melon.org mail service is up and running again. things are not yet fully recovered, but look to be almost fully recoverable, and are working well enough to use again.

After much waiting, and fussing over whether or not my motherboard could handle it, i have finally obtained a new 300GB hard drive for use in my mailserver. The data from the failed RAID array has been copied byte-for-byte to a file on the new disk, and filesystem repairs are being attempted on this file (in case hardware problems were causing the previous failure). Hopefully, this will enable data recovery, after which service can be fully restored.

realising that it is merely my mail spool that is hosed, and not my mail delivery software, i have aliased my usual email address to my address at the math department. now i just have to see if the departmental sysadmins try to lynch me for the sudden surge in traffic as all the delayed mail finds its way across their network onto their servers.

The filesystem repair is returning errors. The RAID array upon which the filesystem is now reporting a failed drive (having previously reported no failures). I suspect that the power failure may have caused simultaneous drive failures and one of the other drives isn’t being reported as failed yet either. This would explain some of the corruption I saw within the files (and the arrangement of said corruption) in addition to the problems with the filesystem.

melon.org mail is still not working, and will probably not work again until the weekend. If you have to email me, please send your mail to my mailbox at school: kris@math.utoronto.ca

The speed of the repair halved while I was sleeping, several more hours of downtime seem likely.

Some filesystem corruption appeared to have happened when my server had its failure the other day. The filesystem on which the mailspool resides has been taken down for repair. At the current rate of repair, this should take somewhere between 6 and 7 hours. During this time, all mail to melon.org will bounce. With luck, the repair will go smoothly, and no further downtime will be required.

apparently the power supply on my mailserver melted down yesterday evening. i should be replacing it tomorrow night.

in other news, i’ve moved moorings from blue 10 to blue 18. the new mooring is 8 slips closer to the bridge between algonquin and ward’s islands. the club wifi amplifier has also been installed, so even though i’m further from the antenna, i’m getting much better signal, and can be online a bit more.

Due to an inability to log into my server for the past few days (I think my connections are down), I haven’t been able to check most of my email. If you have sent me anything since last Thursday morning, I have not yet had a chance to read it, and am sorry if it was time-sensitive. I will be working to remedy this shortly.

As of last Wednesday, I am back at my mooring on the island. It’s good to be back.

My new cellphone is now working. The number to call me at is now +1(416)937-5596. This phone has an answering service, so I will generally be leaving it on the boat, as a home phone.

Also, I have now moved to my Winter mooring, and have not yet set up internet access in my cabin (and can no longer walk to the clubhouse to use the internet there), so I will only be checking LJ/mail/etc. from school for the next short while. That said, now that I am on the city side, my being at school (or anywhere else on the city side) is no longer influenced by the availability of tenders, ferries, or water taxis.