Mikael's blog

A developers seventh time trying to maintain a blog

Tag #server

Server Maintenance of 2013 | August 18, 2013 at 10:42

My server mostly keeps to itself, chugging along in my apartment storage space, but sometimes I order new parts for it. One such part was the picoPSU I bought several months ago to replace my totally overkill 650W PSU. Essentially, I wanted to replace this: ![Really big PSU](/img/upload/36848b40-cda9-4d89-b43b-7bc008126874.jpg) with this: ![Really tiny PSU](/img/upload/80e008fd-c6cf-4dc2-a8be-dc9bb1eea0ac.jpg) The Corsair TX-650 has worked without a hitch, but my server is an Atom D525 with a TDP of 12W and its only other hardware is an SSD. It seems like there would be some serious loss of power due to PSU inefficiencies on such small loads. The picoPSU on the other hand is a DC-DC PSU with an external brick rated for 120W loads, and it has proven much more efficient on smaller load

OMG New Certificates | February 6, 2013 at 14:09

One might wonder where I've been or what I've been up to these last couple of months. One would be right to wonder why I, so close to the one year anniversary of this blog, suddenly stopped writing. The truth is kind of embarassing. ## What did you do? I created a bunch of SSL certificates that were set to expire in a year (by not changing the default value). So here I was, wanting to write to you about building a robot, going to FOSDEM, hacking away at my blog etc, but I just couldn't. Well not in any easy way anyway. ## But isn't that an easy fix? My first thought was to generate new client certificates but that was when I realised that my server certificates had expired as well and my CA certificate had been lost in the [maintenance](http://lofjard.se/post/maintenance-in-progres

The Fabulous Pi | October 4, 2012 at 19:08

In March this year I took a great leap forward in performance when I [built my in-memory cache](http://lofjard.se/post/cache-me-if-you-can). It took my blog from a paltry 5 requests per second to a whooping 62 requests per second. Well, since then I've made some changes... ## The Replacement Since you already know [The Plan](http://lofjard.se/post/maintenance-in-progress), let's go ahead and talk a little about what the temp agency sent over; The Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is a $35 computer the size of a credit card. It comes with 2 USB ports, HDMI, 100 Mbit ethernet, a SD card reader for storage and it's powered by a cellphone charger. It's also quite similiar to the budget smartphone innards of yesteryear. The Raspberry Pi packs a 700 MHz ARM 11 processor and 256 MBytes of RAM.

Maintenance In Progress | September 30, 2012 at 17:49

I've embarked upon my mission to upgrade my server installation. It's probably going to take the better part of this week but I hope to be done by this weekend when my parents-in-law are coming to stay with us. Here's my todo-list as of now. 1. Find a temporary server to host the blog on while installing new stuff on <abbr title="Itty Bitty Server">IBS</abbr>. 1. Grab nearest piece of unused computer tech capable of running Linux. (Yay, my RaspberryPi) 1. Install Raspbian.<br/>(Since it's just a temporary server I didn't bother playing with Arch Linux ARM. Raspbian is what most people are using on their RPis so I figured it would have a decent repository of pre-compiled software.) 1. Install nginx. (This was easy, it was in the repos.) 1. Install CouchDB. (Again, in

Old But Not Dying | September 20, 2012 at 07:35

Tuesday the 25th of September 2012 marks my 30th birthday. Even though I might not be fresh meat anymore, I haven't forgotten about my blog. I've just been busy (raise your hand if you've heard that one before). ## The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Me... * I've been planning an article about my success in getting my laptop installed with Arch Linux on UEFI, but I've yet to complete it. * I've also redesigned the blog and it now looks like crap in Firefox. * I then fixed the Firefox bugs but have'nt gotten around to uploading them because of my next bullet point. * My server operating system/software stack is ooooold. :-) ## Planned maintenance My pretty little server <abbr title="Itty Bitty Server">IBS</abbr> is running Ubuntu Server 10.4 LTS. My original plan was to update it to 12.04

Cache Me If You Can | March 6, 2012 at 22:30

Today at work was "do-anything-but-work-day". It's a bit like Googles 20%, but instead of 20% it's more like <del>.0001%</del> <ins>.8%</ins> or something like that. It's was our first time and not that many people had a clear idea about what to do at first. I on the other hand had a mission all planned out. #### The Performance Degradation When I put the blog on the new server back in January, I noticed a [small decrease](http://lofjard.se/post/say-welcome-to-ibs) in performance. After a few tests I've realized that the CPU is the culprit. The Atom D525, while dual-core, at 1.6 GHz has roughly half the computational power of the Pentium M at 1.5 GHz, which was what my old server had under the hood. Node.js can make use to multi-core processors by starting more instances of itself, wh

Say welcome to IBS! | January 10, 2012 at 22:23

The blog is now up and running on the new server (called <abbr title="Itty Bitty Server">IBS</abbr>). I'm not totally retiring the laptop yet as I might need it when the next Ubuntu LTS hits. And I have yet to try out if it's the Atom processor that makes CouchDB run a little slower on the new machine or if it's a 64-bit/SMP issue. Anywhooo, I'm going to let it run for a few days to see if it's up to the task so there might be some issues, resulting in unexpected downtime, popping up in the coming week. Do not be alarmed! =)

Tinker Time | January 9, 2012 at 17:35

It has arrived! Now it's up to me to get this thing put together and installed with some tasty Linux/Node.js/CouchDB action. I also need to learn how to install Linux from an USB flash drive since I don't have any DVDs at home. I almost can't remember the last time I burned a DVD. I think it was roughly a year ago that I burned some photos I had taken at a friends wedding. And even then I had catch up on how to do it. I fondly remember the old days when one could burn 200+ CDs at a LAN party. I might have strayed a bit off topic now, so I will retire to my server build. I'll see you on the other side!

A New Home | January 6, 2012 at 11:51

I finally ordered a new server. It will probably take a few days to get it running (first I have to get the parts delivered), but at least I get to build a computer again. It was ages ago that I did my last build and I've never even touched an SSD or for that part anything using the SATA interface. That's how old I am; when I built my last computer, we all used IDE. The server computer is going to run my blog on a Linux OS somewhat similar to my current setup which means I don't need that much power. I think the most server load I've had on this blog so far is about 3 simultaneous requests, so I opted for small and quiet. ## The specs * ASUS AT5NM10T-I mainboard with an Intel Atom D525 CPU * Intel 320 Series 80 GB SSD * 2 sticks of 2 GB Kingston DDR3 RAM * Corsair TX V2 650W PSU * Lia

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