New hardware has arrived
As it turned out, it is a genuine |D|I|G|I|T|A|L| PWS 500au, but it’s only 256 Mb of memory, and it’s console – SRM – is gone. So there is still something to work on, on that machine. This I will do later this week, to get it up-and-running by itself, and, if possible, from shared SCSI. It should be possible since this firmware does accept a KZPBY card: It’s the same machine as Diana but running at a bit lower speed.
Athena revived
The 2001 laptop (Compaq Evo 1020v) has been revived. I deleted the Linux partitions – the external video wasn’t addressed and since the LCD screen is somewhat broken, this external video is simply required. Next I had to use the boot-CD to repair startup: running FIXMBR and FIXBOOT to have it boot from the disk again. OInce that was done, a massive amount of updates had to be installed – it has been off-duty for over a year, I think….
It’s only 512 Mb – with 74 Mb shared with the video card, so speed is something you should forget. I’m still considereing what to do with it. Perhaps an entry box for testing?
17-Sep-2009
A short test
Just a short test tonight.
There are more people struggling with PHPMyAdmin, and in their communication of the WASD mailing list, Mark Berryman showed his mapping. It differs a bit from mine, and I think he doesn’t use logical names the way I do: his mapping links PHPMyAdmin to the real location – where I use a logical name.
I tried a similar construct, but the problem I run into persists: Once the login screen has been entered with username and password, the database secltion panel (on the left side of the windows) appears, it takes some time, but then it is all overwritten – with the login screen.
Examining the system, it seems there are several processes running PHPWASD – and these may lose context on the way, that may be causing this problem. What’s wrong with my environment….
By the way: It only runs on Firefox. IE8 cannot display even the database selection panel, it looses track of the site….
A new box coming
a colleague of mine has offered me a PWS 500 au, from 1998, so likely with EV56 processor. It has twice the memory compared to my current server, and a DDS3 tape unit. For free, I’ve just have to get to his place and get it.
That will be done this weekend, and some time the current hardware will be replaces with the new – but upgraded to run at 600Mhz, so at full speed. But still named Diana – it’ll be just the new hardware, running the VMS instance bearing that name.
07-Jul-2009
New switch
The new switch has been ordered, and delivered (actually, I had to drive another way home to collect it π ) and I just installed it – quite basically to start with. It is a managed one, I can do all kinds of fancy stuff with it, like separating network traffic using VLAN (for keeping cluster communications apart from normal LAN traffic, for instance) but I need to read and understand the manual first.
Second, it allows Gigabit Ethernet – given the cable quality is sufficient: CAT5e at least – and some of the cables are, some are not. And only the newer laptops (the previous company one, that I purchased, and the newest) have that built-in. IΔΊl need 1GB Ethernet cards for the Alpha’s – if available AND affordable….
But the improvement is noticeable already: no more hiccups!
12-Jun-2009
Access problems
Quite severe, to be honest.
Too busy on the job to find out, but yesterday it became emonent that access toall of the webs was troublesome; In fact, both the operator web and webmail were inaccessable, and even the basic homepage was slow. Retrieving mail using the POP protocol fails after some attempts (keeps waiting, and waiting…). I tried to get the webmail index, it took ages to load, at least: part of it; the page was incomplete in the end.
Diana itself showed no real problems looking at the system itself, but when examining the operator log, it became clear that there is a problem: the logfile is filled with messages like:
%%%%%%%%%%% OPCOM 12-JUN-2009 18:59:03.49 %%%%%%%%%%%
Message from user SYSTEM on DIANA
Event: Frame Check Error from: Node LOCAL:.DIANA CSMA-CD Station CSMACD-0,
at: 2009-06-12-19:59:03.490+02:00Iinf
eventUid 18BA7200-5783-11DE-8929-0000F87653E2
entityUid EB004904-56DC-11DE-8293-AA0004000154
streamUid EE034380-56DC-11DE-8322-AA0004000154
These messages indicate a network problem – a severe one. Mostly related to hardware, like the network card, cable, switch port, or the swittch itself. Or some other machine on the network, pumping badly shaped data over the wire.
