Ramblings

OK, so I didn’t plan to go this far, but the webserver was offline for about 15 minutes this evening (about 21:00 to 21:15 CST). I needed to re-route some (ok, all) my cables under the desk and, wouldn’t you know it, the power cords for the cable modem and router were some of the worst offenders. It apears that everything is just fine now, but if anyone notices funky behavior that can be attributed to the outage, let me know.

UPDATE: Before and after photos are in my photo gallery.

I think I may have found a clue as to my problems with Legolas and GRUB. I’ll give it a whirl when I get back to the apartment this evening.

After fighting with ezmlm some this morning to get everything set up like I wanted, I decided to write down the final command sequence that I ended up using:

ezmlm-make -esud4 '-t24' [path_to_list]

This command is run after the list is created in QmailAdmin. It does:

• e: I’m editing the list, not creating a new one.
• s: Subscription moderation.
• u: User posts only.
• d: Enable digests.
• 4: Digest generation frequency (‘-t24′ or every 24 hours)

I’m having a bit of an issue getting Legolas to boot on his own. I did a grub-install that should have properly set up the MBR, but once I reboot … nothing happens (I do get that silly message from the BIOS telling me to insert a boot disk).

I wish I knew what was going on.

There will likely be a maintenance window tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon/evening so that I can replace the network card in Gollum. The one that I’m currently using has a few issues and I’d like to get it out of the system. I may have to add support for it in the kernel (which I can do before I even bother to bring the machine down, so that when it comes back up it’s all done), but that should be relatively easy.

The new NICs are approaching quickly …

Had to buy a couple of network cards. The ones in the two server machines (Gollum and Legolas) are both acting up … although the one in Legolas is by far the worst. I’m hoping that a driver change will make it go smoother, but I’m not taking any chances … there are two 3COM 905CX-TXM cards on the way from Newegg.

The hardware has all been assembled. I must say it looks pretty slick.

I’m in the process of installing right now (well, downloading the Athlon-XP stage 2 file) …

The PS that came with the case I bought for Legolas is wrong. It has a 24 pin ATX connector when the standard is 20. No idea why. I’m going to run down to the parts store and try to buy a replacement and maybe a few extra splitters while I’m there as I have six devices to hook up.

All the parts arrived about 2:00 this afternoon. I’m in the process of putting everything together. I am taking lots of pictures and I plan to document everything (including the install and configuration process) as I go.