snafu on the server

So, when I built this server I had an ingenious plan to run everythign in a virtual machine, so if something went down I could manage it from the external server and get it back up without issue.

It was working wonderfully until yesterday sometime.

The problem stemmed from an issue with gnome on the base install issuing errors (fairly frequently) and dumping them to a hidden file, I had gnome running so I could VNC to the server to manage the virtual machine from the UI instead of having to try and find obscure commands that are poorly documented to do it via commandline.

Anyway, yesterday at some point this file grew to 403 GB (likely it grew steadily over the last 2 months) but however it grew it reached the size of all the free space on the primary drive, the same drive that virtual machine ran on, as a result the virtual machine crashed (and corrupted the image as well so it was "unacessible" anymore...).

So when i check on everything this morning nothing is working, I can get into the host machine but not the virtual machine, a quick check of hard drive space shows 100% used and I immediately went "WTF?" and I started trying to figure out where all the space went.  After a bit of digging I discovered a hidden .xsessions-errors file that had used up all the space.  So I deleted it and poof I have all my space back, but now I've got an issue, I don't have physical access to the box and to rebuild the virtual machine I'd need that... so I ended up converting the host system into a replica of the virtual machine by installing all the missing packages and using the nightly backups to restore the mud and all its files and the website and all its files.  Unfortunately the database was a couple months out dated but it won't affect much other than these news entries and possibly a post or two on the forum.

There's still some work to be done to get it back fully functional, but at least the mud and websites are up and running again, so I can get the remaining items done at leisure.

-Vandread

A Memory of Light

For some of our players, its already January 8th.  For others its coming in a few hours.  For yet others, Amazon's 2 day shipping arrived in 1 day and they are eagerly awaiting the work day to end so they can seclude themselves in a quiet room of their house for night.

Whichever group you are in, rejoice.  For you have survived the end of the world and the time is here for A Memory of Light.

-Vandread

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