Title: New Web Server (2016)
Author: bnewbold
Date: 2016-05-01
Tags: tech

For the past 9 years or so
([February 2007](https://git.bnewbold.net/bnewnet/commit/?id=5b31039d4c581048959dc51436f6918f29fbf9ea)
through April 2016), this website has run reliably despite being a weird
machine: a custom prototype web application for archiving and sharing digital
"artifacts" of all sorts. I remember a bold and sparkling afternoon at a
coffee house in Santa Cruz agonizing over URL structure and refining categories
to collect all the material that would (aspirationally) accumulate here over my
adult life.  All things considered I think this effort wasn't wasted: I have
indeed collected wiki notes, photos, images (distinct!), short links, one-off
pages, and longer form writing over the years. My enthusiasm for maintaining and
interfacing with idiosyncratic administrative and upload panels, however,
declined rapidly. Neither the source code web interface nor the git-backed wiki
were ever completed or used. I gave up on spam moderating the comment system
pretty quickly, never actually posted any blog entries, and only ever pecked in
a couple dozen web links and tweet-like microposts. Even the photo gallery
system became too much of a time sink to deal with after traveling. Over the
years I deployed [gitweb](https://git-scm.com/docs/gitweb) and
[gitit](http://gitit.net/), and after RSS starting going out of favor I even
started using [tumblr](http://journal.bnewbold.net/) for random content posts.
I was still using the Django admin panel's "flatpages" plugin to update my
contact info and project pages right up through this spring though.

While it's been amazing how simple and low maintenance running everything
(email, repositories, website, etc) has been, the thrill of being on an old and
unmaintained release of GNU/Linux (Ubuntu 10.04) has worn off, and I'm cleaning
house. This website (`bnewbold.net`) is now a simple statically generated
([pelican](http://blog.getpelican.com/)) site. I've kept `gitit`, but moved to
`gitolite` (one of my favorite pieces of software) and `cgit` for repository
hosting. The server runs Debian stable (`jessie` to start with), and SSL/TLS
certificates come gratis via the Let's Encrypt project, for which I'm very
grateful. I've stuck with [linode](https://www.linode.com) hosting for this
server, though [digital ocean](https://digitalocean.com) is comparable and
cheaper for setups with fewer photos and large files.  Many of these components
are deployed in an automated fashion using the `ansible` deployment tool; you
could fork and edit my [infrastructure scripts](http://git.bnewbold.net/infra/)
to set up those components in minutes if you like (though it would probably
take an afternoon or longer if you've never done something like this before).
Not everything is settled yet: I haven't moved email, and I'm not sure if I'll
stick with [mediagoblin](http://mediagoblin.org) for photo hosting.

<br />
<center>
<div class="centerize" style="font-size: smaller;">
<a href="http://bnewbold.net/photos/detail/529/">
<img src="http://media.bnewbold.net/hosted-photos/cache/2008/02/08/IMG_7232.JPG" />
</a>
<br />
An adelie penguin (the tiny black spot) wandering off alone over the Ross Sea
ice shelf
</div>
</center>
<br />

The name of my old server is `adelie` (named after a small species of penguin
that [I saw a lot of](http://bnewbold.net/photos/detail/527/) in Antarctica),
and it's days are limited.  Though the
[`hier`](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/hier.7.html) (filesystem layout)
of most of my systems are almost identical, I'm particularly comfortable on
this one. It's seen me through a lot, more than any other computer system, and
I'll probably miss it in a weird way.

The new server is `adze`; here's hoping it lives even longer!

<br />
_**Note:** As initially posted this was just a stub; I re-wrote it in June
2016_