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Entry tags:
hardware
Sometimes -- randomly, we think -- our file server goes catatonic. Its video card has been flaky for a while, so we don't always know what's going on when this happens. I almost never turn the monitor on, and VNC only works for the first few days of a boot, it seems. (So a reboot consists of a blind power-cycle.) This is the machine known as "hub", because once upon a time it was, but it's since been replaced with a Linksys box. I bought Hub (new) in 1997 as my desktop machine and downgraded it to network hub/firewall in 1999. Good thing we have a replacement file server in the works.
It's not really a file server in the traditional sense of that word anyway; nothing important exists only on that machine. We had the machine lying around, and it's cheap insurance against disk failure in a desktop machine. And it's a way to pass files back and forth.
Dani has been having trouble getting that replacement machine to see the network when booted under Linux. Tonight he put Win98 on it and that sees the network just fine, so it's not a problem with the card. This is pretty much his project, though, so I'm mostly staying out of it until it's ready for users.
Dani's desktop machine has been having network problems for the last few days. Through trial and error he determined that it was probably due to things being booted in the wrong order. He almost never reboots his machine, so he probably got hit with one of the random power flickers that motivated me to go out and buy a UPS for *my* machine. (My theory is that we got a flicker and his machine came back before Linksys did, and Windows probably isn't smart enough to detect a network that comes into existence post-boot.)
Or maybe he accidentally jiggled something on his router box while plugging in the Linux box a few days ago. Shrug.
There's probably an easier way to run a home network than the maze of routers and cables and stuff that we have, but what we have works so I'm not motivated to change it. When it comes to hardware configuration, I follow a hill-climbing algorithm and settle for the local maximum. I am not a perfectionist.
It's not really a file server in the traditional sense of that word anyway; nothing important exists only on that machine. We had the machine lying around, and it's cheap insurance against disk failure in a desktop machine. And it's a way to pass files back and forth.
Dani has been having trouble getting that replacement machine to see the network when booted under Linux. Tonight he put Win98 on it and that sees the network just fine, so it's not a problem with the card. This is pretty much his project, though, so I'm mostly staying out of it until it's ready for users.
Dani's desktop machine has been having network problems for the last few days. Through trial and error he determined that it was probably due to things being booted in the wrong order. He almost never reboots his machine, so he probably got hit with one of the random power flickers that motivated me to go out and buy a UPS for *my* machine. (My theory is that we got a flicker and his machine came back before Linksys did, and Windows probably isn't smart enough to detect a network that comes into existence post-boot.)
Or maybe he accidentally jiggled something on his router box while plugging in the Linux box a few days ago. Shrug.
There's probably an easier way to run a home network than the maze of routers and cables and stuff that we have, but what we have works so I'm not motivated to change it. When it comes to hardware configuration, I follow a hill-climbing algorithm and settle for the local maximum. I am not a perfectionist.