| tuXlab |
[Dec. 11th, 2005|10:57 am] |
Yesterday I attended the first tuXlab installation in KZN. This is something I've been wanting to do for a while, but they've all been happening in the Cape.
The story actually starts quite some time ago when the school in question asked the Gift of the Givers Foundation for some sponsorship for a computer room. GotG haven't had much experience in such matters, but they got hold of the Shuttleworth Foundation who assisted them with finding cheap hardware (reconditioned machines to be used as thin clients and a heavy terminal server that will live in the back) and procedures for installation and configuration.
I got there a little late (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) the_5th_weel's fault -- we appointed him official scapegoat for the day) but we were still in time for everything. We all had a look at the computer room, which already had all the PCs unpacked and on the tables but no cabling, switches, etc., and went down to the staff room for some tea and biscuits. It turned out that this was an opportunity for everyone to make speeches (which not many of us were expecting) but we dutifully listened with only slightly glazed eyes. After that, we all went upstairs and were divided into teams for the cabling and installation. There were three teams: the guys from LEAD, the guys from PLEG and some teachers from the school. Hilton and Jonathan from TSF and Yusuf from GotG helped out as well.
Just as we were getting started, we noticed some of the machines wouldn't start up. (Second hand machines, remember?) A couple of us decided we'd take all the broken boxen downstairs and try make a few working ones out of the bits, so I got out of pulling and crimping cables which isn't really my strong point. Several of the "broken" boxen we were brought only needed to have bios settings for no-longer-present hard drives removed and to be configured to boot off the network. Most of the others had dead power supplies and several had dodgy processor fans as well. I don't remember how many machines we processed (I think it was close to 25), but eventually we had 10 dead (motherboard issues) and 4 that only needed PSUs. (An aside: While we were messing with hardware, we were brought two school PCs that weren't working. It turned out that they weren't working because floppy connectors had been jammed into the hd IDE connectors...)
Eventually we ran out of boxen to fix and went upstairs again just in time to be summoned for lunch. We were given a selection of fairly good curries and several varieties of bubbly beverage and after that a bunch of people left. Most of the LEAD guys were still upstairs making sure all the PCs were booting off the network and everything was happy, and it turned out that the people from PLEG weren't very good at cabling. We started investigating machines that wouldn't come up (one with a broken NIC, the rest badly made cables) and had a brief moment of panic when the server fell over. Further investigation showed that the server's power cable was one of those dual-power jobbies that had had the second kettle connector cut off. Leaving bare 230V AC wires and an earth. Unprotected. Flapping in the breeze.
I immediately shut down the server and found a new power cable. The UPS hadn't yat arrived (I'm not sure if they actually realised they'd need one) but I don't like the idea of bare copper plugged into mains voltage, especially on the same cable as a server's power. Some quick work with my leatherman rendered the offending cable unusable (Never leave dangerous items where they might be used unknowingly) and the server was back up. But the network wasn't. Eventually we discovered that someone had unplugged the server's cat5 from the switch. (the_5th_weel's fault again -- isn't it fun having an official scapegoat?) Plugging it back in made everything work again.
Eventually, we recrimped the last cable at about 17h00. While we were finishing up the last few machines (we only had enough tools/space to do one at a time) we chatted with Yusuf about how things had gone and improvements for the next time we do this. I think we made a fairly good impression -- staying late to make sure every LAN point worked, even the ones without PCs yet, after everyone else had wandered off probably had something to do with that.
Hopefully next time will go a little smoother. Most of our problems were based on people who were inexperienced and not really trained in what they were supposed to be doing. Also, Hilton seemed to have forgotten that none of us had actually done an installation like this before, so he didn't pick up some of the problems until they were too late. All in all, it went about as well as could be expected and in the end everything *did* work. |
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