Antique-Tractor (ATIS) Community

testing

Post driving goes much quicker when you have help.  But when Saturday rolled around without a friend that was available to help; I decided to drive posts by myself.   With the ground soggy, the driving was easy.   Here is a picture of of a bunch of old equipment(operated by an old operator) going to town on 23 fence posts. The service vehicle holding tools and water (and a beer for afterwards) is a 1986 Isuzu Trooper Diesel.   The tractor is a 58-59 Ford 861 diesel (the serial number is eroded and I cannot tell which year) and the driver is a late 80s or early 90s Shaver HD-8 post driver.   For a while I was driving them 10 minutes to a post.  It was a good day.


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Yes, that is our alpacas in the background.  Great critters with wonderful fleece.

Here is the full story, for anyone who is interested in ugly technical details.....

The server went down the evening of 1-3, but interestingly so did my  home computer (on the same power backup).   The power backup was fried,  but the house computer came back up when plugged into the wall.   The  ATIS server did not.   I replaced the ATIS server power supply about a  year ago, so I figured the cheap Chinese replacement couldn't handle  whatever the power backup did.    So I replaced the power supply again,  but the server would only boot intermittently.    After a few of these  power cycles, it wouldn't even boot.   In the afternoon of 1-4 I took it  to the local techs and a quick check of the motherboard confirmed the  motherboard was dead.

To be honest, I don't know if the power backup fried the board, or a bad  power supply fried the power backup and the board.  In the end, it  didn't matter.   It was dead.


Thank Goodness data was OK, as disk was good.

I bought a new server on 1-5, installed the old drive along the new one,  and began the process of re-building.  It only took me a few days to  install a new operating system, get my security, BIND and mail services  running.  But I ran into serious problems with the mailing list  software(Mailman).     So I punted Mailman for the moment and worked on  everything else.  Within another day I had web services up.   BTW - as a  tip to all the other systems folks reading on:   The latest version of  Apache and PHP do NOT work together on Fedora 14 machines.  Just a word  to the wise  (-:  Within another day I had the database software  upgraded and that meant I could upgrade the bulletin board software and  get that running.  So for all intents and purpose the system was up in  less than a week; except for Mailman.    

While I luckily had a vacation day 1-4,  the rest of the time I am  working, and commuting, a total of 12 hours a day.  So by now, I am  running on about 4 hours a sleep a night.

The mailing list software was another matter.   The language Mailman  uses is called python.  Unfortunately, they never updated the current  version of Mailman to use the most current versions of python.   The  previous versions of Mailman obviously didn't support the new pythons  either, so downgrading python was the only answer.  Unfortunately a lot  of system utility, scripts, and other software use python, and many of  them make use of the newer features in the latest versions of the  language.  So downgrading ended up not being a possibility.    I was  stuck - no way to downgrade either software, and no upgrades that solved  my problems were available.  

So my only option was to run  parallel copies of python.   So I rounded  up an old copy of python that was compatible with Mailman and built and  installed that in a completely separate directory structure, outside of  normal system paths.   Then I modified all the headers, make files,  import statements, etc in Mailman to use that parallel copy.  At this  point, Mailman was working but required extensive additional tweaks  inside a bunch of other utilities it includes.  In addition, there were  some re-configurations of both the old version of python and Mailman.   This ended up taking me a few days.

In the end - the system is a BUNCH faster, very, very up to date, and should serve us for years to come.


I think I am going to get more sleep now.....


Spencer

ATIS is the one of the first sites in the world, and definitely the only one in old iron, to run the newest version of vBulletin.   Hope you like it - The CMS/Blog section hasn't been fleshed out yet but never fear, I'll get to that in my customary 2-4 months

A security upgrade broke one of the enhancements I loaded. This prevented new threads from being posted to the forums the enhancement was NOT applied to(it worked on the one forum I originally added it to - go figure).
 
Sorry the delays and problems,
 
Spencer

A very Merry Christmas to everyone at ATIS.  I think one of the lines from my favorite hymn/carol says it all:

Darkness flies, all is bright.

The season stands for the idea that indeed darkness flies, hope is renewed and that God is at hand and among us; real and not temporal.   That which constricts us, the fear the paralyzes us, the sadness of horrible tragedies and missing loved ones; gossip and recrimination's and strong headwinds we encounter in our daily lives are all borne away on the wings of a new child borne in mean estate.  This compels us to see the world half full instead of half empty and to rest our fears, suspicions and anger toward each other.  Those that know me probably realize I am no great Christian, but when I hear that the host of heaven appeared to the shepherds proclaiming:  "Be not afraid, for I bring you glad tidings of great joy", I take notice and find peace, if only for a night.

May great joy follow you and yours this holiday season,

Spencer Yost
ATIS

Hope enjoy this new service at ATIS.   I'll be adding many new forums in the next weeks or so, including a couple this week.  Please stay tuned, and enjoy!
 
Spencer Yost