CNE - Box Migration. For The Gurus

Author

Box Migration. For The Gurus

dheinsdorf

2001-07-13, 7:42 pm

Heres the situation. I am looking for input.

I have a single server tree, a 5.0 sp4 box running NDS8 v8.12. A subcontractor did this box, its ASUS mobo bios was jacked up and set the date to 2054. A bios patch fixed that but there are 2054 timestamps in NDS that will NOT come out. So in DSRepair there's always errors, good part is there is no replica ring - or bad part depending.

I built a 5.0 sp4 box and am going to follow Novell's well documented procedure for a "Hardware Upgrade and/or Migration". basically I backup the FS and DS on OLD, prepare OLD for hardware upgrade (does another DS backup and locks local DS), transfer the DS hardware upgrade backup to logged in client local workstation then down OLD.

Then I power up NEW, which has the same server name, internal IPX, and Bogus_Tree name, login the workstation to Bogus_tree, copy the OLD DS hardware upgrade backup to sys:system, then nwconfig - restore DS after hardware upgrade = OLD DS to NEW DS, load SMS/Enhanced SBackup, Restore OLD FS to NEW.
Hopefully at this time all Trustee functionality is restored also.

Basically I have replaced one box with another. I can now take OLD and do whatever I want - the end result is I upgrade OLDs hardware, upgrade to 5.1, and then bring up OLD in a seperate non-production tree and by hand reconfigure OLD from the functionality of production server NEW, which users are currently working happily away on - hopefully. I build OLD's tree based on NEW's tree which came from OLD originally. This is a By Hand procedure.

How did I get in this situation - I dare not say other than it was'nt my doing. But has anyone done this? I can make it work in my TestLab, but its damn tricky. As usual there is no call to NovellTS, we fix our own down south here. Just doing the "Prepare for Hardware Upgrade" and thus removing then reinstalling NDS is hardcore. One slip and its TID city, following the -123 error trail.

Any takers on this? I let it rip on Monday and I have studied Novell's docs and TIDs for days. Special Forces stuff!

Power to the people,

Doug

chunder

2001-07-13, 9:40 pm

we did the first 2/3 of what you are attempting.

we built up our NEW 5.1 server in a TEST environment to make sure we wanted/liked what we saw. it had it's own tree seperate from the existing and expiring 4.11 tree but it wasn't on the server we wanted it to be on -- it was on a PC and it's final resting place was on a Compaq Proliant 6400 dual P3 yadda yadda. we wanted NDS and not the FS. the FS was going to come over from the retiring 4.11 server the new one was to replace.

we did the prepare for new hardware thingy on it and copied the funny files to a WS. then we installed 5.1 on it's new home with a bogus tree and got it all churning away all by it's lonesome... then we did the restore after hardware change thingy. we then had NDS from our TEST/TEMP server on our new fancy production server. then we built up our other servers we wanted in the tree and NDS was happy. happy good. then our old 4.11 server with the FS we wanted was brought up and joined the tree (i think) and a all night file copy session was started... this is a HUGE other discussion as to what we went through but there are some factors and people involved that i wanted to tie to the back of my truck and drive at high speeds down I-15...

what you propose does sound exciting and i think the way you have it planned sounds like it should work. just make sure you're running on a full stomach and a good night's sleep as to avoid any brain farts that can happen. it sux to finally get all your data and rights where they need to be at 5:55am monday to finish up a project that was started 6pm friday before. i too was living by the TIDs you mention for several weeks up to this operation. shouldn't have had so many chefs in the kitchen and i think things woulda gone MUCH more smoothly...

bestaluck!

p.s. notaguru (TM)

chunder

2001-07-13, 9:43 pm

oh, why don't you declare a new EPOCH on the server that's been time travelling?

dheinsdorf

2001-07-13, 10:16 pm

Thanks for your reply, I indepthly read what you went through and you were on the same track as myself. Really its good stuff.
Stuff of legend. I noticed you went from 4.11 to 5.1, per the TIDS, its easiest going from X.XX to the same exact nos. Going from say a 5.0 box to a 5.1 box has its own set of implications. Some FS stuff cannot be allowed to come over. You been there and read that, to whatever degree. If you get some time this weekend, before Sunday Mountain time, if you feel like it I would love to hear how the project ended up!! The dirty details is best. Good or bad the end has importance. Hell I'll bet after you dragged those needy down the road things fell into place! And I know you didnt just put this stuff into an old box and shoot at it! We got 2 chefs in this kitchen, youll be prep cook alrighty?

