Diary of a Network Geek

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.

Attention:If you are not a professional geek, the following announcements may bore you to tears!
Right, now that it’s just us boys, let’s get down to brass tacks. First, there’s that pesky Windows Meta File vulnerability. It’s been patched. At least, according to this article on AustralianIT, the overlords at Redmond have stepped outside their rigid, lockstep patch routine to address this vulnerability. All I can say is “About time!” Though, this has been a known problem since November, kids. The only difference now is that the media got ahold of this during a slow news week. The vulnerability wasn’t as big a deal as most news sources were making it.
Second, according to Groklaw, SCO has asked to amend their complaint against Novell. Why? Well, the evidence points quite clearly to the fact that Novell hasn’t violated a copyright, but SCO’s revenue model is such that they have to sue someone for something. So, toward that end, they want to change their suit to, essentially, a breach of contract against Novell. All I can say is, why has this been allowed to go on this long? Someone spank McBride and make him apologize for being an ass then let’s just drop this and move along with the rest of the industry. M’kay?

Finally, this is a little more personal. For years, I’ve been hearing about how the mythical “web services” concept is going to save us all tons of work and money. For just as long, I’ve been saying that it’s not going to work. It’s slow, resource intensive and damn hard to implement. Folks, trust me on this, I’ve been with companies that have tried this again and again. It’s a great idea on paper, but it just ‘aint gonna’ work. Now, it seems like people are finally starting to come around. At least, if I’ve read this ad for a TechRepublic webcast on this topic correctly. Why doesn’t anyone listen to me?

Well, I feel better now. Please, resume your Friday and enjoy your weekend.

Uh, then, can we have them?
Remember that hand-crank laptop I mentioned some time back? Well, the chairman of Intel, Craig Barrett, seems to think that the poor don’t really the clockwork laptops. Uh, okay, then can the moderately poor get some? How about the barely middle-class? I know a lot of those kind that would dig them, especially if they’re going to run Linux.
Gee, you don’t suppose he’s trying to kill this because they’re not going to use Intel chips, do you? Naw! Of course not! What was I thinking?

“I may have to blow up the building.”
Why does my life have to look so much like Office Space? Why?
So, I’m talking to the boss today about the new Linux server that we desperately need, trying to confirm that we will, in fact, order this essential piece of equipment before the end of the year, when the quotes expire, and I get…
“Well, if not by then, shortly after.”
“Ah, you do realize that those quotes expire at the end of the year, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And then the prices will change…”
“Well, tell them that any deep discounts would be appreciated.”
“Uh, those were already in those quotes. After the first of the year, the prices go up.”
“How much?”
“Um, not sure, but a lot.”
“Oh, well, find out. Maybe it will make the MoneyGuy go faster.”

To quote Charlie Brown, and mix my metaphors, “AAAARRRRRGGGHH!!”
And, all this without Chotchkie’s or Jennifer Aniston. Life is not fair.
All I can say is, no one better try to take my Red Swingline Stapler.

