Big Server Upgrade!
Published on July 9, 2024 by deadsuperhero
We made a number of improvements to Spectra Video's day-to-day operations today. The most important thing to know is that the software is up-to-date, and everything runs smoother and better. However, it was way more difficult than it should have been.
What Happened?
Spectra is a really old instance at this point - we originally launched sometime in 2020 - and there were a lot of major version changes between the initial launch and today. We've tried our best to keep the software up to date, but some parts of our server OS were vastly out of date. After a user reached out regarding another video transcoding failure, we decided to take a look at some pieces of our infrastructure to see what was going on.
Redis was behind by a major version. In fact, it may have been a contributing factor as to why so many transcoding jobs have failed over the past year or so.
It turns out, our server's Linux distribution was grossly out of date, running Ubuntu LTS 20.04. It was so old that the developer (and our hosting company) no longer offered updated packages, or any kind of way to update the system. So, we had to do things the hard way today: start up a new server, install a new PeerTube, and move over all of the data manually.
Redis was behind by a major version. In fact, it may have been a contributing factor as to why so many transcoding jobs have failed over the past year or so.
It turns out, our server's Linux distribution was grossly out of date, running Ubuntu LTS 20.04. It was so old that the developer (and our hosting company) no longer offered updated packages, or any kind of way to update the system. So, we had to do things the hard way today: start up a new server, install a new PeerTube, and move over all of the data manually.
How did it go?
Overall, the migration went really well. We were able to recover almost everything we needed from a backup, but we did lose a few thumbnails and not-transcoded video files. If you tried to upload something in the past day or so, and you notice it's not there: we're sorry. We tried our best, and managed to get 98% of the way there. We strongly recommend uploading a new video.
Moving forward, we've set up two new things to make communication easier for Spectra members:
Moving forward, we've set up two new things to make communication easier for Spectra members:
- Official Fediverse Account - We'll be able to use this to put out announcements whenever the server goes down. Follow us directly at: @[email protected]
- Server Status Page - If you haven't heard from us, but something is happening with the server, you can check out if there's any outages or maintenance happening at our official status page: https://spectra.instatus.com
What's Next?
Something we've been wanting to do for a little while is build a new homepage. We're looking for creators in our community who are interested in appearing on our Home page as a featured account. This will give newcomers some people to follow, and will help build a little bit more coherence to our instance's community. If you're interested, get in touch!
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