What had happened was that I had tried an apt update/upgrade (something like automatic updates on Windows) on my Ubuntu 8.10 server. It didn’t go quite swimmingly. Nothing new because my installation was a little wonky anyway. But as I restarted the machine it would not let me boot anymore. I was getting an immediate kernel panic. *shock*

So I did what I wanted to do a long time ago anyway (and was now forced to do) – upgrade my system. From a good friend I got an old 2.5″ 20GB HDD to replace my USB stick with that was running my web server. Not that the USB stick was a bad idea or anything but there’s the odd thing that is made easier by having a hard drive. I chose a 2.5″ model as I still am quite stingy when it comes to power use.

So I tried installing Ubuntu server 9.04. That failed due to whatever reason. So I installed Ubuntu server 9.10 Alpha 6. Very courageous here! …which went all fine.

It was nice to see that the USB stick was not all lost and could be read by the OS. So after installing some needed packages it was necessary to install my WordPress site (i.e. this site). Now that would be a challenge I thought. Not quite so….

1. Copied the WordPress directory,
2. changed the mySQL password in the wp-config.php file,
3. copied the apache2 site config files,
4. created the WordPress database I used for my site,
5. imported the database from my weekly backup file via phpmyadmin
6. and restarted apache2.

Voila, here is the site! Easy as. *phew* …. *PHEW*

So after the initial shock it took me less than 24hrs to recover my site. There’s still quite a bit of detail work left but that I can tackle at a slower pace. Impressed by both, Ubuntu and WordPress here. And of course my lucky stars that I could still read that USB stick. I think now it’s time for regular full backups of my web server!

Just wanted to do some (unsolicited) plugging for a good friend of mine that has helped me heaps in the past. Miraz is an absolute WordPress & web site Pro. Her site www.knowit.co.nz (or link on the right hand side) is a treasure trove on topics like WordPress, Apple stuff and more.  Her book (co-authored with Maria Langer) is also currently helping me to digest the whole WordPress world. All of it has made my transition so much easier and given me ideas of how I can deal with my site.

So if you’re in need of good tips and want to stay on the WordPress-ball add Miraz’s site to your RSS feeds.

Thanks all for being so patient but I’ve been spending my time with Apache VirtualHosts, cpu clock timings, AppArmor and other fun things to get this server going. I learned a lot but all this is definitely not the easiest of thigs.

What is quite interesting is the set-up. I’m running all this on Ubuntu 8.04.1, a 1.8Ghz Pentium P4 with 512kb RAM and a 8GB USB stick as a hard drive. All this in a nice li’ll DMZ. The advantage is that this set-up uses very little power and is absolutely quiet. I activated the correct CPU speedstep scaling for the P4 and it now runs on 225Mhz most of the time saving HEAPS of electricity.