LLRnet servers for NPLB

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by gd_barnes

I have some good news. I have no blown mobos and the problem with my machines was a simple power outage early Sat. evening.

Sherri has turned them all back on and did the "Start VCN server" thing on 8 of them including Crunchford. On the other 2, one was getting that stupid "analog input error" thing on the screen that I seem to have problems with from time to time (turning machine off and on usually gets rid of it but didn't this time) and on the other, after 2 attempts of unplugging the mouse from various places, she couldn't seem to get mouse access so it's sitting at the log on screen.

Max, with Crunchford on now, I tried accessing them remotely...no luck. I assume that you need to do some behind-the-scenes stuff so that I can access them. Can you take care of that as well as restarting ports GB4000 and GB8000? Thanks.

If you can do that, after about 3 AM EDT, I'll get my machines crunching again. I think I'll be able to finish the sieving by Weds. just before we'll need a new file for port IB8000.


Gary

Hmm...that's weird that you can't access them. I would think that as long as the "Start VNC Server" thing was run then it would be OK. I'll see what I can find out about it.

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

Hmm...that's weird that you can't access them. I would think that as long as the "Start VNC Server" thing was run then it would be OK. I'll see what I can find out about it.

Okay, I just tried connecting to crunchford and, believe it or not, it still appears to be offline. I can't access the http://nplb-gb1.no-ip.org/llrnet/ web page either. Both the SSH server and the web server are automatically run as system services on bootup, so as long as the system's on and connected to the internet, I should be able to access them even if there was no human intervention whatsoever after flipping the thing on.

One possibility that comes to mind: Gary, was your Windows desktop restarted as well, or just the Linux quads? Because it's quite likely that the power outage changed your IP address, and thus No-IP is ignorant of the change since it wouldn't have been updated since the outage. Yet, since your Windows desktop does the updates, if it wasn't restarted too, then No-IP might not know where to find your network. That would definitely fit the symptoms I'm seeing here.

[PCZ]

That dynamic IP is hurting you Gary.

1: Phone your ISP and tell them your on a business trip and you really need to VNC into your PC at home to get a document,
They can tel you which Public IP you are currently assigned, do not mention you have a Server.

2: Get somebody to browse to www.whatsmyip.org from any of your PC's and tell you the IP address displayed.

3: If you have any boxes currently running a client using IB's server he can do a netstat -a or the linux equivalent and look for IP's in your usual range,

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by PCZ

That dynamic IP is hurting you Gary.

1: Phone your ISP and tell them your on a business trip and you really need to VNC into your PC at home to get a document,
They can tel you which Public IP you are currently assigned, do not mention you have a Server.

2: Get somebody to browse to www.whatsmyip.org from any of your PC's and tell you the IP address displayed.

3: If you have any boxes currently running a client using IB's server he can do a netstat -a or the linux equivalent and look for IP's in your usual range,

How would that help? Finding out your *current* IP address is really easy; but then what about when the IP gets changed? Yeah, you can find out the new one just as easily, but then everyone would have to update their clients to that. That's why we use the dynamic DNS thing--so that it updates an easy-to-remember domain name (in this case, nplb-gb1.no-ip.org) automatically within minutes of an IP address change.

[PCZ]

True but right now you don't know what the IP is, i was suggesting ways to get round your immediate problem.

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by PCZ

True but right now you don't know what the IP is, i was suggesting ways to get round your immediate problem.

But, in order to find the IP, somebody would have to go to Gary's house from which to check a website such as whatismyip.org. And, it also wouldn't work to check David's servers since all of the machines' LLRnet clients have yet to be restarted (that's the first thing on the to-do list once access is regained).

Though, indeed, your suggestion about having Gary ask his ISP for the IP address might work...though I'm not sure even they could figure it out without having to have a tech take 10 minutes of his work time to try to make the system cough up Gary's IP address. Probably they would consider it a waste of their time and just say "use a dynamic DNS client" (which of course is what we're using already, though for obvious reasons it wouldn't help in the current situation).

Anyway, long story short: it looks like the only option in this case is to turn on Gary's desktop (or maybe just log it on? come to think of it, if it was turned on but not logged in, it probably wouldn't be able to update), which would update No-IP and let us get in--may as well check the IP at the same time just in case it's needed. Though, of course, all of this is assuming that the problem *is* indeed being caused by Gary's computer not updating No-IP like it should. It's quite possible that the lack of connectivity is being caused by some other, unknown reason (though I can't think of anything else that could cause such behavior off the top of my head).

[gd_barnes]

Oh my gawd! I can't believe this. I'm SO SO SO sick of this no-ip address stuff that I could scream. My Windows desktop has been down for 2 weeks because the hard drive crashed and I haven't had time to mess with replacing it and reloading the O.S., Office, Money, drivers, internet stuff, you name it. It's such a huge hassle that I haven't wanted to deal with it.

