It's a gift (not a newsletter) ; and an offer from SF-LUG

[Bobbie Sellers]

On 12/30/2014 01:56 PM, Rick Moen wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 1:14 PM, jim <jim at well.com> wrote:
>
>> A couple of meetings ago, a few SF-LUG folks agreed to
>> purchase some old box in good working order and with
>> sufficient resources to host a MailMan system. Rick, if
>> this offer will help you, please let us know: we're willing
>> to find, vet, purchase, and deliver. I'm interested in
>> seeing if I can provide an electrical processing system
>> that can protect your machines from over- and under-
>> voltage mishaps.
>>
> Hey, thanks to all of you for the lovely and thoughtful offer.
>
> Thing is, I actually do have a bunch of hardware sitting in my garage.  At
> least one of them is very likely a functional 1U or 2U rackmount server,
> which is the right sort of thing to use.  (Many desktop boxes have things
> about them that make them unsuitable, such as many desktop machines' ATX
> power supplies not being able to be configured to bring the machine back up
> without manual intervention when the power returns after a power outage.)
>
> Just before I went on my last vacation, I moved the hard drives from my
> server from the failed VA Linux Systems model 2230 to a spare model 2230.
> To my relief, I got video and was able to boot an Aptosid live CD.  Even
> better, I was able to mount my server system's partitions, verified that
> they were readable, and update my backups of everything.  Thus, at that
> point, I was no longer in danger of having to revert to an old backup.
>
> Using the live CD, I then attempted to fix the software problems that were
> the _other_ issue aside from failed hardware.  (To recap, I had been doing
> system updates, and (skipping some details) the system segfaulted in the
> middle of the system software upgrade. I cold booted, but there was from
> that point forward no video at all, nor beeps, i.e., it acted as if I'd had
> failure of the motherboard or other key system hardware.)   I was not able
> to find a way to make the system bootable through some hours of
> experimentation - was getting some bizarre GRUB errors - and had to defer
> the matter because I had to leave to catch our flight to Barbados.  So, I
> powered down the machine.
>
> When I got back from Barbados, I found something perplexing:  I heard the
> system fan running, and saw the blue power light on the front panel, i.e.,
> it was powered up (even though I'd left the system powered down).  However,
> despite that, there was no video.  Cold booting the system resulted in...
> no video.  This was really bizarre.  The symptom suggested that there had
> been a power outage during my time in the Caribbean, and upon the return of
> power, my system had come online (I hadn't unplugged it, just powered it
> down), and that there had then been a second and similar hardware failure.
> But this seemed like an implausible coincidence, as perhaps you would agree.

     We had a power outage here in San Francisco  on 11 December so
you likely had one too,

         Was off line for about 3 hours. 7:20-10:20 AM
Shut down deliberately when the battery hit 50%.
     Was getting worried about the refrigerator.
>
> Time and experimentation and use of careful logic can get to the bottom of
> the matter.  I just haven't lately had the patience to do that, and have
> been quite busy with other commitments in the meantime.  Sooner or later, I
> _do_ plan on sitting out in my very cold garage for as long as it takes.  I
> certainly could give up on debugging the VA Linux Systems gear, and just
> attempt to build from scratch a replacement software configuration on one
> of the other spare machines I have.  I'd prefer not to do that, because
> building a new server configuration instead of just tracking down the one
> software problem that made my system unbootable is a LARGE amount of extra
> work.
>
> And, thus, you'll notice, the resource I'm short on is not machines, but
> rather time, patience, and focus on the problem.
>
> About over/under-voltage:  Last year, concerned about that very thing, I
> set about dealing with that.  First thing I did was to buy an APC UPS unit
> over at Central Computer.  However, this never seemed like really the right
> solution, just the commercially easy thing to acquire:  A UPS isn't
> actually very great at dealing with power fluctuations (and sometime is
> useless at that, depending on the type), and also interposes a new single
> point of failure in the form of a big lead-acid battery that can, itself,
> bring down your system.  Also, the UPS generates quite a bit of heat, which
> bloats your PG&E bill, and you have to buy replacement lead-acid battery
> packs every few years, which are a large percentage of the cost of the
> entire UPS, each time you have to buy them.
>
> What the UPS mostly does - the problem that it exists to solve - is bridge
> you across short-duration outages, making it so you don't lose power and
> have continuous uptime.  Continuous uptime is abstractly nice, but is the
> thing I care least about:  Linux servers come right back up after power
> returns.  That's what we have journaled filesystems for.  So, given that
> fact, why would I want to put a continually expensive, heat-producing,
> potentially problematic bit of hardware between the AC outlet and my unit,
> one that isn't even very good at line regulation, and that can be a Single
> Point of Failure that otherwise wouldn't exist?
>
> In short, I have not been in a hurry to deploy the UPS, because it's mostly
> a solution to the wrong problem, a solution to a problem I don't care about
> very much.  On reflection, I realised that the right solution is a line
> conditioner unit, not a UPS.  And I don't mean the miserable rubbish you
> can get at Fry's, either.  The problem was:  Where do you get a line
> conditioner of the variety that people acquire who are serious about the
> problem?
     I had to run a line conditioner to keep my C=64 reliable when I did
book keeping on it for a friend back in the 1970s.
>
> Last summer, I solved that problem:  I went to the De Anza College
> Electronics Swap, very early in the morning, and found a vendor who was
> selling a ham-radio-grade line conditioner unit.  I have that with my gear,
> and expect to use it going forward.
>
> Thanks again.
>
         Good to hear from you Rick.

         Bobbie Sellers