Diary of a Network Geek

No, not me. Work’s not that bad. Yet.
This time it’s a new virus that encrypts your special, important data and holds it for ransom. This is actually something that’s been talked about in security circles for years, but it’s been more of an urban legend than anything else. Now, it’s real. Updated your antivirus files lately?

I spent the majority of my day with the pre-sales engineer from Novell today.
And, that was a good thing. I learned a number of things today. (If you’re a non-geek or don’t feel like asking me to translate this into English for you, feel free to skip down to the paragraph break.) First, the bug I reported yesterday was totally false. The problem with Novell’s Open Enterprise Server running on SuSE Linux was that I’m so old school and security conscious. “How’s that?” you ask? Simple, I had a password that started with a dollar sign character. How’s that a problem? Well, it’s like this. The GUI installer takes the information to install eDirectory, Novell’s premier claim to fame, and throws it all at a command-line installer at a hidden console window. Sadly, in bash, the standard Linux shell, when you throw an unescaped “$” at the prompt programatically, it thinks you’re trying to define a string variable. That little misunderstanding throws the command-line eDirectory installer for a loop and it sits there, at its hidden console, prompting for a password and patiently waiting for you to supply it. Then, it misinterprets that and fails. Once the eDirectory install fails, everything afterward, that relies on eDirectory, also fails.
In other words, because I have more admin experience than Novell’s guys in the field and I’m committed to using secure passwords, I found a bug that no one thought to look for EVER BEFORE.

The other thing I learned today is that I know a hell of a lot about all kinds of strange, esoteric, varied and otherwise unrelated computer stuff. And, that is very, very cool.
Now, I’m going to go do something. No, I don’t know what and neither will you. Tomorrow, I’ll post something else. Good night.

It’s been a long week.
And, frankly, next week doesn’t look like it’s going to get any easier. For starters, I’ve been wrestling with this server at work. I mean this has been real Jacob wrestling with the Angel kind of epic battle stuff here. In fact, it was so bad that just today I was looking at returning Novell’s Open Enterprise Server and SuSE Linux in favor of Windows Server 2003. For those of you who know me and know my Novell zealotry, you know how much I would have hated to do that. Thankfully, the guy Novell sent over to help out got me squared away. I think I’ve actually been Novell certified longer than he’s been in the business, but, still, he knew his stuff, so it’s all good.
I’ve been trying to get the server installed for the past two weeks and kept running into strange errors. Well, it turns out to have a really, tiny, picaune thing. Remember some time back I was talking about naming conventions? Turns out it was more important than you could imagine. In the old days, we all used the underscore character in our tree names, as in “CompanyName_Tree”. Now, apparently, no one uses that convention and, as a result, a bug slipped through that kills the install. So, do I get a prize for finding it? Doubtful.
In any case, we managed to convince the boss that we should stick with Linux and OES and that we’d go over the migration tools tomorrow, which is when most of you will be reading this post anyway. So, I’m still going to get those career goals in after all. Woot!

On other fronts, I’ve got at least one, dear, sweet lady crawling all over my site to try and find out all about me. No matter what she finds here, and, yes, I am directing her to put the best possible spin on who I am, it still won’t be me. Not all of me. Not the part of me that people really love. The blog gives information, but, I’m more than the sum of my stories. And, in fact, many stories simply won’t ever see print, here or anywhere else. I have collections of odd, little facts and strange, obtuse skills that simply don’t fit well into a blog. And my humor doesn’t really play well in print, either. It’s all timing with me, and you can’t do timing very well in print. Still, I worry that we’ll be all out of things to talk about by the time we actually connect for coffee. I hope she’s ready to talk about herself!
And, several people have come to me for advice in the past week. Or, I’ve seen a couple of situations that I’d like to advise people about. Thankfully, I’ve shown restraint. Mostly. No one really wants me to give them advice. My advice is rarely well recieved, even if it is dead on. It may be my communication style, but, whatever it is, people sure don’t like hearing my advice. i do try and temper it by starting off with “Well, if I were in your position, I’d…” Doesn’t always work that well. Of course, I never said I made the best choices for myself, either! Still, sometimes it’s just like watching a slow-motion train wreck. You can see it all happening, but what can you do? These folks wouldn’t believe me if I told them the pattern I see in their lives. They’d just get pissed off at me. Of course, it wouldn’t change that I was right or that they knew I was right, but, still…

Well, there’s more, but my brain is all a-whirl with thoughts of my upcoming day, weekend and week that I can’t summon them up. Besides, I have a feeling I’d really irritate someone if I did! Always seems to work that way. So, it’s off to a lonely bed with my faithful companion. G’night.

And, yes, it’s free.
Really, there’s this new, on-line magazine that is totally dedicated to the Open Source movement called O3.
Now, this is fun for me. It might not be your thing, but, hey, look at the title of the blog. This is what I do. I love Linux and the other OpenSource projects that are running around out there. I use GIMP more than any other graphics tool, even ones that I paid for myself. Most of my favorite security tools are Open Source. And, nine times out of ten, all this great software is free.
So, if you don’t know about OpenSource software, go check out the magazine. I mean, c’mon, it’s not like you’re doing anything else on a Friday afternoon at work, right?
Next week, more Geek Pickup Lines!

