a view through my own eyes

So ignoring the electricity issues in the house, it has just been a week of one thing after another.

1. the aircon started faffing around in one of the server rooms at work, disabling the management and monitoring interface means that the aircon works but for the moment we cannot monitor it.

2. a PSU went awol in our old not-quite-SAN, so a colleague reset it not realising that the student email resides on it these days. Not a major issue, just irritating at the time.

3. the aircon went wobbly in the one of the other machine rooms at work, a colleague sent over there commented that he could cook in his underwear. The aircon engineers came out and I think bodged it with gaffer tape and an elastic band for the moment, parts have been ordered. In the meantime as much stuff as possible has been shut down over there.

4. Late friday afternoon a library server reported two degraded disks with impending failures, and the management software in an odd state. So Saturday morning was spent sorting out the management software and swapping one of the disks. Fortunately (!) one of the disks finally failed on Friday night so my concern about which disk to swap first was taken out of my hands. Sunday saw the second disk being swapped and the array being resynced. Monday saw the rebuild complete but one of the new disks in degraded state. Tuesday will see me back on the phone to Dell.

5. Saturday our broadband connection died, handily not us or our kit were at fault. The authentication server at the ISP appeared to have gone on annual leave. This was most helpful in keeping an eye on no 4. (above).

6. Sunday we had a power cut. A real one this time. Lots of blips at around 8pm which lead to groans of ‘oh poo not again’ followed by ‘but the RCD hasn’t tripped so not our fault!’, 9pm ish saw the power go completely. Allegedly a tree had a coming together with an overhead power line. By morning our village was supposedly being powered by a generator somewhere and EDF could not say when things would be really fixed. This helped no end with no 5. and no 4. (above).

7. Monday (today) we were due to have my Nan here for lunch (not to eat, to feed - honest). However due to 6. (above) cooking a leg of lamb in an electric oven looked like it would be a gamble. So calling my Nan, we took the lamb, spuds, veg, pudding and all needed pots and pans down to her house and cooked on gas!

Yes I still live. To be honest I have had absolutely nothing to say, which to be fair sums up most of this blog. Anyhow a couple of books have been read - no way now that I will manage a book a week as planned. Oh well. reviews coming soon - honest.

In the meantime there has been a modicum of excitement.

Just over a week ago we come home from work and there is a distinct lack of power to the sockets in the house. A trip upstairs to where the consumer unit (fuse box) is flush mounted inside a fitted wardrobe (why there of all places?) and note that the RCD switch that controls the socket rings has tripped.

Odd.

Flip the RCD and five minutes later, bzzt click and the RCD trips. But at least the circuits not on the RCD (2 x cooker, smoke alarm, immersion and 2x lights) are fine.

At this point I should point out that our CU has a distinct lack of labels and just a scrap of paper inside with illegible writing on. So shutting down all of the ring circuits, enabling the RCD and bringing one circuit up at a time eventually lead to me working out which switch related to which ring and writing it down (kitchen, upstairs, downstairs and garage).

During this process was the occasional: bzzt click etc.

At this point I go around the entire house unplugging absolutely everything, and then repeat the entire process of enabling the rings one by one and allowing ten minutes between each one to allow the RCD to trip.

Eventually I suss out that the upstairs ring is causing the RCD to trip. At this point I resign myself to an evening of removing every switch and checking the wiring in the hope of finding something obvious.

Since the fuse box is located in the corner of the room that is full of my shitmy study, it is the obvious place to start. So plugging everything back in, I enable the ring and then go round turning off all of the switches one by one. The first switch is around 2 foot from the CU, I turn it off, interestingly the item plugged into it stays on. Odd, most odd. So I turn it on - nothing happens, and then back off - nothing happens.

Halleluja!

For a laugh I plug a lamp into the second socket to note that it neither works when on or off, in the first it works when the socket is on or off.

Marvellous.

At this point it is getting late and to be fair I am tired and hungry. I unplug the stuff on the switch and leave it, in the hope it will live until morning.

Saturday I buy a new switch, fit it and out of amusement rip the old one to pieces. Inside I find that a spring behind the switch had flipped out, which lead to a contact slipping inside and providing a short.

So folks the less here is don’t get the house wired by an electrician who uses the cheapest nastiest switches, sockets etc.

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Thursday morning there is a repeat performance - this gets narrowed down fairly quickly to a cordless jug kettle having a leak and soaking the contacts in the base.

At this point I am starting to contemplate what other electrical wonders in the house await me.

On mrspao’s suggestion I email a friend who just rewired his own house himself and then had it PratPart P certified, so I hope has a vague idea of what to do. A day or so later, I have seen my friend, received lots of advice, a cop of the IEE testing guide and several bits of test equipment to check each socket, take impedance readings back to earth and do a continuity test of the rings amongst other things.

So over the next couple of weeks I will be going round the house replacing every single switch, socket etc with good quality Crabtree or MK (but not from B&Q as they are the nasty East Asian import versions) components and then testing along the way.

