mdoyle's blog

I miss FreeBSD

My ISP wants me to run openSuSE Linux instead of FreeBSD on our hosted server. It took me a while to get used to administering Apache/PHP/Drupal based sites on openSUSE rather than FreeBSD because SuSE and linux in general keeps config files in many different places. That's OK, as long as the documentation is good. I must confess that I much prefer the FreeBSD handbook to the OpenSuSE documentation. I find it hard to navigate my way around the OpenSuSE site, and too many wiki pages are empty stubs.

Disaster Recovery

While everyone else in Co-operation Ireland is getting ready to help with Maracycle, I've been stress-testing our disaster recovery mechanisms. The good news is no data was lost. The bad news is that recovery takes longer than expected, but I still recovered two computers in one working day.

Scenario One:
Laptop has close encounter with a beverage container. Beverage emerges as clear victor.

[IT] Server Migration

We're setting up a new web server at the moment. If things look a little strange from time to time, please bear with us.

Oracle purchase of Sun to proceed

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8213425.stm
 
Looks like the deal whereby Oracle is to purchase Sun is going ahead. (Probably only of interest to it people, but Sun make both Java and MySQL, as well as being a hardware company.)

Calling all facebook users: support us

If you are a facebook user, why not show your support for Co-operation Ireland on your facebook profile? There are three things you can do.

Software updates

If you visit our website(s) this morning, you may encounter a "site offline" message, because I am updating the installed versions of various software packages and modules on the server.
The nice thing about using Drupal is how easy this process is compared to how it used to be back when we had "rolled our own" solution to a content management system many years ago.

New Operating systems...

Later this year, there will be two new operating systems available.

Microsoft are going to release Windows 7, and it looks good. (I have downloaded the release candidate and installed it on a computer. While I need to test it a bit more, I do think I will be happier with it than I am with Vista.)

Apple also have the next iteration of OS X almost ready for release. I havent used a pre-release version of "snow leopard", but the reviews look good.

Of course, OS X only works on Apple computers, but it also will cost a lot less.

Building Websites

If you are a regular visitor to any of the Co-operation Ireland websites, you have probably noticed by now that changes are afoot. Since the start of the year we have been working with a team of designers in Belfast (the nice guys in Liquid Ice Design ) to re-design all our websites.

New blog site

Welcome to the Co-operation Ireland staff blog site.

We will use this site to allow our staff to communicate in an informal method with you, our participants.

Please note that while you are allowed to post comments on our blog entries, these do need to be 'approved' before anyone other than our staff members can see them.