[royce]

Like real, I do this for a living let go of my ears I know what I am doing server person?

Preferably dealing with some kind of *nix on a web server, that doesnt mind being abused for info

[ball]

Can your host help you out at all?

I have unmanaged servers but the host still helps when I need help. I don't get instant access or phone support but they are pretty quick still, especially if it help reduce server load.

[royce]

what type of hosting do you use and who with?

the next step up power wise goes to pretty barebones stuff, that they can setup for a fee but it would be nice to have an idea first

[TZAR]

Calling 93GQ, your best mate needs you.











Waits for a banning.

[ball]

I use http://asmallorange.com/

I think I still have 3 shared servers with them. I don't have a lot of stuff any more. I let all the adult ones die when the Aussie dollar took of. It was costing me shitloads to cash overseas cheques.

I have a small forum for the karts and a couple of club websites.

Nothing like the traffic that is generated here.

Shoot them an email with what you have now and they should be able to recommend something.

[Fatzook]

TZAR wrote:

Calling 93GQ, your best mate needs you.











Waits for a banning.

Ohhhhhh

[drewhoo]

I work in sys admin at my uni (also study software engineering there). When it comes to web (maybe 20% of my work), I usually do php programming, but still know my way around webservers, apache, linux etc. Reading your other thread it looks like you are looking to upgrade because CPU load is maxing out. If by bare-bones upgrade you mean they can give you standard admin ssh access to a linux box with nothing configured, setting up a LAMP (linux, apache, mysql, php) install is easy (i've done it) then porting the phpbb install over is also easy (my experience in phpbb is limited but I could catch up). You can even put a cpanel style interface in for easy install of phpbb, stats tracking etc, but not really necessary.

I don't know what measures you guys have taken, or your traffics stats. The obvious would be to tweak phpbb first, but sounds like you have... Do you have access to httpd.conf (apache)?, try reducing timeout, maxconnection or rlimitcpu. Do you have ssh access? Running the 'top' cmd will help you figure out if it is php, mysql or apache causing the load. There are a few modules that help with optimisation that dont come installed by default too, I could look into it, depends how cooporative your host will be in installing them.

I think if you are having trouble with your host locking the entire website out, it would be good to look into a short term method of running your own lockout mechanism that kicks in before the host's. It'll work much the same way, throwing a static error page to the user, but means you wont have to get the host to unlock you every time.

I dont have decades of experience (I am only 23!) tho usually for programming if I don't know the answer, I know someone who can tell me it.

...but when it comes to modding and fixing my jimny I know jack shit, and all my friends have pootrols so thats why I come here.

Cheers,
Drew

[royce]

I think youve given us more info in that post than everything ive googled or been told so far!

I think we wont be able to tweak enough to get under our current limit (we hit 100% CPU 4 times last night alone) but changing to a virtual server sounds like we might be left in the cold with regards to setting it up.

Our host has since said they are able to set it up so we get cpanel (which we are familiar with) and migrate everything for next to nothing so we might just be ok but I am still going to go through your post and try and learn what it all means

[drewhoo]

Ok, the offer from your host sounds like a good one, I would jump at that - migration is a job that can be a huge shitstorm, let them deal with it if you can...

If that fell through and you were given a virtual server with bare shell (ssh) access, dont let it scare you off, I would be happy to [help/do] setup. Realise you probably live in qld as does most of this forum, but this stuff can be done together with skype/teamviewer.

If you can PM me the hosting company, and what plan AZ is currently on, I will have a much better idea of what can be done now and how good the upgrade is. It doesn't look like you have ssh access currently (at least not on auszookers.com:22, the standard port) so much of what I described above cannot be done. You should get this with a virtual server.

Also, aside, I notice all the advertising is gone from the new forum. Theres dollars to be made in google ad's etc which people are used to, and will pay for higher plans. I know that steve? is working on a new banner system, but its only a few minutes to drop some google ads in there in the meanwhile and make a few hundred. Again, I don't know your traffic stats but I have an AZ sticker and feel the few dollars I paid for it wasn't much help to the funds

Anyway, feel free to pick my brains. send me an email or whatever, its no problem

[royce]

From what I have gathered so far, we get a server with an OS on it and have to work from there
further googling says once you install cpanel (this is an extra cost but that doesnt matter) it takes care of the 'lamp' stuff
migrating from cpanel to cpanel is pretty straight forward and the host will do that anyway

