Friday, July 28, 2006

Hawkins 53b 11B has a bad cd writer

Tried writing two iso images and both failed.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Optiplex machines

The slackware version seems slow, even the terminal.

The ubuntu live cd takes a while to boot, but seems more responsive.

Update: Need to change SATA operation to normal mode from combination to allow Ubuntu to see the hard drive.

Hawkins 53B lab info

Dell optiplex GX280
SATA 40GB
HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4481B
1 GB, 2 512MB dimms
pentium 4 3 GHz

linux 2.4.29 Jan 20, 2005 - slackware

40 machines

1 hp laserjet 4200n

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Wishlist

Uninteruptable power supply for the servers.

Phone for the real time lab.

Hard drives for backup space.

Server Notes

unix: Dell Poweredge 1850, Xeon processor, 1GB ram, ~15 GB hard drive, Megaraid. Running slackware with a 2.4 kernel. Missing many common utilities.

file: Dell Poweredge 2800, Xeon processor, 1GB ram, ~130 GB hard drive, Megaraid. Running slackware with a 2.6 kernel.

Concern: Slackware has weak package management.

Possible solution: Suse Enterprise Linux is supported for these machines. Unclear if openSuse can handle it. Other linux solutions have mixed reports about getting the raid working.

Question: How useful is the hardware raid?

Server Migration

Started Tuesday morning, Shawn, Symen, and Joe showed up.

Moved the case from Hawkins 53B to 36A, need to decide what to do with former (unknown servers) that were in the case.

Moved servers to new case, servers are too deep for the case. Removed back door of case to allow them to fit there. Probably need to find a longer term solution.

The machines are somewhat loud, so it is better not to have them in the main teaching lab.

Contacted networking support to turn on the ports.

Networking issues were resolved Wednesday morning.

Some minor nfs problem. The server seemed confused about who it was exporting to. Needs further investigation.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Ubuntu Installation

In the redcay lab tried to install ubuntu on E24 and E23. They both hung on hdc problems.

Update 1: Tried booting laptop and home machine using the disk and they worked fine.

Update 2: Talked to Jim Owens, he indicated that he had experienced problems on machines that had less than 256 MB of memory.