No news is good news!
No news is good news!
The network switch we're hiding behind had problems between 16:40 and 18:00 UTC yesterday. The problem appears to be resolved.
And we're back up again. I think.
Both of the drivers (MudOS and DGD) appear to be working, and so does FTP, and login for admins. I'll be a bit busy the next two days, so I'll probably be able to put us back online on Friday.
Ick, it's getting late. The good news is that the following now seems to work:
What I haven't tested yet is a longer list, but at least I got real progress tonight!
The devil's in the details. Just a few more things, right, yeah. Well, we'll get there. Klopf also seems to have recovered some more recent files from Krylitz, so we'll be a bit more up to date on stuff there than elsewhere when we get back up.
I think I've finished with the system reconfiguration. Now I only need to reinstall the MUD driver, and we should be able to get back up. I'll try to get it done this weekend.
Sorry for the information draught. It turned out not to be only one problem, but rather a series of them, keeping me busy for all week.
This week looks better, so I've started restoring files and server configuration for Viking.
The wedding went fine, back to work. This is turning into a blog ...
One of the servers at work was very sad when I left Oslo for a couple of days, and needs petting like a tamagochi. I'll try to do a restore of Viking one of the evenings this week.
I have received the new CPU fan, reassembled the computer, and installed an operating system to the new disk.
This weekend I'll be gone for a wedding in the Netherlands, so I don't have a chance of reinstalling the necessary software until sometime next week.
Donations have now reached NOK 1450, which covers the disk. Thanks for the incredible support!
We're edging a bit closer to completion, but I had to order a new CPU fan -- the current one is making so much noise that I'll go deaf.
Donations have reached NOK 1150, which is more than I expected.
The new harddisk has arrived, but the computer remains in pieces. The remaining work is to gather all the different backups, make a final attempt at accessing the data on the old disk, installing an operating system on the new disk, pushing the backups back in, checking that things look allright, ... I'm sure something is missing on that list, and it will take plenty of hours as it is.
Don't expect the MUD to be back up this week. :(
Thanks to all those who have contributed with donations. I've already shelled out the money (approximately NOK 1500) for the disk, and thanks to you guys, I've gotten 800 back. That's wonderful, no joke about it!
The data from the old harddisk is not salvageable; we'll have to try to restore from a mostly complete backup we had 2004-08-17.
The new harddisk has finally been shipped by the computer store we ordered it from. We may be able to install it sometime next week.
Since a Norwegian asked, Norwegians can make donations to the following account number/address (the bank is Skandiabanken):
97102976006 Viking MUD c/o Jan Ingvoldstad Thurmanns gate 10 C 0461 Oslo
A backup web site for www.vikingmud.org is now in place.
Several people have mentioned that they would like to be able to make
donations for new hardware for the VikingMUD box. We appreciate this,
and I've created an account at
moneybookers.com for
this purpose. The account name is: 
Note: .no, not .org.
And as you may have guessed already, the harddisk is not working properly, so we really have to get a new one.
The server is now down. Willfon is attempting to salvage data from the problematic harddisk. The time frame for a fix is still unknown.
The server that's running VikingMUD has severe issues, and its physical defects list is growing rapidly. It is difficult to estimate downtimes and stability. Problems can be expected from 2004-09-06 through 2004-09-17, depending on how quickly something can be done.
Additionally, the server must be physically relocated because of other factors; we are working on that, too. This means an upcoming change of IP address.
We had a network interface outage from Saturday 31st to this morning. Willfon fixed the problem.
The switch seems to have worked just fine.
We plan for downtime tomorrow between 11:00 and 13:00 UTC, for changing a SCSI cable and terminator.
Well, it wasn't quite that easy; I forgot that the Perl upgrade broke mod_perl, which thus needed recompilation. Fixed now.
If you can read this, we're back up.
There will be a downtime for tomorrow, June 2, at 13:00 UTC to 18:00 UTC, approximately.
We're installing a new harddisk and a UPS.
Oh, by the way: www.vikingmud.no is up as a secondary site where we can post additional information about stupid problems like this, even when the main site is down.
We had a momentary power failure at 21:30, and the computer needed help to boot. That is why the MUD was down for half an hour, and not just five minutes.
This of course has to happen during one of the few periods where we don't have a UPS. Remember this, folks: you buy a UPS to keep power failures from happening, not to have power when they happen.
The system upgrade yesternight seems to have worked out just fine.
The network downtime below may turn out to be a real downtime. The sysadmins at ifi.uio.no have warned us that they may have to relocate the computer we're using, and to do that, they'll have to turn it off for a short while. We don't know whether this will be necessary, nor do they. And there will be no advance warning apart from this message.
There is a possible network downtime on the following date:
2004-04-23 16:00 - 22:00 UTC
A system upgrade has been scheduled for 2004-04-21 00:30 UTC.
No news is good news.
Frogo retired.
Kernel upgrade to 2.4.25, and we're rebooting at 2004-02-19 05:30 UTC.
Bladerunner set to elder due to absence.
Tundra promoted to full law arch.
New web-page showing Windows users how to connect using PuTTY is ready.
Kernel security upgrade at 06:00.
Sitronsmak retired, back to creator(self request).