Journal For Week of August 28, 2000
Last Update: Monday, September 04, 2000 10:53 AM
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Monday August 28, 2000
Linux has a tentative green light at work. If I can show that all the functions of the SCO Unix box can be duplicated with Linux, I can replace the SCO Unix server with Linux. This will in the long run save us time and money. Time is the big one since the vendor for our Unix solution does not supply media, and if the server dies we have to send it away to be fixed. We need the Unix box running reliably everyday, production depends on it. So now I have to setup a Linux server and start learning it ASAP. Going to be a lot of work, but also going to be a lot of fun. Also our vendor has not delivered what they said they would. Could be we can get them to refund us a fair amount of cash which it would be nice.
To aid in getting the Linux project off the ground as fast as possible I stopped by the Staples outlet by the office on the way home where I found a copy of eDesktop 2.4 in stock. I picked up a copy and now have it installing in a virtual machine under vmware as I write this.
My install is done but I can't load KDE. Looks like something may have to be installed off a second CD before things will work. Time to do some reading
Late update: Found that I had vmware configured wrong and misunderstood how the Linux Tools install. Now that they are installed properly, my display problems are fixed.
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Tuesday August 29, 2000
Got Linux installed this morning on a Pentium 90 with 64 Mb of ram. Enough for a test bed, but doesn't run KDE very well. One problem I had was with the NIC. It would not work. I swapped it for a 3com 3C905 which is suppose to be fully supported. Also went through 6 video cards before I found one which worked decently. Guess that is what happens when you pick through the parts bin for parts to build a computer.
I managed to break the file system on the Linux test bed. Tried briefly to fix it then started a reinstall. Interesting thing about breaking things then trying to fix them, you learn a lot more than if things just work. I am also learning that while manual that came with eDesktop is OK, it is no where good enough when you trash the file system as I did. May need to find a good book which covers more advanced subjects.
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Wednesday August 30, 2000
Got in the office and the Linux install I left running last night was waiting for the IP info for networking. Just as with the previous install, everything locked up as I entered the subnet mask. Everything worked fine before when I did an install without the PC being hooked up to my KVM switch so I gave the PC it's own keyboard and mouse. Then I recalled that for previous successful installs I did not have the patch cord plugged into the NIC. Could it be that something on my network was killing my install? So I disconnected the patch cord and now the new install has marched right past the network setup and is going well. But in the end I could not get the networking operational.
I finally got things working by taking the NIC, RAM and video card out of the PC I had been working with and installing them in a Pentium 133. 45 minutes later a fresh install of Linux had been completed and everything was working. I then tried to telnet in to the Linux box from my computer and was able to get a connection but could not logon. Now I have to configure Linux so telnet sessions can connect and logon.
Brrrh..... arrived home to a chilly house. The mercury is just above freezing out side and the thermostat is set too low for the furnace to fire up. A quick adjustment and wait for the furnace to take the chill out of the house.
It is now too cold out to run in shorts and a tee shirt forcing me to have to dig out long sleeved shirts and some light pants. The weather man says warmer weather is coming, but I won't hold my breath. Tried to check the web cams at the local mountain resorts, but they are not operating at the moment, but with Highs of 0C snow can't be too far away.
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Thursday August 31, 2000
Been playing with setting trying to get my tenet connections working. As a part of this I have been combing through the knowledge base at caldera systems. Well I found a note saying that by default logons via telnet by root is disabled. Silly me I have been trying to use the root ID. I also now recall reading somewhere some time ago that root user logins are disabled for telnet. I guess the old memory just isn't helping me out today. I'll blame it on the Unix consultants who have the SCO Unix box setup so root can logon through telnet, and I have gotten used to being able to to so.
Now I can telnet into the Linux box but KDE has locked up on me. Oh bother what have I done now! Fixed it through the back door by going su to root under the telnet connection and issuing the reboot command. The Linux box shut down nicely and rebooted.
Is consultant a four letter word? I know some people who say yes, and I am starting to lean that way. A consultant who helps out one of our satellite offices found a worm virus on a users laptop, and proceeded to upgrade the laptop from Windows 95 to Windows 98. Now they didn't scrub the system down but just did an in place upgrade right on top of Windows 95. Now how is this going to fix the worm virus problems? Now I am sure I have not got the whole story, but what I do know is that the consultant did leave the office without restoring the laptop to an operational status. The modem didn't work nor did the NIC, meaning they had only done half a job. Well so far I have talked the user through getting the modem working so they could upload their sales orders to the Calgary office and tomorrow we will work on the NIC.