Thankfully this stuff I can do myself legally without needing to spend a fortune on an electrician and can ensure that non cheap parts are used.

Another rare work related post.

Over the last couple of months we have had some issues with our RADIUS server, since it runs on Linux it is automatically my problem whether or not I know anything about RADIUS. That in itself is not a problem as there is nothing quite like learning your way around something new and getting your hands dirty at the same time.

Some background information, wireless devices authenticate using RADIUS which in turn talks to the Windows Domain Controllers. The bit that has been iffy is Winbind (part of the SAMBA suite*) that makes *nix systems appear to be Windows. So strictly speaking RADIUS itself has been fine. My colleagues who look after the Windows servers looked in the logs**, but could see nothing obviously of interest.

Today’s iffyness required several service restarts of both Winbind and RADIUS to no effect. Caches and state information were cleared along with more service restarts all to no avail.

In the end I decided that since it was a Windows connectivity issue I needed to think about it in a different way. So I decided that I would do what a Windows Administrator would do:

I rebooted the server.

Naturally it worked.

* SAMBA being that well not bit of software that is engineered to openly made available APIs and specifications from Microsoft.
** Which was really quite suprising as it is well known about how detailed and useful Windows logs are.

Time for an eye update.

A couple of weeks ago the eye started hurting again and went rather red. Back into the hospital by arrangement of a secretary and a Registrar and the registrar has a look round. It appears that when the stitches were pulled one of them snapped. Consequently it had to be left to work it’s own way out otherwise it would have been a case of digging in and around the cornea to get to it. Five minutes later the remnant stitch has gone.

Once again on masses of eye drops until I return in April.

Meanwhile the cataract is slowly growing I am told.

This one was a Christmas present from mrspao and I have been looking forward to reading it for a while.

Here Banks takes science fiction and weaves one man and his servant’s quest to get justice for the murder of his father on the micro level with civilizations at war on the macro level.

I sometimes wonder whether Banks plays chess, because he has this utter knack of having everything in front of you from relatively early on and yet he manages to hide everything at the same time revealing things at times of his choosing.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, particularly the concept of ‘Matter’ games within games where the games involves lives, civilizations, worlds and even the universe.

The one niggly point for me though was not the changing character of the servant (Holse) but the radical change that takes place.

On the whole though a recommended read for science fiction lovers - the scale is on a level that I have only seen Banks do well.

1. I hate cheese, with a passion. I do try a piece now and again - the flavour, texture and smell does nothing for me, but given a choice I would choose to gnaw my own leg off.
2. I love cheese and onion crisps.
3. I used to love climbing trees as a kid.
4. I fell out of a few but never broke any bones.
5. I return to Deal once a year for fish and chips from Middle Street chippy and go and eat them on the beach by the pier.
6. I am rubbish at making Yorkshire Pudding, my late mother was excellent at it, handily my Gran still is - I should get instructions.
7. As I kid I discovered that eating a couple of raw OXO cubes along with a pint of Ribena, led to my mum crapping herself when I threw up.
8. I worked in Comet at weekends selling electrical goods and called it a day after a couple of months.
9. We had spaniel called Jet and a cat named Tiger.
10. My wife is my bestest friend ever.
11. I used to know how to do Rubik’s Cube and used to solve them at school for other kids in payment of Mars Bars.
12. I loved Dr Who as a kid and still do, as a kid I hid behind a cushion, now I hide behind mrspao.
13. As a student I drove taxis four nights a week and still did a full week at college.
14. I remember seeing Star Wars at the cinema when I was 7 and being utterly blown away.
15. I have always spent more time reading books than watching TV.
16. But I have seen almost every Formula 1 grand prix on TV since the mid 1980s.
17. I bought a dartboard with Christmas money one year, Mum went apeshit, Dad hung the darboard up and challenged me to a game.
18. I learnt to play the trombone at school but was rubbish at it.
19. I really really like Champagne marmalade from Fortnum & Mason’s.
20. I read The Lord of the Rings roughly once every two years.
21. Saphhire and Steel scared the crap out of me as a kid, so much so that although mrspao bought them for me on DVD I still have not watched them.
22. Green Triangles are the best Quality Street ever, my grandparents used to own a corner shop and did pick n mix of Quality Street. I do not beleive that they ever sold a Green Triangle.
23. My favourite food is Shepherds Pie, my mum made used the make the best ever; now I have to make it myself - I think it is just about edible.
24. I like a fine pint of ale, Double Dragon from the Felinfoel Brewery is marvellous.
25. The best day of my life was my wedding day.

Mrspao bought me this for Christmas, I discovered a day or so after I finished it that this is also the book that Rah leant me a couple of years ago and is gathering dust. Rah - I am sorry but will return it.

