SUSE Baby!
Alright, so I was thinking, Gee, I'm not really happy with that Gentoo machine... It doesn't work the way I want it to, and it's really difficult to use the damn thing... Grrr, I wish I had a decent linux file server! and then I realized that I hadn't tried out the latest and greatest version of SUSE (version 10.1 beta 3)... So, I went to OpenSUSE.org, did a little research, and decided that it would be nice to try out 10.1b3... I haven't messed around with the 10.0 virtual machine in ages (nor have I messed around with the Windows Server 2003 VM in ages either, but I digress), so I figured that it's high time that I update the VM... And if 10.1b3 works out well, it shall be time to say BEGONE, foul operating system! and then usher in SUSE 10.1b3.

Either way, it should be fun to experiment for a while. I think the downloads should be done by tomorrow evening... Although, next week is pretty busy (8 extra work hours, plus a TCP/IP suite seminar in Ithaca on Friday -- going to that instead of work).

Miki-ni Update...
Last Friday, I was playing around with creating a copy of a DVD in Linux, and I was having a minor issue, so I decided to head over to Miki (my Windows 2000 Pro machine) and see if I could get the files off using Windows... When I KVMed over to Miki, I was greated with:
KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR 0x00000000 (0x00000077, 0xC000000E, 0x00000000, 0x01AB0000) Oh joy... A BSoD. I noted the message, and restarted my machine.

Upon reboot from a BSoD, there's one thing that every computer user should do: look at the Event Viewer. So I rebooted my computer to do just that. The reboot was successful... There's some possible risky situations to keep in mind when rebooting from a BSoD:

Risky Situation 1: after blue screen, OS or hardware failure prevents booting...
[ status: avoided ]
Risky Situation 2: after rebooting from a blue screen error, OS is not usable for troubleshooting due to other errors thwarting usability of the OS
[ status: my computer made a "spin down" sound followed by a "spin up" sound. The sound of hard drives powering off and on... Quite the bad sign, wouldn't you say? ]

When the first spin down occurred, for a moment my computer lagged. I had lost control of the OS as one of the drives had spun down and, after only a moment, spun back up... But at least the system came back up. Maybe it wasn't the hard drive? Just some odd sound? I knew better, but it was a thought that would keep me from freaking out that my anime/file server had crapped out on me... And the OS had returned to my control anyway, so it could have been a fluke... Although, an error like an HDD spin-down isn't something that just happens for no reason.

So I clicked on Event Viewer, and as I was moving my mouse to click on the "System" subfolder (where any HDD errors, possibly page file errors, and other major system faults would be reported, and might hint to a reason for the BSoD error I received) - that when it happened again!! One of my HDDs spun down again, locking the system where it was at. This time, when the drive spun-up again, there was no recovery. My screen was locked in the same spot that was was... Keyboard and mouse were unresponsive.

I waited for about five minutes, without regaining any type of control. But when I heard the drive spin down for the third time, I could only think that this was no fluke, there was either a very hardware fault on one of my drives (*gasp!*) or that my power supply wasn't able to power all of my devices at the same time

The PSU being a FOUR year old, a no-name-brand (Nobilis), low wattage (230 watt, I believe), and suffering though nearly continuous use since 2002, I figured that it may be the PSU (power supply)... If it was, it may explain all the odd errors in the system, including page file errors, odd BSoD errors, and worst of all, if it is the PSU, it could eventually lead to damage to other components to the system... Since I figured that the most sensitive part of my system is the PSU, I decided to replace that!

A fix was in immediate need, but with Andrew still sleeping it wasn't possible... Rebooting to see if the error persisted was foolish (such obvious PSU trouble could easily cause more damage to the system if I power-cycled the machine). The best thing to do was to power off the machine, get back into bed, and deal with it after work. So, that's what I did (surprisingly, I wasn't worried about Miki-ni, and put the computer out of my mind shortly after I turned it off).

