Free Islam web server major upgrade

[AhmedBahgat]

Salam all

Sorry about the down time today, I had to solve the backup issue so I can sleep every night in peace, under the virtual environment, the virtual machines could not access the LTO2 backup tape that I have, which can backup to 400GB at speed of 320 MB/S, after struggling for a few days, I discovered the reason which is very complicated to explain, however in simple terms, I had my Tape connected on the same bus as the RAID configured Hard disks, both the Tape and the Raid were hosted by one SCSI card that is RAID compatible, now, for VMware to be able to see the physical tape device and consequently makes it available for the Virtual Machines, the tape device must be connected on its own SCSI card that is not RAID compatible
,

I searched for a list of VMware SCSI without RAID cards, and managed to pinpoint one that will give me the least hassle, which is Adaptec 29320 LP, it is about 350 bucks, but I managed to get it for 50 bucks brand new, Ebay is awesome. Installing the card inside the server is a bit risky work, so I manually backed up Free Islam site just in case and dismantled the server, managed to add the card but when I started the server, it came up with the pink screen of death, which indicates the failure of VMware to start, I had my heart pumping really hard, not only that I want the tape backup to work but also I don't want to lose my 10 days of work setting up such virtual infrastructure, I restarted the server to pinpoint where exactly it will crash, and to my luck, it was crashing when VMware tried to load the driver for the new SCSI card that I added. At least I realized that to get things running again I just remove the card and live without automated backup.

I sat down thinking what to do, after dismantling the server again, and came up with an old trick that I learnt in my early days of IT, if after adding a card in an empty slot and the machine does not start, try inserting the card in another empty slot.

That is exactly what I did, I tried another slot, and bang, VMware started, however it had a new problem, I had 3 network cards installed on the server, one of them was on the same bus as the new SCSI card, and somehow it got confused and half of the network was not working, that was an easy one to solve as I do not need 3 network cards only 2 that I need, so I dismantled the server again and removed the third network card, and that was it, everything in now working as I designed, including the automated backup on a Virtual server that I assigned to be a backup server to backup all my data that are stored on the Virtual Environment.

Now I can accommodate losing the whole thing while having very recent copy of my data, consequently I can now sleep in peace

Salam

[AhmedBahgat]

Salam all

Sorry about the down time today, I had to solve the backup issue so I can sleep every night in peace, under the virtual environment, the virtual machines could not access the LTO2 backup tape that I have, which can backup to 400GB at speed of 320 MB/S, after struggling for a few days, I discovered the reason which is very complicated to explain, however in simple terms, I had my Tape connected on the same bus as the RAID configured Hard disks, both the Tape and the Raid were hosted by one SCSI card that is RAID compatible, now, for VMware to be able to see the physical tape device and consequently makes it available for the Virtual Machines, the tape device must be connected on its own SCSI card that is not RAID compatible
,

I searched for a list of VMware SCSI without RAID cards, and managed to pinpoint one that will give me the least hassle, which is Adaptec 29320 LP, it is about 350 bucks, but I managed to get it for 50 bucks brand new, Ebay is awesome. Installing the card inside the server is a bit risky work, so I manually backed up Free Islam site just in case and dismantled the server, managed to add the card but when I started the server, it came up with the pink screen of death, which indicates the failure of VMware to start, I had my heart pumping really hard, not only that I want the tape backup to work but also I don't want to lose my 10 days of work setting up such virtual infrastructure, I restarted the server to pinpoint where exactly it will crash, and to my luck, it was crashing when VMware tried to load the driver for the new SCSI card that I added. At least I realized that to get things running again I just remove the card and live without automated backup.

I sat down thinking what to do, after dismantling the server again, and came up with an old trick that I learnt in my early days of IT, if after adding a card in an empty slot and the machine does not start, try inserting the card in another empty slot.

That is exactly what I did, I tried another slot, and bang, VMware started, however it had a new problem, I had 3 network cards installed on the server, one of them was on the same bus as the new SCSI card, and somehow it got confused and half of the network was not working, that was an easy one to solve as I do not need 3 network cards only 2 that I need, so I dismantled the server again and removed the third network card, and that was it, everything in now working as I designed, including the automated backup on a Virtual server that I assigned to be a backup server to backup all my data that are stored on the Virtual Environment.

