• Service
  • My current service is a 20MB down/5MB up residential connection through Comcast. I have 1 static public IP for now ( I have have hopes to upgrade to business class service which includes 13 status public IP’s.
• Software
  • DHCP and DNS services are currently hosted on  Mac OS X 10.5 Server running on an Apple Xserve G4. DHCP is setup into 2 subnets, 1 for my “admin” network that houses all of my server infrastructure, and a second subnet for public traffic such as wireless clients and multimedia streaming.
  • Port Forwarding is currently handled by a Netgear WNR3500 802.11 N wireless router. Since I have multiple services on multiple systems that need to be public facing, and only 1 public IP, Port Forwarding is essential to my setup.
• Hardware
  • Core router/Wireless AP: Netgear WNR3500 802.11 N wireless router (5 port Gigabit Switch)
    • As this device isn’t used for DHCP it acts as a Wireless AP and a 5 port Gigabit switch only.
  • Dev Switch: HP ProCurve 2523 (J4813A)
    • This is a 10/100MB switch with 2 Gigabit uplinks. I use this mainly for my dev systems that don’t really require a huge data throughput.

All of that out of the way, let me start by describing my issues with the current setup. As I previously stated, because of my current setup I depend greatly on Port Forwarding, which is currently handled by the Netgear router. The service, “as-is,” works alright, but has a good bit of limitation. First of all, I am unable to forward an external port to a different internal port (ie. forward TCP Port xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:5902 on the WAN to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:5900 on the LAN. This limitation just adds more difficulty when configuring internal services on multiple systems that listen on the same ports. It’s not impossible, but it is definitely cumbersome. The second major limitation is that the Netgear router only supports a maximum of 20 port forwards. As I host multiple services on mutliple systems behind one public IP, this gets messy! Think about it this way:

Assume I have 4 systems behind my router with 1 public IP. Here are potential services that would need to be forwarded:

1. SSH/FTP (ports 21-23) for system 1
2. VNC (port 5900) for system 1
3. AFP (ports 548-549) for system 1
4. MySQL (port 3306) for system 1
5. HTTP (port 80) for system 1
6. HTTPS (port 443) for system 1
7. DNS (port 53) for system 1
8. VPN (port 1723 for PPTP) for system 1
9. VPN2 (port 1701 for L2TP) for system 1
10. POP (port 110) for system 1
11. SMTP (port 25) for system 1
12. IMAP (port 143) for system 1
13. iStat (port 5110) for system 1
14. Zimbra HTTP (port 81) for system 2
15. Zimbra HTTPS (port 89) for system 2
16. Zimbra Admin HHTP (port 7071) for system 2
17. Zimbra IMAP SSL (port 993) for system 2

Then if you need any of these ports/services available on another system, the number of needed port forwards multiplies. As you can see from this simple example, I very easily filled up the 20 available port forwards, and have been forced to switch port forwards on the fly as needed. In search of a solution I was looking for a product that wasn’t limited and offered a little more to meet my future needs. After much reading and deliberation I decided on the Netgear ProSafe FVS318G VPN Firewall (read more about it here). I’ve come to like Netgears SMB products over the years as I’ve used many of there switches, hubs, access point, and WiFi routers without any significant issues. Sadly I cant say the same for there regular home/consumer based products. In addition to being fairly inexpensive (always a plus!), it packs a few other nice features. Most notably:

• 1 x Gigabit WAN port
• 8 x Gigabit LAN ports
• NAT routing and Classic Routing
• 5 VPN tunnels for Secure Remote Access
• IPsec Secure Site-to-Site connectivity
• Denial-of-Service (DoS) protection
• Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI)
• Logging and Reporting
• Realtime Alerts

All of this, and more, packed into a sturdy little metal box that has a lifetime warranty!

