Category: Web Hosting

It all started on a Monday … This reseller told me that there was a customer of his that was getting mail server errors … So I tried sending from/to accounts I have on that server … It worked. I also sent messages to the guy that was reporting the problem … They all worked. But, he tried sending, and he couldn’t do it, so then I thought that maybe I had some sort of privileges since I was on the same network … Regardless, then the phone rang … Someone trying through webmail wasn’t receiving messages … Another IM popped upped … Damn! Something was a amiss … I immediately contacted the mail server guy and he found that the virus scanner was crapping out on a corrupted database … He then thought it best to upgrade the virus software to fix the problem … All was fine and good … until the next day … Now the thing was core dumping … Various other errors, and the machine would quit under load and boot … The thought was that Perl should be upgraded due to the new virus software … While that was compiling, it was crapping out, so then things got real fun … So he figured that we should just upgrade the whole box and bring everything current … but the machine seemed to behave respectably if we left it alone … We did get a new kernel built, but trying to right everything else was resulting in Bus errors and more and more core dumps … At this point, the problem seemed to point to memory although the memory in this machine has been working for the last year … We decided to leave the machine running and stop the IMs and phone calls until I could test the memory in the wee hours … I did that yesterday morning and there were multiple errors so lo and behold, yes! It was the memory … So having that tested, I had to go another day running the bad memory until I could purchase new memory and install it. So, on my way to work I stopped at CompUSA and picked up 1G of memory … When I got home, I first tested the new memory in another machine … I checked it for over an hour and it passed all tests … Then I installed it into the mail server and have been up ever since … Then I tested the RAM again in the test machine … The stick that went bad wasn’t even the one I thought would have went bad … The 256 stick was bad, and the 512 is good … So, now we need to fix up the rest of the mail server and all will be well … I can’t tell you how I have felt the last week with all 3 of these scenarios hitting at once … At one point I almost gave up … but, that’s not like me …

If I had a dollar for every time this happens, I’d have about $20.00 … Maybe I exaggerate, or maybe it just happens so often to piss me off for me to post about it … I get the call, “Oh my god! What did you do? I can’t get to my web site! You’re down! I’m down?! What the heck did you do??” So, I go to GoDaddy.Com … click on the WHOIS at the bottom links section … Lookup the domain that’s “down” … and there it sits, expired … I guess what upsets me the most about it is that when there’s a problem, the first place the finger points is at me … The labor I put into the network, connection and monitoring is probably more than most ISPs do … and I’m only one person … I can never understand how someone could have their domain name expire … I get tons of emails letting me know of upcoming domain expirations (which I find annoying that they let me know 90 days in advance, but at least it’s placed in my mind what domains are coming up), and I check almost weekly the domains I manage for their expiration dates … The fee is nominal, and it makes no sense for anyone who wants their web site to remain active to keep that nominal fee paid …

Have been making some site updates on the main ICUHost.Net web site … Guess it’s about time that I give the FreeBSD portion of the network its due … Plus there were some old email addresses on there that still pointed to the .com domain … Although they were still good, I just thought it should all be .net … It’s genuinely tough to express what it is that makes us any different from any other web hosting provider … Especially given the fact that it’s from a hobbyists point of view mainly … Read “hobbyist” as hacker … I hack these machines to work together in what I feel is the proper manner in which to satisfy the needs of myself and hope that that genuinely relates into the way that others would want things … I watched Revolution OS again … It is truly a great piece of work …

That’s utimately the worst phone call or email anyone doing what I do can receive. It makes me break out in a sweat immediately before I even know what the problem is … Sometimes, it isn’t my problem, and that makes me angry. Sometimes it is my problem, and that makes me angrier! Most times lately, this is due to the Windows systems rebooting on their own. As I recall, the first time this happened, I researched it and created this page: http://www.icuhost.net/bug_check.html for an acquiantance of mine to look at … After his seeing that page, he sent me the following:

Your Windows issues, it is kind of outside my area of expertise. I can keep my servers running to support my development efforts, but that is mostly with duct tape, spit, and a prayer. Did you go to http://oca.microsoft.com/en/Welcome.asp? In addition, you can turn off auto-reboot and actually see the BSOD that brought your system down. I am going off WinXP/Win2K3, but presumably, it is similar in Win2K. Windows-Break to bring up system properties, on Advanced tab under startup hit settings, and uncheck automatically restart under System failure. You can also change the option to do a complete memory dump, which will give you additional information should it happen again. Do you have anything in your event log? I am also not seeing too many suspects that are running in Kernel mode. Perl should be running exclusively in user mode. Black Ice Defender runs in Kernel mode. Are you running WHQL drivers all around on this box? These are the usual suspects.

So, the decision was made to migrate everything running off of those Windows boxes and create new ones to take their place … This process has been slow going as there are people utilizing the setups on those boxes … The DNS has been moved off, but the mail servers are still active … I have been trying to get everyone to migrate over to the FreeBSD mail server voluntarily, but that isn’t going as well as expected. I thought people would jump at the chance at FREE SPAM and Virus protection? Maybe I need to word it just like that so that it looks sweeter rather than a chore …

Sent out statement reminders for billing. Wife said that not many payments were coming in as usual. Could be that when I sent them out on the 1st that there were DNS issues. After changing the DNS to FreeBSD servers, I pointed the Windows servers to those new DNS servers … I think this was amistake due to the fact I am running AD here on the Windows machines … Eventually I lost local networking, and I assume this had to do with not pointing the Windows machines to the Windows DNS. So, I have to keep DNS running on the Windows network for the Active Directory … I wanted to avoid this, so I will rebuild the Windows portion of the network into not requiring DNS and doing the networking via a workgroup or something … Utilizing a domain isn’t as necessary as I would have thought when I started all this up … It’s ultimately cool that I have had the ability to experiement and learn with these machines and I have people benefitting daily from my endeavors …