Lord, what a boring title.
Hmm, come to think of it, it’s not a very exciting update, either. Anyway…
I got the last of my replacement server parts in Monday, got them in place and the bad stuff out again today. Oh, wait, I’m not sure I’ve mentioned that fiasco… Okay, so early last week I got all my server parts in except for my 1 Terabyte drive array, which got lost in shipping. That arrived Friday, but had the wrong cables. So, Friday, I decided to setup what I could anyway, and discovered that the keyboard and integrated trackball was bad. After a series of calls to Dell, they finally ship me the entire monitor/keyboard/rack-tray subsystem, because “that’s just how they come”. Those arrive Monday afternoon. I get them changed out and, basically, give up doing anything useful for the day.
Oh, yeah, the whole time, in between trying to get all the hardware worked out, I’m trying to talk a guy in Louisiana through setting up a “new” computer with an old hard drive. I say “trying” because apparently, this guy couldn’t read the damn screen to tell me what was going on. He kept asking me, “Uh, what’d I do next?” to which I almost always replied, “I don’t know, what does the screen SAY!?” And, apparently, it was so painfully funny that the engineer on the other side of the cubicle wall from me regaled his fellow engineers with the tale, much to their amusement. And, really, the guy in Louisiana was being pretty stupid. Everything he needed to know was right on the screen. But, I digress…
Then, yesterday, it takes me half the day just to figure out why the install can’t find any disk drives. Apparently, while hooking up the drive array, I some how wiped out the config on the two disks in the server itself. I have no idea how, but, wiped they were. And, since figuring that out, I have banged my head against the same module failing to install and configure correctly. Sadly, it’s the main security database the server uses to track everything. (For those in the know, it’s failing on the eDirectory/NDS/LDAP install and config. The modules are there, but the damn thing simply refuses to install a new NDS tree.) So, it’s kind of key to the whole reason we bought Novell’s Open Enterprise Server, instead of just running on Linux. This was not helped, I might add, by the fact that I was not smoking or that the boss stopped by to make clever comments about why I hadn’t figured the damn thing out yet, either.
I have an e-mail in to Novell to try and get some answers. We’ll see how it goes.

As for the other stuff, that messy, sloppy junk I call a personal life, well, it’s just not really going. Not unless you count the Prayer Team meeting last night and the grocery store tonight. So, since I won’t be managing to do my conversion this weekend, either, I’ll head back to the River Oaks Borders in search of True Love Friday night. I figure I’ll give it one more shot on Fridays, then take a week off to lick my wounds and convert my server, and try another night. Suggestions anyone?
Oh, and you’ll notice in deference to the start of my Troubles with Dating posts, I’ve added a new category, named in honor of my new favorite consolation at the Border’s coffee shop, Bavarian Death Cake of Love. So, if y’all are around, look for me. I’ll be the guy in glasses with a goatee, probably trying hard not to look like a stalker, and eating Bavarian Death Cake with a side of Italian Fascism. If you talk to me sweet, I might even buy you a slice! (Not you, boys. You’re on your own.)

For data disasters, not hurricanes and such.
Although, I suppose one could result in the other. Still, the article on TechRepublic is about a system for categorizing systems disasters. Five levels to help you decide appropriate responses, ending in total loss that might result from, of course, hurricanes and the like. Yes, as much as I’d like to ignore them, they are a very genuine concern here in the Gulf Coast. And, now, in this brief “off-season”, is when people who manage data should be planning for them. Now. Not two days before they hit. Or, a day after. Plan now for data loss due to hackers, or virus infections, or failing hardware. Not after the loss of data. The article is a good start on what to think about when planning.
Now, I have to go find the rest of my server so I can start ignoreing all that.

I just had my last cigarette.
I sat outside with a cup of coffee and smoked my last cigarette just now. I’m about to leave and get my hair cut, for which I am woefully overdue, and I’ll stop on the way to get gum. Lots and lots of gum, to help me curb the oral craving for a smoke. (That’s item number two on my list of Resolutions, BTW.) Considering the amount of work I’m about to immerse myself into with the server install and conversion, it might not be the best week to stop smoking, but, well, I have to stop sometime.
Last night, I ran out with some friends to a noodle shop that I haven’t tried before. Of course, that meant I over-ate. Again. I always do that in noodle shops, which is going to make Resolution Number Nine a bit more challengeing, but, still, it was good. So, I won’t eat lunch today to make up for it. Tonight, I’ll head out to dinner with folks from church, since I’ve paid all my bills and still have money in my pocket.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll do my Driver’s Safety course via OnDemand, thanks to WheelsInMotion. While all that’s going on, I’m also doing laundry. And, actually, I have a load in right now.
Oh, I also went to Borders last night. I picked up a couple of books my head-shrink reccomended to me, to be added to the ever growing pile of Books To Be Read. As well as getting a book I ordered on Syraic. (That’s a language related to Aramaic, which is probably the language that Jesus spoke. Probably.) Not to mention a couple of magazines on Linux, including one that had a wall chart of handy Linux commands and Open SuSE install CDs. I love that OpenSource stuff! And, I got a couple of CDs, too. Three from the “Local Talent” section, which I’ll review when I listen to them, a collection from The Brian Setzer Orchestra and one from some folks called “Bowling for Soup”, just because they seemed interesting!
Well, I have a lot to do yet today, so, off I go!

