Al’s WebLog

Avoriaz has changed IPs. I have changed any records I have access to change, but if I can’t change your DNS then you need to.

Avoriaz is now in my flat. I have a new colo box in Manchester that everything is moving too. Fun fun!

Well, after a bit of playing with add-in VGA and USB cards to try and get the IBM Netfinity 4000r installed I had to admit defeat. Having installed a base Linux OS on the hard disk the BIOSes virus warning wanted to tell me the boot sector had changed (I know, I just loaded GRUB!) and would only take ‘enter’ for an answer. So without a working BIOS level keyboard I was stuck. No matter though, eBay to the rescue and the SMBus break-out box duly arrived from the USA, allowing me to press enter. So, Morgins lives!

In case you didn’t know, I name my personal machines after places I want to go riding (either for the first time or again). Avoriaz is named after the town in France, perched up above Morzine where there is some magnificent riding to be found amongst the trails of the Portes du Soleil. So in seemed appropriate that I should name Avoriaz’s twin after the town across the border in Switzerland where there is some excellent north shore to be had - Morgins!

So, the IBM Netfinity 4000r off of EBay turns up – rah! Problem is it doesn’t have PS/2 connectors or a video out – it has a proprietary IBM thing I don’t have the adapter for. A PCI graphics card works fine though and the system boots of CD, but I can’t find a live CD that will boot to an SSHD prompt on the LAN without keyboard input. Gentoo live CD boots up fine, DHCP’s etc, but no SSHD (or serial console). SysRescCD won’t boot, nor will my custom Slackware, ‘cos it wants you to press enter to confirm your keyboard mapping (!). So, does anyone know an off the shelf Linux live CD that will boot, detect the intel LAN and start an SSHD which I can remotely connect into? I may have to make one of my own… or shove the hard disk into another box and install it there. Ideas please!

Okay, so it shouldn’t have taken 6 weeks, but it took that long to get the firwmare updated on the Intel SRCU31 RAID card (5th box I tried, first 4 the card wouldn’t work – needed a long PCI slot thingie). But yes, Avoriaz is back up. Things are almost correct, mail is being feed into the sendmail server ATM, web sites are almost all back up and I have not even looked at DNS yet… If you find bugs, let me know!

So yes, the problem that caused Avoriaz’s RAID to die is a known issue with the Intel SRCU31 card I have. Intel kindly produce a “how to recover your RAID” document to help you out. Step one, upgrade to latest firmware – okay, easy… or so you think. The Intel RAID detection DOS app thing just will not find the card so won’t upgrade the firmware. Arse. Okay, lets just load up the Intel Advance RAID Configuration Utility and get on with it. Hmm, that too also runs the same damn RAID detection software and it will not find the card! I know the card is in and working ‘cos I can go into the card’s BIOS and see it says it had failed! Hurmph. I will have to try the card in another PC I think…

Sorry for the lack of update on Avoriaz, but no news is good news this time. The new SATA RAID has been installed and is working fine. I have the old SCSI RAID and RAID card at home now, so I will attempt data recovery probably tonight. If that goes well a data sync will take a few hours and then its just an exim configuration and IP swap and everything should be back. Somehow though, I suspect I won’t be that lucky.

So, yes, given the issues with Avoriaz being down I thought I’d buy a new pair of disks and a controller, install a new OS and swap the lot. Then I can bring back the old RAID for data recovery. A fine plan, but something about the two new SATA disks or the SATA controller isnt happy and I get media errors all over the shop. One disk errors more than the other, but they both error a lot and on both SATA links. I suspect the cheap shite Silicon Image 3112A controller is a PoS. I have ordered a new Promise jobbie from span.com (why does no one else sell Promise STS controllers?) so hopefully, some day soon, I’ll have hardware to take down to London to get Avoriaz back on-line with! Crossed fingers all around please!

Well, ‘Plan B’ failed. The rescue disk kernel panics as soon as it queries the RAID card. Pile of shite Intel crap… So, all that is left to do is for me to get down to London, pulls the disks and card out and bring them back to Bath for further debugging. Not fun.

If you don’t have a shell on Avoriaz you can ignore this… Following a power failure (yes, it is UPSed) late Saturday night at the colocation where Avoriaz is housed, the machine will not reboot due to a RAID problem. It isn’t anything I can fix remotely, so Avoriaz will be down until at least I can get to London to have a poke about. Apologies.