ajft

More work-related stuff, no Adrian-related stuff.

Working on the NetWare servers for Monash South Africa, which was more to do with my work life than my private life, so its in my work journal.

For some reason I'd put my work log in my private website, I've removed it now. If you really want to know what I was doing in Monash's South Africa campus, just ask. All it said was that getting some servers working in Johannesburg was a frustrating and slow experience.

Not an entirely successful day. Since both NetWare 5.1 CDs are not bootable I've had to boot the machines from floppy disks, format the hard drives from Novell DOS, then add the IDE CD driver and attempt to install from the CD as D: drive. Unfortunately there seems to be an incompatibility between something in the hardware and the NetWare installation, and it is hanging at or before the hardware detection.

Finally I resorted to copying the NW5.1 CD onto the C: drive, then launching the install from C:\INSTALL.BAT. This has been successful.

Yay, the servers turned up! Due at 10:00 they arrived a little after 11:00, so I spent the rest of the day with Johanne unpacking and powering them on. J. was from the vendor/supplier and never once used an anti-static strap, nor had he ever seen inside an IBM server since they normally sell Compaq, so it was slower than if I'd done it myself, however, they were determined to do all the physical setup. My contribution involved unpacking the boxes and getting in the way.

A couple of stumbling blocks, the major one was that the supplied RAID controller was a "ServeRAID-4L Ultra160" while the one ordered was a "ServeRAID-3HB Ultra2". Apparently the one we got is the latest, while the other one is no longer available. Unfortunately the newest one is not supported by NetWare... or not initially. After chasing up the supplier it turns out that we need an update to the configuration software, downloaded version 4.50 from IBM support and now have drivers.

Second stumbling block was the NetWare 5.1 CD. Apparently a bootable CD copied from the original, it is not recognized as being bootable by the server. I'll try the other one tomorrow. Booting from a DOS floppy then launching the CD installation works though.

The three of us, Jamie, Royce and myself, headed out to PQ Africa this morning to meet with Les and see what the temporary site looked like. Since PQ Africa is in the process of moving, we've been offered space in Vector's offices in Midrand, even further out of the city to the north. Drove to Vector to find that the Sun equipment is all present, though still boxed, and the IBM servers are expected tomorrow ... awaiting some missing parts.

Back to Jo'burg to the Monash temporary offices at Nashua, and we are handed our first technical assignment. It seems that only one external IP address has been given to the Monash staff, all the rest are connected on the 10.0.0.x network. Ed's PC has been turned into a dual-homed NT server, which has had most of Microsoft Exchange and IIS web and proxy servers installed on it. Apparently he could access the internet prior to this happening, but no one else could. Now, everyone can partially access the web, but mail won't work.

A few configuration tweaks and changes and George and I end up with most of the machines being able to access the web via the proxy (but only if using Internet Explorer), and mail via Microsoft Outlook and/or Outlook Express. No matter what we do we cannot make Netscape Communicator work with the proxy. A minor panic ensued when it appeared that we had stopped Outlook from running, since the calendaring, address book and contacts details of this are heavily used, but the traditional Windows reboot fixed this.

This is not an auspicious start, the mixture of workstations running Windows 98, NT server and Windows 2000 professional seem to be running everything but the Monash SOE software. There is no backup software of any kind, and no consideration has been made for backup or disaster recovery. We all decide to “consider” the options available to get some form of backup in place ASAP.

Later in the day Les calls to let us know that the IBM servers will be delivered tomorrow — probably around 10:00 — and that we should be able to start work on them immediately.

Our first evidence conclusive that the Monash building really does exist. Jamie drove Royce, George and myself out to the site to see the building. Most of the outside appears to be complete, probably a good thing considering the amount of rain, and the builders have all moved inside.

I've no idea what the motorist did, but months later I found this note to myself in one of the notebooks that I carry while cycling. If I wrote it down at the time then they probably either tried to hit me or threw something at me or similar...

Gold Holden Kingswood
IMG-472
21:12

2000-Apr-11 Tuesday

A simple task — I called Telstra to ask for the phone to be changed from 5/42 Cameron street to 1/59 Westbank terrace. Both addresses are in the same suburb so it is a simple job and I can take the number with me. They ask me to make sure that a phone is plugged in on Thursday night and it will be done on Friday (2000-Apr-14).

2000-Apr-16 Sunday — +5 days

Called Telstra faults (132203) since the phone is still not working. I can receive a dial tone, but all outgoing calls result in a message that “that service is not available from this phone.” Apparently the job is marked as "incomplete" in their database, but with no explanation. I am assured that it will be fixed on Monday (2000-Apr-17), and that someone will call me on my mobile.

2000-Apr-17 Monday — +6days

At 16:45 I called Telstra since no-one has called me yet. I go through the whole rigmarole again and am asked to check with a phone in both sockets at home, in case one is working and one isn't. They believe that the phone has been connected by Optus in the past and thus it is "difficult" to transfer the number, I'm told to check and call Telstra Sales tomorrow, not faults, on 132200.

Get home, sure enough, both sockets give exactly the same message — dial tone but calls disallowed.

2000-Apr-18 Tuesday — +7 days

Call up in the morning to Telstra Sales and am directed through three different people, at each point I have to go through the entire story again, eventually I am told that I have to go home, call 12722123 to find out what number is allocated to my connection, and then to report this number back to faults!

Get home, both sockets give a generated message stating that the number is 03 9421 2321.

2000-Apr-19 Wednesday — +8 days

Call up Telstra Faults again, only have to give the story to two people this time. Tell them that my number is 9421 2321. They assure me that it will be connected some time today, but cannot guarantee when.

Get home and check 12722123 and still get told 9421 2321.

2000-Apr-20 Thursday — +9 days

Call up Telstra Faults again and explain that it is now a week that I've beeen chasing my phone around, that I was told it would be connected yesterday, but that at 7pm I still could not make calls and was being told that my number was still the old number. According to their records the job was done yesterday, which doesn't explain why the message still says 9421 2321. It is recorded that there is a "line fault" that will require a technician to attend, this will be done by close of business on the 22nd. After asking about three times I'm told that COB on a Saturday is 6pm.

2000-Apr-22 Saturday — +11 days

At 12:30 a Telstra technician showed up, I hadn't realised that he would require access to the premises and so it was pure chance that I was home! He assured me that it would only take 5-10 minutes. After several visits to the cables in the shared carport, and off down the street, I eventually had my phone connected at 2:00pm. He claimed that there were a number of incorrect things done in the wiring and it had taken a lot of tracing to find my cable. Not bad for a job that was supposed to be done 10 days ago!

2000-Apr-27 Thursday — +16 days

Called 132200-24 to see whether I get any kind of refund on my "service" charge since I was without a home phone for 10 days. After being referred through to "Jo" in their customer service area who is investigating whether I am eligible for a refund, I was put on hold for 11 minutes and then hung up on. 5 minutes later tried again, after the second menu of the voicemail system I got an engaged signal and kicked out again. Another five minutes later, all the way down through the voice mail system, give all the details again to the person on the phone. This time she has to call faults, since the job record shows that my phone was successfully connected on the 14th. Ten minutes later and I'm getting a $13.xx refund, and according to them my phone was first reported as not working on the 19th! I've no idea where the calls on the 16th, 17th and 18th went — I guess it makes the job records look good if you can shave two or three days off every fault report.