So, some things went well today, and others, not so much.
Virtually all my hardware arrived yesterday and I was able to start getting things setup. Which was good, but not everything went according to plan. For instance, my giant terabyte external drive array is still on a UPS truck somewhere in the greater Houston area. Or so the UPS tracking website tells me. Then, there’s the Novell Open Enterprise Server/SuSE Linux CDs that won’t be arriving. Why? Well, both the salesman and I were surprised to discover that they don’t send the media anymore. Now, it’s a download, which is what they’re doing even as we speak.
Also, there was the left side panel on the half-height rack from Dell that wouldn’t stay on. Any guesses why? Because the underage, third-world welder was overworked that week and the welds on the hooks at the bottom of the panel were extremely substandard and popped. Of course, I could have taken it out to the guys in the shop to get them to weld it quick, but that’s not the point. Dell sold me a fully functional rack that should have had all its parts together. They didn’t send that, so, now, they’re sending a replacement door. I figure it’ll arrive about the time that missing drive array does.
Now, here’s the lemons to lemonade part…
The great, big UPS that was shown on the quote as simply being 120 volts, which should be standard wall power, turned out to have a funky, 30 amp, round, grounded plug. So, I had to con one of the electricians we have on staff to help me out. Turns out he’s going to run a completely new 30 amp circuit just for the server. Which, as you old server monkies know, is just precisely what we should have anyway. Of course, I knew they wouldn’t want to hassle with it, so I totally ignored that and, well, sometimes, God likes me and sends me just enough lemons to make a whole, yummy pitcher of lemonade. Just like today.

So, in short, I’ve had worse days. The server is almost ready to go and the boss still thinks I walk on water. All in all, not bad at all.

No, this is not a euphimistic post.
My new server hardware arrived today. The whole thing, including the half-height rack with the pullout monitor and keyboard. I was also surprised to find that I’d been smart enough to get a server-grade UPS. I thought I’d forgotten that, but, luckily, when I started getting these quotes so many months ago, I’d been smart enough to get that added in. Yea for Jim’s hind-brain-server-ordering-autopilot! Yea!
So, tomorrow, it’s jeans a day early so I can run the cables through the dropped ceiling to where the rack will live. And, it’ll be taking everything out of boxes and getting it into the rack and configured. If I’m lucky, my software will arrive tomorrow. At least, it would be nice to have my Novell Open Enterprise Server and SuSE Linux to install. The backup software, from Syncsort, and the network attached storage devices that I’ll be backing up to would be nice, but they’re not as important as the operating system. I hope, for obvious reasons.
After that’s done, all I have to do is figure out how to migrate everything from the cranky, old Windows NT install and still have all the Windows XP machines and Apples talking to the server. No problem.

I hope.

Well, it looks like my server finally got approved.
Yea! So, yesterday morning, our office in New Orleans is having their third or fourth server space crisis in as many weeks and they start complaining about why they can’t get a new server. Of course, I patiently explain that I’ve been going through this little drive-space two-step for about six months or so here in Houston and we need a server as bad as they do. Well, I guess I said the right things to the right people and suddenly everything is a go. So I scrambled around and ordered a Dell server with 1.5 gig of RAM and 1 TERABYTE of hard drive space. I also ordered SyncSort backup software for Linux/Novell, two 1 terabyte network attached storage devices and a 50 user copy of Novell’s Open Enterprise Server for SuSE Linux. Now, all I have to do is whip together a migration plan. *sigh*
After I get this all converted and what not, I’ll repurpose the old server for the New Orleans office. Sadly this will mean travel to the sweatiest, back-road, industrial armpit outside of New Orleans, but, well, at least it’ll get done. And, I’ll have my OES server on nice, clean, safe, bullet-proof Linux. Of course, that means more geeky/technical writing. And a lot of penguin references.

I lost a reader recently, and I think my lack of geek content is to blame. At least, I have one less subscriber on Bloglines and, while it is possible that someone else has bailed on me, I blame it on a boring, barely technical job. I spend more time hooking up cables for my boss’ KVM switch than I do maintaining anything. In many ways, it has been rather disheartening. Of course, by the time I’m done here, I’ll have some really good things to put on my resume, but, then, I’ve been spinning long, thankless jobs into impressive experience since I started in this business. That Marketing degree comes in handy sometimes. So, in short, I’m looking forward to being a very technical guy for a couple of weeks. I hope I don’t bore my new readers while I geek out, though. Frankly, I really like some of you new ones. And, yes, I really do enjoy having a more female demographic. Really.