Seriously, good stuff but what was the end result?

Take 10 deep breaths,

Doug

quote:
Originally posted by chunder
we did the first 2/3 of what you are attempting.

we built up our NEW 5.1 server in a TEST environment to make sure we wanted/liked what we saw. it had it's own tree seperate from the existing and expiring 4.11 tree but it wasn't on the server we wanted it to be on -- it was on a PC and it's final resting place was on a Compaq Proliant 6400 dual P3 yadda yadda. we wanted NDS and not the FS. the FS was going to come over from the retiring 4.11 server the new one was to replace.

we did the prepare for new hardware thingy on it and copied the funny files to a WS. then we installed 5.1 on it's new home with a bogus tree and got it all churning away all by it's lonesome... then we did the restore after hardware change thingy. we then had NDS from our TEST/TEMP server on our new fancy production server. then we built up our other servers we wanted in the tree and NDS was happy. happy good. then our old 4.11 server with the FS we wanted was brought up and joined the tree (i think) and a all night file copy session was started... this is a HUGE other discussion as to what we went through but there are some factors and people involved that i wanted to tie to the back of my truck and drive at high speeds down I-15...

what you propose does sound exciting and i think the way you have it planned sounds like it should work. just make sure you're running on a full stomach and a good night's sleep as to avoid any brain farts that can happen. it sux to finally get all your data and rights where they need to be at 5:55am monday to finish up a project that was started 6pm friday before. i too was living by the TIDs you mention for several weeks up to this operation. shouldn't have had so many chefs in the kitchen and i think things woulda gone MUCH more smoothly...

bestaluck!

p.s. notaguru (TM)

dheinsdorf

2001-07-13, 10:22 pm

quote:
Originally posted by chunder
oh, why don't you declare a new EPOCH on the server that's been time travelling?

Been there done that. Time is synched to the net and everyones happy. This server is constantly on synth time for no reason. We have pounded on it. The only clue is these damned 2054 stuck like glue time stamps reported by dsrepair.

Good or bad there will be a full report posted on this. We have Tidded out and thats why this DS has to go to sleep, what I mean is we have read and done per the docs.

Thanks and lemme know if you think of weird tweaks. All the tids require more than they entail.

Doug

chunder

2001-07-13, 11:07 pm

doug. i will try and relive the pain for you tomorrow when i am home and "studying" for my CCNA stuff...

dheinsdorf

2001-07-14, 12:49 am

quote:
Originally posted by chunder
doug. i will try and relive the pain for you tomorrow when i am home and "studying" for my CCNA stuff...

Alrighty, not only are you:
1)Right next door to Novell.
2)Already a CNE

3)In the same time zone as me.Give it up man!!!
4)Oh yeah, you got AZ neighbors!!! Four Corners - right?
5) I dont get to do CCNA until CNE plus getting RedHat7 down.

Thanks Bud!!!

chunder

2001-07-14, 6:30 pm

my power was out half the afternoon or i woulda posted sooner... oh well, got the lawn cut.

ok, doug.

what we actually did was build up the 5.1 tree paralell to our existing 4.11 tree. we built it properly -- the 4.11 tree wasn't a good structure at all. it was installed by someone who used to admin a 3.1 server and i think there are many an ugly tree out there that were put up too soon by someone who was used to bindery. anyway... we got the new (5.1) tree built up the way we wanted -- one O, then 2 OUs (one for us, one for 3rd party connecting via WAN), and then under ours, a location based OU and OUs for each dept.

