TLS server move progress thread

[Cthulhu]

So, this morning I fucked around with the new server, and right now I believe I have the webserver set up so it'll work - installed Apache, PHP, MySQL, made mod_rewrite work, and installed a barebones version of Wordpress to see if it works - see http://95.211.43.58.

I'm currently doing two things:

1. Get a backup of TLS to do a 'dry run' of transferring everything over. Our site has grown too large for Hostgator's automatic backup thing to work, so we need support for that.

2. Transfer the domain name over to my personal account again, instead of having hostgator control it. This involves needing Hostgator support to unlock the domain name and the new registrar (transIP.nl) to pull it to them. Nothing should change for you guys though.

Once 1 and 2 are done and accounted for, I'll lower the TTL of the domain name - basically how often the domain name is resolved to an IP address, to avoid having to wait up to three days for the server switch, and once that's ready, I'll 'close' the site on the new host, switch the domain name over, wait until that's done and a sufficient amount of people are seeing the closed message, then do a final transfer of the database.

Alternatively, I shut down the forum here, set the domain name transfer in motion, and start the move right away. It kinda depends on how fast that goes.

If everything goes right, we can transfer the site over somewhere next week. I'll probably do it during my vacation between xmas and new year though.

I'll also see to tweaking the shit out of the server - install memcached, optimize the server, rape everything and pretty much do everything we weren't able to while we were on shared hosting.

Another thing I'd really like to see work is to use nginx, an alternative to apache but much more modern and faster, to serve static files. Dunno if that would give benefit to the users, but it's much better on the server side (uses less resources, allows more simultaneous connections etc).

 

[Cthulhu]

Just installed the PHP APC module, a php opcode cache that basically makes executing PHP scripts way faster by not reading the files and executing them all the time. That's probably on on the current host anyways, so it's a basic required thingy to make everything not suck.

'ave some opcode caching stats if you're a geek: http://95.211.43.58/apc.php

Should probably hide stat pages like that behind a login or something though. I don't see the harm in keeping that one public though.

 

[AvecAloes]

You rock, Yop. I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say 'thank you' for seeing to it that our collective geek need for TLS is properly satiated.

 

[Cthulhu]

FYI, if the site goes b0rken tonight, it's my fault. I just accepted the domain name transfer from Hostgator's registrar to one under my more direct control. It shouldn't have an effect on the site, seeing that the domain name will still point to the same server, but one may never know.

 

[Tifabelle]

I have no idea what any of this means, but yay!

 

[Cthulhu]

For those that experienced problems accessing the site in (about) the last nine hours, that was the domain name registrar transfer finishing. I had figured that the DNS records would be retained after the move, but apparently not. So for a while, the domain thelifestream.net pointed to a generic 'this domain is reserved' page. I just pointed the domain back to the proper IP address (Hostgator's servers), and at least for me, it's working again.

I already feel better now that we have control over our own domain name via an independent party.

Next up, I'm downloading the backup that was made a couple of days ago (9 GBs) and will try and install that on the new server. It'll mainly be copying around data though, which might take a while. Should see if I can strip some stuff out of it we don't need.

 

[Cthulhu]

Right, finally got to things today. Figured out how to send the backup to the new server - a commandline tool called SCP gives one the powerz to upload stuff over a secured SSH connection, so I don't need to set up FTP for that. I probably should set up FTP on the new server though, for the site staff to upload stuff to.

Lessons learned so far:

1. Remove non-critical files (like personal backups, lol ) from the TLS FTP before getting a back-up
2. Download the back-up straight to the new server instead of first downloading them to my PC, then re-upload them again - on my current line, I'm getting about 10 MB per minute uploaded; the database backup alone is 2 GB, so that'd take about 200 minutes = 3 hours to upload. Downloading straight to it could be faster, depending on how fast I can download stuff with the new server.

Additionally, I could download the backup, import the database file into a local MySQL instance and remove the optional tables, like cache tables and shit. But eh.

Thinking about how to do this if it all works. What would you guys prefer:

* Losing posts made after a certain time
* The forum being taken offline for a while (probably... up to 24 hours, depending on how fast the support guys respond to my request for backup, the upload / install duration, my sleeping hours and the DNS change).

 

[Fangu]

Option 2. What's the point of having the forum up if the posts will just vanish once the new server is up and the old version is gone? Just set a time (in GMT) for going down and coming back, so we know when and why, and this will be all peachy

 

[Ⓐaron]

Yep, option two is the best way to handle things.

 

[Joker]

Two.

 

[Ryushikaze]

Two. WITH a notification when it happens.

Will 2 also affect the homepage when you make the move?

 

[Cookie Monster]

Option two all the way. We can keep Doc and the gals in good company on FFOF again.

 

[Cthulhu]

Two. WITH a notification when it happens.

Will 2 also affect the homepage when you make the move?

Nah, only that comments made during the move will not be transferred. The frontpage only gets a fraction of the comments of the forums anyway.

 

[Ryushikaze]

Nah, only that comments made during the move will not be transferred. The frontpage only gets a fraction of the comments of the forums anyway.

Good, because I figured we would announce our downtime publicly when we're about to make the move, and forestall freakouts and the like.

 

[Cthulhu]

Yeah.


Also, huu huu huu, spend all afternoon copying files over to the new server, figure out there's not a database dump in there. Requested, will try that tomorrow.

 

[AvecAloes]

Door number 2, please.

 

[Cthulhu]

Right, fuck it, going to do the move today, see http://thelifestream.net/site-news/11658/tls-moving-to-a-new-host-again/.

I'm still doing the dry run, but I don't expect any problems yet. I'll go to the gym in a bit and start the move after that.

 

[Cthulhu]

Dry run... well, worked good enough, . It showed some default Wordpress site instead of TLS, but that's probably because I left some stuff behind from my test installation. I'm confident it'll work and any problems I will be able to fix.

 

[Cthulhu]

i maek poast

 

[Cthulhu]

And it seems we're back! woo

 

[Tifabelle]

hey look at me! I'm on TLS! woo! *throws confetti*

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Huzzah!!!

(Are you already updating the frontpage poast?)



X

 

[Cthulhu]

Going to tweak a setting (APC, the PHP caching business), two flips:

1. Set TTL to 0; never removes cached .php scripts from memory unless the webserver restarts.
2. Set stat to 0, which should give another performance boost / page load speed increase, as the default setting (1) will check whether every file executed has been changed on the file system, every time.

You may experience a hiccup as the server restarts in 3, 2, 1...

edit: huu huu, it might actually work. Page generation time for this page (for example) is down to 0.08749 seconds.

...I forgot what it was on the old host though. Also, the forums home page still takes anywhere between 0,5 and 5 seconds to load. I'm pretty sure it's due to the shit stats thing at the bottom though.

 

[Masamune]

And we're back.

 

[Cthulhu]

Still tweaking. Now adjusted some webserver settings to speed up things client-side, mainly to keep the page speed analysis tools from whining. Some tweaks:

* Enabled gzip compression for text-based files such as css and JS. It was already enabled (apparently) for normal files
* Disable some unused headers (etag, pragma) (tiny differences, just a few bytes per request. But hey.)
* Set some expiry headers for static files such as images (for stylesheets etc), so browsers cache them better. Bollocks:

        FileETag None
        Header unset ETag
        ExpiresActive on

        <FilesMatch "\.(ico|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|swf)$">
                ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year"
                Header set Cache-Control "public"
                Header unset Pragma
        </FilesMatch>

Will fuck around with it a bit more, fgj.