a view through my own eyes

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.