WolfChat.org is back, Explaination of down time.

[WOLFGAR]

For those of you that do not want to, or don’t have the time to, read this rather long post, ill start it out with the short version, and then give the rather long, lengthy version with details.

After 14 years of fairly stable service to its users, Wolfchat.org went down for nearly 6 months, with out warning and with out much in the way of an explanation. Now WolfChat.org is back, and is offering all of the same services it always has. However WolfChat.org will need to raise some money and it will need to get some volunteers to help prevent this from happening again. What is needed most of all are as follows.
a) A better computer
b) A leaf server
c) A second machine, in a separate location to run its web pages.
d) Domain registration for at least 4 more years, in advance.

OK now for the longer more drawn out but much more detailed version I promised you.

In April of 2006 Gitch, my wife and Wolfchat.org’s accountant was diagnosed with Cancer, the same sort of cancer that had killed both her Father and Grandfather. On Aug. 14th after having undergone Chemo Therapy and radiation, she had surgery on her colon. It was expected that with in 6 weeks time she would have healed and been able to start more Chemo. Sadly, her colon never healed and still hasn’t. That is because of the Radiation.

Upon returning home from the hospital one day, a day in which was particularly difficult for Gitch, and thus our entire family, I discovered that the WolfChat.org machine was not working properly; it was in a constant reboot loop. I made an attempt at getting it to work, but no matter what I did, it would only stay on for a few min at a time, then reboot its self. I figured this must be a heat issue, it showed all the classic signs of that anyways… I would have to get it tomorrow, Dinner had to be made, laundry had to be done, kids had to be bathed, house had to be cleaned, Cat and dog had to be fed, and most of this stuff are things I never had to do before, Gitch always handled these things (God women are so underestimated and take for granted!)

I woke the next morning, got the kids breakfast, dressed and off to baby sitter and girlfriends home, came home, had a cup of coffee and then got a phone call from the Hospital, something went wrong, Gitch was not well and I was needed there… The computer was forgotten. As much as I love WolfChat.org, its computer, and all of the people it serves, it simply had to take a back seat to what was a hell of a lot more important. It went like this for a few days. Eventually I found the time to dedicate to the computer. I vacuumed it all out, cleaned up the heat sink, and changed out the fans, and even added in an extra fan. No way was this pc going to over heat again, NEVER. Plugged it all in… and it acted no differently  I feared this because the fans did not appear to be unworking, and the dust was not so great. OK it must be bad ram then, only other thing that normally causes such behavior in a pc. Again this must wait; I needed to get back to the hospital.

Eventually Gitch did come home from the hospital. She still was unable to take care of the home or do much at all. I was busy taking care of her, hanging an IV bag on her each night, giving her meds during the day, changing her dressings, and caring for our children and home. It was so much of a full time job, that I even took an extended leave of absence from work, during our most busy time of the year, the one time of the year I actually get to earn any real money at all.

By this time it was September and school was back on for the kids. Much more was needed of me, and the computer just had to wait a bit longer. To make matters worse, Gitch was going down hill quickly. I had to make time for Prayer and Prayer groups. I am a firm believer that while Doctors are the tools in which God uses to make people better, true, real and complete healing comes only from our Lord. I have dedicated my self to doing all I could to get my wife well and that meant that the computer just had to wait even longer.

During the end of September, beginning of October, I had found some time, to check the ram. I took ram out of a known working computer, and put it into the WolfChat.org machine. No good… same problems. Dang it all, now what? I found that if I booted the computer into single user mode, it would stay up a bit longer, for about 10 – 15 min at a time, instead of only 1 or 2. In single user mode, I discovered that the pc had been hacked, via PHP and MySQL. Tom Coyote had warned me that there were vulnerabilities in these; I should have heeded his warning more closely. In between reboots, I deleted all the files that I could find that were not supposed to be there. Still no change. I figured that it would not make a hell of a lot of difference, the files I found, as best as I could tell were harmless… just a plan webpage hijack, where they replaced my page with their own. Reading the HTML and the PHP, of those, it did look harmless enough… but heck, who knows, it was worth while removing, they did not belong anyhow.

Gitch wound up back in the hospital toward the middle/end of October, and was in a bad way. She was not healing at all, her colon had a hole in it, and she had to be taken off of solid food. Gitch was to receive what is called TPN, which basically is all the nutrients a person needs to live, via an IV bag. She also had to have a hole bored into her buttocks with a tube put in, at the end of which is a bag. Her colon was leaking into her body, causing a cavity between her tail bone and rectum. This had to be drained.

