I enjoyed this and want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.  Hope that you get to spend time with your family.  I am Thankful for still having some family to spend Thanksgiving with.

     I’ve posted a couple of videos on our forum that have to do with X2Go, a method of using a remote desktop on our shell servers from your Apple, PC, or Linux system, and Bluefish, a graphical editor that is similar to DreamWeaver but operates on our server rather than on your local PC.

     See: https://www.eskimo.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=13

     Some days just nothing goes right…

     Been trying to get RoundCube with MobileCube to work to replace SquirrelMail and provide a responsive design (works with all devices).

     Got it mostly working today, except for the calendar part, problem with SQL syntax there, but it did not work as advertised.  Basically did not format well below 768px wide screens.  Well, at least not on an emulator I have.  If I can snag my older son with his I-phone long enough perhaps I can test it on a real device.

     So I tried to get Horde installed, I’ve had requests for some sort of functional Group Ware anyway.  But I’m getting a database error I can’t figure out and I can’t find where to configure the mail server to use.  It seems to want to use the local host which is wrong.

     I’ve been trying to get a new XMPP server to work and having problems with the SSL configuration.  I can connect with Pidgin but not Coccinella.  With Coccinella, the client and server can’t agree on an encryption protocol.  I don’t know how to determine what protocols Coccinella supports.

     I’m still having digestive system problems after a course of Doxycycline which isn’t making things a lot of fun either.

     When things go like this I try to accept it in the context of Romans 8:28 and believe there is some way God will make good of it all, but there are times when that is difficult to imagine.

     Forums has been replaced with new software, phpBB 3.1.6.

     I’ve run phpBB in the past but went away from it because it lacked support for responsive themes and was generally slow.

     MyBB had responsive themes but they turned out to be ugly and really ONLY looked okay on mobile devices.  On a wide screen they’d jam everything over in the left corner.

     MyBBS broke badly when we went to an all encrypted site.  For some reason enabling SSL broke a bunch of things on MyBB.

     The current phpBB is responsive by default, so now Forums will display properly on your cell phone, laptop, tablet, or desktop.

     In addition, phpBB 3.1.6 works properly on an SSL encrypted https site.

     The captcha is both easier to use for people and harder to use for bots.  Accounts are registered instantly by e-mail.

     Our current web server platform runs phpBB fast so speed is no longer a problem.

     From our main website https://www.eskimo.com/, use Web Apps → Forums or you can use the direct URL https://www.eskimo.com/forums.

     I’m going to be out of the office for a while as I have to make a trip to the co-location facility to bring up the old eskimo.com server.  It is an old Sparc SS-10 with no means of rebooting remotely when it’s hung.  I am going to run a few errands as well when I am out and possible get dinner so will be two or three hours.

     I will be taking scientific7 down for imaging tonight around 10pm (I will wait if it is actively in use at that time) for about 25 minutes.  I had intended to get to it with the other machines last night but problems with one of the host machines booting properly prevented it.

     There appears to be an issue with the version of systemd on these machines.  If it has only been operating for a while, it works correctly, but if it’s been up for a week or more, it often hangs during a run level change.  I am seeing the same behavior on my workstation which is also Ubuntu 15.10.

     Everything is back up except eskimo.com, which was not part of tonight’s maintenance.  I’m too tired to make another trip tonight so it is going to have to stay down until I can make another trip tomorrow.

     The mail spool server does not seem to be booting properly so I am leaving for the co-lo to go give it a kick.

     The server which has home directories has been rebooted and is restored to service.  Work on the server with the mail spool and client mail server is still in progress.

      I will be rebooting some servers and taking others down to image them tonight.  The reboots are necessary to load a new kernel.  Imaging is necessary to have current backups in the event of a machine failure or corruption.

     Servers that need to be rebooted include all the host machines so everything will be unavailable for a brief period during this interval but not everything at the same time.

     Most outages will be brief (less than ten minutes) but the mail client server will need about a half hour of downtime to image it.