Great Western Coffee Shop

The server that has hosted the Coffee Shop since day 1 (we're now coming up for day 5,000) will be retired at the end of this month.  The Coffee Shop was a pop-up site ... intended just to be there for just a couple of weeks. It's lasted 250 times as long as we expected and some of the software is getting long in the tooth.

The new server will be running Ubuntu 20 (versus 14), MySQL 8 (versus 5), Apache https 2.4 (versus 2.2) etc ... and I will be moving the Coffee Shop over to it overnight later in the week or at the weekend.    Early tests are looking good in that I've been able to nip a few problems in the bud - but please take backups of your posts once I do the transfer as the nature of these things is that things may happen that I haven't tested, especially under load.

That shift won't be the end of the story ... we'll be moving from PHP 5.4 to 5.6, but we need to go to 7.0 (and will probably go to 7.4) in order to upgrade our Simple Machines from 1.1.2 to 2.0.17 ... and the database structure changes between them.   I already have two different web servers running on the new machine, so that once The Coffee Shop is across, I can write / run conversion scripts which (with another overnight change) will let me step the Simple Machines software forward.    None-trivial .... but when it goes through you'll get a new modern look and feel, and a forum that will run until day 10,000 ... and still with all the archive data.   I will give you good notice when I'm ready to make this step - it won't all that soon.

And I thought the stuff I work on was complex   :o

With all the stuff I've been doing today, I realise that in railway terms it's like a heritage line on which just about all the pieces of rolling stock have their own differences and foibles and if you try to relay the tracks so many complex issues come up.   

I have probably made a rod for my own back during two decades of teaching by having examples on the main site in the server in just about every open source language which helps create Electric Train's complexity.   So I'm finding I need ... an odd Apache module I had forgotten about, Expect, the LWP.pm module ...

Few hours sleep now and I will probably switch over the image engine ... let me see ...

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/DSC08291.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/gclub1.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/nightrail1.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/ch_900_217.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/9jf.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/holibob19_13.jpg)

Guess I can add a "guess where THAT was" to the above ... though I have forgotten some!

Image engine swapped ... post above looks good.  A few early issues with QR code generator and there may be other oddities during the day.  Main site to swap tonight - the Coffee Shop will be unavailable for a period of up to a couple of hours.

If it all goes pear shaped, updates at http://status.firstgreatwestern.info (which is another machine). Please make a note of that URL!


Edit ... Also at http://status.passenger.chat ....

Cheltenham?  :D