roncli.com blog

I have been quite annoyed over the past couple months with things that aren't working the way they should.

First is Kathy's computer. Mind you, the specs on her computer and mine are exactly the same. However, she's having serious issues. Firstly, her network card sometimes doesn't fire up with the computer, leaving her networkless until she shuts down and reboots. Second, she's got a KVM that doesn't seem to want to work with her new computer, causing the keyboard and mouse to not work, forcing a physical reboot of the machine. I could attribute these problems to Windows Vista, except my computer works just fine. The KVM could be the KVM itself, but Kathy's been unwilling to test it out. She lives with it, but if it were me, it would drive me straight up a wall.

Second is her monitor. I got her an LCD for her birthday in December. Now the red channel's gone. Apparently I'm going to have to send it in for a trade.

Lastly is my UPS. Yes, the big $1,000+ one that cost me $60 just to get it from the leasing office and into the apartment, the one that took me hours to install into the rack. Well, it doesn't work. That's right, I got a big, thousand dollar paper weight in the bottom of my rack. I haven't gone through all the troubleshooting I should with it, so I'm hoping that it's still salvagable. However, I'm not liking the idea that there is a strong possibility that I will need to return this UPS. It costs hundreds of dollars to ship, which is about how much it weighs, too. I'm not happy.

The rack is mostly done, but I just haven't had the energy to disassemble and reassemble the two Linux boxes and put them into the rack. That said, the rest of the rack is fine, and I'm quite happy with where the setup is going. There are still too many cables to worry about, but that comes with the territory of so many servers.

Labels: Monitor, Servers, UPS

Monday, March 05, 2007

Server update
Posted: 11:16:00 AM 0 comments

Well, all the servers are finally back up and running. I simply put everything back on the crappy UPS's they were originally on - or in the case of Amused, back on the surge protector - and fired it all back up. Until I can get an adaptor for the 5-20, this will be the setup. Coincidentally, the product I'm looking at is the ADP-1520 by Furman.

Amused got formatted and is running Fedora Core 6. This should help Saurin get his project going again. He's tried to get me back on the project, but I don't know. The level of frustration I was having still grates at me at times, and I'm not sure I could step back into that any time soon. It's far, far too late in the development process for anything to seriously change, which means I'd have to accept it for what it is, and what it is doesn't excite me. Why work on something that's not fun?

That said, I'm still going to host the project for as long as the hosting is wanted, and as soon as that final part's in, it too will be on battery backup, and then I can give the UPS to Kathy for her new machine, something that she needs.

The last two cases still haven't shipped. I ordered them on Tuesday of last week, yet the order still shows "Pending Approval". What is it with these Itox cases that everyone seems to have them, but when it comes to actually placing the order, they seem to vanish? I have had at least 6 cases vanish in this way. I know they exist because I have 3, but 3 for 9 is a bad track record. They are also very hard to find, and I may be forced to order these from Itox themselves at a cost of 3 to 4 times what I'm paying now. Hopefully, this order will ship.

Labels: Fedora Core 6, Servers, UPS

Friday, March 02, 2007

5-20
Posted: 10:00:00 AM 0 comments

You won't be able to read this post immediately when I put it up. Why?

The server upgrade came to a dead halt after I realized that the plug for the APC UPS was a 5-20, not your standard 5-15. Fortunately I can get an adaptor for that, but in the meantime, my entire network is down. I plan to pick up the adaptor on lunch to get things working again.

Labels: Servers, UPS

Monday, October 24, 2005

Of UPS's and Procrastination
Posted: 11:49:00 PM 0 comments

A letter I wrote to Kim today, pretty much sums up my day.

At about 11 AM this morning, Reborn (207.235.121.202), the new DNS cache for the ModPlug box as of... what was it, Saturday?... and my entire network, failed. It was clearly due to a power blink that the UPS that it was on couldn't handle. I've been meaning to replace it and... well, this moved my hand so to speak.

I got home at 12 to reboot the servers. I noticed Reborn acting a bit weird, the power supply started and stopped. I didn't have time to look into though as I was on my lunch, and just figured everything was fine.

About 2:30, I got bored at work and started working on OSMusic. I couldn't, though, because it kept erroring out. Apparently, I was using an old server name for the SQL Server. No biggie, just replaced the names with good ol' 127.0.0.1.

Turns out it was able to resolve that old name on Reborn - while it was up. I came home to it powered off. Pressed the power button, nothing. Replaced the power supply a couple times, nothing.

So, I reluctantly (yeah right) drove down to Micro Center and picked up a mobo and Athlon processor along with a gig of memory and a new power supply. Got home, replaced all the parts, and after messing up the floppy drive connector (I always do that), I got it working again.

Another thing I picked up while at Micro Center was a bigger, badder UPS. This thing now handles all 3 servers, both the hub and the router, the external hard drive for OSMusic.Net, and my monitor, all without overloading (we'll see about that when my 22" comes in Thursday), while my personal UPS handles just my computer and my MAME external. The one that used to be on the servers? It's now doing something it's own speed - it's on a lone switch by itself next to the wall jack to the outside world. I think it can handle that, at least.

What does this mean? More power continuity. Power blinks should not do anything to this network anymore, which has been a real problem here where I live. Now that I have paid the price for not doing this before, more stability should finally be in the future for the network.

Labels: ModPlug, Servers, UPS

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Dropping the Ball... or the Box
Posted: 1:21:00 PM 0 comments

So I was all set to receive my new 22" monitor yesterday that I won on an eBay auction. I went to track it online, and noticed its status: "Exception".

Uh oh.

Turns out UPS dropped the box. It's now, in its damaged state, on its way back to Phoenix. I'll be getting my money back, thankfully, but man oh man... I was going to get a $600 monitor for just over $130. The deal was too good to be true. Actually, the deal was true, just UPS messed it up.

Back to searching again...

Labels: Life, UPS