No, this is not one of my infamous religious posts.
Actually, this is a technical post. Thursday this past week started like any other. “Jim, do this, ” and “Jim, I need that” and “Hey, Jim, should this computer be smoking this way?” A standard day in the life of a stand-alone IT department. Then, things turned ugly. Every call became “Hey, Jim, is there something wrong with this network share?” And, I finally put two and two together to get five and, sadly, discovered that the Linksys EFG-120 Network Attached Storage device had curled up its toes and died.
Luckily, the important stuff is all backed up, but not everything on that drive is “important” enough to hit the limited backup we have. So, it was time for the Network Geek to go into action. I started, as always, with a reboot. Nada. Well, I thought the NAS was Windoze based, since it was a mapped drive on the crusty, old Windows NT server I’ve been limping along here, so I reboot it again. Still nothing. So, thinking at a moderate pace, I decided to try and reseat the drive in the device. One small problem: the NAS is locked and no one has a key. Luckily, a little thing like a locked door has never been more than a temporary impediment to me, so I start banging away at the lock with my LEATHERMAN Pocket Survival Tool. After a few minutes, I managed to bust the drivetray out of its slot without damaging the case and reseat the drive. Crank it up and… Still nada. Damn, I thought to myself. Gonna’ be one of those days.
So, I tell the Boss about it. Boss says, do what you can and let me know. Great. I try getting the drive into an external drive case and hooking it up to his firewire hub on his Mac. Can you guess what we got? Yeah, nada. Right, well, I’m not ready to give up because, well, I’m a tad obsessive about this kind of thing. Sure, that makes me a little hard to deal with in the World, but in my job, obsession is definately a trait to be desired.
Next, I try hooking it up to my machine and seeing if Windows 2000 can see the partition and fix what’s wrong. What’d I get? Nunca nada. Not done, yet, though. I dig out a copy of PartitionMagic. I make the disks and boot into that freaky, specialized operating environment to see if I could fix the broken disk partition. See, I’m figuring that it’s just the File Allocation Table that’s decided to take a vacation. PartitionMagic is totally scoop at restoring those kinds of things, which is why I gave it a whirl. Sadly, nada. Well, not quite nada, since I was at least able to see that the damaged partition seemed to be a Linux partition of some kind. AhHa!
So, now, I install the drive into a Linux machine I keep under my desk, just in case of emergencies. I duck in and tell the Boss what I have in mind. He gives me a funny look and says,”Well, that’s a bit of a Hail Mary, isn’t it?” Well, yeah, it was, but isn’t that what I get paid for? To come up with and implement “Hail Marys”? And, if it works, who cares what crazy thing I have to do? Anyway, after the update to the Boss, it was off to the Linux machine to attempt a partition recovery, the hard way. Whoops! I had forgotten I canablized the drive in that machine to fix another problem weeks ago! Damn. So, I install Ubuntu on it, mainly because I have the ISO downloaded and can quickly burn an install CD. Well, Ubuntu goes to the Internet to find an archive server to download the install files, so that takes all night. Still, I figured, I’d come in early and bang this out in no time. Well, my head-shrink says I live in fantasy too much, so, it shouldn’t surprise my readers to know that it was far from easy. For an hour Friday morning, I ran every disk repair or recovery program I could find that came with a standard install of Linux. Guess what I got? Yeah, bubkes. (That’s Yiddish for nada.)
So, after all that, I still ended up formatting the drive and letting the restore run. Oh, did I mention that it was a Maxtor? For you non-geeks reading this, Maxtor 80 Gig drives have the highest fail-rate I’ve ever seen in the field. Everyone has problems with them. Well, this was a Maxtor 120 Gig drive, but I’m afraid that the same luck holds true to them, too.
Hmm, sounds like it’s time to order that new server I’ve been asking for, doesn’t it?

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Unhappiness is in not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it."
   --Don Herold

A primer from Patrick Norton.
Yes, that’s right, Patrick Norton of TechTV and The Screen Savers fame. Pat’s written a little article in his blog over at Extreme Tech about switching to Linux for “free”. I put “free” in quotes like that because, frankly, nothing is free. There are some things that just don’t work or don’t work as well in Linux as they do in Windows. And, there are programs that simply don’t run under Linux. Oh, sure, you can try to use an emulator or whatever to make it happen, but I’ve never, ever really trusted those suckers. Especially not with my financial data. To me, that’s what will “kill” Windows, a Linux-version of Quicken.
Anyway, Pat has a good overview of the pros and cons of switching to Linux and it’s worth taking a look.

I want one!
Hey, I know Negroponte designed these for kids in developing nations, but, uh, I want one. I mean, c’mon, who wouldn’t want one? And, if I can load Linux on it, well, that would be just peachy.
I guess what I’m thinking here is, if Negroponte can make this happen for the poor of other nations, why not sell it here in the States, too? Couldn’t some kids in the many impoverished communities in the good old US of A use them too? And, if not them, what about the poor, impoverished middle-class, like me? Or, even college students? And, why just the poor and downtrodden? Heck, if you can make it for under $100, just sell it everywhere!
And, apparently, they’re even energy efficient. At least according to this article on AustralianIT, which makes mention of the fact that these sucker are “wind-up”. Now, that makes them even more attractive to me. I could keep writing even after a power failure or a hurricane. Nothing could stop me!
Man, I gotta’ get me one of these bad boys somehow, someway when they hit the market!