I don’t expect that this product will solve all my network issues, but it will hopefully remedy some of my immediate needs. In the long run I know I need to move to a business class service and move away from only a single public IP setup. As this is more of a hobby than a necessity I can’t currently justify the added monthly expense of business class service, no matter how much I’d like to! I guess I could always save a ton of time/money by going back to a completely flat network setup with no servers and only a wireless router, but where’s the fun in that?! This raps up Part 1 of the 2 part series. In part 2 I will cover the unboxing of the Netgear FVS318G and talk a little about it’s installation, configuration, and the aftermath of it finding it’s home on my network.

-Phenix

• Hosting news
  • Server was successfully migrated from Valdosta to Atlanta
  • After a Hard Drive failure the server was successfully restored to new hardware (no data loss occurred)
    • New Hardware:
      • The WebRoot sites are  running on a single Apple Xserve G4 with plans to extend to 2 nodes once I procure another license for OS X Server 10.5 and a decent NAS for shared storage (2nd Xserve already on hand!).
  • The WebRoot mail services have been migrated off of OS X Mail Server and onto an Ubuntu Server running Zimbra. I will hopefully make a 3 part series on the implementation and migration, but for now just know that it’s running a lot smoother and is more easily managed!
• Site News
  • I am closer to being finished with the new custom theme ( a few set backs with some of my code and the release of WP 3.x)
  • I have decided to drop the WPMU setup in favor of a standard WP single player site.
  • I will permanently move the site to http://thephenixblue.com once the new theme is ready.
  • I am in the process of procuring additional writers so we have new posts all the time!
• Other News
  • I have decommissioned a few sites I used to have (vsumug.com and vsumug.org) due to lack of interest.
  • I have a new site planned (domain purchased), and I am in search of someone to do the graphics work for it. More details will come soon.

That’s about it for now! I will try to be better about churning out new content.

-Phenix

The Issue:

When the time allotted for a scheduled post to be published occurs, the post is not published, and a message within the Admin panel only says “Missed Schedule.”

After perusing around the WP forums for a bit, I came to realize that this is a hot topic for many 2.9 early adopters. After looking deeper into the forums, I found that this has been a potential issue with Wordpress versions since the release of 2.7. Some say the “Missed Schedule” mishap can be caused by a temporary “hiccup” with a site’s DNS. As I manage the DNS for the particular site I host, I knew this to not be the case. Further research did indeed provide me with a solution.

The Solution:

Apparently with all the new fancy upgrades to the WP core, a significant amount of time (in the web world this means milliseconds!) has been added to the time it takes to run the job that actually publishes a post. From what I can tell this is due to the number of hooks that data has to be run through to make it from the edit page as a draft, to the front page of your blog as a live post. The addition of running it through the scheduling cron job pushes it too far. Can’t we just extend the allowable time to publish a post you say? Here you go:

The time limit is set around line 230 in the /wp-includes/cron.php file. The default line will appear as such:

230

wp_remote_post( $cron_url, array('timeout' => 0.01, 'blocking' => false, 'sslverify' => apply_filters('https_local_ssl_verify', true)) );

As you can see, the limit is set to 0.01 seconds by default. I tried increasing the value in increments, and finally decided on 20 seconds. You may find that this can very from server to server, so play around with it for a bit to optimize it for your setup. So here’s the updates line:

230

wp_remote_post( $cron_url, array('timeout' => 20.0, 'blocking' => false, 'sslverify' => apply_filters('https_local_ssl_verify', true)) );

So there you go! If you’ve found yourself upgrading to a new version of WP and you are unable to successfully publish a scheduled post, try this out!

I try to keep a directory structure similar to this within my webroot:

WEBROOT/

/domain1.com

/domain2.com

/domain2.com/sub1.domain.com

/domain2.com/sub2.domain.com

/*********************DISCLAIMER***********************************/

PLEASE BACKUP YOUR DATABASE AND FILES BEFORE PERFORMING ANY OF THE FOLLOWING!!!

