This is another one of those posts where I talk and then beg for help. As Cian mentioned in a previous blog post, we’re working on moving apache off deathray (poor, overworked little soul) and onto murphy (hopelessly underutilised monster server). It’s going quite well for the most part. We’ve received reports that the multithreaded architecture (with bucketloads of RAM) can handle high loads beautifully, and hopefully this may also make our other services a bit more stable too, as deathray will be far less prone to load spikes and things. There’ll also be a bunch of other benefits like no more PHP hash line requirements, etc.

We’ve run into a snag, though. The MySQL client library available for the SPARC platform has an incredibly annoying bug. Basically, it crashes out when you specify the SQL server by hostname, and only works if you specify it by IP. This is a problem, because it will cause every PHP and Perl script on redbrick that uses the recommended “mysql.internal” to connect to the database server to suddenly not work. What we want to know is, have any of our members ever come across this bug before (at work, for example), and if so, did you ever find a work around? Have any of you ever gotten MySQL to work on any SPARC platforms (with Linux)? We’ll love you long time if you have.

Aside from that, things have been coming along smoothly (ish). We’re about to begin preliminary planning for the software upgrades on the twins (carbon and deathray), and we’ve been working on getting the entire Redbrick system thoroughly documented for the first time in years. Hopefully this will lead to a shorter incubation/learning/noobing everything up period for incoming admins (the poor things), and will just make life easier for the ones that are there already. The new encom backup machine (severus) is up and running, and there are just a few glitches to be worked out before we consider it “production ready” and move it to CSD’s server room. That way if the hub ever gets hit by an asteroid, at least your Redbrick home directory will be safe.

Happy New Year everybody,

-Andrew (the other one)