Well I can only say .. SIGH .. things were really looking up besides the mysql issue last week, but this week seems to be the worse. For the past couple days they seemed to be having network issues related to a DDoS attack causing major timeout issues for the sites I host on the grid platform. (read here for details)

Yesterday their incident page showed the issue as resolved, however today I find I cannot access my sites again for short periods of time and the incident is now showing as “orange” on their incident page.

Is it time to move? Thats the question, some users are already complaining about the downtime this week. I’ll giving them until Monday then I’ll decide what to do.

Here is a pick from the 23rd when it was going to hell over there.

So I needed to build apache2 manually on a 64bit centos5 server today. My hurts to say the least, however If you get this error “/usr/lib/libexpat.so: could not read symbols: File in wrong format” add this option to your ./configure line “–with-expat=builtin” to save yourself a headache

This was sent to me and I felt it was a great article worth mentioning

http://www.itsecurity.com/features/ubuntu-secure-install-resource/

Well I skipped week two because things were running so great. Today, it appears the mysql server took a complete dive for about 30 minutes resulting in downtime for this blog and for socialdiscussion.com grumble. I think I might have to call them and find out more about the mysql grid containers they offer.

Some people thing I am crazy for this but during the past 2.5 years running ubuntuforums.org there has been a need for a place to discuss religion, politics, life, civil liberties and we created “the backyard” on the ubuntuforums. For the past few months I’ve been thinking we have a large userbase who loves to discuss and debate such topics that could fall under the ubuntuforum guidelines and the ubuntu CoC.

The solution? Keep the community cafe and the backyard in tact on the ubuntuforums but offer a place for the user base to discuss topics that really don’t fall under the Ubuntu Linux blanket. Such as politics, religion, civil liberties and so on. I am happy to announce a new forum called “Social Discussion” a place for these types of debates and conversations to take place, a place with limited restrictions and a place for one to share personal beliefs.

I welcome you to come socialize at http://socialdiscussion.com …