back to the topic --

we did as i mentioned previously once we had our new tree tuned/planned the way we wanted. so, what we ended up with was a FS on one tree that users in the new tree had no rights to. then the nightmare overnight file copies began to go from old to new server. thinking back on it, we should have done it differently and i think i wanted to... but others were impatient. (shoulda given rights across the tree/servers, yadda yadda). what happened with the file copy was the server the files were coming from was old and IDE based and had issues with the volme and we almost lost it all.. then someone ran a DSREPAIR at the wrong time and we almost lost the old tree altogether. the old server was crashing. crashing bad. server bad. we actually finally got the files where we wanted them -- why didn't we do an FS restore? our backup guy didn't get his part done when we thought he had... he basicallly couldn't connect to the new tree/server running IP only with the old IPX backup server. why didn't we load IPX? boss told me to "REMOVE ALL IPX... WE ONLY WANT IP" so i took out the ipx compat on install of all servers... so we then had to mess with CMD/SLP etc. it wasn't fun. ok, like i said, we got the files over to the new server... then we had to assign rights to everyone... again, too many chefs in the kitchen. i had worked with nw5.x more than anyone there (my boss and 2 other admins) and i was trying to get them to "do it my way" but they weren't. things got confusing. it was probably 3 or 4 am and no sleep. then, oh, this is good... we were also implementing our new Cisco switched (Catalyst 5506 and 3 3500s). they didn't want to talk Novell talk so we weren't getting client connectivity but only on ocassion. we ended up needing to enale PortFast on all ports or something... i forget (by choice).

where was i? oh, we eventually got the rights people needed to get MOST work done by the time the started coming in at 6:30am. then because we also cleaned up the FS to a more logical less messy structure, we had to wait for people to cry about a file they couldn't access, find it's new place, assing them rights and then tell them what drive it was on. we were hated. the floor in my cubical isn't comfortable. sleeping in a low back chair is bad on the neck and when your feet are on the desk: WARNING - CHAIR MAY ROLL!. but basketball in the parking lot at 2:30 am is nice in october in salt lake city and eggs benedict at denny's at 5am sure is yummy!

i'm gunna have to read this one or 10 times and see if it makes sense and make edits here and there... but, like i say, you're already on a much smoother path than what we ended up doing.

quote:
Alrighty, not only are you:
1)Right next door to Novell.
2)Already a CNE
3)In the same time zone as me.Give it up man!!!
4)Oh yeah, you got AZ neighbors!!! Four Corners - right?
5) I dont get to do CCNA until CNE plus getting RedHat7 down.

i've been interviewed by novell. did you know the sign is BLUE on their new building?!?!

and i still have to pay for my incindets.. and the state is one of their biggest customers!

cne? paper man, paper.

timezone schmimezone.

can you believe there's one place in the US and probably the world where 4 - count 'em 4! - states meet in a perfect point?

yuma's damn near part of mexico AND california!

CCNA for me (soon or i kick my XXX) then w2k upg (will take 2 tests) then hopefully some Linux.

if i'm a prep cook, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY! KEEP THE KNIVES AWAY FROM ME!!!

HTH

dheinsdorf

2001-07-15, 3:44 pm

quote:
Originally posted by chunder
i'm gunna have to read this one or 10 times and see if it makes sense and make edits here and there... but, like i say, you're already on a much smoother path than what we ended up doing.

Good stuff! Just what I wanted to read. I understand - or I have a good picture of the scene and the project. Thanks very much for the time taken to relive it. I have to say thats one to file under "learning xperience".

Some things you guys did, lots of it were methods that initially seemed good to me and had I ripped into it, I woulda probably done much of what you did. Like:

- setup a seperate tree and begun populating it.
- did a file copy (ncopy). Thus killing trustees.

Anyhow, good reading. !!

quote:

i've been interviewed by novell. did you know the sign is BLUE on their new building?!?! and i still have to pay for my incindets.. and the state is one of their biggest customers!

I dont know what to think about that. I cant even gestate it. But I will say I had an IBM PC Server 700 that had Box set 3.12 and it was blue and white - Novell for IBM. Well it is strange to gouge Nevada state, give huge price cuts to educational users. And the money all comes from the same circle.

quote:

cne? paper man, paper.

Now, there's Paper CNE's. For me getting the CNE means a raise, a promotion. Plus I have learned more by restudying material. I dont believe in the "sit in the class, read the book, pump out the test in 1 week thing". I dont care about the paper, but it gets me into tougher assignments and, well I guess I just feel the CNE program is pretty good for preparing the end result.

