andor.altrion.org / estariol.altrion.org

[fleetfootmike]

Huge props to djbp for a rescue act on andor.altrion.org on Thursday afternoon, which had died overnight on Tuesday: apologies to those folks with shell accounts on it, and to everyone affected by the downtime.

Andor hosts FilkNet's mailing lists, as well as primary DNS and webspace for altrion.org, filknet.org, contabile.org.uk, ukmg.org.uk, ukmgpu.org.uk, fleetfootmike.net and others, and Flanders, the infobot for filkhaven on FilkNet IRC.

Estariol hosts mail for most of the domains we host (including altrion.org itself), as well as webspace and webmail for a couple of folks, and the UK IRC server for FilkNet.

Both machines are getting a bit long in the tooth: andor's case, RAM and PSU date from my time with Demon Internet in 1996, its processor from around 1997, and its 4.5G Maxtor HD (which we suspect was the cause of Tuesday's crash) from 1999 or so. Estariol dates from around 2001, though most of its hardware is cannibalized from old CricInfo machines: its original case and motherboard packed in earlier this year, and it's now in a case scavenged from sotalin.altrion.org, which was my desktop machine before I saw the light and converted to Mac OS X.

In short, they're both on the way out. Anne and I (she's the hardware-building expert in this relationship!) will be replacing both of them with a single, new (brand new, no cannibalized hardware) Athlon XP machine within the next month or two. We will be doing this come what may, so don't feel pressured into anything :) Having said that, if anyone reading this feels moved to donate a small amount towards the building of the new machine, we won't say no. At a rough guess, a minimum-spec machine comes in around UKP400 tops: any donations, however small, will be appreciated - large ones will be viewed with a certain embarassment :)

If you want to donate, my Paypal account is mike@altrion.org. Again (and I can't stress this enough), you don't have to. I host web/mail/IRC for folks because I enjoy it - donating or not will make no difference to the service you get.

Comments

[bardling.livejournal.com]

I'll happily donate some, but... do I *have* to use the paypal account? (g,d, *snughug* ;)

[plaid-dragon.livejournal.com]

I'll make a donation, but I think I'll just wait til I see you rather than faffing with paypal. That way you don't lose the 4% vendor fee!

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I agree with the other comments, if you can send me a bank account details then I'll do a transfer without giving money to other organisations. Thanks for your sevices, they are appreciated...

And I second thanks to djbp, I couldn't post or send to some mailing lists without the DNS entries.

[aunty_marion]

I'll be seeing you in 4 weeks, probably, so can let you have a donation then. Well worth the money!

Bank details

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

First Direct
M.R.Whitaker
20796972
40-47-83

[rickbooth.livejournal.com]

I also second thanks to djbp, and will be donating when I see you. I hope he's in a position to repeat the rescue act pretty soon, since Andor's apparently gone again...