Step 1: Migrate files from old sub-domain to new domain directory

• Create new directory

#sudo mkdir /WEBROOT/zeblueprime.com

• Change to old directory

#cd /WEBROOT/phenixblue.com/evan.phenixblue.com/

• Copy files from old dir to new dir

#sudo cp -R  * ../../zeblueprime.com/

• Change to new directory, verify your files (including .htaccess) exist, and have proper permissions and ownership

#cd ../../zeblueprime.com/

#ls -la

Step 2: Update url information within the Database (all DB edits performed via phpMyAdmin)

• Update Site and Blog URL

Within the “wp_options” table, change the “option_values” for the following “option_name” rows

“siteurl” -  change to: http://zeblueprime.com/
“home” – change to: http://zeblueprime.com/

• Update file upload url

Within the “wp_options” table, change the following “option_value” where “option_name” is “upload_path” to

/WEBROOT/zeblue.com/wp/wp-content/uploads

• Update Post URL’s

Run the following SQL

UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = REPLACE (
guid,
'http://evan.phenixblue.com',
'http://zeblueprime.com');

• Update URL’s within your Post’s content

Run the following SQL

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE (
post_content,
'http://evan.phenixblue.com',
'http://zeblueprime.com');

Step 3: Verify your site works

Navigate to your site in a web browser and verify your page. post, tag, category, etc. links work (I normally test a few, and then assume they all work!). Also log into the admin interface and navigate through a few menus.

This should conclude all of the required modifications to change the domain of your WP install. This is by no means the only way to do it, just the way I chose to. You can also check out the Wordpress Codex for other options.

P.S. I typed up all of this after the fact, so some of the commands may not be perfect, and there’s the slight chance I may have skipped a step, but most will be able read between the lines!

-Phenix

New Server Specs:

• 20″ Aluminum iMac
• 2.0 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 4GB DDR2 (667Mhz) RAM
• 250GB SATA HD
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 128 Mb ATI Radeon 2400HD Graphics
• 8Mb/s High Speed Cable Internet
• Sitting on a desk next to the kitchen!

If you don’t like the fact that I use an iMac for a web server send me money for an xserve!

If you don’t like the fact that that I hosts sites off of an 8Mb/s connection, send monet for OC3!

If you don’t like the fact that my server is on a desk next to my kitchen, send money for a Data Center!

-Phenix

• Site migration

This will including a possible migration to a standard WP install, rather than the current WP MU hosting. I’m also toying with a possible change in URL to http://thephenixblue.com or changing the overall domain to http://phenixblue.com (for overall better SEO).

• Add 1-2 contributing authors in addition to myself

 I would like to get one person to cover Technology topics focusing more on the Linux OS platform, in addition to having a good understanding of the Mac and Windows OS platforms. I’m looking for someone that can offer an open and unbiased opinion on hardware, software, security, and other accepted practices surrounding Linux, and other platforms. This will help me focus on a smaller scope of information, and still offer the same broad coverage I originally intended for this site.

I also want to add one person to cover some Artistic design tutorials. I’m looking for someone that has experience with Adobe, Macromedia, Corel, and other industry standard design software. This person would be responsible to writing general application tutorials, as well as tutorials covering standard, and non-standard creative tasks, works, and methods. I would prefer someone that has experience on both Mac and Windows platforms. Any experience with screen casting is a plus, as I would like to offer some video tutorials. 

Anyone with the experience I’ve mentioned, that has an interest in contributing to this sites content, please use the contact form, or send an e-mail to support@thephenixblue.com with a list of credentials, and a brief explanation as to why you would like to write for a Free Public Technology News Site.

• Remote data Replication
• Remote Load Balancing
• Remote Failover

The ideal setup would be to have 1 web server (Server A) at ground zero that dynamically replicates it’s files to another web server (Server B) 20-100 miles away, while simultaneously sharing the load across the two, and also providing an automatic failover to the other in case one goes down. I have never before venrutred into the realm of any of these topics, so I barely have a surface knowldge if this scenario is even possible, let alone practical. Should I configure this setup differently? I have already reserahced and found (as well as been referenced to) rsync for data replication. I will also note that all of this will be on the Mac OS X 10.5 platform (slight possibility to move to 10.5 server) using a residential ISP connection. Thanks in advanced to anyone that can help out,

-Phenix