Problem is some people can pass any test but not boil water.

quote:

can you believe there's one place in the US and probably the world where 4 - count 'em 4! - states meet in a perfect point?

Its strange. Its also where the Hunta virus popped up awhile back - the rodent dropping thing.

quote:

yuma's damn near part of mexico AND california!

Man this place is the best kept secret in the southwest. I did Phoenix, been tempted by Vegas, SLC and Tucson, its just too much easy livin here. Good kid raising territory.
Money rolling in.

quote:

CCNA for me (soon or i kick my XXX) then w2k upg (will take 2 tests) then hopefully some Linux.

I want the CCNA but moreso jump into Linux hard. A Cisco seasoned contractor doing work on our Cabletrons and Adtrans said Cisco and Cabletron are the only one (or close to it) with thier own IOS and that everythings going embedded Linux. ? ..

quote:

if i'm a prep cook, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY! KEEP THE KNIVES AWAY FROM ME!!!

Your scary dood. If your into violent PC games, I highly suggest a $20 copy of Serious Sam.
Lotta fun for $20.

More on the stupid game note. Anyone that cares, I hang out on Quake3 Loaded mod 165.121.240.147:27960, Lots of prep cooks and Iron Chefs waiting to meat you there.

Doug

chunder

2001-07-17, 5:09 pm

is there a report yet doug?

man, i've been so immursed in ZfD3! ok. you don't need to know that.. but that's why i haven't responded to this... then, i go home and night (and when my wife is working late) immurse myself in Counter-Strike for the rest of the evening... and maybe go through some more CCNA stuff... <yadda yadda>

you ever play CS? you should. maybe i should look into the Q3 mod you speak of... tell me more.

anyway. anxious to hear of your adventures!

dheinsdorf

2001-07-18, 2:38 pm

quote:
Originally posted by chunder
is there a report yet doug?

Hi,
Yes, My CNE boss and I worked the box migration for 23 hours (minus 1hour for really good Chinese buffet). Monday noon to Tuesday 11:00. It sucked. I will keep it short for now until I have completed the task and can post a reasonable procedure.

Basically, the latest tid 10010933 Novell DSMaint Procedure is as we know one of many on the subject. We followed the instructions best we could, combining value from several tids, and ended up failing several times and bringing the OLD box back up. At this point it looks like the best way to do a box to box is with a full FS and DS backup/restore with tape using SMS. All we have is SMS unfortunately.

Lots of things worked and lots did'nt. More later on that. I am honing my SMS skills at this point in prep to try the tape thing.

quote:

man, i've been so immursed in ZfD3! ok. you don't need to know that.. but that's why i haven't responded to this...

Thats very cool, and glad you responded at any point - gave me a little break coming here.. Wonder how Cybatek is doing with his ZfD3 imaging? My boss just told me we probably gonna go from Zen2, skip ZfD3 (we own it but find it problematic) and work with Z4 FireStarter.

quote:

then, i go home and night (and when my wife is working late) immurse myself in Counter-Strike for the rest of the evening... and maybe go through some more CCNA stuff... <yadda yadda>

Hehe, my wife works till 9pm some nights. So I know the drill. CS looks really cool. I been bugging a coworker to return my HalfLife CD - we gonna play "first blood" if he dont cause now I wanna try CS!

quote:

you ever play CS? you should. maybe i should look into the Q3 mod you speak of... tell me more.

I will try it but I use Q3 because I feel that for halflife, unreal, and q3 that q3 has superior performance on 33.6 dialup.

goto http://www.planetquake.com/loaded/ and download it, then on dialup, fireup q3 and specify 165.121.240.147:27960 (the default port). Once it fires up into the game (the server is called Tolnep's Screamin Weezilz), hit tilde, type in /bind mouse2 +button5. That will get you the grappling hook.

The loaded mod is rapid fire on all weapons plus ? else. The grappling hook makes for trick play. I hope you get a good ping on that server cause its a very competitive bunch, no attitude, well managed. I play as "The Ritalin Kid", no funny I know, but it works. Let me know what name youll use and if it works I'll meet you there!

quote:

anyway. anxious to hear of your adventures!

