Thursday: Go to The Other University to do some prep for the move
coming up next week. Check in with their computer store (where you
pretty much have to buy things) to see how the order on the console
server is going. The guy behind the counter looks up the order,
frowns, and tells me that it seems their supplier does not have one in
any of their three Canadian warehouses. Okay, so how long will it take
to get one in? He looks at me earnestly and says that, sometimes, they
never come in. I ask at what point I can count on the supplier a)
giving up and b) informing me of that fact. He frowns again, and
suggests that I check back in a couple weeks (four weeks after I've
placed the order) just to be safe.
Friday: Get email from contractor/university liason for new
building to say that network and electrical connections will not be
ready in time because the requests were received so very late. While
The Other Guy was supposed to get them in long ago, I should've been
on top of this.
Monday, a stat in Canada: Go to the old building to do a
serverectomy on a soon-to-be-formerly shared rack. The Other Guy
mentions that the new server room has water on the floor. I go over to
look, and it's a rapidly evaporating puddle, irregular in shape and
maybe two metres across at its widest. I can't figure out where it's
coming from. Turns out there's some other stuff that should become
formerly shared as well, so I spend time poring over Sun Enterprise 1
workstations (which I like) and old inkjet cartridges for printers
that may no longer be around (which I don't like). Ask The Other Guy,
who's been involved with the move a lot longer than I have, what
electrical connections he's asked for him and for me (long story) in
the new building. He says that he gave them the model number of the
Sun rack he's got (which has built-in, and very nice, PDUs) and asked
them to figure out what he needs.
Tuesday: Moving day. As expected, network and electrical are not
present; we've got 2 x 15A 120V circuits. Also, the leak is back, and
we can see that it's coming from a small leak in the concrete roof. I
move my rack into another room; The Other Guy spreads a blanket over
his rack. The liason promises us that the contractors are on the job
to fix the roof. The network connections (two fiber, two Cat5) get
terminated, so I call the local network folks to get that taken care
of. The university wireless network is not present in the new
building.
Wednesday: The contractors show up to start fixing the leak. The
network connections have been set up. The contractors have put in a
big tube of plastic sheeting, taped to the roof at one end and a
40-gallon recycling barrel at the other. The Other Guy decides things
are good enough and starts setting up his rack; I elect to hold off
another day.
Thursday: The contractors say the roof is fixed, so I move the
rack in and start hooking things up. The new OpenBSD firewall comes up
nicely -- thank you, pf developers -- as does the main Sun
server. Next up is the SunRays in the lab, only they're not. I take my
laptop in and try to verify connectivity. I can't. The Other Guys
suggests that the VLANs on my new switch are the problem and suggests
just simplifying things. I do and keep testing. Traffic from the
laptop's RFC 1918 address just never makes it to the server. In a fit
of desperation I try using an address in our routable subnet, and it
works. This takes me until 8pm to figure out. I email various bosses
explaining how far I've got, and the campus network folks to ask if
they're filtering this subnet in some way. (This isn't completely out
of the question; this place has a reputation for a pretty locked-down
network.)
Friday: I buttonhole the guy at the campus network office and ask
him about this. He considers this and realizes that while he's
forgotten to unblock DHCP (told you it was pretty locked down), the
other behaviour I'm seeing can be explained if I've somehow got my
interfaces crossed. I'm doubtful but give it a try, which is a good
thing because suddenly everything works. I don't understand it or what
I did wrong, but assume that I was simply too tired the previous night
and thank him profusely for taking the time to talk to me. I am now
where I should have been twenty hours before. Mighty battles emerge
with Sun's DHCP and Sunray servers. In the end, I have to delete the
Sunray configuration, delete all DHCP configurations, and then add the
Sunray configuration back. This works, which annoys me; why are there
all these opaque configurations around? Not a single plain-text file
in sight. I manage to get a printer working, then another. DHCP is
modified so that laptops work as well. I call it a night and head
home.
