OnTheFive Blog

Alright, so I’m really having a ball with this domain of mine.  My server back at home is now online, and of course had to be put under the domain.  It was previously called gemini, so I figured I would keep it the same.  Now that I have 2 servers, I of course have to have some kind of naming scheme.  With gemini being a zodiac sign I looked up the rest of them and realizd, none of them are really cool, and most are a pain to spell.

So now, my naming scheme is Cedar Point roller coaster names, which Gemini fits into.  The main server at alex’s house is now named “Raptor”, after my favorite ride at cedar point.  Other names can later include: Blue [Streak], Corkscrew, [Iron] Dragon, Junior [Gemini], Magnum, Mantis, Millenium [Force], [Top Thrill] Dragster, Wicked [Twister], Wildcat, and Maverick.  By the time I have more servers that this, Cedar Point will have built more rides for me to name them after.

But don’t be suprised if you try pinging all of those and get replies.  Remember, I have the wildcard (*.onthefive.com) still going to raptor (alex’s house).  Also, I’m currently trying to work to get my MySQL database backup script going again. I really liked what I had before: Each backup was a folder (mysqldump_yyyy-mm-dd) with several databasename.sql files inside it.  I could also easily add .gz or .bz2 compression to save space on the small backup drive.  Till next time.

Ok so randomly I decided to add daily time-synchronization to the server. This is accomplished quite easily by adding on entry to cron. Again, crontab -e (under root) which opens VI to edit root’s cron entry. Then I added:

#       Every day @ 1:00AM - update the time
0 1 * * * (/usr/sbin/ntpdate -s -b -p 8 -u 69.222.103.98)

This calls ntpdate (just a pre-installed) client program to update the time using NTP. The switches: -s diverts output to syslog instead of stdout (I don’t want this thing yelling at me at 1am when I’m putty-ed in). -b uses settimeofday() rather than adjtime() - not sure why, but it was recommended. I don’t ask questions. -p 8 uses 8 samples rather than the default 4 - must be more accurate, right? -u uses outgoing packets instead of a privelaged port - recommended for firewalled boxes - might work without this, but I don’t really care.

All of the information for setting that up is at akadia.com under the Section “Configuration on Unix: Unix Workstation as NTP Client”. The IP address I used came from NIST.gov .

Also, since I now have a domain name and can have many different IP addresses as sub-domains, this main server can’t just be called OnTheFive (even tho onthefive.com and *.onthefive.com will take you there). So I am now naming the server at Alex’s house “alpha” (it’s host name is alpha.onthefive.com). Enjoy.

So… I decided earlier today to go ahead and register onthefive.com, considering alex’s IP hasn’t changed in years…. and so what if it does? there will just be a few minutes of dead time before the new IP propegates to all the nameservers around the world (because we know I will notice and update it immediately…)  So if you’re in the US, it should be fine about 5 minutes later.  If you’re in China you’re screwed…  It’ll probably take the full 48 hours (and still fall apart right out of the box).

So now, I have the LONG, tedious task ahead of me, of changing every damn mweb.kicks-ass.net to onthefive.com.  Its so worth it tho.  Enjoy the less hassle of speaking our address to friends!