Bewildering Stories Editorial

Computer Hell

by Jerry Wright

Well if it ain't one thing, it's another. The last few months have been traumatic here at the old Network Center of Bewildering Stories. Once upon a time, I had Bewildering Stories all backed up on a pretty new computer. I was intending (as soon as I got a few bugs fixed) to migrate BwS over to this new server and get off the old one. The old one was a bit slow, and besides was busy doing a lot of other things and had an older version of Slackware Linux as the Operating System. Not that I have anything against Slackware, just the opposite, but now we're at Version 10.2 and it's time to upgrade. Only the hard drive of the backup server crashes and burns (metaphorically only, please).

So... I have this brand new server I'm configuring up in Kelowna B.C. and its a doozy. Only I'm having minor problems with "server side includes" which are a critical part of how the BwS webpages are served.

Yeah, but when the original BwS went south, you moved everything over to a new server, right? And it works, right?

Only kinda... After I got EVERYTHING (not just the BwS stuff) up and configured, the server would occasionally just... go away. Researching the problem I find that... (Drum Roll...)

The hard drive is going bad.

This is 4 hard drives in three months.

So I have to rebuild the server that BwS was sitting on and get the various critical subsystems up and running (DNS, sendmail, radius for those of you who are interested) as well as move and get operational all of BwS. Fortunately, the forum is now on a totally separate server, and with any "luck" as it were, should be totally unaffected by everything.

Still, I am reminded of the phrase, "To err is human. To really foul things up requires a computer."

Thank you, and goodnight.

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