OK, so I just purchased some bitcoins at a reasonable price for the day.
EC2 Instances and EBS
Here are a few things I have recently learnt about EC2 instancess:
1. I think (but am yet to test again and confirm) an attached EBS will be dropped when you create an AMI from a currently running Instance.
2. Before you apt-get upgrade create an AMI as a back up, its just to much heart ache creating eveything again – especially when its a “I’ll just do this before I go to bed l” late Sunday night and then don’t get to be till 1am because your last AMI was created a week ago and now you have to rebuild a recently installed wordpress blog.
3. Make sure you at least attach an EBS and mount it to store your email, at least then when 2 above happens your golden for your emails.
4. Seriously consider moving mySQL db to an EBS volume, wehn your micro instance falls over you have lost everything since the last AMI was created (or the last backup at least).
The move to EC2 rolls on.
Well I have flicked the switch on my email server at EC2 and its humming away as I write this.
So far so good but still some wrinkles to iron out, in particular the odd IMAP folder mapping that courier has (as opposed to my dovecote of old) and some issues that this is causing me on my Android Phone. With luck I will figure that out shortly.
Last thing to move will be a forum that I host for a motorcycle club I am in and then the ESX box can get turned off. I’m having a few issues with move on the forum as the MYSQL db is a different version on my old installation as compared to the EC2 instance and they are not playing nice together when I try to import the MYSQL dump.
The complication now is that I run my Subsonic server on a Fedora VM so it will be a bummer to have to turn that one of especially given I have licensed the subsonic server – lets hope I can use the registration serial number again.
Mobile Phones
I just mentioned this to a few friends tonight. What is it with people and mobile phone. They go out, buy something that looks great, is small and oh so stylish then stick a massive ugly phone cover and screen protector on it and it becomes a thing functional ugliness.
Please, everyone, throw away the cover and the screen protector, use the phone as it was intended, naked. You know it will be worth nothing when you all finish your 24 months contract don’t you……
Just moved my blog to EC2
Hello all.
If you are reading this you are in fact reading it from my new snazzy EC2 instance at amazon, sweet hey! With luck it will be a cheaper way to host my websites as opposed to the power bill that I seem to be incurring at home with my dual Xeon CPU old clunker.
The big 4…
I read something very interesting today that sums up working in some accounting firms.
“When large numbers of people are after the same commodity, be it stock or bond or a job the commodity quickly becomes overvalued.”
I think I agree.
Bitcoin again and Sundays crash
I can understand MtGox shutting down there exchange after it appears to have been compromised but then another exchange (Trade Hill) shuts down temporarily?
I cant help thinking they freaked that if the exchange was allowed to stay open people would actually have finally realised that Bitcoin is not actually worth anything and dumped the rest of there holding at knock down prices. When prices fall so to will the exchanges commission – its in a Bitcoin exchanges interest to keep exchange rates high.
Google Music Beta – A way to catch the pirates?
Perhap sI am being a bit paranoid but could these new cloud music services offered by Google, Amazon and Apple be a way of removing pirated music from the posession of individuals?
Music Beta by Google on your Android and 2 Step Verification
After I had updated Google Music on my Nexus S and had uploaded music to my Music Beta by Google account I noticed that my Andorid phone failed to “see” the uploaded music.
If you use Google 2 step verification you may have the same problem, this is how I got around the issue.
1. Go to your google accounts settings page and revoke the authority for you Android device, wait for your device to error out saying it can’t access your google account.
2. Go to Applications manager on your device and clear the cache then reboot your device.
3. Back on your computer create a new password for your device again.
4. Input the new password created by Google into your device for the account that your music is on.
5. Wait for device to access your google account again, give it a minute to sync.
6. Fire up Google Music on your device and wait a couple of minutes.
7. If it all works when you tap the menu button on your device while in Music it will show you the option to link the device to your Music Beta by Google account
8. Enjoy.
Let me know if this helps you.
Mythtv and sudden DB crash
My wife calls me while I was in my man cave tonight and tells me our mythbox has crashed and didn’t come back up with a reboot. I have a look and the thing it is asking me for the DB details (ie, location, password etc) – as if we are setting the mythtv installation again from scratch. This understandably throws me into a bit of a panic especially when she tells me she has already seen the screens and just entered through them!
I wasn’t able to log into the mysql tables using the cli client. Manually starting the mysql db FAILED as did restarting it or even stopping it, they all FAILED.
After digging in Google I noticed that the mysql.sock file that is created in /var/lib/mysql and which the mysql client must use to connect to the mysql db server was appearing and then the next moment it was gone, very very strange.
I looked at the size of the mysql.log file, it was over 3 GB! Looking in the mysql.log I see “Can’t start server: can’t create PID file: No space left on device” then the penny drops, I had run out of disk space on the root partition.
Deleting the 3GB mysql.log file gives me back 34% of /, rebooted and then off I go.
So the moral of the story kiddies is to check your log files for a hint to what’s going on and make sure you have enough space left in / or mysql will bomb out,