Entries Tagged 'Projects' ↓

It’s been quite a while since I last put a posting on here, primarily because finding the time to do it, has been very hard. Work is going great, I have been pulled from my primary project to help resolve issues with another, and we are finally at the stage of resolving the “major” issues. Thus, I get to go back to my primary project this week and I am looking forward to it.

cpCommerce had the PayPal IPN Gateway Implementation put into the build about a week ago and it seems to be holding out, that or no one else has had a lot of time to do any testing. I feel it is getting close to lose 0.06 all together now and allow for a much cleaner version to take its place. Right now there are not a lot of new features in the works, in fact, with me being so busy, a lot of the work is on hold until I can find someone to take my spot or help alleviate all the things I do for cpCommerce. Who knows, time will tell, as I may eventually find more time to do these things.

As for me, I am doing fairly well. I am about to add 16 DVDs to my collection from signing up with Columbia House and then inviting a friend. In the end the 16 DVDs will cost just a little under $70. Now that is what I call a GREAT STEAL…err…I mean…DEAL!

Plans for upgrading my computers are always being thought out, and hopefully one of these days will come true. I know what I want to get, but the new question is: “What do you really need?” and I am struggling with that one, as honestly, right now, I don’t need an upgrade.

Well, that seems to be everything in a nut shell over the recent weeks. I hope all of you are enjoying your jobs, school, or whatever ventures you are currently involved in.

Okay, I am getting ticked now! I was told at 11:58:46 PM that the server that runs cpCommerce would be down for nearly 13 hours as they reconfigure the system. That was cool with me, until I read they were starting this process on the 7th, which was in another 2 MINUTES! Who can backup all their stuff in 2 MINUTES! That site alone runs with more than 50 MB of content, and another 30+ MB of tables, rows, and other database materials.

As soon as I tried to SSH into the system to make a backup, I was quickly greeted with “Host not found.” CRAP! How can they do this to me! I paid for a freakin’ year of service that guaranteed 99% uptime and now I am at 30+ hours of downtime. My members are going nuts, I am getting countless emails asking “WTF? Is cpCommerce still kicking or did it fall under?” Who knows what will happen now!

I am very tempted to move cpCommerce to yet another new host. One that has proven to be very stable and hasn’t let me down yet. In doing so, I am also likely to upgrade to a reseller account and then even market selling cpCommerce hosting!

Around 9:44:28 PM today, I received an email stating my site should be back up. HAHAHAHA! It is not! First off, the morons copied my files to my public folder as ROOT! What kind of moron does that and then does not change the ownership back over to me! Secondly, they did not reinstall my databases that I had a lovely 2 MINUTES to try and backup! Finally, they missed my shell scripts entirely! I had 3 very important shell scripts and none of them are on the server. I use these scripts to do numerous maintenance tasks from uploading new source code to making and retrieving backups.

Does anyone have a good idea how to go about requesting a refund of my money due to the lack of guarantee supplied to me when I signed up? 30+ hours definitely fails the 99% uptime guarantee. They better have this all fixed by Noon tomorrow or else I am moving it.

Today, was a busy day. I woke up around 10:30 AM and so I did what I usually do and tried to go back to sleep but that never happened. So, I got up and read a few posts on the cpCommerce Forums and came across a bug dealing with the shipping zip code. I probably spent 2 or more hours trying to figure out why this bug was occuring and finally it HIT ME. The bug existed due to a change I had made to the account_info.func.php file which loaded the user’s zip code information into the session variable everytime their login information was checked. DUH! Of course, that will overwrite any checkout value the user then later on types out. I am just glad I got it resolved.

Following the bug fix, my grandparents came down and told me they had finished the work they needed to do on the Conference Computer, so I could now make a clone of its hard drive. They wanted a clone of it made, as they plan to do a major software upgrade on it and do not want to lose all of the data they have. I must admit, I am in love with the NTFS tools Linux has. It didn’t take me long to make another hard drive (one that is larger in size) work exactly the same as the old hard drive.

To start out, I first needed to make an image of the conference computer’s current hard drive. This can done by running the following command:

# ntfsclone -s -o /media/software/backup.img /dev/hdc1

Now, the “-s” stands for “Save Image”, the “-o” is for the output image path and filename, and then the whole command ends with the partition on the hard drive you want to backup/clone. Following this step, I then made a copy of the MBR (Master Boot Record) and of the Partition Table, so my cloned hard drive would have the exact same configuration as the original. To make a copy of the MBR and the Partition Table, I did the following commands:

# sfdisk -d /dev/hdc > /media/software/master-hdc.dump
# dd if=/dev/hdc bs=512 count=1 of=/media/software/master-hdc.mbr

Now, I used the command sfdisk to do this and the first command makes the partition table and the second of course writes the copy of the MBR. Now the only part left, is to write all of this data to the new hard drive so I can have a clone. To do this, I simply ran the following commands:

# sfdisk /dev/hdc < /media/software/master-hdc.dump –force
# dd if=/media/software/master-hdc.mbr of=/dev/hdb
# ntfsclone –restore-image –overwrite /dev/hdb1 /media/software/backup.img

The first command write the partition table to the new hard drive and I had to use –force as my hard drive already had a partition table, however, you may want to use –force just for precaution The second command, write the MBR to the new hard drive which is needed if you wish to boot this hard drive. Finally, the ntfsclone command is used to write the image we made earlier to the clone hard drive, this way we have two hard drives that have the same exact data. How sweet is that! All of this took less than 20 minutes to do on a 40 GB NTFS formatted hard drive and cloning it to a 60 GB NTFS formatted hard drive.

Finally, my day ended with going with Kami to her high school’s 5 year reunion. IT COMPLETELY SUCKED! First of all, why bother going to a high school reunion? I know this is popular in small towns, but what is with the need to see old school mates and gossip about those who did not show up? Kami agreed afterwards, that is was boring and not worth it, but she wanted to attended so at least she gave it a shot. I admire that, but it kills me to attend these type of events, as I feel like an outcast. People are chatting away about people I know nothing about and no one explains to me who these people are… Then of course, we get back to my place and my grandparents have to make the whole thing worse by bringing it all up again!

It was already excruciating enough, just let it be! I will not attend one of these again for the rest of my life. They are flat out horrible and pointless for me to be there. The only real reason for me being there was for Kami’s arm candy…or at least that is the feeling I got from it all. Everyone knows the saying: “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Well, let me tell you this, if that is true, a picture would have said a whole lot more than I did AND I WAS THERE IN PERSON!

After all of that hoopla, we went to lock up the church and to let the dogs out, then I went home and watched “The Last Castle”.