Access that doesn’t require the network hardware has no trouble at all. But all that goes ‘outside’ and is more than a few bytes in size, won’t get out. Or incomplete – triggering even more messages to appear. As it turned out, all HTTPS access was virtually blocked, as well as any access to larger files (photos!) from the public site would stall.
But what caused it?
It could be the NIC in the system – it’s over 10 years old so a breakdown could well be possible. But a second, more likely culprit, is the switch that links all systems together. Irene – the system in the living room – often marked a drop in network connctivity, that was restored shortly afterwards. Aphrodite – on which I use to listen to Internet Radio while working at the datacenter – does note drops as well. A collegue told me today that this behaviour often indicates the death of a router. And since this is a very cheap one, it woudln’t be a big surprise if NIC and router run out of sync. It could even happen to a single port.
Time to find out.
I do have a free port on the switch to I reconnected Diana to it. And behold: speed is as in the old days. Apart from the fact the connection is now set to half duplex, it works. There still are messages on frame check errors, only when a lot of data is sent at once: like images and large, encrypted pages like Soymail’s index. But at least, I’ll be able to download my mail π
Time to get a new router.
New kid on the block
Demeter, the company laptop, has reached it’s moment of retirement. That is: I have purchased it from the company, and got a new one in stead that I’ll use for company work and other usefull things, like studying Linux, for instance.
By request, the system should be called after it’s administrative name: VXLT090409 – I kept that in the description for the ease of system management at the office. I named the system Gudrun, a name from the Saxon mythology (if I’m well informed). Its operating system is Windows Vista Business – and I already have had the oppportunity to question what the hack it’s doing on disk…It’s still in the phase where I’m installing bits and pieces I miss on the system. Quite some of them…
Irene down again
Another problem occurred today: Irene, the system downstairs, started in the set-up screen, and fails to boot – without a warning. I’ll still have to define what’s wrong there, but it certainly doesn’t look good. Well, a replacement is now available: Demeter…..
29-Mar-2009
Busy weekend
It has been quite a busy weekend, in terms of system management.
First, I asked the hardware shop on the behaviour of the graphics card – it even crashed when closing a window. According the technician, it’s a sign the card in at the end of it’s lifetime. It’s not designed to work in a 1400 x 1050 resolution, AND running a heavy application like Google Earth, AND be able to handle the extra features that the ATI software could set it to, of the nice features build in the Linux environment, AND do anything fancy like fast changes in the background.
So I purchased a more modern card – this time, Nvidia based. It means a bit higher noise volume but way lower than the older card without adjustment by software. I could have taken a card with no fan – just a heat sink, but that would limit the abilities that I foresee I’ll use.
To built it in, required preparing both Windows installations, push the card in and load the software (drivers and utilities) in both. That took a few hours. Next was the Ubuntu installation, it was signalled that there was another driver needed, I had to redo some of the settings (screen resolution, fanciness of the screen and so on, but it was rather painless in the end.
Next year’s licenses
Next job was to install the new licenses on Diana. The file was stored binary, copied that way to VMS, and I edited the file to make it more readable. That alone was a nasty job, but with the aid of the “learn” and “repeat” facilities of TPU it was done in less than 30 minutes. Then, all new licenses have been installed and loaded.
Software update and new installation
Last but not least, there was an update to Soymail – the web-base mail client – and a new program by Mark Daniel, that I can use as a template for my own ‘blogging’ program – and to redo the website homepage more easily. But there are still some things to discover. It doesn’t exactly do what I would expect. Biggest difficulty: how to get started…
Well, it’s still BETA π
Apart from this software, I think to update WordPress to it’s latest version (2.7.1) no matter the problems with the PHP engine. Using Firefox on the Ubuntu desktop works fine, even with these issues. I think part of the access problems are actually caused by Internet Explorer; at least, it looks like it: where IE (both 7 and 8) have problems accessing the admin pages, there is hardly a problem using Firefox, where it concerns passing information to the application.
Also, there are a number of patches to be downloaded and installed, and I’ll take a look to newer versions of Python and MoinMoin – the Python based wiki. Now it’s just a matter of finding time to do it all.