Software Update

[GMJohnny]

I get no attachments tab, also. Does this have something to do with
the fact that I'm not a moderator?

GM

[TireSmoker]

Must be a permissions problem. I'll look at it tonight.

-Dave

[TireSmoker]

Give it a shot, I think I fixed it.

-Dave

[Maverick]

Think it worked.

[GMJohnny]

Works for me!! Thanks, Dave!!

[TireSmoker]

Not really a software update, but Tiresmoke has been moved to new hardware! For the past 3 years, It's been running on a Linux virtual machine using Oracle VirtualBox on an old Windows 7 box that is probably 11 years old. (Dell Inspiron 531) Sometime in the past year, I bought a Dell Optiplex 580 from Penske for $25. I bought this box because it has an AM2 CPU socket which would accept the quad-core 3.2GHz processor I salvaged from another PC that died. The stock processor was a dual-core 2.x GHz something. I added an 8GB ram kit (12GB total) and a 256GB SSD. So we're running on a souped-up hotrod!

I loaded up VMWare ESXi 6.0 which is enterprise quality virtualization and migrated Tiresmoke into that environment. One of the things I could never do (satisfactorily) with VirtualBox in Windows was to get the Tiresmoke virtual machine to start automatically on bootup. It was a manual process. It's problematic when something happens and I'm out of town. The new hardware is configured to always turn-on when power is restored, and ESX will auto-start the Tiresmoke virtual machine. Should work pretty nice for a long time.

-Dave

[wxo]

Hot Rodding at it's best. Good work Dave. Thanks for keeping us up and running.

[Fred32v]

I don't know what you did 'Smoke, but "Way to go"!

[Basement Paul]

"I cut the knibbler cord and attached a badass Johnson board which started the collaboration process with the GMXQ-7 super conductor core"...

Computer stuff.

-BP

[TireSmoker]

Well, after 5 solid years, I'm way overdue to upgrade Tiresmoke to the latest software. This also involves a move to new 'hardware' -- a different Virtual Machine (VM) in VMWare, but still the same old PC in the climate-controlled Tiresmoke.Org datacenter. (my basement)

We are running on Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS (Long Term Support), which stopped being supported in 2019. phpBB was 3.1.10, supported by MySQL 5.5, Apache 2.4 and php 5.5.9.

To upgrade phpBB (my true goal), I needed php7.x. I couldn't install php7.x on Ubuntu 14, not available. I tried doing an in-place upgrade from Ubuntu 14 to 16, which had its own time spent, only to find out php7 support was removed about 6 months ago. Total wasted effort there (and there's a bunch of issues I'm omitting)

Then I just tried migrating the current phpBB to the new server, but the current phpBB couldnt user the newer underlying php. I made a mistake trying to move ALL the databases at once, which would've been fine if MySQL had been the same version, but they weren't. Once I figured out to move just a single DB at a time (and extra steps to create new DB user), that part finally worked.

So once I figured out how to properly move the data, then I had to figure out all the steps involved in doing the upgrade from phpBB to 3.1.10 to 3.3.5.

We are moving to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (supported through 2025), Apache 2.4., MySQL 8.0, php 7.4.

Having not done any upgrades at all in the past few years, this one was a bit more work, but being wayy more proficient in Linux now than I was 5 yrs ago helped immensely.

Production cut-over will probably be later tonight.

edit: and we're now live on the new version!

-Dave

[Fred32v]

Great job Dave, I certainly do enjoy TireSmoke. Thanks for your efforts!

[Maverick]

Dave,

Thanks for all you do for TireSmoke.org. I have all my projects since the Maverick on there and I still peruse them occasionally. Thanks also for allowing my 2019 driving trip thread which I also review periodically. I wouldn't have put that on a more publically known server.

Much appreciated.

All the best in 2022.

Jim

[TireSmoker]

A few stats..

[Basement Paul]

I love TireSmoke.org and thanks!

One criticism though. Maybe put some checker flags, a broken piston, or something racy by the sad looking data center. It looks like any other computer in a basement on a shelf, and with that much HP running through it, I felt it needed a little something special.

-BP

[TireSmoker]

I love TireSmoke.org and thanks!

One criticism though. Maybe put some checker flags, a broken piston, or something racy by the sad looking data center. It looks like any other computer in a basement on a shelf, and with that much HP running through it, I felt it needed a little something special.

-BP

Challenge accepted.