Speaking of motherboards-a-la-grill, here's a tip: Never switch the keyboard and the mouse connectors on an old Alpha machine. It burns motherboard when you turn it on.
Another thing about those creatures (I'm talking about something as old as OSF/3): It appears that a bug in a specific version of OSF causes the system to hang after a long uptime. It goes something like this: As all kernels, OSF's doesn't like to be left without memory, so it kills a process once it find out it can't allocate pages, until it re-gains enough free memory. Problem is, OSF picks processes randomly (or so it seems). As a result, if you had a leaking process running somewhere on your system, you could be certain that eventually, OSF will decide to kill something important on its killing spree (like init). That version of OSF ships with a leaking idle process... On 4/19/05, Nzer Zaidenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'll call. > (raising on this crowd is to risky) > > working on my first workplace (TAU) we had a similar > issue... a sysadmin tryed to format(1) a disk under > SunOs 4.1.3 problem format displays a menu > 1 /dev/sda0 > 2 /dev/sda1 > 3 /dev/sda2 > > nuff said > > on my second work place I was a sys admin in eci > telecom I was working on a priority project on Solaris > 2.5 when suddenly i had to setup an AIX system real > quick. (new problem popped up on a customer site). > > we had 2 AIX systems that had a tape (DDS-2) drive > that represented customer machines. > we had customer machines backups on tapes (the DDS-2 > tapes) that we restored whenever a customer problem > occured. > > since the restore of a complete system takes time I > decided to ditch the sun for a second, dig a KVM, > connect the AIX to a KVM (they made me use windows for > mail so I was connecting machines with PS/2 slots to a > KVM with my windows) and get back to the sun ASAP. > > now the Sun project was very important (but so was the > AIX project) so I was very very stressed > > I stormed through our lab equipment eventually finding > a KVM that was ditched to the side (who would put it > there? nobody can find it!) > > and immdietly connected the first AIX system. > it refused to boot. > no fear! there is another AIX! we will deal with this > one later! so i connected the other AIX... this one > also doesn't boot.... > > hmmm I connect the first one again, check electricity > nothing works... > I eventually ask the windows system adminstrator to > take a look the second he arrives he said > "where did you take this KVM from I specificall put it > aside because it kills mother boards!" > suddenly things were not urgent. > > PS> later I found out that my windows PC (also > connected to the KVM also didn't boot... > > --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I see as raised, and add some more. > > > > Few years ago, while (and still) administrating the > > Israeli Radio Amature > > Commette (IARC) server, which is a Linux machine, > > and back then it was old > > RH5.1 (very old at that time), I played with a spare > > disk (small one) I > > had, and a backup script, using tar. > > > > It happened that I was very drunk that night, and it > > seemed like the best > > idea to play with the script, and try to handle > > everything in the / > > partition, where it was anyhow well divided between > > many partitions. > > > > I did the following: > > > > cd / > > tar <some commands> | (cd /mnt/backup && tar xvf -) > > > > <Oh no, I thought to myself, now it's backing up > > /home, which is on > > another partition. Lets clean the space and try > > again, correctly this > > time> > > > > ls /mnt/backup > > <yep, home is there. Not good. Need to remove it, > > and try again> > > rm -Rf home > > <Had I ran `pwd` I'de seen I'm located in / ...> > > <Shit!> > > ^C > > </me now very sober> > > > > At that stage I started copying whatever realy > > resides on /mnt/backup from > > the home subdir. With luck, I had a week old backup > > of the home dirs, at > > home, connected through ADSL, and got to start > > uploading a 4GB file to the > > server, to open and restore. (afterwards I've > > decided to untar it on my > > computer, and upload only the missing parts). > > > > During this upload and restore time, a user starts > > "talk"int to me, saying > > he can't login to his home dir... I've explained > > there are some > > maintanance works on the server, and that it will be > > ok by morning. He > > claimed he can't read his mail using pine (wonder > > why...), and I've used > > the same explanation... > > > > That's another way to get real sober, real fast... > > > > Ez. > > > > > On Mon, Apr 18, 2005 at 09:22:22PM +0300, > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > > > >> I told him I'de sell tickets for his show, if he > > ever did it again. > > > > > > I'll see this and raise you one. > > > > > > Some time ago I was working on a custom embedded > > PPC board (running > > > Linux, naturally). After I finished hardening the > > system against > > > intrusion, I disabled root access and logged off. > > There was a super > > > secret sneaky method for enabling root access > > remotely, which I > > > proceeded to try. The method was buggy and root > > access was not > > > enabled. No worries, I still had serial console > > access. Which required > > > root access. I also had a couple of open root > > logins on the board - > > > until my X died. Oh shit. > > > > > > I then proceeded to try and break into the system > > I just finished > > > hardening to (re)gain root priviledges. A few > > hours later, I gave > > > up. Cooked up a RiscWatch, sacrificied some blood > > to the bare hardware > > > gods, hooked it up, and proceeded to reflash a new > > kernel that should > > > drop me into /bin/sh. Driving the RW was done from > > a machine several > > > firewalls (and continents over), with the latency > > you would expect. It > > > was done via a set of shell scripts that usually > > worked, except when > > > they didn't and completely fried the board. > > Naturally, they were > > > sensitive to timing. Amazingly, this time they > > worked. I rebooted the > > > board, dropped into /bin/sh, was happy to discover > > that everything > > > still worked, restored the old kernel and > > rebooted. > > > > > > As it was booting, I realized that I haven't > > enabled root access > > > before rebooting... > > > > > > Cue several more hours of alternately massaging > > RiscWatch and banging > > > head against wall. Eventually, root access is > > restored and I go > > > home. Some mistakes you only make once. > > > > > > Cheers, > > > Muli > > > -- > > > Muli Ben-Yehuda > > > http://www.mulix.org | > > http://mulix.livejournal.com/ > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ================================================================= > > To unsubscribe, send mail to > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] with > > the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., > > run the command > > echo unsubscribe | mail > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Plan great trips with Yahoo! Travel: Now over 17,000 guides! > http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide > > ================================================================= > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with > the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command > echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ================================================================To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
