Category: Activities

Ok, that was getting ridiculous

After getting that error on the pt_comments table again, I went into mysql and tried a

check table pt_comments;

and it found an error, so then I did a

repair table pt_comments;

and it said it repaired it, but another

check table pt_comments;

found the same damn error again. So I shut off the web server (so I wasn’t getting hit with comment spams) and did a backup and restore of the entire mysql database, and the problem seems to be gone. For now. Maybe. We’ll see.

I don’t think MySQL liked the upgrade very much

Every time I go into my WordPress SpamKarma page, I get the following error:

Failed to purge comment spam entries.
Query: DELETE `pt_comments`, `pt_sk2_spams` FROM `pt_comments` LEFT JOIN `pt_sk2_spams` ON `pt_sk2_spams`.`comment_ID` = `pt_comments`.`comment_ID` WHERE (`pt_comments`.`comment_approved` = ‘0’ OR `pt_comments`.`comment_approved` = ‘spam’) AND `pt_comments`.`comment_date_gmt` < DATE_SUB('2006-08-14 11:36:26', INTERVAL 2 HOUR) SQL error: Incorrect key file for table './wordpress/pt_comments.MYI'; try to repair it

So then I go into mysql, do a “repair table pt_comments”, and repeat the purge operation and it’s fine. But some hours later, when I go back to the page, I get the same error. How do I repair this damn table so it stays repaired? Would doing a full mysqldump and restore fix it?

First Annual Rochester Pilots Picnic

Hey, that was a big success. It was supposed to start at Noon, and I arrived at 12:15. There was nobody there yet, and I was walking over towards the river to have a look around, and seriously considering whether to declare the thing a big bust and head home, when up comes Brad Salai and Jim Hood with all the food. Hey, even if nobody else shows up, at least we can eat and drink. But over the next little while, people started showing up. By the time the charcoal was ready, we probably had 25 people there. It seems there were a bunch of people from Artisan Flying Club, 3 or 4 other people from Rochester Flying Club (RFC), and at least three former members of RFC.

Mostly we just sat around eating and drinking and talking about flying. What more does any group of pilots need to do? At around 3pm, a Red Bull truck pulled up and handed out cans of Red Bull energy drink. (They’d evidently contacted Brad Salai to ask if they could come.) Just for the record, the sugar free type of the drink doesn’t taste very good. I don’t think I was alone in that assessment – there were a lot of mostly full cans sitting around as we packed up at the end.

I’d say the event was a success, and I hope we decide to do the Second Annual Rochester Pilots Picnic. One comment I heard was that we should get the Rochester Pilots Association RPA back together. RPA sort of went on hiatus for many years because the guy running it lost interest in running it. But then Paul Pakusch decided we needed to get it back together, but when we started having meetings only 4 or 5 people showed up for each meeting, so he disbanded it. I think the Assocation assets were disposed according to the charter, which probably means it went to an aviation related charity. But maybe we went about it the wrong way – instead of having a bunch of boring business meetings, maybe we need to have picnics and other fun things, and then see if we have concerns that need a business meeting. After all, the Rochester area isn’t just Greater Rochester International Airport – there are a bunch of airports in the area, and a bunch of different groups of pilots who should all get together and talk flying.

Server upgrade

I upgraded my server from Fedora Core 4 to Fedora Core 5 using yum. After going through all the .rpmnew and .rpmsave files and fixing configuration files, most things are working. A couple of annoyances:

  • It no longer puts items in /etc/fstab for usb storage devices, so I have to find what device the disk has been assigned and mount it manually. I’m hoping I can find a solution to that.
  • Can somebody please tell me why the people who wrap the PostgreSQL binaries in an RPM can’t figure out how to do a pg_dumpall in the %pre at the beginning of the process, and a restore of the backup in the %post at the end? The init.d script refuses to start up if you have an 8.0.x database on an 8.1.x PostgreSQL, so after the upgrade you have to go “oh, shit, the last backup I made was …” and restore it. If you’re not the sort of person who dumps the database every night to a file on your USB disk, you’re screwed.
  • WordPress was refusing to clear out comment spam because of some index issue, and then claimed that the table had “crashed”. I had to fumble around with mysql_upgrade, mysqlcheck, and myisamchk to get that straightened out.

So far, knock wood, those are the only issues. The PostgreSQL one is, to me, indicative that the Fedora Core team don’t really care about preserving data. I haven’t tried, but I bet you anything the Debian people don’t just say “oh well, if you didn’t back up you’re screwed.”