Aham Vyaktam

Caution: This post will be a lackluster for non-techies or may be even for techies. The author suggests the reader not to go ahead if he/she is allergic to technical stuff :) [especially Project Managers LOL, pun intended to you-know-who] The other techies – be content if you know how to do these stuff; no worries if these are Espanol to you as there are many sailing in the same boat like me.

Last week was terrible at work. I was pissed off to such an extent that I started throwing everything like a lunatic and my teammate had to ask me leave the place, freshen my mind and come back. Whatever we engaged in, went on toss and not a single thing worked. We had been brooding over them for nearly 3 days but in vain. They were completely new stuff for us and none knew how to proceed. I’ll not be surprised if Google comes back to us with an accolade saying we used their search engine efficiently or sues us for having hogged their servers requesting too many pages.

We had to install Support Pack 7 for Netware 6.5 server. The pain started off with the SP7 not going in one CD and we had to burn a DVD, only to realize that the server didn’t have a DVD drive. So we had to hook up a USB DVD drive, which led us into a different problem. After loading the cddvd NSS file, the DVD was detected and mounted as a NSS volume. But we were not knowing the way to access NSS volume so that we can read the contents of the DVD. Googling went on and on with various search patterns starting from “how to access USB DVD in NW6.5” to “how to access NSS volumes”. The administrative guide said we have to load the cddvd NSS file, by which the CD gets mounted as NSS volume and from there on, you can use it as any other NSS volume. We were like “come on man. We know it. Tell me how to access NSS volume”. I wish the admin guide had ears.

We sensed there’s no point in dragging it and so put the SP7 in 2 CDs and copied the files to the server through the CD drive itself. Finally started installing the SP7. When it asked me if the backup of files is to be done, I gave a yes to be safe. It took nearly 30 mins and came back and said its left with only 3MB and cannot do a backup. [why the hell did it take 30 mins to report it man?] The installation terminated. [why wasn’t it user friendly to ask me if it can proceed with the installation without backup?] Had to start all over again. This time I asked it not to do a backup. Before the install could start, the user was prompted for the username and password, and there came another hitch. In Netware, during SP install, you need to provide the user name in the format “CN=username.O=context”, wherein username and context would have been given during fresh install of Netware. We didn’t know the context part as nobody made a note of it anywhere. Trying different contexts didn’t work. And again we had to exit the installation to go back to the console and grab the context.

Started the install all over again expecting some problem to popup. But this time the installation ended. But when it came up after a reboot, it reached the console screen, unlike usual, wherein it reaches the Netware GUI. The execution of startx loaded the required NLMs but the GUI didn’t start. sheesh!!!!!

As we had a customer request that is to be completed in a week, we decided to manage with the console itself. We had to install the new drivers for our HBAs in the Netware server. We followed the procedure to do it and we had no clue if it went successful or not as the OS didn’t report any thing. So we went and checked the version which was showing 6.9.15. We were supposed to install 6.9o. Now I repented for having made the blunder of not noting the version before starting the upgrade. We thought the upgrade didn’t go well as it was showing 6.9.15 and tried it multiple times. Then we came to know 6.9o is called as 6.9.15 too. Damn!!!! How am I supposed to know when there’s nothing in the server denoting it atleast in brackets?

Another parallel problem which was going on was installation of VMWare ESX 3.5. Our client demanded that it’s to be installed on a 64-bit machine. We had only a few 64’s and choosing a server to do this itself took us about an hour. Once we chose the machine, we put the ESX 3.5 CD in it and rebooted the machine. Started the installation. Suddenly we lost the connection to the server from our KVM and it was displaying “Out of range”. Now what? Then we came to know that the install screen is of mismatching resolution with that of the KVM. So we hooked up a monitor and keyboard to the server and completed the installation. Once the server came up, it wasn’t able to detect the storage. What are we to do with a void system without storage? How am I to create virtual machines without storage? After half-a-day of delving, we found that the SATA in the server is not compatible to hold ESX 3.5. Phew!!!!

Then chose a HP Blade Server 64-bit to install ESX. None had worked on Blade servers in my team and we found it difficult to even boot from the CD. Win2K3 was booting up properly but the ESX didn’t, reporting virtual media not found. :(

We left that as such and migrated to another task of upgrading our multipathing s/w in all the servers. This had a few little hurdles when it came to HPUX like sharing the CDROM, mounting it in HPUX (which initially didn’t auto-detect the drive and I had to do an ioscan followed by insf to install device files) and then access it. The upgrade started and ended pronto, reporting “no space in /opt”. Okayyyyy….Now we had to extend the logical volume of /opt, for which we had to reboot the system to get into single user mode and then extend it. Once it was extended, we again started the upgrade which went on fine this time. The server was rebooted and when it came up, we started mounting the logical volumes from our storages. It failed displaying “no device or address” error. There came the most painful process. We had to delete the /etc/lvmtab and recreate it with new volume groups and lvols. And finally the server was set.

Parallelly, we had to install linux 5. my teammate had requested the lab administrator for the linux 5 CD and the admin had said he had kept it on our lab desks. When we looked for it, we found only one linux 5 CD with a like-license-key written on it. I went and told my teammate satirically that I never knew linux came in a single CD :) When we were speculating what does a license key written over the CD have to do with linux and whether it requires us to register in the redhat site and get the remaining CDs on providing that key, my teammate decided to phone up the admin ask him what it is all about. The reply he got was “you had asked only for CD1 in your email. So I gave you only the CD1”. My team mate, who was confused, told him that he wanted all the CDs and hung up. He went and checked his email to the admin and it read “Can you pls give us the linux 5 update 1 CD?”. Heck!!!! He mistook the “1” for “update” to be for CD. How dumb. Will the “update” stand alone and will it not strike a newbie even that the update would have a number? Uffff…..i asked my teammate who the admin is and he showed me his name in the email. He was a sardarji. LOL. Are all the sardarji jokes true then? Mmmm…..

Wasn’t it a hard time at work? Yeah, I can hear a loud yes.

Attempting to break the jinx. I hope there’s no spell cast on me this week.