16/02/2007 - Friday

In an effort to blog more I'm going to attempt to blog daily. I doubt I'll have much to blog about each day but I'm sure I'll be able to find something. I think I'll also start doing some more technical posts about various things (like websites, programming, etc.), so not all of you will be able to follow fully, but nothing lost if you can't follow along!

I had a scare last night and this morning. I was attempting to compile Apache 2.2.4 and Subversion 1.4.3 so that I could run both my websites and my svn repository using a single Apache install. I couldn't get Subversion 1.4.2 to work with Apache 2.2.3 so I had to use Apache 2.0.53 for the svn repository and Apache 2.2.3 for the websites (so I could use mod_proxy_balancer). This was fine except I noticed that the Apache 2.0.53 process was using a lot of cpu time when it was pretty much sitting idle 99% of the time. I couldn't work out why so I did a google search to see if anyone else had had this problem. I ended up coming across a page detailing how to compile Apache 2.2.4 and Subversion 1.4.2. I spent the day grabbing the sources, extracting them, getting the right configure lines, compiling, trying, going back to configuring and repeating from there. I switched the subversion source for 1.4.3 instead of 1.4.2 and I skipped out the "optional" steps that I couldn't even get to work right anyway.

Eventually I had Apache 2.2.4, Neon (can't remember the version) and Subversion 1.4.3 built in my home directory and working just fine (doing both websites and svn). I removed both of the old Apache installs from starting at boot time and added the new one to start instead. I then had to restart to check that the new Apache started and worked properly when the machine started up. There was a kernel update waiting to be installed so I decided to install that as well instead of leaving it in the updates (it had been in there for about a week and it was getting annoying). This eventually downloaded and installed (was a slow download) so I restarted the computer. It restarted, went to the initial Ubuntu boot screen with the progress bar, moved ever so slightly, then went to a black screen with a flashing cursor top left and the hard drive was making a weird noise. I left it for about a minute thinking that the hard drive was messed up (it happened to another hard drive I had that came with the bunch of three computers I got just before Christmas), tried to ctrl+alt+del out, then powered it off manually. I tried it again, same thing. I got annoyed then and just pulled all the plugs out and ignored it.

I thought I would give it another try this morning to see if any error messages came up and then see if I could salvage anything from the hard drive and install a spare hard drive in there instead. So I turned it on, it went to the black screen with the flashing cursor again, but this time I left it for longer. After about two minutes it started doing a disk check. I thought, "Ok, it'll find something wrong with the disk and then it'll tell me". Alas, it didn't and it then booted up into the graphical part (GNOME) and logged me straight in! Obviously the kernel update had to do something during boot time and it was that that caused the black screen and flashing cursor. I just assumed it was dead when I just had to leave it longer. At least I don't have to go hunting for a spare hard disk and then spend time installing everything again then trying to get my website and programming data from the original hard drive!

I think there was something else that I was going to write about but I can't think what it was now. I guess it obviously wasn't that important!