I’ve had a string of technical difficulties lately, some with regard to my website, some with regard to my on-going backup efforts.

On Monday my webhost upgraded the version of PHP running on the server. Unfortunately one of the plugins (not the one I wrote, phew) I was using was incompatible with new PHP. It was relying on a technique that was so insecure, the new compiler catches identifies the problem and refuses to execute the script. The problem is, this effectively brought down my blog.

Even though I had plenty of warning, I didn’t get around to checking my blog until yesterday.

Ouch. Those stats do not make for a happy Sarah.

At least it’s back up now. The offending plugin has been removed.

The other technical battle I’ve been fighting is getting my backup system setup.

The first problem was with our ISP. Our download rate dropped to 2.5 mbs (megabytes per second), a mere 5% of the promised rate. As much as I would love to blame my ISP, I’m not sure it’s entirely their fault. Living in an apartment in the heart of silicon valley, I’m sure there are a number of start-ups within 50 feet of our apartment. One of them could be saturating the line. Of course the onus is still on the ISP to deliver what’s promised, so they’re not off the hook either.

What does a cruddy internet connect have to do with transferring files on a home network? I’m glad you asked that question! Apparently in order for our home network to work (also set up by our ISP), our modem needs to connect to the outside world. That’s a bit like living on an island, and driving over the bridge to the mainland and then coming back any time you want to go anywhere else on the island. It’s that stupid. With our connection being so slow it would time out, and with the bridge to the mainland down, those files weren’t going anywhere.

The second issue I had was with crash plan itself. I’m using multiple external hard drives for my backup. All hard drives have a UUID (Universally Unique Identifier). It’s a way of identifying the drive. Crash plan identifies a drive not by it’s UUID, but by the drive letter the disk has been mounted to. The problem is the drive letter can change and is usually assigned in order of the drive’s being mounted. A system restart can change those drive letters! That’s like running a pizza delivery place and identifying your customers with phone in orders based on their arrival time rather than their name.

This last one was fixable by manually assigning the drive letters, it just took a while to realize what was wrong. At least I’m making progress. I finished sorting through one external hard drive. Four more to go through.

Posted in Internet & Technology | Tags: Website