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tuxmachines issues lately

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Site News

I've been putting off blogging what's going on with tuxmachines lately because number 1: I don't really know what happened, and number 2: I don't really know what's gonna happen. But here's what I do know.

The Sunday evening of January 25 I lost my internet connection and could not reconnect. I called Bellsouth and they informed me that I had to connect through the modem instead of using any software on my computer. That made it impossible to associate my given static IP with the dynamic IP that is assigned to the dsl modem when it connects. So, when I tried to set my static IP in the modem, it wouldn't connect. Bellsouth told me that you can't do that with a block of IPs like I had, you had to be assigned only one. So, they deleted all my static IPs instead of just the extraneous ones and tuxmachines was screwed until the new IP propagated. However, connectivity was slow and iffy. I couldn't download an ISO, I couldn't surf the web without sites timing out more often than not. And my site was performing very poorly. I had set the modem up to pass all traffic through it without interferrence, but something was wrong. And tech support was uncaring and unhelpful. Basically they wanted my server off their service.

So, I decided to move my site to offsite hosting, get cable internet and phone, and cut bellsouth off entirely. But the host I had chosen didn't appear to be working out - if you recall the later part of last week seeing a placeholder for a day or two then it went down for a day and half?

Well, I signed up for no-ip dynamic IP service and put my home server back online. This is what we are running on right now. However, while this dynamic IP service monitors my computer for changing IP and will adjust its files accordingly very quickly - any time I get a new IP, my site will be down for days for some visitors until their resolving nameservers catch up. Obviously, this is not a permanent solution.

And this is where we are this morning. I was having connectivity issues yesterday morning for no apparent reason. The connection just went down several times. It seems to have stablized for now.

Today, we were offline while the cable guys were messing with stringing up the cable phone and stuff. So, until we get a new IP, we should be okay unless the dead tree hanging by a thread over my cable wire goes down. And with the winds hitting 35 to 40 mph today, this is a real possibility.

I'm in the process of finding out what happened at that host company and am considering some other hosting companies. I'm not sure where we will end up and how it work out. We may have to host hop around some (causing more downtime). But funds are a real issue lately. I'm thinking of starting a donation drive and will speak more on that later. If you'd like to donate now, please click on the Support Tuxmachines link at the right. If money wasn't an issue, I could just go and get a good dedicated machine at a reputable hosting company. As it is is how it is.

I've got to tell you that more than once in the past week I've thought of giving up. The ad revenue earned from this site each month is less than I earn from selling one article and with all the headaches lately...

Anyway, if we go down, just keep checking back. Hopefully, we'll have everything ironed out soon. I'll try to keep you updated.

Thanks,
Susan

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BellSouth/check is in the mail

As far as I can tell, BellSouth defines "uncaring" in the Telecom industry. I was so glad to see the end of them when I moved. Closing out my account with them was such an aggravating experience, though, that there was no way I was going to consider their parent (AT&T) when I was looking for cellphone service after my relocation.

I do hope you find a way to keep the site alive. It's been a very useful service.

Tuxmachines is very worthwhile

It wasn't until Tuxmachines went down that I realized just how much I relied on the site for news. I want to encourage you what great work you do here on this site. Please don't get discouraged--it is worth it.
I run around 30 Drupal sites myself and have had lots of hosting experiences. For what it is worth, I have found my current hosters: http://rimuhosting.com/ have given me easily the best experience. For what it is worth I have written a short tutorial on how I got Drupal set up on their servers: http://drup.org/installing-drupal-rimuhosting-com

thanks

thanks for saying. I'm trying.

ISP's

I'll bet we've all had an issue with different ISP's. When I went with the Charter Cable bundle (Internet, TV, Phone), my service went to hell.

Charter Cable has major technical problems in supporting this bundle. Not to mention the local outlet rep is just plain rude to their customers.

I'm now with Qwest for phone, for Internet--a local ISP called Outreach Internet who has their main antenna on a hillside near my house for a great connection, and Direct TV for my TV services.

No more Charter Cable services, forever. It's great to live in an area where you have some alternatives.

re: ISP's

Bellsouth and Charter are our choices here. Sad

I'd been happy with Bellsouth for the most part until that Sunday night. They'd always been nice before that. But something changed not just with their infrastructure but their attitudes too. They just didn't seem want my business anymore.

How much bandwidth?

Susan - What are your requirements from hosting? How much disk space, bandwidth per month, that kind of thing? I may have a solution for these problems.
__________________________________________________________________
Ubuntu is lame as a duck- not the metaphorical lame duck, but more like a real duck that hurt its leg, maybe by stepping on a land mine.

re: bandwidth

I think my site uses less than 200 GB a month since I stopped posting so many new screenshots. My server uses about 10 GB of space, so say 20 GB. Drupal with mysql is quite the hog. Even with version 5.x being a bit better, it's still a resource pig.

Drupal resources

There are some very simple things you can do to greatly decrease Drupal's resource requirements. You can install a APC cache for example. Also, Drupal 6 does very good caching for anonymous users that will decrease the database access. On the plus side, Drupal greatly improves your SEO and is one of the reasons that tuxmachines ranks so well in Google. If you want any help, just let me know.

Well, based on your

Well, based on your description, it sounds like the site would fit well on a Linode. $39.99 a month, 18 gigs hard drive space, 540 megs ram, 300 gig transfer (soft limit), and you have full root control of the distro of your choice. You can drop by #linode on irc.oftc.net for more info, or check out http://linode.com. I hope everything works out!
__________________________________________________________________
Ubuntu is lame as a duck- not the metaphorical lame duck, but more like a real duck that hurt its leg, maybe by stepping on a land mine.

Caught up

I caught up all that you posted. Keep up the wonderful work. You're among the last ones standing (not just in FOSS... the press in general is dying as you can probably tell).

I got some mails today from an editor and writer who were laid off.

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