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Well, its back. I'm sorry it took so long to recover the site. With
hindsight (as always) a series of events that could have been averted, took
me completely off the air for days. For those who are interested, here's
what happened.
The system board in a server that hosted a few websites and also hosted ns1
failed. Ns2 was hosted by an ISP, but they had deleted the IP to which ns1
was transferring zones and I hadn't checked if ns2 was working for some
time. As both dn servers weren't running, it was as though I had
disappeared. The mail server was also using the same dn servers.
The system board that failed was only 11 months old, and still under
warranty. Normally it's a 24 hour replacement, which was barely acceptable
for a non-critical website, although very inconvenient for ns1 to be down
that long. UPS lost the overnight shipment. Negotiating with the distributor
and UPS took another 2 days. With hindsight it would have been preferable
to buy another PC and plug in the controller and disks from the original
server, but I decided to push on with the course of repairing the server.
The most "damage" was already done, or so I thought.
The server went down Tuesday and by Friday morning after UPS delievered 2
system boards, it was back together. Then I discovered that the registry had
seemingly been clobbered, and after several hours of work I was still unable
to repair it. Now it was time to buy a new server and at least get back on
the air. I purchased an Intel 1U and loaded Windows 2k Server.
Next problem: the backup tapes weren't readable in a different DAT drive. So
back to the original server, which was running NTS. After several hours I
was able to get it to boot and I could at least bind NETBEUI. Using a laptop
I was able to shuffle the data and install the t2t website on the new
server. Still lots of remedial stuff to do, but the "disaster" clearly and
probably overly emphasized the need for real redundancy, particularly if one
is to provide a service (free or not).
Again, sorry for the inconvenience. There are bound to be some permission
issues on the new server so please don't hesitate to mail HYPERLINK
"mailto:support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"; support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The name
servers may take a day or so to update the new resolution, but the site can
be reached at 66.7.170.155
Colin West
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Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.330 / Virus Database: 184 - Release Date: 2/28/2002
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