Linux netboot

I spent today setting up a new server for one of our customers. The customer had ordered it and had it sent to us to install all their software onto. It had a couple of really annoying features, firstly it didn't come with a powercable and as the office is bereft of spare parts I had to get back in my car go home and get another cable. This was to go with the keyboard monitor and mouse I had already dragged down.
On returning I realised there was something even more worrying than the missing powercable, on the front of the unit there was a rectangle of plastic. Unfortunately rather than being the cover of the cd-rom drive I was expecting this was a blanking plate. Yes thats right I had a server with no Operating System and no cdrom.

Fortunately it is possible to install linux from a remote machine provided the target computer is a able to run a PXE (preboot execution environment) boot from your network card. So I spent the morning configuring my laptop to act as the host server and deliver the initial files via tftp.

I had planned to install Centos as its closer the the normal Red Hat advanced server we use. Unfortunately despite a lot of effort the PXE boot images didn't work. Next I tried Debian, which booted but then failed to see the network card, preventing me from continuing. Ubuntu was next like Debian this booted and the initial installed seem to be ok, then it just hung very annoying.
Finally in desperation I tried Fedora, which actually proved to be the easiest to get going only four files needed and it worked straight away. I was very shocked! Whilst I was playing about with different netboots my colleague went out and acquired a usb cd-rom. He arrived just as Fedora was installing I decided it would be quicker to installed from the cds I had already downloaded rather than pulling a distributions down from the net. So despite its superior netboot Fedora was forgotten and I put a fresh install of Centos on.

It proved to e a really slick process I was very impressed. I managed to pretty much get everything done in a few hours including installing our software. Next week I have the pleasure of delivering the server to the customer so I want to make sure its as finished as possible before I arrive onsite.

Stupid Car / Bourne Ultimatum

Phil and I planned to go to do some shopping at our favorite discount shopping centre Cheshire Oaks today. Unfortunately Phil had a big of a computer meltdown at work. The atov server went into melt down so he struggled to fix it. He even asked me to come and take a look, so I missioned into Manchester. Turning into the road leading to Atov h.q. I was confronted by a line of policemen. I first I thought there had been another shooting, then behind them I saw a procession of brightly dressed people, floats, dancing and music. The Caribbean carnival of Manchester was heading straight past Phils work, I had to turn around and head in a missive circle to come in on the other side of the science park. The PA system they were using must have been huge too you could feel the bass reverberations in the air!

Phil had managed to get the systems operational by the time I arrived so instead we did the initial setup for Holly's forthcoming website the universal woman. I also set up some email bits and bats for Phil. In gratitude he offered to should me diner. I always live by the Philosophy of "if its free, its for me".

I went out with my parents for a curry last night so I managed to talk Phil into going for Chinese. Bruce joined us and we headed into China Town. I wanted to go to the place I ate for Emily's birthday but I couldn't remember which one it was so we ended up in a random Chinese. Eating our banquet the food was delicious unfortunately we were sat next to what I can only describe as a table full of yobs. They spent most of the evening talking about fighting fucking (many loud tails of night spent with prostitutes) and thieving. I was feeling pretty uncomfortable by the end of the evening, and was glad to leave. I wonder what these idiots do, do they have jobs or just steal for a living?

After the meal we decided to catch a film and headed to Parrs Wood. The new Bourne film, Bourne Ultimatum was out so we decided to see what its like. The story continues where the last film left off. Still hunted by the CIA and haunted by memories from the past Jason Bourne attempts to get back to where it all began. Starting in Russian the action moves across Europe and ends at the beginning in America. The action scenes are splendid, though the car chase dosnt live upto the mini around France in the Bourne Identity.
A couple of things struck me, at one point the CIA agents raid a bus in London guns drawn, take over the cameras at Waterloo station and gun down a British citizen, I really really hope this would not happen in reality.
I really enjoyed the film, but lack all sequels it was a little samey and the FBI dialogue became more than a little tiresome, as Bruce pointed out how many times did the order to kill on site need to be delivered!

