O2, The Cloud: How to Use, How it Works SOLVED.

PasturesNew

I have an O2 dongle, currently connecting at 32Kbps download and 20Kbps upload. It also has a data limit.

But, it says while I have a service, I can use The Cloud and there is a directory of places where I can do that.

The Problem

I have an entire website (0.25GB) and database (2.1GB) to download and then upload. I cannot do this with the dongle here as:
- the connection keeps dropping
- the speed is way too slow
- it will exceed my bandwidth limit by miles

So I thought I'd try to use the Cloud. There are 4 places listed in the Cloud Directory near to my home:
- The Royal British Legion Club, members only
- A snooker club, full of dodgy types
- McDonalds
- A public bar, frequented by wild stag-do types.

Now, as I see it, I don't see how I'd get electricity in those places. I might have the Cloud, but my laptop is limited to under an hour of power .... and I suspect my 2.x GB of download alone would take longer than that ... and then I have to upload it elsewhere.

How would you go about solving these problems? Would a Cloud provider be likely to provide electricity?

I am prepared to drive a round trip of up to 100 miles to achieve this, but I think the problem is lack of electricity to run my laptop at a Cloud place.

P.S. I ABSOLUTELY have to achieve this today (tomorrow at the latest) as I am migrating my entire site from a webhost in the US to a new one in the UK and the US webhost will be turning off my account shortly (they failed to migrate it, so it's been put back on a legacy platform for now, but for a very short time to give me time to do the transfer).

P.P.S. The public library limits you to half an hour - and it's closed. It only opens during office hours and Saturday mornings. I will be at work from 8am to 6pm Mon-Fri for the next three weeks.

P.P.P.S. I don't know anybody that has the Internet that I could borrow - and, as it's my whole site, this has to be downloaded onto my laptop, not some other random machine. Firstly, for security reasons of the data existing on somebody else's machine - and secondly because then I'd have the problem of getting a copy from their machine to mine.

bonzer

Why do you need to download and then upload? Can you not transfer direct from one web host to the other by FTP and then you don't need a good mobile signal. Do they let you SSH in?

You could try asking if a wi-fi hotspot would let you use a plug. Just keep driving round till someone says yes. I'm sure someone will eventually. If it's an emergency, could you not use some other wi-fi hotspot apart from cloud? Just go in a few pubs/coffee shops and ask if they would let you use a plug and pay for whoever says yes. It won't be that much.

What's the problem moving data off your laptop? Can you toast a DVD or get a cheap USB stick and use an internet cafe ?

weegie.geek

You'll probably get a signal from the McDonalds wireless router in the car park. Got an adapter to power your laptop in the car?

Bouncing it from one server to the other via fxp (how many webhosts enable fxp? I've seen some who do, some who don't) or via SSH will be much easier and faster.

It's just occurred to me that if you don't have the website locally... What's your backup strategy? Do you have one? You could kill two birds with one stone by buying backup space, a cheap VPS or something else that'd get the job done right now, backing the site up onto the backup service, then grabbing the backup from there to your new host. Much faster than downloading it to yourself then uploading it.

You can get a really basic spec VPS for a few pounds per month that'd give you space for a dozen generations of backup (and probably tons more if you compress them well) and plenty of bandwidth to allow for backups. Even if you only get it for the one month, it'd get this job done for you just fine. SSH in, ftp into wherever they're holding your files right now, grab them, then ftp into your new host and upload them.

penrhyn

Do you have any friends with an internet connection who would let you plug in to their router?

tronator

I would try to transfer everything directly between the servers. If you have SSH access the best way to do it is with Rsync, in case the connection drops.

verystupidwithmoney

Does your web host support SSH? Is your DB a MySQL DB?

The following from your web host should work if so:

mysqldump -u username -p dbname > dump.sql
tar zcf site.tgz path/to/yoursite
scp site.tgz dump.sql username@yournewwebhost.com:/your/new/path

then log into your new web host:

mysql -u username -p < dump.sql
tar zxvf site.tgz

if you provide all you new paths I'll improve those commands for you :-). You'll probably also need to edit your site paths if your software is built from a root path, ie, wordpress.

PasturesNew

Thanks everybody. Lots of solutions there that I'd have never thought of .... was "rescued" in the end, by a kindly neighbour ... who has let me take their laptop and effectively 'pirate' her signal across the road. I just happened to have a random conversation outside with her as she was packing to go away ..... !!! Who'd have believed it!!

I should look into the solutions above. I'm just without my own, proper, Internet at the moment, so things become much harder to achieve... then I was hit with a tsunami of individual, different and challenging occurrences online.

I now have my files backed up, I have one on a laptop here, other one is still downloading..... then I'll have a copy myself and be able to upload a copy.

I've effectively had two different hosts go unexpectedly awol this month. Got one domain back just one hour ago, and this second host is still trading, but been bought out. They migrated my site (I had no idea as they probably emailed me on my dead email address ... and the migration didn't work. So after 14 days of my site being offline (database connectivity issues they think), they rolled me back to the legacy platform and told me "take it ... you have X days to get it shifted". So last night I found a new host whose blurb said they'd do a migration... so I signed up and thought that was it, then the email came that said "ALL .... you have to do is get us these two files" DAMN!!

Well, I'm nearly there. I am hoping that if I can get these files uploaded to them this evening/tonight, then they can get my site up and running overnight and I can check it first thing in the morning and alter the nameservers.

It's never one thing is it ...


Edit/Update: And to prove it's never one thing I've just lost that fast connection. I have downloaded two files and was going to leave the 1.8GB running overnight .... and the wireless network's completely disappeared and I have no access to the house it's in - I've been staring at it and rebooting the PC, trying it in various positions, to try to see if there's any way it will connect, or if the modem's died over there.

Two options now:
- wait for neighbour to come home at some random point tomorrow and beg/steal the connection for longer
- book into a hotel within 50 miles, that has wifi.... and lounge about on the bed watching telly while I download/upload the files. Seriously, this would provide a comfy solution. Bonus: I'd be able to have a lovely hot bath, uninterrupted, too. mmmmm

It is 11:45pm and I have been working solidly on getting these two files, downloading them, uploading them for 12 hours now .... I'd got the new host to agree to try the (much) smaller .rar file (145MB instead of 1.8GB) to try to avoid downloading the biggun, but I was then going to download it overnight in case they turned round and said the .rar wasn't working.... all that's gone to pot now. Just have to PRAY the .rar file's fine and they need nothing more from me.