Dark Light

Reef is dead.

This is an ungood thing on a fairly major level.

reef.water.gkhs.net is my linux box, currently (well, formally) the gateway and home box for the entire Geekhouse network. Apparently it’s booting, but /proc isn’t mounting, keyboards don’t work, and it’s basically an ex box that has ceased to be.

For me, this isn’t a terrible thing, since the componants for my home box arrive today (Athlon 1800xp, DDR memory, New Mobo, Geforce 4, *drool*) and so the older componants (Duron 750, old mobo/memory for starters) can go in there tonight, but for ccooke, who has production code on the box, and LoneCat, who has mp3s and stuff on there, it’s really ungood, especially for cc, who is trying to rescue data as I type.

Dead Boxen Bad.

Update:
Okay, here’s what happened. About three weeks ago, we put /etc on reef into CVS, because we now have three people with admin access on the machine, or who might want something changed, and CVS allows us to track this kind of thing. And this was fine, I’ve been checking out files, editing them, checking them in again, and all was fine.

Then mutt stopped working, because the default editor wasn’t set. Okay, I add “export EDITOR=vim” to ~/.bashrc, problem solved. A quick look seems to suggest that /etc/alternatives appears to have been cleared of all files, which is why it wasn’t set. “update-alternatives –auto editor” solves the root problem, and I go along on my way…

CVS, when you do an update, deletes symbolic links. All of them. Because they arn’t in the repository.

Including, for example, /etc/alternatives (where debian sticks a load of programs for default tasks, editor, for example. Spell checkers), /etc/cron.*/*, for the timed things, and /etc/rc.[1-5]/*, where all the startup files are.

Let me repeat that.

cvs update deleted all the startup files on reef. Which is why it wouldn’t boot. Or notice keyboards.

Or anything.

Tonight I have a repair job.

Oh, and to add insult to injury, my computer componants arn’t going to be there because CityLink thought the delivery was Friday.

I ordered these coponants over two weeks ago now, on three day delivery. Having been screwed around by eBuyer, and now by CityLink, I may phone them up tomorrow and explain, carefully, exactly why they are a load of fuckwitted morons who don’t deserve to exist.

But first, I’m going to feel guilty about the cvs thing. Argle.

Related Posts