We’ve got problems.

It all happened two nights ago when I put a questionable disk in my Linux box that’s running a highly experimental kernel. The task crashed. OK, fine. Everything else was still happy. So I tried to close out that shell. Hello, Mr. Freeze. Well, that’s what I get for running an experimental kernel. These things happen. So I rebooted. It came up fine, except it couldn’t see the network.
Figuring I’d catch all kinds of crap about this one, I shut off the monitor and resolved to come back to it later.

Then I came home last night and figured I’d check my mail on one of my Windows boxes. It errored out immediately. So I opened a command prompt and tried to ping. The network was unreachable. What? Is this contagious? So I went to my Web server. It saw the world just fine, and the world could see it. Curious.

So my router/switch was fine. I looked under my desk. There it was, blinking away. Then I noticed something wrong down there. I glanced at my hub. No lights. No nothing.

I reached down and unplugged it. Dead. I unplugged the power cable from the power supply. Dead. I reached over to the hub’s plug and pulled it.

My Web server went dead. So much for my 270+ days of uptime. And I guess that wasn’t my hub after all.

So I traced the cable from my Windows box to the hub, and moved it to the switch. I opened a command prompt and typed ipconfig /renew. I was back in business immediately.

I tried my Linux box, but I couldn’t trace its cable. I’ll do that some other time.

And of course I needed to plug my work laptop in and VPN into the LAN to try to do a little maintenance. Every night needs to be spiced up with some adventure, you know.

I guess I’ll be finding out about Netgear’s customer service later.

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8 thoughts on “We’ve got problems.

  • March 20, 2002 at 1:40 am
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    270+ days and counting…you can’t fault a linux box for the knuckle head in front of the keyboard…or below it I guess I should say.

  • March 20, 2002 at 3:09 pm
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    Clearly Linux isn’t ready for prime-time if it can’t survive something as simple as that. Although this is, admittedly, a difficult problem to troubleshoot. Was this outage the fault of Linux, was it the third-rate SiS chipset in the PC David calls a server, or was it the VIA chipset in the computer on the desk above it?

    A difficult problem, yes, but not one that’s above my intellect.
    One thing is quite clear, however. If David would quit doing things on the cheap and use Intel hardware running software from a company that will stand behind it (Windows and IIS, of course), he never would have had this problem.

  • March 20, 2002 at 3:48 pm
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    LOL.

    (Hey.. what’s wrong with VIA?) :op

    WATYF

  • March 20, 2002 at 4:49 pm
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    R. Collins, for once you don’t sound like a lice-chewing forest gorilla. I must say that the proximity of that inferior VIA chipset may be the culprit here. I have no time to explain the science behind my reasoning; most laymen would call it "bad karma".

    Obviously, if Linux offered 5-9’s reliability – as Windows 2000 does – David’s machine would have been up 99729 more days before failure. Of course, owning a useful and mature platform, Windows owners install software occassionally, thus forcing a reboot. (I shut down my machines regularly anyway to let my IBM hard drives rest.) I’ve never heard of anyone rebooting for any other reason (my main source being the Internet), so… QED

  • March 20, 2002 at 5:13 pm
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    Ah, so Stenche is the exigent embecile who’s keeping the temerarious IBM in business by buying their hard drives. Stenche, haven’t you forgotten our intense and illogical and loquacious hatred of IBM?

    And to think, you don’t even have the fumes from my private Tu-144 supersonic jet to blame…

  • March 20, 2002 at 6:16 pm
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    How can I feel insulted by someone who can’t even spell "imbecile"? That’s hard to believe, since you obviously had your "Dictionary of Pretentious Words" close by as you posted that bilge.

    I acquired my IBM hard drives based on the advice and hearsay of those who read second-tier technology web sites for second-hand hearsay. So I say, I took this under advisement and contemplated what these reliable sources said, because they’re in the know. See? Now, IBM has taken a dive in quality lately, a fact about which I spoke long ago. But they recognize my status as an industry stalwart and offer me complementary hardware, so I will say no more.

    I have enough of your fumes to put up with. And all the sniffing in the world won’t make your refurbished Cessna scale model break the sound barrier.

  • March 20, 2002 at 6:34 pm
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    Ignore them and they’ll go away.

    I hope…

  • March 20, 2002 at 7:02 pm
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    This has nothing to do with anything, but Dave, you were going to email me and tell me if you wanted tickets or not.

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