Re-Released Again!
4 minute read
So I have not touched my web site, this blog or anything in forever. I have been burying myself in work. I used to do that when I worked in IT. Back then it was because I was a total nerd and could not help myself. Now it is so I do not have to think about my miserable life and how wasted it has become. How I have become weak and grumpy and totally lack in all motivation.
Because I neglected everything for so long, I was running products no longer support. My FreeBSD server was still supported but running on 13.1, so I upgraded to 14. My NextCloud server was 8 releases behind as well. And when I attempted to upgrade my VPS to 14 it failed miserably. Too many jails running to many outdated unpatched and out of support products. I tried to force the upgrade and corrupted my database. And though I did a backup of the database before upgrading I quickly ran into the problem of not being able to roll my applications back far enough to work with the old database structure. So I dropped all the tables created a blank database then installed and initialized the database with the latest deployment of NextCloud. But when I restored the database from my SQL dump the table structure was too messy to be reliable. O’ to have static sites like this one that do not need databases on the backend. Anyway, as I had moved away from Google and was now committed to my NextCloud server, I quickly realized having a corrupted database on something use use to Sync all your calendars, contacts and photos on and something I totally depended on was becoming very frustrating. At first I noticed contacts corrupting or completely disappearing from my phone, then photos, then calendar entries. It was like watching one’s life slowing being erased. In a panic I migrated back to Google, that quickly became even more unmanageable and an even bigger mess. I had become so comfortable with my own private services, yet neglected that very service for over 2 years and paid the price.
Things became even worse when I tried to deploy applications that developers really only think about making work on Linux and of course I’m complicating the hell out of everything by insisting on FreeBSD and containing every little service separating in jails and running everything through a regional firewall a local pf firewall, virtualized networks on the server host and Nginx, Apache servers all proxied through Caddy. Very secure, but very complicated. I mean for me FreeBSD/Bastille/pf/Caddy made it all super easy and it just works. Unless you neglect your systems beyond the support dates so excessively, there is really no option to roll back unless you restore from a complete image backup. Which I was not creating because, I was, well, neglecting everything.
I finally had enough of trying to fix the broken. And though I’m a super fan of FreeBSD over Linux. I tire of having to tear into every application and figure out how to make it work on FreeBSD. So I deleted everything. And I was not even going to rebuild it. But I just can’t help myself and also I’m really bad about accepting defeat or even fate. So I rebuilt the sites from scratch.
So here I am back on My own VPS running Fedora now and no jails or containers or KVMs. Running all the software I was running before my phones are back to syncing contacts, calendars and photos on my own private servers now. This time I have automated the backup of my VPS service and my cloud block storage and I will eventually move my FreeNAS server to the cloud as well. So I do not have servers running in my apartment generating massive amounts of heat and enough fan noise to drown out a jet engine.
Besides I’m working on certifications that will benefit my current line of employment and so can not spend as much time on IT sandboxes and playgrounds and home-labs that do not benefit my current job. Sure I will still study for IT Security certs, and programming classes, but that is now, lower priority to working on certs fo my current job, since I no longer have, nor most likely will never see anything, not even part time or contract of my previous IT Career.
Fewer web sites, less complication, active backup and upgrades. My cost will go up a little when I move my NAS to the cloud. But the savings in my stress and health should offset the dollar cost.
So stay tuned for real blog posts about things other than documenting outdated things I have done. And also for more varity about things in life and beyond.
Until then, B’fhéidir gur lú do thrioblóidí, agus do bheannacht níos mó. agus ní thagann aon rud ach sonas trí do dhoras.