Andy Kopciuch's Blog
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Toltec, /boot & Vacation
It's been quite some time since I wrote. Not that I have not had some things to write about ... I'll admit I've just been busy ... or lazy. But now is the time. I find my self up quite early this morning, and working away on things while a Gov. Schwarzenegger movie is on in the background. I'm sipping on some milk, and enjoying a relaxing cigarette. So I had the time, and have decided to get things down for history sake.
A few weeks ago I took some time to play around with the Toltec Kolab connector for Outlook. Since we have been using Kolab for several months, and quite a few clients (most of whom have no real need for shared calendars etc), I have been bombarded at times with complaints about Horde not working properly, or being too slow, or just crappy in general. I have done more than my fair share of Horde installations, and debugging. So I am pleased with the new adventure.
A client had a need for use of the LDAP address book, since they were used to exchange. So I tried out the LDAP connector from Toltec. It worked like a champion would expect. I was impressed by the ease of installation, and configuration simplicity. Let me back track on some history as to why I was impressed. Originally, before I was around, Gregg and Aaron had investigated the Kolab connectors. They had favored Konsec as it had an MSI installer, and they found the Toltec connector to be very complex in the setup. When I had made attempts with the Konsec connector, I managed to bork my IMAP account. I then became busy and the connector investigation ceased.
When I was forced into a situation where I needed a connector for a client and found the LDAP installation so smooth, I decided it was time to give the Toltec Kolab connector a go. So one night and about 20 minutes later everything was working. I was impressed. I went to see Gregg a couple of days later, and made him do an installation. He found it very easy. And was very impressed as to what he had done before. I'm not sure what version of the connector they had tried before, but much improvements have been added obviously.
Gregg has been using the connector daily now for a few weeks. He has noticed a few issues, not very large problems, but things we need to find answers too before releasing it to many staff members. He is still of the opinion it is very well worth it.
Some short time after that I received an emergency help call from a client. It was the first business day in July. In Canada this also meant changes to the GST. Since I had been up late coding all night I had shut off my phones, and awoke to 6-7 messages on each phone from various people. And my week begins. So I rushed into the office to see what was going on. I think the UPS was being overloaded by the new servers, which was causing some problems ... mainly power outages ... and this time the mail server didn't come back up.
It did not come back up in a very very bad way. The system seemed to be missing the entire /boot partition. YIKES! that's not so good. I have never seen that before. I've seen some hard crashed servers, and some foobar disks, and filesystems ... but if you have no kernel image to load, and no grub files, and not initrd image etc. Things do not look promising. So I spent a short time investigating, and using Knoppix to get a system, and move some things around.
I copied some things from a backup to USB disk, and restored the boot images, and grub.conf. I double checked permissions and all sorts of standard things ... after about 45 minutes of dicking around trying to fix the broken system, I talked things over with Dwayne and we just decided to relocate the mail server to a newer machine, and reconfigure. There are very few domains / users to worry about, and there are no local accounts any longer, as every has moved to other companies, and different mail servers. It was quicker to rebuild from a backup that to try and fix this. I spent a half hour reconfiguring the HP server to have some extra IP addresses, and checked for remote access. I could finish the setup from home. Things seemed to have worked out well ... only virtual accounts now, or email is simply forwarded permanently. Nerves are shot, but things are better.
Before the long weekend in July, I decided I need a vacation, so I took a few days off. I wore my shorts, and t-shirts. Put on the bucket caps, and shades. I admit I did absolutely nothing for 4 days ... I needed a break. I played some poker, I ate junk, I watched some movies, and I did some computer stuff for myself and no one else. It was nice to relax. Now I'm in the mood for another vacation ... but I've got some work that needs doing ... we'll save that for another entry. ΒΆ 5:40:00 AM 0 comments
A few weeks ago I took some time to play around with the Toltec Kolab connector for Outlook. Since we have been using Kolab for several months, and quite a few clients (most of whom have no real need for shared calendars etc), I have been bombarded at times with complaints about Horde not working properly, or being too slow, or just crappy in general. I have done more than my fair share of Horde installations, and debugging. So I am pleased with the new adventure.
A client had a need for use of the LDAP address book, since they were used to exchange. So I tried out the LDAP connector from Toltec. It worked like a champion would expect. I was impressed by the ease of installation, and configuration simplicity. Let me back track on some history as to why I was impressed. Originally, before I was around, Gregg and Aaron had investigated the Kolab connectors. They had favored Konsec as it had an MSI installer, and they found the Toltec connector to be very complex in the setup. When I had made attempts with the Konsec connector, I managed to bork my IMAP account. I then became busy and the connector investigation ceased.
When I was forced into a situation where I needed a connector for a client and found the LDAP installation so smooth, I decided it was time to give the Toltec Kolab connector a go. So one night and about 20 minutes later everything was working. I was impressed. I went to see Gregg a couple of days later, and made him do an installation. He found it very easy. And was very impressed as to what he had done before. I'm not sure what version of the connector they had tried before, but much improvements have been added obviously.
Gregg has been using the connector daily now for a few weeks. He has noticed a few issues, not very large problems, but things we need to find answers too before releasing it to many staff members. He is still of the opinion it is very well worth it.
Some short time after that I received an emergency help call from a client. It was the first business day in July. In Canada this also meant changes to the GST. Since I had been up late coding all night I had shut off my phones, and awoke to 6-7 messages on each phone from various people. And my week begins. So I rushed into the office to see what was going on. I think the UPS was being overloaded by the new servers, which was causing some problems ... mainly power outages ... and this time the mail server didn't come back up.
It did not come back up in a very very bad way. The system seemed to be missing the entire /boot partition. YIKES! that's not so good. I have never seen that before. I've seen some hard crashed servers, and some foobar disks, and filesystems ... but if you have no kernel image to load, and no grub files, and not initrd image etc. Things do not look promising. So I spent a short time investigating, and using Knoppix to get a system, and move some things around.
I copied some things from a backup to USB disk, and restored the boot images, and grub.conf. I double checked permissions and all sorts of standard things ... after about 45 minutes of dicking around trying to fix the broken system, I talked things over with Dwayne and we just decided to relocate the mail server to a newer machine, and reconfigure. There are very few domains / users to worry about, and there are no local accounts any longer, as every has moved to other companies, and different mail servers. It was quicker to rebuild from a backup that to try and fix this. I spent a half hour reconfiguring the HP server to have some extra IP addresses, and checked for remote access. I could finish the setup from home. Things seemed to have worked out well ... only virtual accounts now, or email is simply forwarded permanently. Nerves are shot, but things are better.
Before the long weekend in July, I decided I need a vacation, so I took a few days off. I wore my shorts, and t-shirts. Put on the bucket caps, and shades. I admit I did absolutely nothing for 4 days ... I needed a break. I played some poker, I ate junk, I watched some movies, and I did some computer stuff for myself and no one else. It was nice to relax. Now I'm in the mood for another vacation ... but I've got some work that needs doing ... we'll save that for another entry. ΒΆ 5:40:00 AM 0 comments
