SiC - David Sidwell

Here’s a snapshot, both literally and figuratively, of me today. I’m trying to work out if/why a certain disk drive that was part of my “PC reborn as a data server”…is playing up. Labelled for your viewing pleasure.

1) DDS - David’s Data Server. An old Athlon 1.4. For once it’s dressed. Recently it’s been nudey-rudey with the sides off so I can get to the drives etc.

2) The even older 166 MHz Dell that is my test-rig box. Got it at a swap meet for next to nix. At the moment it has the suspect Samsung drive in. The drive had no operating system. So I could either install…

3) Full-on Debian Linux from the black and white CDs..or…

7) The new Ubuntu single-CD version of Debian

But both of these versions would write to the hard drive. I really only want to see what’s on it and if it’s worth saving off to another PC. So, I used my …

6) Knoppix live Linux CD. This is the case - the disk in currently in the CD-ROM drive and running the PC. “Live” (rhymes with “dive” not “give”) means it can boot an entire operating system without writing anything to the hard drive. Great for non-destructive rescue missions.

I booted from this CD. Found there was indeed data on the old disk, so am now copying it over the LAN to another PC.

9) (The blue cable of the LAN, just visible. See I think of everything)

4) Is my faithful log book. I write down everything I do. It’s the scientist in me.

5) Are the two Sound Blaster Live! cards I removed from both PCs. Servers and test rigs should be silent.

Is the original (I think) hard drive from the Dell test rig box. It can only have one hard drive in at a time.

I am very, very impressed with Knoppix. I was easily able to configure my Ethernet card and use Samba to copy the files over to my Windows PC.

Note: before I get emails: yes, I know that Ubuntu Linux also has a Live CD version. But I didn’t have that…and I wasn’t going to download 600+ MB when I was sure my Knoppix Live CD was fine.

As I had put the old (unstable?) Ethernet card back into the spare PC, I ‘d predicted I’d simply transferred the problem from one box to another. Yep, sure had. Linux had the same symptoms using the natsemi driver on this card - poor connection and 50% packet loss.

So, I went and and brought a Surecom Gigabit card for under $40. It wasn’t a no-name clone, so it should be okay with Linux. But it did take me HOURS to get working. About 4, I’d tip.

The makers had included a diskette with Linux drivers. Actualy the SOURCE for the drivers. And there the fun starts. I had to compile them.
Continue reading “r8169.o and the kernel headers”

As of about 6pm yesterday Windows had been recovered on DDS. But, from bitter experience, I know it arrogantly over-writes any other boot managers etc.

In my case XP would have clobbered the Linux Loader (LILO) that is used to start the Linux boot process. So Windows ensures that whilst Linux is left alone, you can’t actually start it nor use it.

Sure enough, tests with the boot manager GAG confirmed this.

To cut a long story short I had to get LILO back on. Took me ages. I did have my own Debian Recovery Diskette, but it failed to start properly.
Continue reading “Kernel panics, I don’t”

Windows disobeyed a direct order, then - by accident - it fixed things up.

Here’s how it happened. To add to my woes, I started seeing hard-drive errors on DDS, so I went into the Bios and disabled the first 2 drives. This included the main C: drive with (corrupt) Windows on it.

I decided to boot Windows XP from CD and install Windows on another physical drive. During this process Windows found the original C:drive (yes, the one disabled in the bios) and proceed to run a chkdsk on it. It had ignored the fact the drive wasn’t supposed to be there and available.

And found errors on it and repaired them.

So after installing the new Windows on the other drive and testing it, I went back into the bios, re-enabled the other drivers and rebooted.

The original Windows came back up! First I went into Safe mode, then rebooted into standard mode. All data there.

Just to be sure I copied all the main data over to a spare drive. There was a lot more that I had first thought, including a stack of emails.

I then put on GAG, a Graphical Boot Manager. I was able to use it to find both Old and New Windows then add them to its Boot Menu. A final reboot and ta da! Windows x 2 both work.

Forgot to say that I checked the first 2 hard drives, which were playing up. One of them seemed to have its power cable half hanging out. Since pushing it back in, both drives have been fine for hours.

Oh dear. Looks like the DVD on DDS drive is faulty. Updated the firmware, it was like 3 levels behind. But still not working properly. Come to think of it, that rings a bell. Yep, my old faithful Book Of Wisdom (my log book where I scrawl such things) reports it was playing up - including disabling the whole IDE channel, causing a hard crash of Windows. So it had been unplugged some time ago. Should have remembered that! Kick self. Move on.

