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
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