Obviously there is no way to turn my Windows desktop on but why does it have to be turned on? I thought we loaded the no-IP thing on a couple of my quads.

Let's completely forget about servers on my machines. Between power outages (which are relatively rare), blown mobos (which are relatively common), and IP address changes (which are relatively common), and who knows what else that may come up, they are just too unstable to use for public servers since I'm out of town so much.

Maybe this weekend, we can figure out how we want to transition my 2 servers over to David's servers. I don't want to deal with their problems anymore. Max, I'm sorry that it's not working out after you put in the work on them.

Unless you can figure something else out, my 10 quads will sit idle until Friday morning. I think I have the sieve file sieved to P=12.5T for loading into port IB8000. I'll get that taken care of early Tues. afternoon as well as starting a new drive thread for it.

What a bunch of bunk.

Sorry to rant but I had to get it out.


Gary

[PCZ]

So you have an uphill battle then.

The no ip dns client runs on a windows machine by the sound of it and doesn't run unti Gary logs in ?
That is something that can be easily fixed going forward by running it as a service.

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by gd_barnes

Oh my gawd! I can't believe this. I'm SO SO SO sick of this no-ip address stuff that I could scream. My Windows desktop has been down for 2 weeks because the hard drive crashed and I haven't had time to mess with replacing it and reloading the O.S., Office, Money, drivers, internet stuff, you name it. It's such a huge hassle that I haven't wanted to deal with it.

Obviously there is no way to turn my Windows desktop on but why does it have to be turned on? I thought we loaded the no-IP thing on a couple of my quads.

Let's completely forget about servers on my machines. Between power outages (which are relatively rare), blown mobos (which are relatively common), and IP address changes (which are relatively common), and who knows what else that may come up, they are just too unstable to use for public servers since I'm out of town so much.

Maybe this weekend, we can figure out how we want to transition my 2 servers over to David's servers. I don't want to deal with their problems anymore. Max, I'm sorry that it's not working out after you put in the work on them.

Unless you can figure something else out, my 10 quads will sit idle until Friday morning. I think I have the sieve file sieved to P=12.5T for loading into port IB8000. I'll get that taken care of early Tues. afternoon as well as starting a new drive thread for it.

What a bunch of bunk.

Sorry to rant but I had to get it out.


Gary

Hmm. I agree, in light of all this, we should definitely see about getting G4000 and G8000 transferred over to David's server once we get everything going again.

Regarding the No-IP client on the Linux machines: I installed it on crunchford, but I didn't set it to start up automatically. I probably *could* have set it to do so, but didn't think of it at the time.

Unfortunately, this means that indeed, most likely everything will end up sitting idle until you get back. The only other possibility would be to have Sherri go back and check your public IP (with the whatismyip.org web page that PCZ suggested) on one of your quads, and report that back to you. I could then get in remotely, start up the No-IP client on crunchford to make sure things keep getting updated, and then we could get everything started back up again.

[gd_barnes]

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

Hmm. I agree, in light of all this, we should definitely see about getting G4000 and G8000 transferred over to David's server once we get everything going again.

Regarding the No-IP client on the Linux machines: I installed it on crunchford, but I didn't set it to start up automatically. I probably *could* have set it to do so, but didn't think of it at the time.

Unfortunately, this means that indeed, most likely everything will end up sitting idle until you get back. The only other possibility would be to have Sherri go back and check your public IP (with the whatismyip.org web page that PCZ suggested) on one of your quads, and report that back to you. I could then get in remotely, start up the No-IP client on crunchford to make sure things keep getting updated, and then we could get everything started back up again.

OK, I've calmed down now. lol

I'd rather not inconvienence Sherri again. I'll see if I can get my mom or someone else to go over there and get my IP address.

One question: Does it have to be on Crunchford? I'm assuming not since it should be the same on all of them.

There is one way that I'd consider keeping the servers on my machines. That is if we could somehow set them to automatically come back on after a power outage as previously mentioned in this thread -and- that the no-IP thing automatically starts up too.


Gary

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by gd_barnes

OK, I've calmed down now. lol

I'd rather not inconvienence Sherri again. I'll see if I can get my mom or someone else to go over there and get my IP address.

One question: Does it have to be on Crunchford? I'm assuming not since it should be the same on all of them.

There is one way that I'd consider keeping the servers on my machines. That is if we could somehow set them to automatically come back on after a power outage as previously mentioned in this thread -and- that the no-IP thing automatically starts up too.


Gary

No, it doesn't have to be on crunchford--any machine on your network will do.

Regarding having everything run automatically: well, I might be able to set something like that up, though I'd definitely have spend some time working on it. I've got a number of ideas about how to improve the stability of your setup that I won't go into now, but will explain in full detail once we've gotten this current situation resolved.