Internals
From OraWiki
Configuration of OraForecast.com
To give information about configuration details to the public is always a risk because this give crackers information about vulnerabilities of a WebSite. Have a look at our Hackers_clause to understand the difference between Hackers and Crackers.
Contents |
Simple image
This image uses the OraForecast WikiMedia extension ImageMap. You can move the mouse pointer over an Item and click at it and than you will be directed to detail pages located at OraForecast.com or other WebSites.
Update of the drawing on 2007.03.11 19:47 CET by Steven.
Update of image map at 2007.03.24 19:28 CET by Steven.
Our imagemap extension have one benefit compared to the new offered imagemap extension of MediaWiki (offered later as our extension.): You can use kImageMapEditor to create such imagemaps.
Hardware
Our site is build using a router with firewall and DSL 6000 (6016kBit/s download and 576kBit/s upload) using a dial in line with a flat rate. We already pay for DSL 16000 (16000kBit/s download and 1024kBit/s upload) but we do not have a DSL 16000 enabled modem. Today we run one Intel 3.06Ghz. Celeron (Frequencies) computer with 1 GB RAM and two 160GB SATA disk drives for RAID level 1.
There is one Adaptec SCSI adapter installed. We attached two 9GB drives with RAID 1 and one DAT streamer at these adapters. We've attached SCSI drives because they are pretty much faster as IDE or SATA drives (We tested this!). For HSM (Hirarchical Storage Management) backups we've attached one 80GB USB II drive.
Additional backups could made with a 4GB DVD burner. If you want I can send you a backup of our Wiki or BBS as DVD. You have to pay for this service. DVD backup will be used for additional backups and safe backups until our database is larger than 4GB (That's roundabout 16E6 (16.000.000) DIN A4 pages!). Why DVD backup? A cracker maybe able to hack this site. Maybe he is able to get acces to evrything and delete everything. But: Nobody can delete a written DVD.
There are two (actual manual to startup) logical standby servers with identical configuration. Actual they are turned off (to safe energy and stop not necessary polution) but it is very simple to bring them up and running.
Why being so paranoid? I give nearby all informations about this site to the public. This is a security risk! We should be able to restore this site (probably with a small loss of changes) in any case. Data stored here should be persistent. That's a must!
Hardware Image
Click here to get images of OraForecast.com servers.
Server Software
We installed Ubuntu Linux, Apache2, PHP5, MySQL, phpBB2, phpMyAdmin, MediaWiki, AWSTATS, NTP, ddclient, postfix, openLDAP, ISPConfig, SquirrelMail, phpLDAPadmin, PostFix admin (not really required, if using ISPConfig) and some other OpenSource (non commercial) products.
Up to now I do not use Oracle XE at this site. I've tested it with Ubuntu and it works. But there are too much restrictions. The major problem is that Oracle forbid usage of domain names starting with Ora if someone want to use XE at his site. That's really bad for me. I've developed a lot of pretty good tools to analyse Oracle performance problems and I'm not able to install running previews of this products.
My idea is up to now to pay for a second domain, installing XE at this domain and access the database at this system.
In my opinion Oracle XE will not have any chance to become an intresting database for free WebSites like MySQL using such a strategy.
I do not need running examples of my work for a good reputation. In my opinion all of this done here show's my know how and that's just 2 percent of my Oracle know how.
HA module
To manage high availability I've written Watchdog. This is a small piece of software to support non stop high availability. Watchdog is now in stage test and you can access some previews of sources from Watchdog. If everything runs perfect than I will publish Watchdog at the regular used WebSite for this like RPM seek and at the servers of Ubuntu Linux to make it installable via apt-get.
Backup
Backup is setup using simple tar but using a poor persons HSM (Hirarchical Storage Management). Everything is dumped first to a local USB drive and than migrated to a DAT drive.
Client (your) Software
Our site is very special. It's easy to use with all versions of Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla or Firefox. Nevertheless your browser must meet our requirements.
Please click at OraForecast compatibility check and OraForecast.com's user configuration assistance to check your installation.
Our system offers three different levels of "difficulties".
- Easy (OraWiki and OraForecast BBS). Requirements: Any browser
- Medium (Simple Java Applets) Requirements: Java 1.5 enabled browser. Check with WikiMedia Extension EmbeddedJava.
- Complex (Java3D Applets) Requirements: Java 1.5 plus Java3D 1.3. Check your Java3D_requirements
Our Java applets are tested with different operating systems and browsers. They work! If not it's a setup problem of your environment.
Installation guide
Click here to get details about installation and setup of a Linux based dial in Website.
