Now that should have been that, but when the server was up and running again, I found that MySQL was pretty much dead. And I couldn’t fix it right away, had to go to work. So when I got home tonight, I jumped right on it.

Turned out that MySQL had some corrupt files, so I fixed them, but it was still behaving pretty buggy. I couldn’t even get it to check or repair my tables, so I did that with myisamchk. Still no luck.

Because I was more concerned with getting my site back online than figuring out what the heck was wrong with MySQL, I decided to take the quick ‘n’ dirty approach: I just reinstalled the thing. A little drastic (and Windows’ish, as a friend pointed out ), I know, but at least it worked and was indeed quick.

So why didn’t I feel like upgrading? Well, ever since I got into managing my own servers, I always preferred Debian for its proven stability, especially in the “stable” branches. However, that stability comes with a price. More often than not, software packages are seriously outdated, especially in the older-than-current releases (Etch for instance). Upgrading to Lenny will probably upgrade most software to a somewhat more recent version, but it would probably still be lagging at least months behind in most cases.

Then, there’s the fact that I’ve become increasingly interested in using the newer features of software, especially those found in PHP 5.3. Playing with all that new stuff in my local testing environment is all fun and dandy, but soon or later, one might want to publish a creation or two. Having a server capable of running those creations helps.

So, I’m currently looking for a new Linux distro, which is somewhat more up-to-date than Debian. Preferably something with a rolling release system. I want updates when they’re ready, not when a release schedule says it’s time. I also want a bare-bones base system and then add the desired packages myself. When installing Debian and selecting to install packages for a “web server”, it installs all sorts of stuff one would rarely need. Or simply tings one would rather choose a different program for. I just want a bare-bones system with only what’s needed to run and a package manager that handles dependencies for me.

I’ve been playing around with Arch Linux for some time, and I like it. It complies with all my wishes as mentioned above, it’s lean, it’s a rolling release system, and has an elegant package manager that does its job well. Configuration is a bit more labour intensive than Debian (less automated), but since setting up a server is mainly a one-time process, that’s not really a problem.

I’m not fixed on Arch. I’m also planning to try out some BSD variants, and perhaps some other Linux distros. Trying out and playing with new OS’s is a rather time consuming activity, though. Luckily, I have some more free time available lately. I’m not expecting to have this server running another OS in the next couple of weeks, but I should get around to it in the following month or three.

Then, as a final note, there’s also the new layout for this web site that I’m contemplating. I made a mockup recenly, but it only showed I had a lot of thinking things through ahead of me.

I’m not exactly sure what to do with the laptop that was MemoryAlpha. It’ll probably find some use elsewhere. Or I could always sell it or so.

If you see this post, that means that your DNS is up to date and you got this page from the new server.

Right now, this site sits quite comfortably on a shared hosting account. However, shared hosting has its limits, and with a virtual machine (a so-called Virtual Private Server), I have root access so I can do with it whatever I want. And it comes with its own IP address, so I can finally set up secure (HTTPS) access to my web site with the certificate I already own.

I’ll be spending the next few weeks setting everything up to replace my existing hosting account. Apache, PHP and MySQL are all running but still need to be configured properly. Then, I will also need a mail and DNS server, neither of which I have experience with. So I’ll have to look into that as well.

My current hosting account won’t expire before April 2009, so I’m confident that I have everything set up by then. Somewhere between now and then, this web site will move to the new server.

The specs of the VM are more than enough to even run Windows XP smoothly. For a server however, that doesn’t seem like a very good idea to me. So just like my home server, it runs Debian Etch.