I’ve been wrestling with hardware issues for about four days now. That is what I get for naming a server fireball! Basically, the machine that has been my internet router, NAT box, development web server, database server, RDP proxy has gone through quite a few upgrades. It originally was my old overclocking desktop (thus, “fireball”) running a 300 MHz Celeron. It was upgraded to a 500 MHz PIII and it currently has a 700 MHz Duron. A month or so ago, I bought a new 120 GB drive for my desktop (thanks, Slickdeals!) and last week I finally got around to putting my old 30 GB drive into fireball.
The problems started then. Since the 30 GB drive was already in my desktop, I decided to install OpenBSD 3.4 on the drive before transferring it to the server. That install went smoothly, but the drive would not boot when I transferred it. I figured it just didn’t like the transfer, so I reinstalled OpenBSD while in fireball. When I tried to boot after the second install, the bootloader would come up with crap like “@$%&@#$&*@#$#$%!@#(&(^%”. After 45 minutes of playing around with the bootloader, the BIOS and the boot sequence, I finally figured out that it wouldn’t boot unless the drive was the primary on the IDE chain. Ok, finally got the new drive up and running! When installing OBSD, my first steps are to install the ports tree, tcsh, vim, the source and add ‘mbibik’ as a user. I got as far as compiling tcsh static when the machine just froze, hard. I figured, whatever, just a random lockup. Nope, anytime I taxed the processor, the machine would freeze. Obviously (at least to me), this seemed like a heat issue. I opened the case to check out the CPU fan, but it’s a fairly small (AKA cramped) case so I couldn’t see the fan behind the power supply. I monitored the CPU temp and it never seemed to get into dangerous territory.
I gave up at this point and told Russell the internet would be down for awhile (no server, no NAT, no internet). I started to play with it again, but there isn’t much you can do when the damned thing freezes every 15 minutes! I gave up trying to install tcsh, vim, etc and just started surfing the net from my desktop. Oddly enough, it didn’t lock up. At this point, I realized that interactive activities such as installing or compiling are probably accessing the disk more than just using the box as a router (which would only access the disk to periodically write logs). I switched back to the old drive, and all is well. Too bad my 30 GB drive is fried!
Category: Uncategorized
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Reminder for later: Sour Times; Breath From Another
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“Everywhere in these days men have ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather that in isolated individual effort.” – F. Dostoyevsky
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Let’s see, what’s been going on lately… Chris and Lindsay are getting married this fall. Definitely congratulations to them! I am the best man, so that means I should get started on writing the toast. I’ve been best friends with Chris since 1992 and I’ve known Lindsay for years, so I will have lots of material with which to work.
My knee is slowly healing. No longer do I need to wear my brace daily, just when exercising. I no longer limp around and I have full range of motion. I am supposed to go snowboarding this weekend, but that is not going to happen. If I really want to heal on time, I need to do more physical therapy.
There is some political crap going on at work, but I can’t say much yet. I still have a job, so I am okay. -
Altruism, as a concept, exists. Altruism, as reality, does not exist.
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Merry Christmas!
I will increase my post frequency soon once my parents go back to Michigan. -
Why is it that I had never heard of the terms “bollywood” or “steam punk”, yet I’ve seen both a handful of times just this week?
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Disclaimer: For no real reason, I have always disliked Walmart. Maybe it was because, for the longest time, there were no Walmarts nearby either my hometown of Livonia, MI or my college town of Ann Arbor, MI. That has since changed, with stores in or near both cities. Maybe it was because Walmart always had a southern, poor slant to it. Maybe it was because we had a similar store, Meijer’s, in our area and I was pledging a local allegiance. For whatever reason, I never liked Walmart.
I’ve always heard that Walmart was an “evil” company. From details like hiring illegal aliens for stock and cleaning work to treating “regular” employees poorly to pushing around suppliers, the comments swirled around and painted a dirty portrait. When I was back working at the Daily with Scott as my manager, he spoke of Walmart as being worse than an other company he knew of. He had facts from reputible sources, and though being an activist, used them properly. Now having read this article from fastcompany.com, I’m starting to see the details about how Walmart interacts with suppliers. From first glance, it does seem evil, overbearing and monopolistic. At the same time, isn’t that what capitalism is all about? A mostly-free market for companies to do as they please? Walmart doesn’t force smaller suppliers to cut costs, Walmart is just such a large and successful company that the small suppliers need to be up to Walmart standards.
I won’t go so far as to condone their practices and I do agree that Walmart needs to improve their human rights issues, but don’t fault a company for being successful.
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So, Walmart has decided to open their own online music service. My first thought was, Walmart with an online service, up against a formidable opponent like iTunes Music Store? Then again, people thought the same thing about Microsoft coming out with the XBox to go against Sony and the PS2. Anyway, this serivce, much like the new Napster, uses WMA 9. Because of this, no one with a Mac can use this service and this is even mentioned in their FAQ. Oddly enough,
this page has a screen shot from a Mac! Observed first by a Slashdot member.