Later that evening, I was able to get to work on the machine. A PSU transplant:

For some reason, after a long day under near-zero conditions of sleep, I always seem to have trouble staying asleep. But, after a short two-hour nap, I felt refreshed enough to attend to Miki-ni. The plan of action was simple: do a power supply unit (PSU) transplant from Experiment8 to Miki-ni.

Notice: any type of hardware modification to any computer is potentially dangerous, and may void your warranty.

Miki-ni being so old --and custom built by a small-time computer shop in my home town, it had no warranty. And doing a PSU transplant is analogous to doing a heart transplant in surgery... Everything needs to go perfectly, since the PSU supplies the "blood" (DC current energy) to the computer's internal organs (components).

Since Ex8 was just sitting around doing nothing (it has gentoo installed to it, but without a monitor, keyboard, or mouse, it wasn't being of any use -- not to mention that I wasn't able to setup my "gentoo file-server" like I wanted...) I decided to work that that machine before Miki-ni... Ex8 had a relatively new PSU, a 400 watt baby that I installed when Ex8's PSU died about four months ago --at the time, I was having trouble with Miki-ni's PSU, and thought about replacing it, but wanted to try out this "ALLIED" PSU [image] before actually installing it in Miki-ni... And now was the time for the testing to be over, and the full blown installation to be underway.

The removal of the Allied PSU from Ex8 went as easy as silk. Opened the case, undid the molex connectors [image] from the drives [image], the motherboard connector [image], and all other remaining connectors, removed the PSU from the case, and sat it aside. (images from google image search, and not from my personal machine)

The removal of the Nobilis PSU from Miki-ni wasn't as simple. Undoing the molex connectors, and all most other remaining connectors was simple, but the connector for the motherboard was placed in under my hard drives in a spot that is inaccessible without removing my "drive cage" - a total pain to get in and out... But possible.

Once the cage was out, I had to pull the 20-pin motherboard connector, which after being seated for four years was nearly impossible to remove. The securing latch on the connector actually broke away when I removed the connector from the system!

The easy part was installing the Allied PSU, but there is a scientific methodology to dealing with power supply units...

1. On the first boot, never hook everything into the machine and attempt to boot it... If anything should go wrong, a limited number of components in the system would be at risk of damage. Although knowing this, the last time I reconfigured my system (just over a year ago) that it wouldn't boot the OS without all the harddrives hooked in together, but at least keeping the drives to a minimum would allow me to see if the system would run (or fry) itself.... PASSED: Due to having all the HDDs unhooked and none of the input devices (Keyboard, Mouse) or output devices (Speakers, Monitor) all the system did was beep.
   
2. Test Two: The big test: would risk all of the system, accept for my CDRW/DVDROM, 250 GB anime drive and my 100 GB storage drive. A necessary risk. So, with my system laying on the floor, with it's guts plainly exposed, I hooked in the one required item to the computer: the power plug (risking the monitor, keyboard, and mouse was again unnecessary). Pressing power produced the expected results (no smoke, error beeps for having no keyboard or monitor). This is a good sign, I thought to myself, time to go to the next stage.
   
3. The final test is a boot-up of all devices: And once again the system began to successfully start up, I cheered with delight! The computer was booting, with all components successfully loaded. I was abled to access all of my drives, read and write information, and all looked good. It was time for some stress relief: once I had determined that the system was doing well (no odd system failures or error messages) I played a song for my computer - "Oingo Boingo: Weird Science" [ Lyrics ], it seemed appropriate ^_^

Fast Forward: One Week Later
There was one thing that I noticed about Miki-ni while I was in there working on the hardware: the system was getting really dusty. I hadn't had the time in ages to actually dust out the system, so it's about time for that. I managed to get my hands on a new can of compressed air today, and that's what's going to be happening to Miki-ni as soon as that last download finishes.

But other than the dust, there have been no odd errors... ShareScan crashed a few times, but I think that was just the application, and had nothing to do with the PSU, or anything else that is related to hardware. Only time will tell if this was the right decision, or if I was just looking in the wrong direction, but so far, things are looking good.