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liam_on_linuxSo today's small victory was beating my HP Proliant ML110 - the original model from 2004, with a 3GHz P4 in it - into submission.
It used to run Windows Server 2003 Small Business Server. Not really from my choice...
I got it with an HP UltraSCSI adaptor in it, but no disks, & I don't have enough to populate it.
So, I swapped it with the PCI-X Dell CERC ATA-100 controller out of my Dell PowerEdge 600SC, acquired around the same time. The Dell has 3 IDE controllers on the motherboard anyway, meaning it can boot from a pair of more-than-big-enough-for-Ubuntu-Server 10GB UltraSCSIs and still has enough ports to drive 4 UltraIDE disks and an IDE CDRW drive to boot and install from.
This left me struggling to fit six UltraIDE drives into the Proliant - it's only really meant to take four, but a pair of cheapo 3½"-to-5¼" mounting kits from eBay let me use the two spare removable bays, too. I have six spare 80GB IDE drives and a seventh in case of failure, so this gave me a total of 372GB of RAID5 storage. OK, not a lot by modern standards, but actually, that is a lot of space. I don't game, I don't download a lot of movies or TV, and I don't want more space than I can back up onto one relatively inexpensive external disk.
Snag is, last year, no Linux distro could access a RAID5 on the CERC controller. It's really an ALI MegaRAID i4, bought to drive a mirror pair with Linux, but kernel 2.6.twenty-whatever-was-current-in-2009 couldn't see RAID5s on this controller. Windows could. So, finding an eval copy of W2K3 SBS in the garage, I went with that, and it worked fine.
But as mentioned in an earlier post, unfortunately, it timed-out at the start of Jan and my server stopped working for more than 1h at a time. Microsoft's elegant method for enforcing the evaluation period is to have the server automatically throw a bluey - a BSOD - after an hour of use. Nice.
So I decided to try this copy of Windows 2008 I have. Put an external screen on it, boot Ubuntu 9.10, move all of W2K3SBS into a "previous system" folder (that's what Mac OS X does when you "archive and install", so it seemed appropriate), boot Windows 2008 and install it. It all went swimmingly. It took an hour or 2 to get it running, but it even detected and installed the inbuilt Broadcom NIC for me, which is more than 2K3 could do. (According to a review I found, these damned boxes shipped with W2K3, so it ought to have worked - but it didn't. Had to faff around downloading the driver on another machine and transferring it across with a USB key. Of course, the HP setup disks I got with the machine don't contain anything as mundane as a NIC driver, oh no. Management tools agogo, but no actual, you know, drivers.
And then the niggling issues started...
The only real snag I hit was the screen. I have an ancient mono VGA monitor attached by a KVM to the HP & Dell servers. It is enough for, well, monitoring. For actual admin, I use Rdesktop or an SSH session from a machine with a nice big monitor (or two) and a conveniently-situated keyboard and mouse (i.e., one that does not require me to sit on the floor with a cushion.)
But W2K8 does not support VGA monitors any more. It wants at least a SuperVGA. You can't even select 640×480 in the control panel!
So my server monitor just displayed rolling fuzz. W2K8 can't detect the built-in graphics chipset - an 8MB ATI Rage XL, according to the C|Net review - so it can't detect the monitor. It thinks it's a generic PnP SVGA screen, which it isn't, and was trying to display an 800×600 or 1026×768 screen on it.
And I don't want to lug over my external screen again. Try Ubuntu's Terminal Server client... nope. Try a friend's laptop with XP... success. So the server is accepting Rdesktop connections.
OK, google it... Lots of articles tell you about the Terminal Server client in the menus, but oddly, I am capable of finding that, and it won't bleedin' connect. Eventually, I hit this rather helpful piece which tells me about the other RDP client, the command-line one that they don't put in the menus. Oddly, this one works first time.
So, bingo, I'm in. Deep joy.
So let's try to fix the monitor, then,
First step: force the monitor type to Standard VGA 640x480. Reboot. No difference.
Next: off to ATI.com. That means The Interwebs, and IE8 with the server lock-downs is just too much of a pain, so use it to grab Chrome, and then AdBlock, and we're in business.
So, ATI.com. Which redirects to AMD these days, of course. Windows Server 2008 isn't in the supported list. Well, W2K8 is Vista Server, really, so let's try Vista. Nope, no driver for Rage XL, a 1990s PCI chipset. Fair enough, I suppose.
Wonder if a 32-bit XP driver will work...?
Look under XP... yes, there's a Legacy section. With a Rage XL driver. Download it.
Unpack it. Try to install - nope, unsupported OS. OK, Device Manager, point at the driver tree, browse 'til I hit a .INF file. Installing... installing... installing... (begin to wonder if I am buggering my server...) installing... Done! Reboot, again.
And it comes back up. (Deep breath of relief.) And the screen turns to rolling fuzz.
Back into Device Manager... Nope, it's gone back to a PnP screen, which this one, from the 1980s, definitely isn't. Reset to plain ol' VGA. Reboot.
Nope.
OK, let's see if there's a 640×480 LCD option. There is. You can even choose the refresh rate, so I choose 640×480@60Hz. Reboot.
Et voilá! I have a working monitor!
The only other tweak was finding a RAID monitoring tool. From experimentation, I know that this card has a hardware beeper and emits a piercing intermittent shriek if it thinks a drive is failing, which is a rather desirable feature. (Ask me again if it ever goes off at 4AM.)
ALI do, it seems almost reluctantly, offer a monitoring suite, but it won't install on W2K8 unless you disable everything except the client app. The SNMP service and agent won't run on newer Windows and if the services won't start they won't install.
