Lefthandedlayup

Day 2 of the big server move is highlighted by three issues.

1. Turns out php’s default 8mb allocation was the culprit when I was doing stuff like accessing wp-admin’s pages and it was returning white empty pages. I bumped it up to 16mb. and immediately, that wasn’t enough too. So I bumped it up to 24mb. and I haven’t heard a peep since.
2. Around this afternoon all the sites suddenly got MySQL errors of the highest order. Stuff I’ve never seen before, like tables loading but not fetching data (“mysql disappeared” messages) or the default “I cannot connect to the WP db are you sure your password / username is correct” sort of stuff, aside from getting bog slow after initially being lightning fast early on. After a quick support email it turned out the installed 160mb. RAM wasn’t enough to handle the load, and they offered me a 96mb. upgrade for a discounted extra $10.00 a month. I said YeeaAAayyy aLLelujaaaaAhh and they set it forth onto the server posthaste. Looks ok so far although I’ve received some complaints of slowness, so we’ll see.
3. Finally the biggest issue of all is DNS. And I mean 3rd party DNS and not my server DNS (thank God). After an hour or so of working on my sites, I try again and get 404 errors. After delving into it I realized I’ve been pointed back to my old server (!?!?!!). Yet another support email, and cause for alarm was raised, and they started asking me to check out stuff. After some settling down we both realized it was probably OpenDNS (which I use on my PC) maintaining an old record which pops up from time to time. Although I’m not particularly sure how and why that is, since I am dependent on that server it suddenly fetches the wrong record after the requisite 10 minute rotation. Now that is just plain weird. At any rate, the only solution is to just wait it out. I initially thought that it was some sort of failback issue, where it serves up a ‘second best’ record should the first one fail for some reason, but the tech support guys said DNS doesn’t work that way so that’s not it. I’m glad (although I was initially freaked) that it turns out the problem is confined to me. Which is freaky still in a way considering I’m it’s admin, and I’m the one having probs accessing it. Figures, right?

Anyway that’s it. I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. Tiring day, and the promise of another again tomorrow. Later then.

wish me luck!
update: as of 17:46 I’ve managed to upload everything, and finally changed the DNS entries to point to my new host. Although the recommended waiting period is 12 hours it should probably be ok before midnight. Meanwhile I’m gonna get a beer and rest a bit. That was a solid 8+ hours of work (off and on since 8am), delayed mostly by the length of time it takes to back up, transfer and activate my gargantuan databases. Crossing fingers.
update: woke up to work on it at 2am and at 4am, and finally 6am. By now, 835am, everything seems to be working normally. There were some issues with too little RAM allocated by php.ini. This did not allow some internal wp-admin pages to load, resulting in a white screen. I upped it to 16 which still wasn’t enough, and now to 24 and is now pending observation. LFTP’s mirroring was also not recursive, and did not migrate the directories write permissions, which is a drag, but not a complete disaster as there are only a few specific dirs that need tweaking. I needed to reload and re-cache my browser several times and reboot, and even removed the OpenDNS IPs which I use, then put them back again, and now finally I can see all the sites. Apparently I should have used rsync, but they (my host) put LFTP there for me so I thought that was the SOP. Anyway..

I’m really tired now. The sites look ok so far so I think I’ll go to sleep, after which I need to finish an article for SME Insight and get it in before lunch. I hope my editor doesn’t read this.

The last command I’ll enter, hopefully for awhile is:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Manila /etc/localtime, which results in: Mon May 21 08:55:09 PHT 2007. Now to zzzz.