Stupid HTML

Today I wanted to do a really simple thing. I had a terms and conditions list which was points subdivided into sub points. It seemed a pretty simple thing to do in html, unfortunatly nesting ordered lists meant the numbering restarted so instead of 1, 2, 2.1 2.2, 2.3, 3 I had 1, 2, 1,2,3, 3. I found this article however while it provided a solutions it wasn't one I could use as its not supported in internet explorer. I ended up having lots of unordered lists with no bullet style and typing in the numbers myself :s rubbish! How come word processors have been able to do bullet lists at different levels forever but nobody thought it might be useful in html?

NeverAlways Be Lonely

Its been a bit of a mad weekend, for expected and unexpected reasons. Friday was a long day, I was meant to be catching Sandbox after work, but by the time I left work I wouldn't have had time to change, I felt tired and didn't want to turn up to a gig in my suit.
So my Friday night consisted of drinking a couple of beers and watching a dvd. It was a very very good dvd though, Pans Labyrinth. Its a film that crosses the dreams of a girls fertile imagination against a brutal backdrop of the end of the Spanish civil war. Well written well acted a good story this is the sort of film I really enjoy.
On Saturday my dads pc failed, this meant stress for me, as de facto pc guy I had to sort it out. I decided rather cunningly to give him my 18 month old old and to buy myself the bits to get a new one. I found aria were selling 4GB of ram for just over £ 100 and scan had a reasonable price on processors. I decided to go the whole hog and shelled out for Windows Vista just to give it a try. I would say Vista is a worthwhile upgrade if you have a powerful computer and like eye candy. Its got slightly less patronising pop ups then XP other than the box which pops up every time you want to install anything. I know its for security but does it really have to be that irritating. The graphics tweaks make Vista look good but switch between Windows has nothing on Apples expose. I was a bit worried when on installing Visual Studio it warned me about the incompatibility problems. I only had to download a 490mb patch to fix it.
I basically spent the rest of the day backing up, screwing together, installing and configuring this new machine, which was good really as I was feeling dreadful. Sometimes I find the loneliness consumes. I spend hours looking at photos of whats been happy times trying to cling to something good. I also find doing installs is a good way to avoid thinking about it, her.
To be honest I am angry with myself, my friend said it best. I make too deep connections too quickly so I end up hurt then shut myself away to avoid getting hurt again. Overcompensating in both directions like an emotional sea-saw. I supose things are not made easier by the fact the I received an sms telling my how much she was enjoying herself with her niece by the sea. Whereas I am sat alone, in the rain. I suppose it could be much worse I shouldn't complain my house isn't sat in the middle of a new lake right new. Bah the only problem is I feel guilty for feeling sorry for myself, but at the same time whilst other people have worse problems it dosnt actually change the way I feel, stupid emotions.

Internet Cafe

Today set up an internet cafe in the Birmingham ICC, starting at 8am Loading the car at Phil's house. I am actually sending this post from one of the internet computers here. Apologies for the poor quality photos but they were taken on my phone.
We had a few last minute problems and ended up having to rebuild the Smoothwall box, it normally runs headless and we didn't have a monitor so we had to borrow the plamsa screen from one of the displays.

New PC

Over the last couple of weeks I have had problem after problem with my PC. I tried replacing the hard disks only for the motherboard fan to fail causing everything to overheat. I finally reached the end I needed to work on something in windows and I couldn't get my PC to stay on for more that 5 minutes so I have finally bitten the bullet and upgraded.

Scan were doing an offer for 2ghz processor motherboard and 1gb or ram for £209 which seems a pretty good deal and my dad was kind enough to go down and get it whilst I was at work. So I am now the proud owner of a 64bit computer, kind of strange really going back I used to run a 64bit Sun ultra 5 a few years ago its takes years for the x86 world to catch up. Once I get Windows running Ill be interested to find out how well Linux runs :-)

Work was pretty good today thanks to Easter weekend everyone was chilled out looking forward to a nice long weekend or in fact a week off for me I cant wait. I have arrange to go and see my friend Paul for a few days. I even went for a pint after work with the IT crowd a rare treat indeed.