FedEx left me a nice box with a Coolmaster HSF and my new ECS board. Originally it was going to be installed in my low end gaming box, but since the Dell mainboard has to go, I stuck it in my workstation instead. My old ECS K7S5A is going into the file server, tonight. Now [...]
In November I installed Solaris 8 on a few old Ultra 10s. I decided on the Core install only. This gives you little in the way of basic applications. With the help of SunFreeware and my Solaris 8 Software CDs, I managed to recover to a much more functional state. First, I had a hell [...]
Over the course of recovering my file server, I needed to setup a RAID 0 array real quick, but had no hardware ATA RAID controllers available. Fortunately, Linux has an easy solution. If you’re using a default distribution kernel, you probably already have support for Linux software RAID. If not, build a kernel with Multi-device [...]
Dell gets a huge thumbs down for shipping proprietary ATX PSUs with the _standard_ ATX connector, but different wiring. proprietary PSUs and a ready made adapter. While the link above details how you can manually convert a standard ATX PSU to work with a Dell mainboard, it’s ridiculous that one would need to take such [...]
You did write down the backup superblocks you were given by ext3 when you created your new filesystem, right? No? Oops. If you used the defaults or remember what options you used, never fear. The recover procedure is simple: First, obtain the size of the damaged filesystem in question. If your system still has df [...]
The replacement parts I ordered for my file server finally shipped. Apparently they’re being shipped FedEx 2nd Day. Not sure why, but I’ll have them tomorrow it seems. NewEgg rocks, it seems. They’re definitely not the cheapest online vendor, but so far the service has been excellent. I tried again to get the 3Ware 6200 [...]
With the 3Ware 6410 toast, I sacrificed one of my 120GB drives. I have the file server back up running with a single 120GB disk. I’ve restored necessary files to get IMAP back online. Nothing quite sucks like not being able to access your mail effectively. I’m going to select a drive that sat opposite [...]
It’s interesting. So many options and choices. I’ve spent much of the day attempting to determine why file server died. There are so many different strategies for regaining functionality and I’ve considered many angles. Each possible approach might have a half dozen side affects that all have to be sized up, weighted, and the solution [...]
It seems the situation has not improved. The 3Ware card died. I am fairly certain I killed it. It wasn’t intentional. I have traced it back, as far as I can tell, to a faulty molex connector on the proprietary Dell PSU. I have not before used all the connectors, so it had gone unnoticed [...]
My post to leaplist earlier this morning: Well, this is fun. I had a drive reset on my ATA RAID 1+0 this afternoon. The 3Ware card detected it and marked it as a dead drive. I actually touched the power connector in question and that’s when it reset. Anyway, I rebooted and told the 3Ware [...]