No, not here.
But, here is a link to XYZ Computing’s Mini-ITX tutorial. Why is this cool? Well, because this is about as small as you can get and still have a computer with “standard” parts. And, that’s cool because it allows you to do more and cooler casemods.
The folks in the article use Linux, which is what I’d do, but you could go other ways. The most important thing, to me, is that they list where they bought everything with links. Sometimes, it’s hard to get all the right pieces, especially when you’re looking to get the smallest, coolest one’s possible. Anway, I thought this was cool…

Hey, it’s been a rough week, and now it’s Friday, so work with me here!

Well, why not!
Now, I don’t mean a “de facto” standard, but a real, organized, unified standard. In this case, according to News.com, it’s a Linux standardization push. In fact, to get really specific, it the Linux Standard Base Project. These folks are advocating a standard “base” on which all Linux distros build themselves. Not a bad idea, really, to help get things standardized and more interoperative. I mean, when I was working on that Novell Linux-based stuff, a little standardization would have gone a long way.

I wish I was.
All arty, that is. Alas, I am inhibited by my close association with “The Man” via my degree in Marketing. Still, working to overcome such crippling handicaps is my stock and trade, so I went to an art opening last night. A friend of mine, Mark Flood, and a group of other artists that he did some collage work with, had an opening in the Heights area. Sadly, I cannot remember the name of the gallery where the work was shown. And, I was late. In fact, I was so late the other people I know who were going came and went, so I ended up spending some time with Mark, then was alone for a bit, looking at art and a mulitmedia presentation of the art being created, then poor Mark felt guilty for leaving me alone for so long and hung out with me the last 20-30 minutes I was there. It was, in a word, “interesting”.
I’ve never been to an art opening before. It was a little strange, to me, because it seemed like it was such a social event and had so little to do with the actual art. Also, I have to admit, it was art that I’m not really all that “in to”, either. Modern found-object collage art, for the most part. Still, it was interesting to look at. I much prefer Mark’s other work with lace. *That* absolutely fascinates me. But, I did have a good time people-watching. Seeing human drama unfold still enthralls me. There was some poor girl who was obviously quite upset at something her paramour, who I never connected to her, was doing or not doing. I’ve lost some of my ability to read lips in poor lighting, but I did catch “… but it still sucks. I just sucks!…” and the poor thing looked like she was on the edge of tears at one point. She did seem to recover enough to flirt with someone later, though, so I guess it all worked out. I have to admit, I was sorely tempted to quietly tell her “Darlin’ whoever it is, they just ‘aint worth it. No one should put you in that mood and make that pretty face so troubled and frowny. It’s time for a new horse, darlin’. You rode this one on out and you can’t ride ’em any further, so it’s just time to jump on a new horse.” You’ll be pleased to know that I successfully resisted that temptation.
Still, it did get me thinking about being creative and that longing to be part of a creative subculture reared its ugly head. Again. One day, I’d love for Mark to be introducing me to his friends as “my friend Jim, the writer” instead of just “my friend Jim”. So, I need to work on my writing. And, I need to work on it in an envrionment other than home. That led me to dig out my pile of laptops and sort through everything until I could make a reasonably decent one that ran. Then, of course, I installed Linux on it. Why? Well, why not. I have a copy of RedHat 9.0, the last free version of that particular distro that they released before going to Fedora. It installed like a charm. Easy as pie. Actually, easier, since pie can be a bit challenging sometimes. And, now, since the only drive I had that worked well was a five gigabyte IBM, I ordered a new 40 gig and a 512 meg memory upgrade from Tiger Direct. So, with old parts that I got free and the new hardware that will be coming soon, I’ll end up with a new, to me, laptop for under $200. Not bad. All of which means, ultimately, that I’ll be able to go to coffee houses and write. And emulate some of my heros, like Ernest Hemingway, in the process. Now, all I need is a good laptop bag that’s just as cheap. I was thinking about going with something Army surplus, but I’m not sure.
This is all part of the changes I’m trying to make in my life as I work toward being a person I like more. A person I like being more. Little by little, it’s happening. After God only knows how many years, I’m finally becoming the man I wanted to be when I was a kid.
Life is good.