Wow! That was… unexpected!

After a LONG time of not upgrading my site’s operating system, various initiatives I am undertaking required me to update from Fedora Core 5 (released March 20, 2006) to Fedora Core 9 (released May 13, 2008).

I was very nervous about this upgrade since it spanned so many versions of the operating system, but I started out with high hopes. I backed up my system to DVD using MondoArchive, an excellent bare-metal backup solution. Then, I inserted the Fedora Core 9 DVD, rebooted, and started the upgrade proceedure only to be told that one of my drives was a bit short of space (249 megs, to be exact).

The solution ended up being repartioning-in-place using a great product from Acronis which handled all the heavy lifting of the non-destructive repartition for me. I repartitioned the particular drive to a size large enough to make sure this particular problem will never surface again.

Launching the Fedora Core 9 DVD’s upgrade procedure a second time worked, using the newly-widened partition… The installer updated 890 files and rebooted successfully (I was worried about it rebooting successfully!)

However, that’s when I ran into two things… First, the webserver failed to launch because of a configuration error. Secondly, I ran into a time limit and we had to leave for dinner with friends. So, the site was down for a few hours while we enjoyed a very nice meal and evening with Brian, Milan, and Erin.

We came home, went to bed, and I was lying awake thinking of how to address the issues on the server. Next thing I knew, my feet carried me in to the server room and I started tinkering. An hour later (and about 10 minutes ago), I got the site online at last. But there is still more tweaking and testing to do… I need to ensure that the changes I made manually that got the site online will “stick” after the server is rebooted, which I will attempt to do after posting this article.

It was immediately apparent that the new operating system is considerably faster than the old one. Cold-booting takes less than 40 seconds on Fedora Core 9. I’m not sure how long it took on Fedora Core 5, but I know it was longer.

I apologize for the downtime, but it was necessary, and moving forward should be considerably smoother from now on. There is still a fair amount to do — applying non-critical patches & upgrades to the system and then another comprehensive backup, but being back online is enough for tonight.

UPDATE: Rebooting works… mostly. After rebooting, I need to enter “dhclient eth0″, “tzoupdate” and “service httpd start” to get things rolling properly. I need to determine how to automate those steps so the system reboots to an online state.

UPDATE 2: I’ve got the system configured properly now, so it boots into an online state.

I noticed that my pageviews have skyrocketed over the last few days.

A bit of investigation reveals that G4 tv’s popular technology news-and-reviews show, ATTACK OF THE SHOW did a piece on Evernote, an information management tool that I use and advocate. My website (and photo) appears in Evernote’s promotional video which shows features of their software. This promotional video was used to generate content for the short segment that appeared on ATTACK OF THE SHOW.

Apparently, lots of G4 viewers have Personal Video Recorders and single-framed through the video to see my URL, and then came visiting. Welcome! I hope you enjoy the site.

After a very long beta period, Celtx 1.0, a wonderful open-source tool for cinematic writing, has been released to the public. The price is right, too – it costs NOTHING to use! I’ve been involved with Celtx for a couple years now, and am pleased to see it mature into such a full-featured product that is so tightly integrated.

If you are at all interested in cinematic pursuits — screenwriting, playwrighting, even comic book writing — check out Celtx at http://www.celtx.com!