Anyway, set in the middle ages as civil war rages across Britain between King Stephen and Empress Maud over the succession of the English throne. This tale follows the lives of Prior Philip, Tom the Builder and other whose names escape me at present; as a new cathedral is built over the period of forty or so years.

At times funny, serious, lessons in architecture, deeply moving, violent, shocking and occasionally mildly erotic, the story gives us a tale made of love, passion, faith, treachery and politics affecting all of the characters involved to one extent or another.

It is a large book, but does quickly draw you in and keeps you enthralled, my only disappointment was that it ended almost too soon.

I think this has to go down as one of the best books I have ever read.

Thursday saw the return to the cornea consultant. Once again he had a good peer round, proclaimed that the cataract can wait for as long as he feels like and then announced that the last five stitches were coming out.

So now George and I are alone with no physical ties to bind us together.

I suppose that I should remember not to look down in case George falls off.

Is what I said to my manager yesterday.

As part of a move at work to move from a traditional many (over specced) servers in racks for services, we are moving to fewer (very well specced) blade servers in racks with storage from a SAN (storage attached network) running VMware infrastructure. The theory being we can run lots of little virtual servers specced to do the job that they need to do and nothing else. This means that we can claw back some space in the data centers and also to play the green card by having fewer physical machines.

One of the tasks that I am involved in, is getting VMware installed onto the blade servers, although there are shiny GUI tools that the point n click boys like, there is also a service console based around Red Hat Linux - which to be honest is a darn sight easier to drive when configuring a virtual network infrastructure - mainly on the grounds that it can be scripted. On the grounds that we want in the long term it to be as little effort as possible we are looking at Altiris Rapid Deployment Manager (RDP). The idea being that our asset database can feed enough info to RDP so that when a brand new blade is inserted into a chassis on first boot it will automatically be installed with VMware, patched, networking configured and other bits done - with no sys admin work required.

A couple of days ago we pretty much had it working, then it did not. When I say working we had got to the point where the VMware install worked and ran our customisation scripts. Admittedly the scripts were still being tweaked to auto setup the virtual network infrastructure - but that really is trivial stuff the hard bit had been done. Two days ago we also started looking at making the SAN storage available to the VMware hosts to run the virtual machines.

Yesterday when testing the build scripts they failed every time, installation of the OS was just not happening. It was as if the storage had vanished. Then it occurred to us that at different points of the blade boot and installation process that the hardware storage is not necessarily available at the same place consistently.

So although there are internal disks in the blade and they are enumerated 0 and 1 at the BIOS level within the blade, it gets forgotten about when an OS is installed. Taking the boot process, the blades are configured to do a network (PXE) boot and should that fail to boot off the internal disks. Back to the PXE boot part, the RDP software knows which blades it has installed and should it see a new blade, it then sends the installation OS down the network which then runs on the blade which tells it how to build itself with VMware. Once it has done this, it ignores that blade since it knows that it has provided an installation and the blade should then boot of it’s own disks.

In our case the machines did a PXE boot and as they were new received the installation OS which did its stuff, they then rebooted but failed complaining of no system disk being available. After some (around a day of) head scratching it dawned on us that with other testing going, on a LUN from the SAN was being presented to the blades; the machines PXE booted, received the install OS which knows about SAN LUNs and so spotted the presented SAN and enumerated its disks as LUN, disk 1, disk 2; consequently the install OS installed VMware onto the LUN rather than the internal disks and so the blade boot failed as the OS was not actually on the blade.

Where in the manual it says: “Do no present a LUN from the SAN to the VMware servers prior to the VMware installation”, it tends to do so for a reason.

This part of the manual was read by myself and a colleague some time ago, and we both noted that it was clearly rather important and that it must be a silly thing to do.

The stupid thing is I was burnt on something similar years ago with Sun kit when performing a Solaris 7 to 8 upgrade where the internal disk structure had been added to over the years. The documentation then said ensure that you do an upgrade rather than a fresh install - so we did during testing and completely ignoring it for the live system.

dmc: path_to_inst

Yup it is another Dalziel & Pascoe from the job lot, this will be the last for a while as I need a change of scenery. Although I started this one on New Years Eve I finished it a few days ago so it counts as one of this years.

There is a serial killer on the loose, known as The Choker due to the method of killing. Add into the mix a randy bank manager, a dodgy garden centre, the country fair, an aeronautics club, a travelling band of gypsies and fortune tellers offering their services to the police and once again we have a corker of a who dunnit.

I have to admit that I did have suspicions as to the who fairly on but could not figure out the why and that left me confused about the who.

However based on the previous D&Ps that I I have read recently I feel that maybe it is not too difficult to work out the who, not because it is obvious (i.e. Johnson was seen walking away from the body with a hammer dripping in blood) but more because of the way that Hill does not write for that character almost as a way to deliberately leave them on the periphery and so reduce the amount of attention that they receive.

I will try and remember to put this to the test with the next one I read later in the year, for the moment though I am having a change of genre and the current book is a monster.