Who Sabotaged CHAKRA?

by Vipramukhya Swami

CHAKRA (Vancouver) — The CHAKRA web page was off-line from October 5 to October 9, 1998. Although it is now back on line, some of our friends thought the off period was the result of sabotage.

It turns out, however, that it was a simple software problem, unrelated to any mischief mongers.

"When I installed Windows 98," said Umapati Swami, "I installed it as an upgrade over Windows 95, and I don't remember whether or not the setup asked me whether I wanted FrontPage Express and the Windows web server. In any case, I did not know what they were, and they seemed like something that might be useful or necessary with Front Page 98, the software that I use to maintain CHAKRA."

Umapati Maharaja said that the Windows web server seems to conflict with the FrontPage web server, but only under certain, unknown, conditions. He forgot about the Windows web server and had no trouble at first. "I updated the web site normally a few times," he said. "Then suddenly it stopped working. I could log onto the web site, but I could not update it."

"I tried everything," he said. "I reinstalled Front Page, I reinstalled my network connections, I manually configured port 80, I contacted the site server, I spent hours poring over documents on the Microsoft web site. Nothing helped. Fond memories of the old typewriter days drifted through my mind, and I began to wonder if it might be true that sannyasis should not have computers."

"I discovered the extra web server tonight as I was fooling around with Windows," he said. "I took it out, reinstalled Front Page, and everything worked."

We at CHAKRA apologize for being off-line for several days. We received much e-mail and many phone calls from around the world from devotees asking us what was wrong.

Umapati Maharaja says that he hopes this will end the problem. We think it will.

"And my computer and I are in love again," he adds.

CHAKRA 14-Oct-98