A HD decided to die on my server. Fortunately, all the important data is backed up (and I’ll describe how I do that one of these days), but the disk is still acting flaky (not sure if it was disk corruption or an impending disk error… all the self-tests check out, but I dunno….).
The old system was a Debian woody + unstable updates (3.0 + random updates)… I decided to re-install with Debian Sarge (3.1). Now, Debian, while not flashy on the UI, has always been extremely stable and relatively bug-free.
I downloaded the netinst and went with that, let the thing run overnight, and got things installed pretty easily. Then came time to start making the server like it was.
Already, I’ve found two glaring show-stopper Debian bugs… come on guys, what are you thinking?
There’s Bug #310887, Does not mount non-root partitions. Essentially, some lunkhead decided to fsck all partitions before loading any drivers, like SCSI or USB. So if you have a SCSI disk, which my previous server image was on, you’re out of luck. (note: the previous server image was on a ~10 year old 4G SCSI running RedHat 7.2 that has shown some signs of failure… but at least it’s still kicking as the impromptu backup). Haven’t figured out a work-around for this yet, but man is it a pain.
Then there’s Bug #271363 - kdm frozen at first boot. Debian uses gdm by default for gnome, which is fine. I prefer KDE and use kdm. So, I installed kdm, no problem, and switched it. But this dies a horrid death. Running things manually, I find errors about the ELF version of libkdeui.so.4… haven’t tracked down the culprit here yet either.
These are basic… sigh. But I guess people tend not to have SCSI anymore, or don’t use KDE. Um…. sure.
I’m re-installing my picture archive from backup, and will then update the new image to SID (Debian unstable… as Debian testing was the same as sarge). Or maybe I should just go back to Fedora… they seem to have gotten better about solving the rpm hell problem, so might be worth giving them a try again.
Oh, and for those paying attention — yes, these are all Linux servers, and yes, I do work at Microsoft. Why am I not considering Windows? Lots of reasons. Frankly, I don’t feel that Windows is up to the task of providing the roles I use the server for. In particular, DNS, mail serving, and file serving. Second, my main data is held on two 75G IBM Deskstar disks (still functioning after 5 years… go figure!) in RAID configuration. I’m not in the mood to consider how to migrate this over to Windows. Finally, Linux does great at headless operation, and mostly that’s what the servers are. I can ssh in, and check things out, from whereever I am. The Windows solution is this hokey Remote Terminal, where you suck a lot of bandwidth to get a remote GUI. Sometimes, I don’t have a lot of bandwidth, and all I need to do is get a command prompt and go. So, yeah, I still run some Linux boxes.
Thats awesome! I’m trying to learn some linux basics because of trying to create an OS to run programs on the 8051 - windows CE? No way! I just need to multitask between a couple of programs checking a couple of programs on some eblocks - CE costs too much and is too much overhead.
Any advice regarding what Linux distro I should be learning? I just need to do some simple multitasking in my while loop. Maybe not even learn linux, where do I start?
My big interviews are in Redmond next friday thanks to you BTW - I hope if I get it (probably I’ll be creating Appliances :)) we can chat about my long term vision. Its a little ‘out there’ but I feel confident I just need 5 years and unity between all the search teams to pull it off. My plan….
why the Debian distro?
The right OS really depends on what you want to do. My two favorites are Debian and RedHat. RedHat is great if you’re planning on doing a traditional desktop / workstation and want the install and the apps to all just work, but you’re not expecting on installing too much more than what RedHat provides, and you’re happy with the versioning of the RedHat apps (which are usually a version behind bleeding edge).
Debian Stable (different than Debian Unstable, aka SID) is what you want for a server. It has a higher learning curve and some things (such as X) are a pain to install. However, the thing is rock solid. Most apps are two+ versions behind. However, once you’ve got yourself that Debian install, you rarely touch it. The box this webserver is on is Debian Woody (v3.0), and I haven’t touched it in probably a year or so. Its purpose is just to run Apache and this website, and it does that marvelously. It also acts as my backup server… again, just works. I don’t have to look at it. It’s also one that enables you to start with a very, very minimal system and slowly add things on — perhaps what you want to do for the 8051.
Debian Unstable is the bleeding edge. Things mostly work, but you may have problems. For example, I fixed my KDM problem by going to KDE v3.4, but somewhere along the line I broke something so now I can’t mount… so gotta figure that out tomorrow or Monday.
A good middle-ground is Debian Testing.. which contains packages that have a bit more rigor than Unstable and are undergoing testing.
Some people also like Mandrake, but they’ve been fading fast. Seems like a dead distribution.
So, that’s my recommendations there. Enjoy!
Debian sounds like the way to go - I’m going to pick it apart slowly and take what I need, should be lots of fun.
I’m loving assembly coding, and C is great, but my big plan is to create a new language with C# syntax that generates assembly, like HLA (I’m using that one to start), and then as needed mirror .net system classes.
I want to build this http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~snematbakhsh/dialer/ - I have to figure out how to create a System.Net.HttpWebRequest from scratch! All this is going to take me all of 2006, because I’m not that smart
I’m going for the Debian Testing, that sounds like a pretty cool plan