Thanks. I really learned a ton. I have to make it work and hopefully get a good post on it so others dont have to suffer from TID SICKNESS. Novell gives alot, but its loose ends, stuff left out, stuff wrong. I wish I could have called NTS. And thats our problem, not budgeting for NTS.

By the way, the stuck 2054 timestamps, I declared a new epoch, still wont fix it. I gotta few new books, Administering NDS and Troubleshooting NDS, been hitting them getting used to dstrace and everything else.

I tell ya, one has to be able to gang-bang with NDS to really get past a certain point as a CNE (if they want to).

Sorry to all for the Gaming content.

Do not ignore the 1st rule of NDS disastery: Replicate. I am a hypocrite.

Adios, Doug

ccieToBe

2001-07-18, 3:12 pm

quote:
Originally posted by dheinsdorf

..I will try it but I use Q3 because I feel that for halflife, unreal, and q3 that q3 has superior performance on 33.6 dialup...

Q3 on 33.6? Wow, I'm suprised you can do much more then StarCraft. UT's the coolest, but I can feel the bandwidth sqeeze on hubbed ethernet.

I have an NT 4.0 to FreeBSD 4.3 migration coming up soon, so I'll post on that if anyone's interested.

dheinsdorf

2001-07-18, 4:40 pm

quote:
Originally posted by ccieToBe

Q3 on 33.6? Wow, I'm suprised you can do much more then StarCraft. UT's the coolest, but I can feel the bandwidth sqeeze on hubbed ethernet.

I was doing it on 28.8 but have a crappy dialup to my office (bad copper somewhere).
My Sportster runs 33.6, I refuse to go 56K,DSL or broadband - I would be playing too much!

If the ping is around 350, give or take, its useable. I attribute it to Q3's maturity, come a long way from Wolf3d, lots of years to tweak.

quote:

I have an NT 4.0 to FreeBSD 4.3 migration coming up soon, so I'll post on that if anyone's interested.

I personally would really like to read about it! Anyone doing Novell should concider someone hanging around with cross platform stories to tell a certain benefit!

Tear it up,

Doug

ccieToBe

2001-07-18, 5:20 pm

I'm still setting up the BSD box. So far it's going fairly smothly with one exception. I'm having trouble getting M$'s and BSD's PPTP (VPN encryption) implementations to talk to each other. I'm tempted to move over to IPSEC and find some third party software for Windows.

chunder

2001-07-18, 5:27 pm

quote:
Originally posted by dheinsdorf

Hi,
Yes, My CNE boss and I worked the box migration for 23 hours (minus 1hour for really good Chinese buffet). Monday noon to Tuesday 11:00. It sucked. I will keep it short for now until I have completed the task and can post a reasonable procedure.

chinese? that's what we had the same night of our pain! maybe that's the catalyst! damn chinese food! (note: i love chinese food and have nothing against the people)

quote:
Originally posted by dheinsdorf

Basically, the latest tid 10010933 Novell DSMaint Procedure is as we know one of many on the subject. We followed the instructions best we could, combining value from several tids, and ended up failing several times and bringing the OLD box back up. At this point it looks like the best way to do a box to box is with a full FS and DS backup/restore with tape using SMS. All we have is SMS unfortunately.

Lots of things worked and lots did'nt. More later on that. I am honing my SMS skills at this point in prep to try the tape thing.

bummer man. bummer. i really feel yer pain!

quote:
Originally posted by dheinsdorf

Thats very cool, and glad you responded at any point - gave me a little break coming here.. Wonder how Cybatek is doing with his ZfD3 imaging? My boss just told me we probably gonna go from Zen2, skip ZfD3 (we own it but find it problematic) and work with Z4 FireStarter.

you know, cyba and i are actually AIM buddies now but we've only chatted one evening (my eve, his afternoon) and didn't even talk about ZfD3. maybe we should aslo hook up, d. but the next release of ZfD look to be more gooder. i really hope it fixes the issues with 3.

quote:
Originally posted by dheinsdorf
Hehe, my wife works till 9pm some nights. So I know the drill. CS looks really cool. I been bugging a coworker to return my HalfLife CD - we gonna play "first blood" if he dont cause now I wanna try CS!

