Posted by Jim on Sunday......
Yup, the entire system was down hard yesterday. We couldn’t even reach it remotely. It’s like we had no system at all, no DNS, nothing. John had to drive up to the data center to restart and debug it. After rebooting, he had to do some major diagnostic and forensic work, some debugging and network systems work, and finally got it up again.
Don’t know exactly what the error was that brought it down, probably a combination of things. We had a particularly nasty DOS attack last week and the system has not been fully up to speed since. Don’t want to start any conspiracy theories, but someone could be messing with us. Got a nagging feeling that not all the people of the world love us.
John will continue researching, refining and beefing up our systems and security. And we’ll also be ordering some new equipment that will help us recover remotely. We now have twelve separate servers up there and keeping them all running, all on the network and all synchronized is a bit of a chore. The next major hardware upgrade we make will include a replacement of all these separate boxes into one unit where the various processors are on boards that just plug into a big box. And when the big box is filled up, we can simply add another big box and continue plugging in more processor boards as needed. That should handle our growth to a few million concurrent users. After that, we’ll have some serious hardware growth issues to contend with.
We’ll also be exploring an offshore account somewhere, perhaps a mirror site for maximum redundancy, and maybe some underground networking. We’ll be encouraging a comeback of the local chapter networking system and encouraging our members to exchange email addresses and phone numbers with trusted chapter or group members.
On the personal side, I am fairly well. Still have the infection in my lower right leg and they’re treating it, but we can’t seem to get rid of it. But we’re managing. Just praying it doesn’t get worse and they won’t have to amputate it too. My blood sugar is under control. Diet and the pills are keeping it in the “good” range. Don’t have to use insulin. They’re also giving me pills for circulation, blood pressure, cholesterol, various dietary supplements and minerals and vitamins. They’ve discontinued the antibiotics. I take enough pills daily to choke a horse.
I have regained much of my strength and I’m now able to sleep at night. I can attend to most of my personal needs but still need quite a bit of Chris’ help with some things, like dressing, for example. I can now transfer myself to and from bed and in and out of the driver’s seat of the van and I can drive. This gives us some independence.
Sheila, John and Chris are all well.
Thank you all very much for hanging in there with us. We must all hang together or surely we’ll hang separately.
God bless.
207 posted on Sunday, November 09, 2008 1:40:29 PM by Jim Robinson (We ARE the dissent, baby
At least I know what is going on.
Jim, I'll presume to speak for most FReepers and say that we'll do whatever you need to help keep the site up and running. In the coming dark days we won't be attacked just by open methods like the Unfairness Doctrine--all kinds of surreptitious methods, like attacking FR's servers and network, will be used by our enemies as they attempt to destroy our liberty and turn us into slaves of the state.