Software Channels

Folks, we are currently importing around 1 Million new German files, which puts some extra load on the database for the members. That import should be done by tomorrow.

The reason for the slow down is, that all members write to one database master, which replicates to the slaves. So reading keeps the speed, just sorting and writing is affected.

Since Martin started coding for Tradebit end of last year, we have been rolling out new sites and functions to distribute and promote your digital goods. It has been a very exhausting ride so far and we implemented many new features. Now summer has come and we will take a break from development and focus on the quality of the platform in terms of bug fixes and layout cosmetics.

In the coming 3 weeks we will improve the layout, fix minor bugs in the member area and import new and cool content for your pleasure.

By mid of July we want to be all fresh and shiny!

I just rebooted our Web frontend machines and the main storage box. Last week we added another Linux storage system into Tradebit and all of a sudden the NFS file system was slowing everything down. First we found out that the “nfslock” daemon was part of the problem and we were unable to restore normal speed without rebooting. Today I took the dive and everything is back up to optimal performance.

Additional information for system admins who run pure-ftpd on NFS shares: If that server can not be stopped or restarted (it says IDLE and you can not kill it) you might want to check if that is the nfslock.

There are many philosophical approaches of running a cluster and some find it questionable, if NFS is the right file system for doing so. After almost 4 years of operations with Tradebit in a NFS setup, I can say that it is a solid and stable system. Some asked me on the last conference, if it would be better to outsource the storage to a service company and I believe more than ever, that this is not a good idea for a technology company like ours. In 4 years we had 4 outages of different nature. In sum less than 24 hours of downtime so far (knock on wood! :), which I consider quite good.

So, Tradebit was rebooted just about 20 minutes ago and we have been offline for less than 15 minutes.

Let me post another system note here in the blog:

1. We will run a scheduled cluster reboot the coming sunday/monday night at approx. 5 am - EST. That is in the middle of the night for all US merchants and should cause no bigger problems. We have to reboot our cluster to improve some settings and speed up the whole thing. We expect a downtime of less than 30 minutes.
2. The download mails are switched back to AuthSMTP.com and the log shows OK for mail delivery. I hope that this solves the problems of the past week.

More updates to follow…

Status update from our side: We just tried to switch back to our mail delivery service AuthSMTP.com who normally takes care of the download mails. That instantly produced errors again so we decided to let the mails come via our Yahoo Mail account for another day.

After ThePlanet exploded on Saturday the problems with mail delivery continued to pile up until we switched on Sunday. A notification went out to all buyers from our side and that should have solved all pending issues.

We also had a monitored reboot of the cluster scheduled for today, but we thought we wait until the hoster returns to normal operations. So far we are green on all lights, sales are steady and we work on some background changes to make your live easier. More updates will follow before the end of the week!

After a weekend full of support issues, I finally found some time to play around with ubuntu Linux to provide you some new screen recordings. First I thought it is cool, that ubuntu comes with a screen recorder. Then I was disappointed, because it produced flickering screen videos. Here is the solution! If your screen movie flickers with compiz on ubuntu, there is an easy solution: “Sync to blank”.

In the general settings for Compiz, tick the “Sync to blank” checkbox and reboot. After that my recordings look quite good - no more flickering. Nonetheless am I missing some features for adding comments and hints for the users, who might want to learn something from my clicking. I am still evaluating this software setup!