I will try it but I use Q3 because I feel that for halflife, unreal, and q3 that q3 has superior performance on 33.6 dialup.

goto http://www.planetquake.com/loaded/ and download it, then on dialup, fireup q3 and specify 165.121.240.147:27960 (the default port). Once it fires up into the game (the server is called Tolnep's Screamin Weezilz), hit tilde, type in /bind mouse2 +button5. That will get you the grappling hook.

The loaded mod is rapid fire on all weapons plus ? else. The grappling hook makes for trick play. I hope you get a good ping on that server cause its a very competitive bunch, no attitude, well managed. I play as "The Ritalin Kid", no funny I know, but it works. Let me know what name youll use and if it works I'll meet you there!

i'll try and get into it. it sounds kinda like the Oz mod for HL (grappling hook) but yes, HL isn't so smooth over dial-up but i know of some people that do play over dial-up but mostly 56k. i have seen UT over dial up and it's much better than HL is. but isn't it based off of the newer engine whereas HL was built from the Q2 engine? anyway...

quote:
Originally posted by dheinsdorf
Thanks. I really learned a ton. I have to make it work and hopefully get a good post on it so others dont have to suffer from TID SICKNESS. Novell gives alot, but its loose ends, stuff left out, stuff wrong. I wish I could have called NTS. And thats our problem, not budgeting for NTS.

By the way, the stuck 2054 timestamps, I declared a new epoch, still wont fix it. I gotta few new books, Administering NDS and Troubleshooting NDS, been hitting them getting used to dstrace and everything else.

I tell ya, one has to be able to gang-bang with NDS to really get past a certain point as a CNE (if they want to).

Sorry to all for the Gaming content.

Do not ignore the 1st rule of NDS disastery: Replicate. I am a hypocrite.

Adios, Doug

best of luck to ya man. let us know how it turns out.

dheinsdorf

2001-07-22, 10:19 am

Going to try this again 7/22-23. Use SMS to perform a full DS and FS backup then restore to new box.

dheinsdorf

2001-07-23, 11:14 pm

Heres the box to box move using SMS (the really short version).

Old box, unload everything not needed. On seperate tapes backup Dos partition, DS, FS.
Do this as Admin.

On new box, a basic load with same tree name, server ID/internal ipx, same .O and .Admin distinguished name and password, load all 3 TSA's.

Restore Dos,DS,FS with no reboots in between.
tweak startup and related files. Reboot and be prepared to hit the TIDS.

Rough ride....

quote:
Originally posted by dheinsdorf
Going to try this again 7/22-23. Use SMS to perform a full DS and FS backup then restore to new box.

chunder

2001-07-23, 11:27 pm

hey! you got it man! rough ride indeed. it's a pain in the buttocks to come into an environment and try to clean it up.. or, as they say.. you can't polish a turd.

good job.

lates.

cybatek

2001-07-24, 7:40 am

Did I hear someone calling me?

dheinsdorf

2001-07-25, 11:02 am

quote:
Originally posted by chunder
hey! you got it man! rough ride indeed. it's a pain in the buttocks to come into an environment and try to clean it up.. or, as they say.. you can't polish a turd.

good job.

lates.

Thanks!

Yeah, you can tune a guitar but you cant tuna fish.

Good thing for DIB "PowerDump". Except you have to pay Novell to polish that turd

Aydeeos..

And remember:
Time flies like the wind, fruit flys like bananas.

dheinsdorf

2001-07-28, 8:25 pm

quote:
Originally posted by chunder
hey! you got it man! rough ride indeed. it's a pain in the buttocks to come into an environment and try to clean it up.. or, as they say.. you can't polish a turd.

good job.

lates.

I was wanting to add, after backing up the old box to the new temporary box, I went to work on the old box (taiwan special 5u rackmount case, ASUS 440bx DP, Raid 10 on an ICP-Vortex 64meg PCI controller, Intel i960 manageable server NIC) - pulled the PIII 450 and put in another matching SN# sequence set of PIII 450's. We nuked the NetWare 5.0/NDS8.0 and put 5.1sp3, Zen2sp2 etcetera.

