[Oceania-tech] [Fwd: [IMC-Tech] ahimsa* update]

Mon Dec 6 11:44:56 UTC 2004

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for those who haven't seen it.

- -------- Original Message --------
Subject: [IMC-Tech] ahimsa* update
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 11:10:32 -0700
From: jeff <jeff --at-- indymedia.org>

I've been posting frequent updates to the ahimsa-tech list.
Here's the present ahimsa* scoop for imc-tech.

ahimsa-db1
============
The new ahimsa-db1 database is up and running. It is a dual
opteron with 8 gigs of ram. st3 reports that italy queries
(e.g. newswire searches) that used to take 60 to 200 seconds,
now take .3 (point three!) seconds.  The load is usually
hovering around 0.00. :)   It is backing up to the NFS server
nightly and each IMC can grab a copy of their database, which I
hope they are backing up. ahimsa-db1 is from
penguincomputing.com and they put together a very solid box. It
is running 64-bit debian, see:
http://jebba.blagblagblag.org/index.php?p=137

ahimsa-radio1
=============
We have a dedicated icecast box now. There are a couple streams
running on it. bame has been the main admin for this, so if you
need to stream contact him (or me). This box has been stable,
but not used very much. This is an ebay box running debian.

ahimsa-web1
===========
The webserver has been doing OK as it is a bit underpowered and
was doing a lot at first (e.g. it /was/ doing db, web, icecast,
rsync...). It is now just doing web and rsync. The load was
silly high the last few days, but once the db got moved to the
new box, things are much better. If multiple rsyncs run, it
still gets a bit overloaded, but it's tolerable. This is an
ebay box. It is running BLAG20k alpha (Fedore Core 2).

jojojojojojo
============
This is the NFS server. It has 12x200 gigs in a RAID-50 3x4,
giving it 1.7 terabytes of useable storage. It can have
multiple drives fail and still keep running. It has had a
couple crashes over the last two months, but looks stable now.
It has a 3ware 9500-12 RAID card with hot swap and all that
jazz. This box came from acmemicro (with chenbro case). It is
running BLAG20k alpha (Fedora Core 2)--FC has the best drivers
for this RAID card, as far as I can tell. It is using XFS
(filesystem) as this had the best benchmarks. It is connected
via gigabit ethernet to the other boxes (though this could use
some tweaking, like jumbo frames and such).

ahimsa-fw1
==========
This is an OpenBSD box and has been the big headache in the new
ahimsa* setup so far. It crashes every few days and I (or bame)
have to call the ISP to have them power-cycle it. It comes up
clean everytime. We have swapped out the hardware 3 times, but
each time put the old HD in the new hardware. So it may be just
a bad hard drive. Weeks ago, I ordered a replacement from
eracks.com (the previous boxes were snagged from ebay...),
hoping that we'd get a nice solid box. The system took too long
to arrive and is quite a PoS, unfortunately. I wrote more about
this: http://jebba.blagblagblag.org/index.php?p=138
Sometime this week we'll try to get a new system in place so the
pages will stop buzzing us...

ahimsa-rsync1
=============
We hope to set up a dedicated rsync box in the next couple weeks
or so. This will make it so web1 only has to serve web pages.
We have a debian box nearly in place for this, but it may be
taken to replace the firewall.

ahimsa-web2
===========
We'd like to get a second webserver going as well. It could do
load balancing and hot failover, in case one system goes down.
OpenBSD's firewalling can do all this automagickally, but I
don't know PF well enough yet.

ahimsa-db2
==========
On one of the above boxes (or perhaps BLAG's lab20), we'd like
to set up database replication. I've talked to chrisc a bit
about doing transatlantic replication as well, once the new UK
publish server is running.

The Great Box Move
==================
The servers are all co-located at frii.net. They've been in the
same building since 1995, but just got their own building with
better power, better connectivity, etc. This means we need to
physically move the boxes. This will result in some downtime,
obviously. Hopefully it will only be a couple hours or so, but
moving all this kit can be a bit complicated... This move will
happen on December 8th, 2004 at around 7PM MST. So, quickly set
up your secondary mirrors, if you got 'em. ;)

Hosting More IMCs
=================
Any indymedia that has been through process is welcome to host
on ahimsa*. I would very much like all IMCs hosted on ahimsa*
to have live backup servers that are either in round robin DNS
or just require a DNS change to go live. :)

BACKUPS
=======
EACH IMC IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR OWN BACKUPS ON AHIMSA*
(whoops, caps lock). If you are currently hosted on ahimsa*,
please make sure you are regularily backing up your site. A
daily database dump is available to grab.

Old rackspace ahimsa1 & ahimsa2
===============================
These boxes are still live, but are not serving anything. I
don't have any legal updates about it, other than it appears a
fascist judge in italy has the power to shut down boxes hosted
with US companies. The US govt is happy to keep this all secret
under the guise of "international terrorism". EFF has the info:
http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Indymedia/

All for now. I'm committed to making this setup fast, stable,
fault tolerant, and secure.

Thanks to everyone who has helped get everything running. :)

- -Jeff
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