Now I can accommodate losing the whole thing while having very recent copy of my data, consequently I can now sleep in peace

Salam

[AhmedBahgat]

Salam all

Just a quick note that may benefit some of you. after I redesigned Free Islam server infrastructure, I used to get the home page in 0.88 seconds (you can see how long Free Islam pages took to complete if you scroll down the page and see it at the footer), the reason I can get Free Islam pages on my browser that fast is simply, I browse Free Islam through my Local Area Network, the Free Islam server is located in my home, i.e. I do not go through the internet to browse Free Islam pages, however about 2 to 3 days ago, Free Islam pages became slow to download all of a sudden, the home page was taking 10 to 15 seconds to download, same with one of my favourite web sites (CNN), I was really puzzled to why all of a sudden, I did some checks and found the reason, one of Windows XP updates that I downloaded and installed, turned Windows Firewall on, so I turned it off and bingo, the pages are fast again.

I tried browsing Free Islam from the server in Egypt that I can remote control and Free Islam home page (the heavies page on the site) comes in 1.7 seconds, so if you have experienced any slow down with Free Islam or with any other intense web site, then most likely you have Windows Firewall turned on

Now, you can safely turn Windows Firewall off, you really don't need it whatsoever, let me explain:

A firewall can be hardware or software based, both do the exact same, checking all traffic coming into the Local Area Network, then either allow it or deny it.

There are so many different types of traffic that are going through any internet connection or even through the local area network, for any device on the network to identify such type of traffic, it needs to know what PORT is used for such traffic, in the computer world we have about 65,000 different ports, i.e. we can have up to 65,000 different types of traffic and each one is going through its road (PORT NUMBER) without colliding with other types of traffic (I am trying to explain it in very simple terms), for example

All internet traffic uses PORT NO 80, the type of traffic is named HTTP
All mail traffic uses PORT NO (25 or 110, or both), the type of traffic is named (SMTP or POP)
SQL traffic uses PORT NO 1433, the type of traffic is named (SQL)

Etc.

So what a firewall does is simply, blocking all those 65,000 ports and only allowing the ports that you want, like PORT 80 for HTTP (WEB) traffic, or PORTS 25 and 110 for sending and receiving Mail

if the firewall blocks port 80, then in no way you will be able to browse the Net, likewise, if the firewall blocks ports 25 and 110, then in no way you will be able to send and receive mail

now, some may say that Windows Firewall is needed then, I say yes but only if you have no other firewall, the fact of the matter is this, almost every broadband modem has built in firewall, I have never seen one yet that it does not, therefore your broadband modem is already firewalling your internet connection, so you don't need Windows Firewall, if you have it on, it will only slow down your internet browsing as it has to check every page you browse, and the more intense the page is, the more Windows Firewall will take to check it, at the end it will still allow it because browsing happens on PORT 80 and Windows Firewall already allows such port, yet it still has to check the traffic, such extra checking took an additional 8 seconds on my laptop, and without even going through the internet (as I browse my site through my LAN)

Therefore I advice you to turn Windows Firewall off with total confidence that nothing will happen because of it

If something happens to your computer then you should clearly know that any malice attack by a malice hacker, happens through an already opened port, for example all hackers know that all internet users must open port 80 so they can browse, consequently they will tray to attack your computer through such port and in that case the best firewall on the planet won�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??t help you at all, because you already told the firewall to allow traffic coming on that port.

People who have no IT knowledge will never know that, and for them, yeh let�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s protect the computer by turing Windows Firwewsll on, this is just total crap. Again, please turn Windows Firewall for a faster experience of internet browsing especially heavy web sites.

Cheers

[AhmedBahgat]

Salam all

Just a quick note that may benefit some of you. after I redesigned Free Islam server infrastructure, I used to get the home page in 0.88 seconds (you can see how long Free Islam pages took to complete if you scroll down the page and see it at the footer), the reason I can get Free Islam pages on my browser that fast is simply, I browse Free Islam through my Local Area Network, the Free Islam server is located in my home, i.e. I do not go through the internet to browse Free Islam pages, however about 2 to 3 days ago, Free Islam pages became slow to download all of a sudden, the home page was taking 10 to 15 seconds to download, same with one of my favourite web sites (CNN), I was really puzzled to why all of a sudden, I did some checks and found the reason, one of Windows XP updates that I downloaded and installed, turned Windows Firewall on, so I turned it off and bingo, the pages are fast again.

I tried browsing Free Islam from the server in Egypt that I can remote control and Free Islam home page (the heavies page on the site) comes in 1.7 seconds, so if you have experienced any slow down with Free Islam or with any other intense web site, then most likely you have Windows Firewall turned on

Now, you can safely turn Windows Firewall off, you really don't need it whatsoever, let me explain:

A firewall can be hardware or software based, both do the exact same, checking all traffic coming into the Local Area Network, then either allow it or deny it.