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Friday September 1, 2000
A new month begins and I have very little recollection of where the last one went. I at times have the feeling that I am going to wake up one day to find that a few decades have snuck past.
Spent the morning mostly working on a batch file and login script combination which will remove the Microsoft Find Fast shortcut from the startup folder on all PCs. Had a bit of a problem with long file names but a phone call to a buddy got me around that one. Seems that if the path is in quotes it will work.
c:
cd\
cd "c:\windows\start menu\programs\startup" del "Microsoft Find Fast.lnk"
Yes I could have made this shorter but I find being very explicit in what is being done helps when other people look at my work.
Then if the batch file is run from the login script the DOS Window does not close. My buddy came in to help again by telling me to create a shortcut for the batch file and set the shortcut to close on exit. I put both the batch file and shortcut on the network, pointed the login script to the pif file:
; removes find fast from startup folder
#\\cal_ho2\sys\public\sysadmin\fastfind.pif
Next I have to add an if statement in so that the script only runs on Windows 95/98 machines as the DOS machines can't process the script, and fail to error out, but just hang when trying to process it.
Stopped by a shop selling used computers on the way home to see if I could pick up a cheap use Pentium to use as a Linux server. With the way prices are I am not sure it is worth investing in a used computer. I think in the morning I am going to rummage through my collection of computer parts to see if I can build a computer without having to buy too much stuff. May also have a look at what the local computer shops are selling for budget model PCs.
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Saturday September 2, 2000
Morning post:: It's raining it's pouring the old man is snoring. Actually it was likely me that was snoring prior to waking to the sound of rain. The farmers sure don't want to see this rain as it is now harvest time.
CNNdot.com did a piece on bluetooth and what companies are developing with this technology. Now do we really need to be able to use our cell phones as a remote control for all the controls in a car. I also noticed that there was no mention of security with bluetooth, so the guy in the car next to you can change the station your car radio is tuned into. Just the thing to set off a bit of road rage.
Well with the weather being rather ugly, looks like today is an indoors type of day. So I'm off to do some chores.
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Sunday September 3, 2000
Morning post: Never made it back for an evening post yesterday even though I had intentions to. I picked up a motherboard, some RAM and a 15 Gig hard drive yesterday. This started me into swapping the new hard drive into my production PC which started me into a project in frustration. The problem was that the BIOS in my Compaq En appeared not to want to support the 15 gig drive. I used the Maxtor drive prep utility and was able to make the drive visible but couldn't do much with it. Then I found a second set of drive pin out instructions for the same drive but the settings were different. When I tried the pin out configuration for a master drive off the second diagram things started to fall in place except that I couldn't get the ghosted image off the old drive to boot. I ended up repartitioning and doing a fresh install of NT and everything fell into place.
I now have most of my software installed, but still have some data I want to pull off the old drive before I use it to build a dedicated Linux box. The Linux box is mostly built, but once again I have been stung by having trouble getting the floppy drive setup. I seem to have collected some faulty floppy drives and ribbon cables. For all time fiddling with them has cost me I think I am going to just toss all of them in the trash and next time I build a PC I will buy a new floppy drive and ribbon cable.
Out with the running club again this morning. I made sure to join up with a different group of people who were going to run farther than last weeks group. The only problem was that the slow pokes in the group were not there today so I started off with the faster people. I stayed with them for about 15 minutes till I realized that though my legs felt that I could stay with them my cardo is not up to the job. So I slowed a little and ran my own pace for the next hour. It all worked out nice as I did a shorter second loop so we all finished about the same time so we could could spend a few minutes doing our stretches and talk.
Evening post: FrontPage played nice for once. Past experience for me and others I have heard from is that if you change the PC which you run FrontPage on, the first time you publish, your whole web site gets republished. This morning this never happened! All I can think is that it is tied to the computer name, as when I did my NT install on the new hard drive I used the same computer name.
I now have all the data off the old hard drive and have buttoned the case up again. Any data of any true value was on the server so if I have missed something that was on the old hard drive I am not going to worry about it. Time now for the old drive to go into the Linux test bed.
Copyright © 1999, 2000 John Doucette. All Rights Reserved