Four Island

This is mainly just a message for the people whose sites I host, but if you aren't one of those people, you may still read this post. Don't worry, I won't hurt you. Come back! What are you doing? :P

Anyway, for those of you who I'm in contact with, you may know of a dilemma with my server. Specifically, it's running under Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition when Ubunto 9.10 came out months ago. So yes, it's running an old version of Ubuntu SE.

So, in lieu of the fact that, due to complications, my monthly server backup was not run on January 1st, January 31st became The Grand Upgrade day. I backed up the server and then I upgraded every out-of-date piece of software on my server. Then, tomorrow, February 1st, I will backup the server again. Sound fun?

It's just amazing how much old software was sitting on my server. First of all, Ubuntu 9.04. Second, all of the Wordpress blogs (including hosted sites and my website projects) were running 2.8.4 instead of the latest, 2.9.1. And I just discovered the other day that The Projects Site ran Redmine 0.7.3 when the latest version is 0.9.1. Gasp! Possibly the worst is that Wikipinia ran MediaWiki 1.11.0 while the latest version is 1.15.1! Yes, that's right, most of my hosted sites were using web software that was two or three years old.

Upgrade was horrendous, though. It took a total of seven hours (start to finish) which included installing Ubuntu 9.10 TWICE, running back and forth between rooms two floors apart to download RubyGems and a lot of near-panic moments. Possibly the worst was during the first Ubuntu install: because of the disgustingly restrictive environment that my server is in, it couldn't download any of the files that msttcorefonts needed to upgrade and I didn't even need that package! Because of that, the upgrade failed and the server was, for want of a better word, bricked.

Anyway, The Grand Upgrade is now complete and my server is running up-to-date software! Hooray! It was a success! Hopefully, the next time a new version of Wordpress or Ubuntu comes out, I'll upgrade ASAP instead of waiting for January 31st three years later. :P