There are so many different types of traffic that are going through any internet connection or even through the local area network, for any device on the network to identify such type of traffic, it needs to know what PORT is used for such traffic, in the computer world we have about 65,000 different ports, i.e. we can have up to 65,000 different types of traffic and each one is going through its road (PORT NUMBER) without colliding with other types of traffic (I am trying to explain it in very simple terms), for example

All internet traffic uses PORT NO 80, the type of traffic is named HTTP
All mail traffic uses PORT NO (25 or 110, or both), the type of traffic is named (SMTP or POP)
SQL traffic uses PORT NO 1433, the type of traffic is named (SQL)

Etc.

So what a firewall does is simply, blocking all those 65,000 ports and only allowing the ports that you want, like PORT 80 for HTTP (WEB) traffic, or PORTS 25 and 110 for sending and receiving Mail

if the firewall blocks port 80, then in no way you will be able to browse the Net, likewise, if the firewall blocks ports 25 and 110, then in no way you will be able to send and receive mail

now, some may say that Windows Firewall is needed then, I say yes but only if you have no other firewall, the fact of the matter is this, almost every broadband modem has built in firewall, I have never seen one yet that it does not, therefore your broadband modem is already firewalling your internet connection, so you don't need Windows Firewall, if you have it on, it will only slow down your internet browsing as it has to check every page you browse, and the more intense the page is, the more Windows Firewall will take to check it, at the end it will still allow it because browsing happens on PORT 80 and Windows Firewall already allows such port, yet it still has to check the traffic, such extra checking took an additional 8 seconds on my laptop, and without even going through the internet (as I browse my site through my LAN)

Therefore I advice you to turn Windows Firewall off with total confidence that nothing will happen because of it

If something happens to your computer then you should clearly know that any malice attack by a malice hacker, happens through an already opened port, for example all hackers know that all internet users must open port 80 so they can browse, consequently they will tray to attack your computer through such port and in that case the best firewall on the planet won�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??t help you at all, because you already told the firewall to allow traffic coming on that port.

People who have no IT knowledge will never know that, and for them, yeh let�?????�????�???�??�?�¢??s protect the computer by turing Windows Firwewsll on, this is just total crap. Again, please turn Windows Firewall for a faster experience of internet browsing especially heavy web sites.

Cheers

[AhmedBahgat]

Salam all

Free Islam was down for almost 8 days, it was a problem by Australia's main phone company Telstra, they disconnected the line all of a sudden without any reason, however they managed to fix it the following day, but all ADSL codes were lost, so I lost my internet connection, when I contacted Telstra they told me that only my ISP can connect me back, but when I did I found out that it will be a whole new process, like I am applying for a new connection again, which takes a week, I was disgusted more after knowing that I have to also pay $99 to my ISP as a reconnection fee, which in no way should be paid, imagine the other losses I had with no internet connection for 8 days, so I am disputing that. Telstra said that they will reimburse me after I pay it to my ISP, but my point is I should not pay it from the first thing anyway, that is a problem between my ISP and Telstra. So expect that the connection may be lost again as I will insist on my argument with such unprofessional freaks, as if they refuse to accept what is right, I will use the opportunity to cancel my account with my ISP and the possibility of suing it as well, then I have to look for another ISP which I already found which will give me more traffic as well, I am looking at naked ADSL so I won't be dependant on having a valid phone connection to get my ADSL going

I will keep you informed

Salam

[AhmedBahgat]

Salam all

Free Islam was down for almost 8 days, it was a problem by Australia's main phone company Telstra, they disconnected the line all of a sudden without any reason, however they managed to fix it the following day, but all ADSL codes were lost, so I lost my internet connection, when I contacted Telstra they told me that only my ISP can connect me back, but when I did I found out that it will be a whole new process, like I am applying for a new connection again, which takes a week, I was disgusted more after knowing that I have to also pay $99 to my ISP as a reconnection fee, which in no way should be paid, imagine the other losses I had with no internet connection for 8 days, so I am disputing that. Telstra said that they will reimburse me after I pay it to my ISP, but my point is I should not pay it from the first thing anyway, that is a problem between my ISP and Telstra. So expect that the connection may be lost again as I will insist on my argument with such unprofessional freaks, as if they refuse to accept what is right, I will use the opportunity to cancel my account with my ISP and the possibility of suing it as well, then I have to look for another ISP which I already found which will give me more traffic as well, I am looking at naked ADSL so I won't be dependant on having a valid phone connection to get my ADSL going

I will keep you informed

Salam

[BMZ]

Good to see the site back on line, Ahmed.

I think you should put down in writing, otherwise they will just ignore.

Salaams, mate
BMZ

[BMZ]

Good to see the site back on line, Ahmed.

I think you should put down in writing, otherwise they will just ignore.

Salaams, mate
BMZ