I like having redundant servers, and 3 would be a good max for the time being. I have a friend who I’ve known for a while that might be willing to go ahead and have a server linked to ours, while in the meantime, I can help him do a few things and learn the world of Linux.

There are no plans set in stone right now, but I’ll keep up-to-date about it and we’ll see how things go. If this third server does come, then I will no longer accept any additional ones for the time being until the userbase grows. The main luna server will act as a hub while the rest will be leaf servers, so to speak.

Alright then, the Information page has been updated to include the new server info. The shadowhime.net is set to a round robin, so you may get either server, while the other one, irc.lolifox.net, will get you to the new one.

On a side-note, SSL is supported on both servers. I think I forgot to update something in the tutorials area or something, so I’ll fix that when I get a free moment.

Before anyone asks me, no, I have no intentions of supporting IPv6 at this time. Its still a pretty new tech (kinda.. its been around for some time over in Europe), but since we’re US-based, there are barely any IPv6 providers and such. None of the servers are compiled for IPv6 support at this time. If it becomes widely popular, maybe then I’ll reconsider on recompiling the servers for the support.

It was a long time coming, and I’ve mentioned this once before a month or so ago.

Well, I finally got the new server, currently running the latest Fedora OS available (though fussy sometimes..). I’ll have a bit more info later on and I’ll add the necessary information on the pages and let y’all know. I do have it linked right now, and so far so good.

This is a self-hosting box, so bear in mind that if my internet goes out, so does it. But, at least it’ll be better to have two servers in the event either goes out. I’ll keep a copy of the services on both ends, but only one will run at a time, to prevent collisions and splits to a minimum.

And one last thing to note. This server has a special MOTD, so to speak, in place. I do have to give credit where its due… Reku is the artist for the base image I used for the ASCII art, while the program to make the ASCII art is called JavE, a freeware program coded in Java. If you wish to see the image I had used (or rather, the full image), you may click here. The site is in Japanese, but you will be able to see the image fine. If y’all want an alternate link, use this instead.

The full MOTD for the servers may get posted here, but I’ll debate on that for a bit. Anyway, as mentioned before, information for that server coming soon. irc.shadowhime.net will be a round robin DNS essentially, and if y’all want to use the other server specifically, I’ll have a link to it on the information page.

ShadowHime will be moving to a new server based in the UK due to a prolonged DDoS on the current box. No one really knows why, but I was informed the UK datacenter appears to be much more quiet and should prove to be more stable. If this appears to be the case, I can go ahead and continue running the server as planned and we can add an additional server or two for fall-back in the event something does occur.

Stay tuned and I’ll try to keep everything up-to-date. irc.shadowhime.net may temporarily stop working if a new IP is obtained from this move. If this is the case, I’ll get it updated and it should work within 24 hours. Shorter if your ISP’s flush out DNS caches frequently.

[Update1] Read the comment below.

I had a bit of time and found out a way to make a backup of all the configs, and the databases for the services, so I got those which saved me a bit of time, thankfully. We’re running the latest stable version of InspIRCd now, which is 2.0.5. I had to muck around with it a bit and fix some dumb mistakes I did (I’m human too~) to get it running again, so took a little longer than intended.

Now on another matter. The server has been rather up and down lately, or a daily PMS. Its getting stupid, I know.. but its beyond my control. However, EvilEntity is getting a box prepared for me to use as a server box, and I’ll just self-host the IRC server itself. I’ll post more updates regarding that as time goes on, but if luck is with me, I should have it by the end of the month at the latest.

I’m gonna plan out upgrading the IRCd soon to the latest stable version that’s available. I need to copy the configs so that they match and that’s going to take me a while. The copy of the configs I have locally are not quite as up-to-date as I’d like, but they only need minor tweaking to fix that, so they’re not far off. I’ll post more updates as I can and when available.

Far as features go, I don’t believe anything new will be around for public use, maybe a few updated/new channel and user modes perhaps to play with. I’m not sure, I’ll do some documentation if needed and update where necessary.

On another note, it may be apparent that there have been issues on the server. I do apologize (rather late) for that, and I’m trying to figure out what to do. I have two friends who are going to help me out with obtaining a couple boxes and we’ll just self-host ShadowHime. I’m tired of piggy-backing and its time to self-host things. The web server will remain where its at, but the IRC itself will move and hopefully it’ll be seemless. At least that way if an issue occurs, I’ll have plenty of people to talk to in case something goes wrong and I don’t know how to fix it. You can thank EvilEntity for one of those boxes as he’ll be able to provide a box for us here, so be sure to give him a beep if you see him online in #insanity_refuge.