A Geek With Guns

Good news, if you’re seeing this it means my server is back online, running OpenBSD 5.3, and using the Nginx web server instead of Apache.

The only difference you may notice is Server Name Indication (SNI) is now working. What does this mean? It means you can use a secured (SSL) connection for https://blog.christopherburg.com/ and https://www.christopherburg.com/ (unless you’re still running Windows XP or an even older version of Windows, then SNI won’t work for you and you’ll have to keep using https://blog.christopherburg.com/ instead). Basically SNI allows me to have different virtual hosts use different certificates. Since I can get valid certificates for a single subdomain for free it’s cheaper for me to use a different certificate for each subdomain than to acquire a single certificate that is valid for every domain (if I made money off of this site I would have just purchased a certificate but I do this for free so you get what you pay for). I’m not sure if anybody will use it but it’s there for those who want to.

I’ll be tweaking things for a while so the site may be up and down throughout the evening.

Starting this afternoon or evening this site will likely be down. OpenBSD 5.3 was released so I want to upgrade the server and I’m planning on switching the web server from Apache to Nginx. As with most upgrades I expect this one to go smoothly but know it will turn out to be a rather frustrating affair. On the upside when it’s done this site should be… exactly the same as it is now. Still, the back end stuff will be newer!

I can’t describe in words how much I love virtual machines. When I made the virtual OpenBSD server that hosts this website I stupidly made the partition holding this website too small. Needless to say the tiny partition was filling up fast and I need to expand it. With a physical machine this could be a daunting task because screwing up would mean really screwing up. Fortunately on a virtual machine I need only take a snapshot of the server in a working condition before fiddling with things and I know no matter how badly I screw up salvation is only a snapshot restore away. The first time I attempted to expand the partition I royally screwed it up and the server would no longer boot. My second attempt was far more successful. The partition holding this website is now, as far as OpenBSD is concerned, on its own drive. Putting the partition on a separate virtual drive will make it easier to expand in the future when the need arises.

What you’re reading right now is the culmination of my efforts to blog this weekend. Here in Minnesota this weekend marked the first weekend where the weather didn’t suck. Because of this I enjoyed my freedom to move outside again by spending my time at the beach and on my mountain bike. Effectively this blog has been delayed due to weather.

Have a nice day and I may post some content later.

Without saying a word or indicating I was going to do so I’ve moved this site over to a different server. What’s that mean for you? I do have a valid SSL certificate now. If you go to the HTTPS version of my site your browser should indicate that you have a secure connection for a brief second. WordPress, by default, has no way to force secure connections and always attempts to redirect users to the unsecured version of the site. I’m still working to correct that. It is my intention to provide an always secure site in the future.

Underneath a few things have changed. Previously this site was hosted on OS X 10.6 Server. Apple no longer provides any notable support for 10.6 and their new server software has proven to be unusable. This time around I decided to go with OpenBSD 5.2. OpenBSD has a solid track record when it comes to security, which is something I really like. Hosting the site on OpenBSD also gave me an excuse to become more knowledgeable about BSD-based operating systems. In addition to changing operating systems I also put the server in a virtual machine. Previously I was hosting this site on a natively installed operating system. Now I can move the site from server to server with little trouble and take advantage of useful tools such as snapshots.

There may still be some bugs to work out. If you notice any problems please feel free to e-mail me using the address on the sidebar.

I’m traveling out of town for business so I don’t have the time needed to post more content. This is going to be a fairly brutal trip as I leave Minnesota at 09:00 and return at 06:00. In other words I’ll likely have been awake for almost 24 hours and, barring free time to write posts, I won’t have much for new content today or tomorrow morning. I leave you with an excellent traveling song: Gods of War Arise by Amon Amarth:

Through a combination of illness and starting a new project I didn’t have the energy or time to write any posts last night. Check back later, if I’m feeling better I may get something posted.

I’m back from vacation but I didn’t get home until 22:30. Needless to say after being in a car for roughly 10 hours I didn’t feel up to writing posts as soon as I returned. Due to this new content isn’t going to appear until later.

I won’t be around to post material for a couple of days. I did write a couple of posts ahead of time so there will be updates although not at the usual volume.

It was a busy weekend and I didn’t find time to post any stories. I’ll probably post some content later but in the meantime Pope Benedict resigned. Needless to say that wasn’t a new article I was expecting to read this morning.