a couple of things, and they managed to sound like they answered all of my questions without actually answering any of them.  Yeah, the natural way to read the response is that the answer is yes, but it doesn't actually say that, it answers subtly different and completely unhelpful questions instead.

It's annoying and kind of embarassing to have to ask the same questions again to try to elicit an apropos response, but if I don't sort it out now it could be a major pain in the future.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:38 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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What The Hell, Microsoft?

I was just installing the drivers for my colour laser (nice internet connectivity there, HP - 7kb/sec?) so I could print out the receipt for my shiny new server and my E drive disappeared.  Not in Explorer, not in Storage Manager, just gone.

Out of all of my drives, that would be best one to lose, but that doesn't mean I want to lose it.  But if something weird happens when you install a driver, 99% of the time it will be Windows or the driver at fault, and so it was.

But still - how the hell can a printer driver disable a disk drive, Microsoft?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:19 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Super Server

Akane is on her way!

Full specs:

2 x Xeon 5520 (2.26GHz, quad core, hyperthreaded)
24GB DDR3 ECC RAM (expandable to 72GB)
5 x 1TB disks in hardware RAID-5 (and 6 free drive bays)
32GB Intel X25-E SSD
Redundant power supplies
CentOS 5 / OpenVZ / CPanel / Urchin 6

This will be fun.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:00 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Um, Waitaminute

SoftLayer sales got back to me, with a quote that was more than what I could get just by clicking around their website.

Oh well, guess I'll just click around their website then.

Sleep first, tho'.

Update: Oh, they quoted me on the 2.66GHz 5550, not the 2.26GHz 5520.  There's about $1200 difference in the RRP; no wonder the price was high.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Also Also Wikout

Aaaand - if I use Xapian - which I shall - the Minx database need not support full-text indexing.  So for instance PostgreSQL, which I rejected because its full-text indexing is hideous, becomes viable again.

Actually, PostgreSQL's full-text indexing is no more arduous or inelegant to implement than Xapian's, and perhaps nearly as flexible.  The difference is that Xapian lives off to one side of your database, doing search-y stuff and nothing else, and doesn't clog up your tables or your SQL.  The PostgreSQL full-text search, by working exactly the same way, turns the virtue of integration into a vice.  The pre-computed search terms field that you need for the full-text index is present in both, but in Xapian it's out of the way and doesn't bother you.

And that really does matter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:55 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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