Its running very nicely. The cool part is having the old tree on one workstation and the new tree on another on the same desk and its really not that bad recreating everything from scratch. I have to say for the benefit of future test takers that the CNE curriculum (not counting 2 tests I have to pass) is fundamental. I copied the 25+ snapshots and user homedirs over, plus app data, and just today UImported 604 students into the tree. I know theres newer LDAP import tools, but UImport and 2 text files really gets the job done. I copied all the old homedirs on top of the new homedirs and now its just a matter of tweaking some rights and recreating App Objects.

Tomorrow I am gonna watch my boss install GroupWise 5.5, my first GW install observance. Should be fun. I cant stress enough that if you plan to work on this stuff and are not totally encompassing the white book material, well you will be. The books are just the tip of the iceburg. You really have to be intimate with them or when on the job you wont be able to swiftly move through the paces to diagnose and configure this stuff. And the white books do find a place on the job after they have provided for passing the tests.

And having the home-lab server - My 5.1 box came in really handy for digging further into DSRepair and trying to get tuned into DSTrace, two items that while not hit hard in the white books REALLY have a place on utilities to dig further into. I have 2 advanced NDS books (theyre at work so I cant remember the particulars), but merely printing the tons of DSRepair and DSTrace stuff off of the developers site and 3-hole binding it is pretty important, tons of good free methodology. Anything off of AppNotes is must read stuff.

BTW Chunder, (I think it was you but at 33.6kbps I aint gonna check) that CA-Zen news was really good news. Really good! Theres some very heavy competition against Zen and UniCenter, and with CA doing a major overhaul to make thier products modular in nature, going Zen is FAT MEAT for the new Novell!! Even though Novell got bombed on the Portal review in Network Computing, things are maybe looking good.

Maybe a good time to buy some $5 shares??

ccieToBe

2001-08-15, 5:42 pm

Hopefully I'll be able to do the NT to FreeBSD migration tommarow. Today I finished setting up the box, updated FreeBSD to the latest stable version, and tested everything. Everything looks good, but of course, I'm still nervous about the conversion. This box will replace an NT PDC/file/print/VPN server and a Linux proxy/firewall. There's supposed to be a period of about 2 hours tommarow when no one will be on the network, so I'll try to do it then. Any general migration pointers?

dheinsdorf

2001-08-15, 6:25 pm

quote:
Originally posted by ccieToBe
Hopefully I'll be able to do the NT to FreeBSD migration tommarow. Today I finished setting up the box, updated FreeBSD to the latest stable version, and tested everything. Everything looks good, but of course, I'm still nervous about the conversion. This box will replace an NT PDC/file/print/VPN server and a Linux proxy/firewall. There's supposed to be a period of about 2 hours tommarow when no one will be on the network, so I'll try to do it then. Any general migration pointers?

Sounds pretty meaty. I dunnow the NT migration, but I can only suggest having working full backups to save your tail if needed.

Actually only reason I am piping up is I am building another home box (finally) to house windoze, so I can free up my old box for my RedHat7 dist. Gotta start somewhere.

Give us the details when the smoke clears!

ccieToBe

2001-08-16, 5:48 pm

Well, the migration's been put off until Monday morning. I was going to do the migration while the end users were trained to do document imaging, but the imaging ended up being more complex then I thought it would be, so I ended up taking part in the training too.

Hehe, I was talking to a manager today about the migration and said the word "Unix". He knows what Unix is, but someone else overheard me and acted shocked at my language

ccieToBe

2001-08-16, 7:52 pm

quote:
Originally posted by dheinsdorf

Sounds pretty meaty. I dunnow the NT migration, but I can only suggest having working full backups to save your tail if needed.

Actually only reason I am piping up is I am building another home box (finally) to house windoze, so I can free up my old box for my RedHat7 dist. Gotta start somewhere.

Give us the details when the smoke clears!

I plan on keeping the 2 servers that are being replaced running for a week or so after I make the switch so if something goes wrong I can just plug them back into the network to revert back to the old setup.

You'll probably love Linux. It has a steep learning curve, but is a lot of fun once you get into it.

I'll be sure to post on how it went Monday.

dheinsdorf

2001-08-17, 12:15 pm

quote:
Originally posted by ccieToBe

I plan on keeping the 2 servers that are being replaced running for a week or so after I make the switch so if something goes wrong I can just plug them back into the network to revert back to the old setup.

You'll probably love Linux. It has a steep learning curve, but is a lot of fun once you get into it.