We postponed our Thanksgivings calibration in light of her not being allowed to eat any food at all. It would have been cruel to have all that great food, the smells of it, and all that goes along with such a calibration, and her not being allowed to participate.

Middle of December, Gitch wound up with an infection, a stomach virus, and a virus in her intestine. Back in the hospital for her. She remained there for 11 days, until Dec 18th. During this time she had 4 more surgeries. Including a colonoscopy. This did mean she was allowed food again  What a joy to see my wife enjoy a meal again, after not being allowed to eat for so very long. She came home, weak but getting stronger. Christmas was on us, and we had much to do… Gitch was not really up to it, but she insisted on doing all the normal things we normally do for the holiday. This is just the sort of fighting spirit that will make her beat this thing.

I’m at a complete loss as to what the hell is wrong with that computer, time to try out a few more things, things that don’t really make any sense, but hell the things that did make sense did not work … Nothing worked.

Right after the new year, Lockster came to me, for about the 90th time, with an offer of a computer to replace the Wolfchat.org computer. This time he insisted I take it. It was not as good as what we had, but it does work. He missed WolfChat.org a great deal and wanted to have it back. I took him up on it. It sat in my room for a few more days though, as I felt I still was needed to do other things. By this time, Gitch is much stronger, and better. She is living a normal life, more or less, doing all the things she always did before, that I USED to take for Granted (Guys listen closely here … and LEARN from me… DON’T EVER TAKE YOUR WIVES FOR GRANTED… trust me dudes, you don’t want to learn like I did just how much they do for you!!!!)
This past week, Gitch came to me, and said “its about time you had some YOU time, go and fix that computer, get your WolfChat.org back up and running and enjoy your self… I know how much you love it, and you deserve to make some time for your self. This week end is open, no Doctor appointments, and I don’t need anything from you.”

First thing I did was take the ram from the old machine, and put it into Locksters. The PC started up with its currant HDD loaded with win2k, it ran fine. OK, so I know it’s not the ram, confirmed. Second thing I did was take the HDD from the old BSD machine, and put it in Locksters machine, It did boot and it would work for a while,… then lock up. Hmmmm ok, this maybe systematic of the problem, perhaps it’s something in the file system? I ran fsck, a BSD tool that is similar to defrag and scandisk all in one. That seemed to correct the problem. Well sheeesh maybe that was all it was all along? I put the HDD back into the old machine, and well … it still did not work. Dang it all to HELL… Must be something on the MB after all. Maybe a bad ram slot i'm thinking, if anyone has any suggestions… please post them and ill give it a shot. When I get more time, I do plan on trying the HDD with the win2k on it, in that machine just to see what it does.

I have run the chat server, and the web pages a few days now on Locksters machine, and it appears to be running well and stable. Only problem is I have lost xwindows, but that is more the fact that I have not set it up to work with this new video card then anything else… I hope. I do know that I deled some files that perhaps I should not have, but there is a simple cure for that as well, reinstall 

So now, after much time, Wolfchat.org is back and the downgrade in Hardware is not so very bad after all. We went from a low end P4 to a high end P3, so its prob not a big deal.

Now what is needed:

Wolfchat.org , to avoid this sort of mishap again, needs several things.
We need someone to run a leaf server to our main server, so if we do go down again, services are not interrupted.
We need someone to run a mirror web site to ours for the same reason. (perhaps I can get StormWolf to help in that area?)
I have only just now got back to work, and I have many personal bills to pay before I can dump any more of my money into Wolfchat.org, so what is needed is the domain registration money, which is becoming dew soon.
A back up computer, that I can mirror this hard drive on, so if this machine goes down, I can simply plug in the second machine, until the first gets repaired. I would do nightly backups of this machine to the second (or maybe weekly, depending on how much actually changed.)
Any spare money raised, would go to paying NYCT.net for the internet service, and bandwidth that we use. For 14 years I have paid this out of my pocket, with very few donations… and right now I simply don’t have the extra cash to keep it going. Doctor bills, medication, visiting nurses, and my being needed at home, more than at work, has depleted our savings, and all and any money I did have set aside for WolfChat.org.

Im not so great at asking for donations or money from anyone, so I have simply kept up the payments on my own... but the time has come that it is now nessisary to ask. Any one wanting to or willing to make any sort of donation, of hardware or money can please contact me at WOLFGAR@wolfchat.org

WOLFGAR

[Stormwolf]

We need someone to run a mirror web site to ours for the same reason. (perhaps I can get StormWolf to help in that area?)

Sure thing my web server has plenty of extra space and bandwidth.

Pm sent with ftp info

Address will be http://www.stormfronthosting.net/wolfgar/