No fat lady in sight...

[altivo]

As they say, "It's not over until the fat lady sings." Left home in a light drizzle, soon needed windshield wipers, by the time I got to work it was snowing. Now it's snowing hard, and accumulating. Current forecast calls for up to two inches before dark. I imagine it will melt quickly, but this further establishes the new record for snowfall in a single winter here. Looking at the long term forecast, there's a day next week with possible snow as well.

The Drupal hangup has been resolved. Sometimes the stability of Linux-based systems actually can cause unexpected little obstacles, and this was one of them. Drupal was unable to connect to the PostgreSQL database I had installed a month ago, even though I'd been using the database for various tests all that time.

The reason? Drupal was using a TCP/IP connection, while the local psql command uses a Unix socket. Though the first thing I did after installing was to alter the PostgreSQL configuration file and send a reload command to the server, it turns out that there are a few small things that can't be changed by a reload of the config file. Opening the TCP port is one of those. The system had not been rebooted since a power outage took it down in December. Once I realized what the problem was, I did a reboot of the Alpha server and now Drupal is happy and I can start exploring the possibilities for redoing our web site with it.

Comments

[saythename.livejournal.com]

I love it when you talk geek to me.

^_^

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Bah, that wasn't geek. It was just buzzwords.

       START
RSAVE   DS    18F
A001   STM   14,12,12(13)
       BALR  12,0
       USING *,12
       ST    13,RSAVE+4
       LA    15,RSAVE
       ST    15,8(13)
       LR    13,15

Now that's geek, and pretty old order geek at that.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

YES! YEEES! NAUGHTY ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Careful with that enthusiasm, or I'll lose control and integrate you recursively... or something...

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Well, I am glad you got it to work. :)

It is always tiny little things like that with Linux. :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, "operator error" as they say.

I have it working on both Alpha machines now, so I have one for a test system and one for the final version.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Sounds promising already :)

I hope we can see samples of your handiwork at some point. I am curious :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It's nothing that exciting unless you've seen the old site first.

But it will go public in a few weeks. I have to work out how we're handling the hosting arrangement. Our site is presently hosted by an external service, and on the whole I'm pleased with the way they've handled it. In order to run this software, we'd have to upgrade our subscription a notch, but it would still be quite affordable. Unfortunately, the versions of support software they'd offer under our contract are not what I'd like to have.

The other choices are colocation, where they'd host our machine for us but we'd have total control over its configuration (more expensive I'm sure and we'd have to buy or lease a machine) or move the web site to a server in the library building. I can move the web site here all right, but I'd rather not if I can avoid it.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Well there was a damn big one on the bus this afternoon, and guess who she decided to rest her rolls of fat on.