Zebra server is currently being software updated, some downtime possible.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
EDIT: Update complete, should be fine now.
Category: Site news
Sorry for the downtime, hosting provider did some maintenance and it seems that not all services were restarted correctly on boot.
Should be fine now.
Raspis (raspis.ddscentral.org) server software is being updated, some downtime is possible.
EDIT: update complete. Everything should be fine now.
I’ve recently upgraded my home connection to Gigabit fiber (1000 mbps down /500 mbps up) and, since I now have 500 mbps of upload bandwidth, I’ve set up a new server.
https://zebra.ddscentral.org/
Since this server has faster upstream connection that that of Raspis, I’ll probably move some of my stuff from Raspis to this new server in near future.
Server specs for those interested:
CPU: Intel G4600
RAM: 4 GB DDR4
NIC: 3x Realtek Gigabit NICs (separate NICs for Router, Internet and IPTV)
Storage: 6 HDDs, approx 3.33 TB of storage.
EDIT: Speedtest (that’s with IPTV and some other stuff running).
Again, I forgot to make a new year post… Dammit.
Let’s start with some good news first. I bought myself a Raspberry Pi 3 for Christmas.
Bought it without a case, because I wanted to buy a Kodi edition FLIRC case for it.
Now, the fun part. There are 2 suppliers of this case: The Pi Hut in the UK and FLIRC (the manufacturer) in the US.
I’m in the EU. Guess which supplier I’ve ordered from ? No, you guessed it wrong. I had to order it FROM THE USA, because the Pi Hut, despite all my attempts to convince them, refused to ship the case to my country, telling me some bull**it about too many lost parcels. Yeah, right… I’ve ordered from the UK dozens of times and had only one or two lost orders. If the US supplier CAN ship to the EU why can’t they ?
I had to wait 3 weeks for the case to arrive from the US (instead of just a week, had I ordered the case from the UK supplier). Had to run my Pi barebones during that time.
That was the good news.
———
The bad news is that the primary server is down again. But this time it seems it’s the server’s ISP (yes, an entire ISP) went offline, because their homepage and corporate page are both down too, not even DNS works. WTF ?
Will update on this.
EDIT: it seems everything is back online now. Downtime lasted about an hour.
Another year of our existence has passed. Was it a good year or a bad one – you decide. Let’s hope the next year will be better than the previous one. But I think every year should have it’s dose of good things and bad things. That’s what makes life interesting.
Happy 2016 everyone !
Now, the actual news.
I normally would never write bad things in a new years post, but this year, I’ll make an exception.
My G751JY suprised me this Christmas… by dropping dead. No boot, just 1 minute of fan humming and then automatic poweroff. Tried removing all parts I could access by removing the bottom cover – didn’t help (didn’t want to go further to avoid losing warranty). BIOS recovery didn’t help either. I suspect it’s a mainboard failure.
I had this lappy for only 3 months and it died… Dammit ASUS, I really expected better build quality from a high-end laptop costing 1.7K €!!! I RMA’ed the lappy and waiting for it to be repaired.
Didn’t even have the chance to test my new SM951. I did ask the service center to make sure the replacement board has the M.2 slot (I know some later G751JY models lack it). I’d really hate to have to return my SM951 due to lack of a slot.
Now I’m thinking about buying a warranty extension. This lappy costs 1.7K € and only has a 2 year warranty. I definitely would NOT want to trash that system after only 2 years !
The server on which SSL and some of my work is hosted appears to have crashed. Currently, my SSL blog and my Android builds are unreachable.
I’ll try to fix the server ASAP, but there’s little I can do right now (it’s 2 AM here). Will need to think of something tomorrow. Will update when there are any news.
UPDATE: I’ve uploaded my last Android x86 build here:
http://ddscentral.org/pub/downloads/android-x86/
UPDATE: Server back online.
Finally updated the site to the latest version of WP. I did retain the old theme (even though Theme Check doesn’t like it..) and all other content that was on the old site, except maybe for minor changes to sidebar and footer.
I have also setup an SSL mirror, for those who feel better browsing my site using SSL. It can accessed using the link below (redirects to the actual site):
I will try to keep the mirror and the main site synced so they should contain exactly the same content (remind me if I forget to, dds[alpha]ddscentral.org).
Just to clarify, I have not yet abandoned my blog (even though I didn’t post anything for nearly 6 months).
Lots of things have changed since I last posted, so I won’t post detailed info, just a short summary:
1. Upgraded storage space on my NAS to 2 TB (250GB + 750GB + 2x 500GB)
2. Got a HDTV, a 42″ LG.
3. Got a Raspberry Pi (model B with 256MB RAM). Currently use it with OpenELEC as a mini HTPC with my TV (TV remote works fine with XBMC).
4. Got a RGH’ed Xbox 360 S with 250GB HDD and 320GB external HDD for games (couldn’t get Linux to boot though, no Xell video support for Corona boards).
5. Converted a 16GB flash drive to a portable USB toolbox with Debian Linux and custom Windows 7 PE, mostly for doing backups and reinstalling Windows 7 using ImageX.
I still fix PCs in my free time. Most frequent problems I encounter:
1. Damaged Windows installations. Usually I don’t bother fixing them and just do a full reinstall (with backup of old data if requested).
2. Busted hard drives. Ranging from bad sectors to click of death. The only fix is to replace the HDD and do a Windows reinstall.
3. Busted laptop video cards (mostly bad Nvidia chips). Only possible fixes are to either reflow or replace GPU. I don’t service such laptops, because I don’t have proper equipment nor skills to do it.
4. Bad capacitors, mostly on PSUs, mainboards or video cards (even had single bad cap on a mainboard kill a nice 8800GTX card). In this case, I either send affected components to a local computer shop for a re-cap or just replace them.
That’s all for now.
The recent weblog downtime was my own fault.
My host has moved the site to a new server and I forgot to update “A” record on my DNS provider (I use separate providers for hosting and DNS) so ddscentral.org still pointed to the old IP.
If you are reading this, the IP is already updated and everything should be OK from now on.