About Chiefresidents.net
History
This website was created in October 2000 initially as a personal website
for Dr. Prashant Phatak with the creation of the "Peripheral Brain" as
the first page. Later, the site became the very popular residents' page
for the LLUMC Internal-Medicine Residency Program from 2000-2003. At the
height of it, the site hosted schedules, templates, sponsored event
information, text-pager directory (initially created in cgi with dbman),
pre-op clinic information and more. Late in 2002, the name was changed
to Chiefresidents.net. To ensure additional reliability, the
server was moved to managed hosting from February 2007 to present.
Content
Most of the original content and services provided have been lost or
discontinued due to lack of support. The online schedules and
newsletters are gone. However, the pager and alumni directory remain,
now in their php-mysql versions. Many of the links are still present and
operational. The message board, initially powered by IkonBoard, has been
replaced with a phpBB-powered system. The content of the original
message board has been lost
Server Hardware
The Server has been running on AMD Athlon based systems since 2000. The
original server was hosted on a AMD K6-2 350Mhz Based system. Then an
Abit-KT7 based 1.2 GHz Athlon powered the site until April 2005, when
the board was lost due to capacitor leakage/failure. The current server
is in operation from April 2005 to present and is a 1Ghz Athlon with a
MSI KT7-Turbo motherboard. From February 2007 onward, the server
is being used for mailing list services only. Web server hosting
is provided by 1and1.com hosting.
Web Server and OS
The original http/web server was powered by Omni-Httpd and later Windows
IIS for a brief period. Reliability on windows was poor with frequent
downtimes and outages. The web server was changed to Apache under Linux
in February 2004, greatly improving reliability. Red Hat Fedora was
installed in February 2004 and was in use until September 2004. Mandrake
Linux-10 was in use from September 2004 to October 2005. From October
2005 to November 2006, Mandrake 2005LE was used. From November 2006 to
present, Mandriva Linux 2007 is used with Apache 2.2x. The website has
maintained uptimes well over 2 months since the conversion to Linux
based systems. From February 2007 onward, the web server continues to be
Apache 2 under linux hosted by 1and1.com
hosting.
Email Server
The Email server was initially provided by various applications under
windows and later Mecury/32 for Windows. In February 2004, Sendmail was
used until October 2005. Since October 2005, PostFix has been in use.
Since February 2007, outgoing mail support is provided by Dyndns.org
mailhop fowarding for reliable SMTP transmission.
Mailing List support was initially provided by Mercury/32 under Windows.
In February 2004, Majordomo was used until September 2004. Since
September 2004 to present, we are using Mailman with increased
reliability.
DNS
The main domain hosting was provided by
Dyndns.org from August 2000 to February 2007. DNS is now provided by
1and1.com since February 2007 onward.
The mail server DNS continues to be provided by Dyndns.org since 2000 to present. Current DDClient is used on Linux to keep the dynamic IP addressing current. An x10 based script written for MisterHouse automatically ensures that the DSL Modem is functioning properly.
Website Versions
Version 2 - 2002-2003Version 3 - 2003-2006
Version 4 - 2006-present
