Unix reinstall

21:46
Got everything copied to www. Not sure if I'll be able to keep the data in place.

This is unbelievable, unix has 2GB of memory. Slackware was only recognizing 896MB!!!

21:49
ok, trying to boot off the cd...
ubuntu amd64 server disk
it is a xeon processor, which use the amd64 type

booting...
dual processor, looking for stuff...

21:51
trying the memory test for fun

Here is some of the data it shows:
L1 Cache 16k 22322MB/s
L2 Cache 1024K 19583MB/s
Memory 2047M 2078MB/s

this is slow though, goint to skip it, it is going to be a long night as it is

One of the options was to install a lamp server, which is kinda neat

21:55
looking at disk configuration stuff

going to try pretending it is a broken system

21:57
taking a long time to load the kernel

21:58
too long, reboot and run a check on the disk

22:00
apprarently hung again, going to try the alternate cd

22:02
alternate seems to work, yeah!

22:06
this is what I suspected and seems right, there are two disks in the machine and there is hardware mirroring happening, and only 1 disk shows up to the operating system.

This is ok, it saves me from having to do raid myself.

22:10
Looks like I will be reinstalling the operating system with LVM.

I have mixed feelings about hardware raid, I don't trust hardware too much...

Found a page describing the machine:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pe1850/en/UG/p1295c10.htm

22:11
installing

22:14
fairly easy

only 18GB on the disks, yuck, kinda small, too bad because it seems like a decent server otherwise

22:20
installing.... I'm reading more on ldap

stupid black pen leaked on me

22:31
easy part is done, now to see what we got

22:34
eeek, it froze on me, I logged in clicked on updates and it froze....
wow, it looks like it was a hardware error since the amber light was flashing....

rebooting...

22:37
logged in via text and things look ok
going to try graphical again

the lack of built in su is annoying,

wow, it looks like graphics is bad, it did not even log all the way in,
no amber light yet, but the blue is flashing...

let's see what google says

22:54
in the mean time let's try updating everything
155 packages, 200MB

23:09
finished apt-get dist-upgrade
ran dpkg-recofigure xserver-xorg
restarted x

....

logged in, died

reboot
going to skip using x for now

23:17
installed ssh
logged in from my laptop
kill X when it froze, much faster than rebooting

23:18
moving on, I don't need to get this done and it is probably just a waste of time

onto ldap

23:33

still unclear how they were using ldap...

skipping to just try and do it on my own

0:32
ldap is running, but not authenticating correctly

0:53
slowing down, getting tired....
ldap search is asking for a password where as it didn't in the old config, so I wonder if it is a change in implementation, or if there is a file somewhere...

1:08
need to use -x arg to specify simple authentication

1:50
ARRGGH, I think I figured it out.
Instead of unix connecting to a central server, the central server pushes update to unix,
which is completely different from how I would have thought it would be done.
blech

now I'll see if I can dump the current database on server and use it to bootstrap unix

2:03
well maybe, the database is the old version

looking to update

found some python scripts

install gcc
g++
python-dev
lynx

crash... of the script

2:26
difficult to find upgrade utility for db4...

sleepy cat does not seem to use the mime types...

compiling from scratch

installing make

2:42
gave up on db, version mismatch problems

tried slapcat and slapadd, the data moved but it is not showing up in ldapsearch or in login attempt

3:20
checking into if nss is working

3:28
found a libnss-ldap package, but it was not on all of the mirrors....strange
rebooting now, too tired to think if I could get around rebooting
this definitely has been an experience so far.

I'm close to just setting up yellowpages for the department

3:32
I'm tired and need to think about whether this is how things should be set up
I'll come back tomorrow or Sunday