The Server LIVES!

After taking far too long to get to this evening, I finally tackled the server conversion project. Ultimately with success, although the battle was not trivial, either.

First off, I had to make some hardware changes (remove extra drives) to the server box. This was necessary for heat purposes in particular, as the machine was running really hot with the extra drive (due to the way I had to have them mounted). Since I no longer needed that drive (and it had a few bad blocks), it was a good time to get rid of it.

So, I got that taken care of, and began the installation. Not a problem, and went smoothly (aside from the time factor…since I’m running on a really slow old machine).

Then came configuration time. First of all was the network. This ultimately became the trickiest part, as the network cards were detected in the opposite order I’d had them in under the old system. So, after several restarts and some tricky configuration stuff, I got it fixed without a problem. However, that took time…and also meant that I had to change my iptables configuration to match. But, while the server box was online itself, I hadn’t yet managed to get the internal network online.

Named (the DNS server) was the first service to come back online…mostly because it’s the most important. Quick copies of configuration files made that simple.

Then came ntp and SMB services. Again, copies of configuration files…went pretty quick.

Then came the iptables beast. Keep in mind while I’d written firewall rules for iptables based upon my old ipchains settings, it was completely theoretical (the changes I had to make between versions) and hadn’t been tested. With that said, things went pretty smoothly. I found some weirdnesses instantly, and those needed to get fixed before I totally went online. But, for the time being, it’s working…and based upon the packet filtering stuff I’m seeing logged, the firewall is doing its thing. I’ll probably wait a few days and make notes of things that are showing up log-wise that I no longer wish to see…and make changes or such…but for now…

I also took this opportunity to make a (really) handy NFS export from the internal server box — for /home. This means that /home is a shared directory between servers…so what I put there on one machine is automatically available on the other. Very handy for most things I do.

So, minus some minor changes which are sure to come in the next week or so (fixes, etc.), the server project is complete. And it only took 4 hours to complete (the install/configuration phase).

But, seeing as how it’s now 12:15am…and my alarm is set for 6:40am…I’m heading for bed, happy that ‘everything has worked out okay’…

This post was upgraded to the MZ Online Blog on 8/20/07