So I swapped over the DVD for a CD drive. That’s right. I did it myself and it booted first time. XP-CD recovery console loaded…and again failed with same “C: drive not there” error. Rebooted and tried an install per se to see if it would ‘recover’ ; which I’ve seen it do before. Not this time. Found the C: drive (partition), but said it was faulty. Kick PC. Move on.

In pondering DDS things, I realised that I may need an optical drive (CD) after all. Problem [1] as you may recall, was running out of space in Linux. Maybe a ’start again’ approach would work. I was, after all, using an old, temporary install of Linux and attempting to bash it into shape with it’s 3 ‘new’ hard drives.

Plus, the main problem [2] with Windows not booting, may be solved with a bootable CD and recovery-install.

All things lead me to change the design of DDS. And this after years of planning, diagrams and heartbreak

I’d take out the smallest hard drive (20 GB) and replace it with the original DVD drive. Went for DVD as it can boot both DVD and CD. Maybe I’ll get Debian 3.02 on a DVD next time.

So, after confirming it wasn’t the main boot drive and quickly trying to get the data off it, this was done. By the most excellent local PC store. And whilst I waited too. (I didn’t actually get the data off, but not an issue as I can grab it via the old Dell Gn PC. Said drive has bootable Debian Linux on it. It was on said Dell PC up until last week)

Thus here we are at 11:53 am and I’m about to boot DDS_V2. With 3 hard drives, 1 DVD drive and 2 fingers crossed.

So here we are the following morning. I’m attacking the Windows Won’t Boot on DDS problem with a vengeance.

DDS doesn’t have a CD, but it does have a diskette drive. I needed to try a full XP recovery-install.

Mmm. I read that Microsoft still offers XP install diskettes. So, I downloaded the official MS application that creates the six (6!) diskettes.

I found 6 old diskettes and carefully formatted all of them. ( One was labelled IBM DOS 6.1 beta. Codenamed Guinan. 1993!)

I then ran the MS program to create the bootable XP install diskettes.

I’m sure I read that they could boot, then do a remote (network) install. Hence I could have the XP install CD shared on my main PC and - via my LAN - boot/install DDS from that.

To cut to the chase, it failed. After manually swapping the 6 diskettes, a brief glimmer of hope when it offered the XP recovery console and even showed me the C: prompt. But then boom, ‘no C drive’ message or something. Another 6swap reboot - and a different menu option - brought up “no CD drive found” and “F3 to exit”. Bang.

Tried a few other things, involving PXE (Pre-boot eXecution Environment, aka ‘boot from network’. Hey shouldn’t that be PEE. I guess not).

The official MS PXE and XP_install seem to want a Windows 2000 server to work. AFAIK. Looked into a few Linux ones, like unattended over at Sourceforge, but nothing seemed to fit.

Beaten! But only this round. Work continues.

A small step towards recovery, late in the day.

My old-old spare PC (a 166 MHz Dell Gn box) has a 10/100 Ethernet card. From installing Linux on that box, I know it is a much more stable and supported card.

So I swapped cards over. The module for this card were there in the Debian kernel already (AFAIK), so I just had to nominate it.

A quick reboot later - not even sure if that was needed - and Networking on DDS is all go again.

Of course, I know that the old Dell Gn PC is probably going to have the same Ethernet issues, but at least my main DDS box is networking okay.

Yes, I’ve simply shifted the problem to another area. Hey, I’m Citylink

DDS (David’s Data Server) is in a spot of trouble. Actually 3 spots.

To recount: it has 4 hard drives, 1 floppy and no CD nor DVD. Linux and Windows are installed - on the first drive - and working. A boot menu - LILO - lets me boot either.

All seemed right. But then, 3 things went wrong in rapid succession.

[1]Linux / ran out of space

I run Debian Linux - Woody (latest, stable). During an Internet-based update of some software, the main (and only ‘user’) disk area became 100% full.
Continue reading “DDS Trio of Woes”

David’s Data Server - the old Athlon 1.4 GHz PC - has arrived home, with 4 hard drives. Again they too are old, but hey for virtually nothing I’ve now got a data server with like 150 GB.

They guys did a good job, leaving the original boot drive in place, so it still boots both Linux and Windows XP.

The linux fdisk utility shows all 4 disks and lots of partitions. For the geeks I’ve included it below. Wow, I’ve got a lot of “gee I wonder what’s stored there?” searching to do. Lots of mount and umount on the way.

Continue reading “DDS - arrived and working”