I'll be sure to post on how it went Monday.

Sorry for more off content, but heres my story. I had to buy a book thru the LCIS book club to satisfy the 1 purchase deal, so I got the RedHat Linux 7 Unleashed (SAMS). I wanted a fat paper reference. There was no 7.1 books, so I'll try this.

I told you a while back that I loaded Mandrake 6.3, was having a fairly smooth time, then I tried to get my dialup working.
I was trying to do the dialup script through the gui, and I think I also setup my USR33.6 Xternal through both Gnome and KDE - Anyhow the script wasnt working, and I think setting up the modem through 2 shells hosed me up.

The modem was trying to dialup in the background, craziness was occurring. I think I'll have better luck with this book.

Again, sorry for the digression. Good luck on your project

ccieToBe

2001-08-17, 1:14 pm

quote:
Originally posted by dheinsdorf

Sorry for more off content, but heres my story. I had to buy a book thru the LCIS book club to satisfy the 1 purchase deal, so I got the RedHat Linux 7 Unleashed (SAMS). I wanted a fat paper reference. There was no 7.1 books, so I'll try this.

I told you a while back that I loaded Mandrake 6.3, was having a fairly smooth time, then I tried to get my dialup working.
I was trying to do the dialup script through the gui, and I think I also setup my USR33.6 Xternal through both Gnome and KDE - Anyhow the script wasnt working, and I think setting up the modem through 2 shells hosed me up.

The modem was trying to dialup in the background, craziness was occurring. I think I'll have better luck with this book.

Again, sorry for the digression. Good luck on your project

I've heard lots of horror stories involving Linux and modems. Other then playing around with some faxing software I've never used a modem in *nix though, so I can't help you out much with this. Hopefully the RedHat book will help. I bought RH 6 Unleashed when I was first getting started with Linux and found that it had a lot of usefull info, but was overwhelming in its detail when I was starting out. I haven't actually used Linux for a while now, FreeBSD is just so much more fun

dheinsdorf

2001-08-17, 5:50 pm

quote:
Originally posted by ccieToBe

I've heard lots of horror stories involving Linux and modems. Other then playing around with some faxing software I've never used a modem in *nix though, so I can't help you out much with this. Hopefully the RedHat book will help. I bought RH 6 Unleashed when I was first getting started with Linux and found that it had a lot of usefull info, but was overwhelming in its detail when I was starting out. I haven't actually used Linux for a while now, FreeBSD is just so much more fun

Good to hear you took a little of the same path with the Unleashed book yourself! Yup, the book is shelf reference, way too fat for a complete reader. Imunna have to play with it for awhile before FreeBSD. I gotta try FreeBSD. I remember back on HP-UX 9.x.x it was the BSD (from which I understand HP-UX came) versus the System7 camp (SCO/AT&T??).

I was too young to persevere then, and training, hardware was soo expensive. Things are good and cheap now eh!

ccieToBe

2001-08-17, 9:10 pm

quote:
Originally posted by dheinsdorf

Good to hear you took a little of the same path with the Unleashed book yourself! Yup, the book is shelf reference, way too fat for a complete reader. Imunna have to play with it for awhile before FreeBSD. I gotta try FreeBSD. I remember back on HP-UX 9.x.x it was the BSD (from which I understand HP-UX came) versus the System7 camp (SCO/AT&T??).

I was too young to persevere then, and training, hardware was soo expensive. Things are good and cheap now eh!

Yeah, you should hold off on using FreeBSD until you're comfortable at the command line. Once you get to that point, go for it. I've found that things go a lot more smoothly in FreeBSD then Linux (IMO it has a much more logical design).

"The Complete FreeBSD" (a little dated, but still very good) has a section on Unix history. BSD and SYSV are the two main branches of the origonal AT&T code. There's a Unix timeline here:

http://minnie.tuhs.org/Unix_History/

Hardware has gotten very cheap. New Sparcs are going for under $1,000 right now, so it's really tempting to get one.

ccieToBe

2001-08-20, 5:31 pm

Well, I got the box up w/o much trouble. I made a posting on the details [URL=http://examnotes.net/forums/showthread.php? postid=114612#post114612]here[
/URL]

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