But these things being resolved, I now have a working server that both my Linux and Windows boxes can talk to. Next stop: printing and getting the Macs talking to it...
It used to run Windows Server 2003 Small Business Server. Not really from my choice...
I got it with an HP UltraSCSI adaptor in it, but no disks, & I don't have enough to populate it.
So, I swapped it with the PCI-X Dell CERC ATA-100 controller out of my Dell PowerEdge 600SC, acquired around the same time. The Dell has 3 IDE controllers on the motherboard anyway, meaning it can boot from a pair of more-than-big-enough-for-Ubuntu-Server 10GB UltraSCSIs and still has enough ports to drive 4 UltraIDE disks and an IDE CDRW drive to boot and install from.
This left me struggling to fit six UltraIDE drives into the Proliant - it's only really meant to take four, but a pair of cheapo 3½"-to-5¼" mounting kits from eBay let me use the two spare removable bays, too. I have six spare 80GB IDE drives and a seventh in case of failure, so this gave me a total of 372GB of RAID5 storage. OK, not a lot by modern standards, but actually, that is a lot of space. I don't game, I don't download a lot of movies or TV, and I don't want more space than I can back up onto one relatively inexpensive external disk.
Snag is, last year, no Linux distro could access a RAID5 on the CERC controller. It's really an ALI MegaRAID i4, bought to drive a mirror pair with Linux, but kernel 2.6.twenty-whatever-was-current-in-2009 couldn't see RAID5s on this controller. Windows could. So, finding an eval copy of W2K3 SBS in the garage, I went with that, and it worked fine.
But as mentioned in an earlier post, unfortunately, it timed-out at the start of Jan and my server stopped working for more than 1h at a time. Microsoft's elegant method for enforcing the evaluation period is to have the server automatically throw a bluey - a BSOD - after an hour of use. Nice.
So I decided to try this copy of Windows 2008 I have. Put an external screen on it, boot Ubuntu 9.10, move all of W2K3SBS into a "previous system" folder (that's what Mac OS X does when you "archive and install", so it seemed appropriate), boot Windows 2008 and install it. It all went swimmingly. It took an hour or 2 to get it running, but it even detected and installed the inbuilt Broadcom NIC for me, which is more than 2K3 could do. (According to a review I found, these damned boxes shipped with W2K3, so it ought to have worked - but it didn't. Had to faff around downloading the driver on another machine and transferring it across with a USB key. Of course, the HP setup disks I got with the machine don't contain anything as mundane as a NIC driver, oh no. Management tools agogo, but no actual, you know, drivers.
And then the niggling issues started...
The only real snag I hit was the screen. I have an ancient mono VGA monitor attached by a KVM to the HP & Dell servers. It is enough for, well, monitoring. For actual admin, I use Rdesktop or an SSH session from a machine with a nice big monitor (or two) and a conveniently-situated keyboard and mouse (i.e., one that does not require me to sit on the floor with a cushion.)
But W2K8 does not support VGA monitors any more. It wants at least a SuperVGA. You can't even select 640×480 in the control panel!
So my server monitor just displayed rolling fuzz. W2K8 can't detect the built-in graphics chipset - an 8MB ATI Rage XL, according to the C|Net review - so it can't detect the monitor. It thinks it's a generic PnP SVGA screen, which it isn't, and was trying to display an 800×600 or 1026×768 screen on it.
And I don't want to lug over my external screen again. Try Ubuntu's Terminal Server client... nope. Try a friend's laptop with XP... success. So the server is accepting Rdesktop connections.
OK, google it... Lots of articles tell you about the Terminal Server client in the menus, but oddly, I am capable of finding that, and it won't bleedin' connect. Eventually, I hit this rather helpful piece which tells me about the other RDP client, the command-line one that they don't put in the menus. Oddly, this one works first time.
So, bingo, I'm in. Deep joy.
So let's try to fix the monitor, then,
First step: force the monitor type to Standard VGA 640x480. Reboot. No difference.
Next: off to ATI.com. That means The Interwebs, and IE8 with the server lock-downs is just too much of a pain, so use it to grab Chrome, and then AdBlock, and we're in business.
So, ATI.com. Which redirects to AMD these days, of course. Windows Server 2008 isn't in the supported list. Well, W2K8 is Vista Server, really, so let's try Vista. Nope, no driver for Rage XL, a 1990s PCI chipset. Fair enough, I suppose.
Wonder if a 32-bit XP driver will work...?
Look under XP... yes, there's a Legacy section. With a Rage XL driver. Download it.
Unpack it. Try to install - nope, unsupported OS. OK, Device Manager, point at the driver tree, browse 'til I hit a .INF file. Installing... installing... installing... (begin to wonder if I am buggering my server...) installing... Done! Reboot, again.
And it comes back up. (Deep breath of relief.) And the screen turns to rolling fuzz.
Back into Device Manager... Nope, it's gone back to a PnP screen, which this one, from the 1980s, definitely isn't. Reset to plain ol' VGA. Reboot.
Nope.
OK, let's see if there's a 640×480 LCD option. There is. You can even choose the refresh rate, so I choose 640×480@60Hz. Reboot.
Et voilá! I have a working monitor!
The only other tweak was finding a RAID monitoring tool. From experimentation, I know that this card has a hardware beeper and emits a piercing intermittent shriek if it thinks a drive is failing, which is a rather desirable feature. (Ask me again if it ever goes off at 4AM.)
ALI do, it seems almost reluctantly, offer a monitoring suite, but it won't install on W2K8 unless you disable everything except the client app. The SNMP service and agent won't run on newer Windows and if the services won't start they won't install.
But these things being resolved, I now have a working server that both my Linux and Windows boxes can talk to. Next stop: printing and getting the Macs talking to it...
