The White Dragon-- SuSE Linux and Apache

    At long last, we have moved onto a Linux platform.  The White Dragon ported to SuSE 7.3 in March, 2003 and now has reached a point where it can take over webserving functions.
    It was a longer road than expected.  We encountered what may very well be a bug in Apache 2 that prevented us from performing host name lookups in the log file.  This made thing undesirable for our console monitoring, which watches a log file.  Unresolved IPs don't tell you much just looking at them.

DrQue.net takes on hosting for MMSof.com and Pluvius.net.  MMSof.com is home of Master Minds Software-- the long time project of Andrew Que and Tyson Mohr.  Although a bit dormant, Master Minds will one day create some killer software :)
    Pluvius.net is home of Tyson "Pluvius" Mohr.  He has tempoarly moved Pluvius.net to our server while he is moving.  Pluvius.net was once the domain DrQue.net used, so it seems we have come full circle :)

    The port to Linux has been delayed due, primarily, to the problems with host name lookups in Apache.  We'll work on it and continue the port once this issue is resolved.

    Early morning, 4-29, "DataDump", the 100 gig RAID-1 array, suffered a major error.  The drives had fallen out of sync, and the master drive refused to be recognized.  In an attempt to recover the drive, the slave was restored, but that ended up corrupting over 90 gigs of data.  This error has taken down a significant portion of DrQue.net-- although most of this data was not visible to the public.  This suffer error was likely due to bad power connectors to the hard drives, which caused the drives to turn off from time to time and thereby keeping the two drives out of sync.  Restoration of some of the drive's data has begun using various backup sources.  Much of the data will be lost forever.

    We allowed the Linux driven White Dragon to serve DrQue.net briefly.  Over the past few days, we've manager to get Apache 2 mostly working.  CGI scripts took awhile-- a long while.  The straw the broke the camels back was not the most comment mistake of forgetting to change the attributes of the file to "+e" for execute, but rather having DOS style end-of-lines rather than Unix end-of-lines.  But, after we corrected that, life worked a lot better.  Some of the core CGI scripts seem to function fine.
    SSI work right from the get go.  Nice when you just have to turn things on.  SSL, the same thing.  Proxys were giving me a problem until I discovered I not only needed to include the proxy module, but also the HTTP proxy module.  Better now.  Redirects seem to work and virtual hosts all seem to function.
    The last issue-- hostname look ups don't seem to be working.  Trivial you'd think, but enough to keep us from moving forward.  Host name lookups resolve the IP address to the domain name of that address.  It's really nice for watching the log file-- you can see who's been asking for what.  It's an easy way to see user sessions, robots, and where requests are coming from.  It should be easy to turn on-- and should be working.  But, it doesn't.  It's my guess we're forgetting to compile in some module.  So far, no luck in locating it.

    The Azure takes over everything and SuSE starts the configuration process.  With the Azure handling life, the White-Dragon is free to for it's Linux transform.
    We started by removing the 60 GB drive, which required a fresh install of SuSE because we could no longer boot.  But, a fresh copy seemed the way to go anyway-- too much crap already installed.  I'd rather download and build everything we need.
    Apache didn't seem to build with the items we wanted.  Apparently, setting up mod_ssl on Apache doesn't happen with the default configuration.  Rather than reading more, we decided to try Apache 2 instead.
    With Apache 2 downloaded and compiled, and it looks like with all the modules we need.  We still don't have CGI scripts working, but SSL, SSI and proxys seem to be functional.

    The Azure-Dragon takes it first work load, handeling the e-mail server, members and Port 8080 webserver; and time server.

    Our temporary non-Linux server, the Azure-Dragon, is alive.  The Azure-Dragon (aka. Kaoru) come to use from our good friend Tyson "Pluvius" Mohr (Pluvius.net).  It is on lone until the White-Dragon is configured to take over everything with SuSE Linux.  It won't be long now! :)
    We've been playing with Perl scripts a bit more.  I made a "WhoAmI" script that displays the requesters IP address.  It assisted LowLyfe in getting his site visible to the internet.

    Our good buddy StaAck (StaAck.com) has transferred Phucker.com over to us.  This domain will host some crass and down right violently offence sites, including the Garage site and the soon-to-be Park Place site.

    Setup a proxy server (to give it a try).  We now proxy a webserver on the Black Dragon, running a web server called BRS WebWeaver.  The server host Port 8080, an experimental site I'm not sure what I'm going to do with yet.  We also setup a proxy to a Savant server running on the Black Dragon to host the members site, Members.DrQue.net.  This was done mainly because we just don't want to get rid of a server software that was so good :)
    After getting the proxy server setup working, I showed Zen (roommate and all around good guy) who put in a proxy mirror to DrQue.net at BananaFunk.com.  This is actually for an other friend of ours who also uses TDS Metrocom DSL.  Due to something on TDS'es end, he can not visit my site. The proxy will enable him to do so.