It sounds too easy, but I cant find any holes in the process, yeah ssh is disabled, I think it can be turned on but on a shared plan I dont know what we could do with it.
Along with what you have said and further googling it doesnt seem as complex as it did, I need to find out more about altering httpd.conf and if it could give us any useful gains right now

Banners, stickers, hats etc will come back once we are 100% stable, its more important to keep it running right now
a few dollars from lots of people is what helps, along with people that keep putting stickers on teh windscreen of their Sierra and then rolling it so they need to buy more

[drewhoo]

If you were to edit httpd.conf you still need access to restart the service (httpd daemon) before the changes are enacted. This temporarily (a few seconds) puts all websites offline. Being on a shared plan, I suspect you wont be able to do that either. You can override apache (httpd.conf) config per-folder using .htaccess files, but the administrators needs to have "AllowOverride" set to "on" in httpd.conf.

Sounds like you have it sorted, they install cpanel and the lamp and migrate your stuff. Building web servers on linux is very common and easy, mostly automated and a few minutes worth of effort - for your setup, there is no custom configuration, so don't expect there to be any holes

[royce]

It 'appears' easy, I always get worried when something you dont know a lot about appears easy cause it usually means youve not really understood it at all

I might have a fiddle with it on a spare PC for giggles and try and understand it anyway

[GRPABT1]

I knew I shouldn't have come in here, I'm scared and confused.

[drewhoo]

If you can't be arsed setting it up on a second pc, you can always use virtualbox etc. Anyway, pm me if you want some more understanding on anything

[Chop]

royce wrote:

Banners, stickers, hats etc will come back once we are 100% stable, its more important to keep it running right now
a few dollars from lots of people is what helps, along with people that keep putting stickers on teh windscreen of their Sierra and then rolling it so they need to buy more

Could we have a paypal donate button like I've seen on a few forums, to help out with running cost?

[Shansh]

i reckon this would be a go

[Daz7]

I run a forum for Lotus 7 replica's

http://www.ozclubbies.com.au

We had growing pains similar to this forum with bandwidth. We also had problems with a member that offered to provide hosting for nix but when he lost interest wouldn't offer back the forum or its data (because everyone wants a go at hosting stuff for some reason). I ended up shifting to an ipboard hosted solution.

Your monthy cost involves hosting, software and upgrades and initial migration (they handle the lot) - total cost per month $29.99 US - bandwidth is fairly free but if your pushing it every month they suggest you go up to the next hosting plan. We have 2000 members and a lot are retired so spend all day online so tend to go through a bit.

Apart from a couple of glitches its be quite trouble free and apart from approving members and the normal forum housekeeping its a no brainer. I ask for donations from members and their more than happy to throw in what they consider its worth to them. Ends up money isn't an issue.

Just another option to consider.

[royce]

OK obviously we haved moved over and it all seemed to work ok, so now I need to work on a backup strategy

I have daily incremental backups setup on the server and will see what this ends up looking like sizewise but I need to come up with a way to get it off the server to somewhere else easily and not using heaps of bandwidth

I can access the backups via SFTP, is there anything I can run on my Windows server at home to tell it to connect to the webserver, grab the latest file and copy it over?

[Buddies72]

Server is running very well now, much more responsive from a user perspective, well done.

You should be able to script the download on your windows box.

simply create the batch file to grab the backup file/s, then schedule the batch file to run at preset times/intervals.

What windows server are you running at home?

Here's a link to a forum discussing how to use a batch file for ftp from XP/Vista, you would need to use the GET command instead of PUT

http://nixcraft.com/windows-xp-2000-2003-server-administration/12018-windows-ftp-upload-script-scheduled-job.html

There are plenty of programs out there that can do the whole thing for you, but anything that I have found that supports scheduling requires a purchase (after 30 day trial)

Hope this helps.

[Buddies72]

Another example script site (NT Based but should be very close to current versions of windows server)

http://ss64.com/nt/ftp.html

[royce]

I think the backups its making are huge might have to find some kind of onilne storage mob to shift it too

I have WHS2011 which is server 2008 underneath, I found WinSCP can have a script made up to sync the backup folder which might do it but I reackon ill have to sort out the backup size first

[Buddies72]

Windows Servers can use a protocol/service called Distributed File System. It allows you to keep large files up-to-date at remote sites, copying only the chunks of data that have changed (4k chunks). It cuts down a lot on bandwidth usage for off-site backups etc. I think Volume Shadow Copy can use something similar also, although I have never used it.

Not sure whether this can be done with Linux boxes or not, but you should be able to, I just don't know what it's called.

[royce]

yay more googling!!!!