Speech:Fall 2014 Forrest Suprenant


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Week Ending Sept 24, 2014
Downloaded different versions of fedora.

- Downloaded the i686 v19 - Downloaded the i686 v20 - Found that the bios version (A6) for all of the Power Edge 1750 are outdated (2003) - Found new version of bios A12

Week Ending Oct 1, 2014
- Began installs of v19 today - Installed fedora v19 on verlehnix - Founds some information of the bios error we have been seeing on the new installations of fedora -- MP-BIOS BUG 8254 timer not connected. Apparently this is because the kernel is developed for newer machines. The http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/mp-bios-bug-8254-timer-not-connected-use-noapic-option-to-boot-591891/

Week Ending Oct 8, 2014
Started out the week by upgrading the BIOS for Methusalix (power-edge 1750) from A6 to A12. -- The Upgrade improved the Boot time considerably!

-- It allowed fedora to continue after the "no-apc error"

-- The A12 upgraded also enabled fedora to shut down the server and reboot it without erroring-out or hanging

Mid week

-- I removed the Caesars twin from the "out of commission" rack and started diagnosing it

-- The server's error light was displaying orange indicating an issue.

-- The Error stated that the RPM for fans 4 and 5 were too low, I opened the cover and found that fans 4 and 5 were completely missing!

-- I salvaged two fans from a decommissioned power-edge 1750

-- I placed the new fans in the NEW server and booted it up.

-- With the new fans in, the light turned BLUE! No Errors as of 10/4/2014

-- Next, I installed fedora onto the NEW server.

-- The installation went fine. However, when the server boots, it loads up fedora and then blank screens. I think this has something to do with the mp bios bug 8254 timer not connected to io-apic

End of week

-- Looks like we're getting a new beast from Brian!

-- Talked with him about setting up RAID a configuration on it

=Week Ending Oct 15, 2014=

This week I wanted to tested out RedHat 6 on our servers.

I installed Redhat 6 x64 on the dell poweredge 2950. I think redhat is a perfect fit for what we are doing here at unh. It seems to be tailored for servers. It has various configurations for setting up and configuring server. Red hat also supports a wider range of hardware right out of the box unlike Fedora or Ubuntu.

I ran into some issues however when I tried installing the legal version (x64) of the Redhat on Verleihnix (poweredge 1750). The poweredge 1750 series don't support 64 bit software. The next day, I "found" a 32bit version of Redhat 6.4. I tried installing it on Verleihnix, and it went seamlessly!

Redhat has several options when installing. I installed the "Desktop" version of Redhat 32bit on Verleihnix so that we could have a UI.

Going forward, if the Redhat 6.4 32bit works on all of our various poweredge sever versions, I think we'll make it our primary operating system for all the machines. I think well be forced into using the 32bit version unless we deprecate the older poweredges.

NEW DEVICE! A poweredge 2900 with 24GB of memory and 8 logical CPUs was donated this week. Since a 32bit version of redhat wont be able to utilize more than 4GB, I will most likely end up installing the 64bit version of Redhat on it. I'll have to run this my Dr. Jonas.

I would hate to have a mix and match of 32 and 64 bit operating systems on our racks.

Week Ending Oct 22, 2014
Installed a 32bit version of Redhat on Methusalix. Seems to be running fine.

Added booster to brutus (soon to be the new Caesar).

Removed Rome from the server Rack.

Continued working on a solution for the NO APIC bios bug. I found a fix!

Since our machines have an issue with the timer, we can simply ignore its interrupts that are causing the systems to hang at boot.

I added the noapic parameter to the \boot\grub\grub.conf file.

noapic

This is added into the string starting with kernal /vmlinuz... I added it after the "rhgb" and before "quiet"

rhgb noapic quiet

Week Ending Oct 29, 2014
Stated installing redhat this week, but the poweredge 1750 won't accept the 64bit version. I'll have to get a 64 bit version for Bruce in IT.

Week Ending Nov 5, 2014
Got the 32bit version of redhat 6.6 this week and starting installing it on verilihnix. Once it was installed, I couldn't find the network adapters. I tried ifconfig but to no avail. Finally when i passed it the -a argument, it would display them. However, I could not get them to connect to the network. I'll have to work on this over the weekend...

Week Ending Nov 12, 2014
Re installed methusalix. This time I included the compatibility files. Redhat 6.6 found the BCMX2 network cards drivers.

Week Ending Nov 19, 2014
Installed redhat on Automatix, Idefix, Majestix, Traubadix and Obelix. Also configured networking and SSH on those machines as well.