I upgraded the server yesterday. I upped the memory to 1.75 gigs and upgraded the system to OS X server 10.5. The memory upgrade was a snap. The server upgrade wasn't quite so easy. First, there was a problem with the primary hard disk. So I installed the system on the backup. The installation took over an hour.

Then I needed to reconfigure all of the paths in the Frontier server to point to the new drive. Over 6000 paths and enough missing addresses that a simple search and replace wouldn't do. Fortunately, I was able to remotely connect to the server and didn't have to spend the 3 hours to get the Frontier sites up in the server farm. I also wrote a script that did most of the work.

So the Frontier sites are back up. My WordPress weblog is still down as are a number of static sites running off the server. I am pretty sure that I just need to configure the new instance of mySQL to get my weblog running. The static sites will take a bit more time, since they are affected by the disk problem mentioned above. Of course since the hardware is 6 years old, replacement drives are limited. I can spend over $600 for a 500 gig drive, which is more than a little overkill in replacing a 60 gig drive. I suppose that if I go that route, I won't have to worry about backups for a while.

On the plus side, the server is much more responsive and all my client sites are running.

Posted by Tom Clifton on 4/5/08; 7:44:29 AM from the Hosting dept.  #