My server (ie, the one on which this site runs) is having some kind of hardware failure. I presume the fan is going out, but it might be more serious than that. Periodically the kernel tells me that the CPU is overheating, and then powers down the system. At the moment, I have a large room fan pointing into the side of the open case, but that is obviously only a short-term solution.
I have a secondary server, which runs my DNS and database, but it's a Pentium III 600, and I'm not certain, yet, whether it can take the additional load. I guess I'm about to find out. Unfortunately, it's running Slackware, which I have distinctly fallen out of love with in the last 5 years or so. And so moving a bunch of services from this machine to that one may end up being rather painful.
Then there's the alternate plan, of purchasing a new server, and combining the two into the one. Unfortunately, that involves spending money.
So, at the moment, I'm not sure what I'll be doing. But if this site is down, it's probably because the overheating problem got worse.
I (literally!) just transferred the majority of my hosted domains to a VPS. The initial transfer was time consuming, but it did give me the opportunity to configure things "right" again (funny how time can make a decent server crufty).
I must say, so far I'm delighted. I don't have to worry about hardware any more. I was already in the habit of taking regular backups and burning them to DVD, so if the VPS craps out, I'll still have (most of) my data. The price is acceptable, too!
While I know, vaguely, in concept, what a VPS is, I wouldn't know where to start moving to one. Is this something that some ISP offers? I really like having my own mail server, and I like having my own DNS server. All the other things (mostly websites) I really don't care where they run.
The kernel is spewing the following errors:
Apr 16 15:00:02 riesling kernel: ACPI: Transitioning device [FAN1] to D3
Apr 16 15:00:02 riesling kernel: ACPI: Transitioning device [FAN1] to D3
Apr 16 15:00:02 riesling kernel: ACPI: Unable to turn cooling device [e7bec784] 'off'
I would think that it was related to some ACPI bug reports I found, except that it's failing to turn it off, rather than on, which seems backwards, given that it's overheating.
Anyways, I got a replacement machine at Office Depot, and will hopefully be swapping them out tonight. I'm not at all happy about this, but I don't feel like there's a whole lot of option. I suppose normal people get along just fine without servers in their homes. Maybe one of these days I'll have to figure out how they do that.