Networking horror

Good evening,

after some days of silence, I think it makes sense to explain what happend.

First of all: I’ve launched my business “dennisklein.eu” successfully on Monday So – great to be back to my own business.

But let me scroll back a few days. The last time, I’ve told you, that I’ve moved to a new ISP, called VirtualBots. They had a nice offer to testdrive the vServer for 30 days. I was impressed, grabbed one package and asked them if it’s possible to upgrade with a managed software. They wanted to do the management and installed Confixx (by Parallels) for me. This thing worked smooth and nice, with some rough corners. For example the security of the Apache was not as I hoped, I could not even install phpSysInfo (and who knows me KNOWS that I love phpSysInfo!). I was nearly finished moving most of my websites to the new server (which now costed 60€ instead of 19€ monthly, which is a fair price) – the main server dropped off. Nothing. Silence. OF COURSE, my old webserver decided to do the same at this morning. So – nothing worked. No mail, no website. I was able to restart my olden goldie webserver at Server4You with a remote hard-reset. And it was back. Of course – broken and need to be replaced pretty soon.

The server from VirtualBots (or Living Internet) was offline for the whole morning. I notified it was offline around 7am and it was back online (after “some” hardware replacement) around about 1-2pm. A long time, but luckily, it haven’t moved my eMails yet. Being very unsatisfied with the strong rules that the managed server had and with this offline-time (what was the reason to get a new server!), I told the marketing guy to call me back. He called back pretty soon and I told him, that I’m unsatisfied and have the feeling that I don’t want to pay 60€ per month for this jailed server. The long offtime was my 2nd argument.

To be honest – this is nearly 2 weeks ago and I’ve send a bunch of eMails and a fax to them with nearly NO REACTION on my contract termination. I just got an eMail with some infos that I couldn’t quit right now and that they will find a nice solution. Really? I thought I had 30 days of trial?! Well, I will see what comes next. I’ve used the server for less than 2 weeks and moved all the stuff offsite within a few days and cleaned it. I’m sure I will give you an update on this soon.

So where is this site now stored? I’ve got an ECO Big server from the same ISP (Server4You) meanwhile to store my websites, eMails and since today also my calendar entries on. Check info.klein2.de for my phpSysInfo (hey! I said I love this tool ). The new server comes with 2x 640GB WD Green HDs. Great! I love Green stuff and I also use WDs throughout the house here. I bugged Jens a lot, but he helped me a lot to setup the perfect webserver with the latest fun stuff. Today he has just installed my so much wanted DAVical Calendar Server and has also updates the mailserver with “IMAP Enhanced IDLE”. That means: PUSH Mails in your inbox. And it works awesome with Apple Mail and Thunderbird . I hope we are successfull with the installation of a CardDAV server, too. This would mean to have the OS X Server software running on my own Debian based webserver – it would include most of the key features of Exchange I love collaboration tools, you know? What is also GREAT, is the installation of the iStat server. I can now track my webserver with iStat for the iPhone. Let me show you how this looks:

The next challenge (with a bad cold over the weekend) was to discover why our two MacBooks decide to drop the line when using the “extended network” between the AirPort Extreme in the home office, AirPort Express in the living room and another AirPort Express in the kitchen. I’ve player around a lot, googled a lot and found – no solution. I’ve switched channels and a hundred other options, but in the end, a AppleCare worker told me today that it seems like my shiny new AirPort Extreme is broken. Uh damn it! So I brought it to the nearby serviceprovider in Duisburg. They told me, that they will try to replace it with a new one. Have a mentioned, that the box stinks as hell?! This seems to be NOT normal – and I’m not speaking about the typical Apple notebook open up smell. No! Really not So until Friday I’ve put one AirPort Express into the home office and the other one still is in the kitchen. For my surprise, the extension of the network works as nice as I hoped before. Hopefully I will receive a new one on Friday.

That’s it for today – have a great evening!
Bye bye!

Your
Dennis

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