Earlier today, I had a mild heart attack only because I broke the site a little bit. In my usual routine of just checking things I updated my computer, then went and connected to the server of this site. Simple and easy as I’ve done many times now.
As I stared at the command line, I kept thinking about what I needed to do next after updating the server. Nothing came to mind right away and began to type out my usual commands of update and upgrade. Hit enter and let things run. I was, of course, prompted if that was what I really wanted to do and I say yes.
Yeah, about that.
Seconds later I get the message that the MariaDB service exited with exit-code. My heart jumped a little bit. I quickly open a new browser tab and check the site. It shows content.
Not entirely.
The reason I say that is because it was showing a cached version of the site’s front page. I’m not mad at it in fact I’m sort of glad that showed up. The next thing I do is refresh the page and sure enough the dreaded “Error establishing a database connection,” message is now showing on the page.
Well, this is how I stop dealing with this site and just save money, right? No. Instead, I copy the error message and look up what could be causing that. The good part being there are many results. The bad part being there are many results.
I look at one, and not quite the same message. Okay, move on to the next one. I do see some potential here as it does at least show the “unknown variable,” line that I was seeing as well; though not the same variable so I have to move on.
The last one was super helpful because it was a GitHub issue. I wound up having to install one thing to resolve it but the fact was I would not have had to do that if I hadn’t read the issue. This was the comment that really helped me out because it had the one line I needed in order to get my MariaDB service to be up and running again.
I will have to do more reading when it comes to system administration because that’s what it feels like at this point when it comes to this site. I do like it but it is also one thing I didn’t think I would be doing for fun. Not mad at it by any means. This has been a good journey thus far though. I love learning along the way.
I know there is still much more for me to learn.