Journal Journal: Tales of an Idiot
This has been an amazingly bad week.
I am an idiot because I do not seem to learn from my mistakes. Well, sometimes, but not recently.
The week started out with promise.
I had finally managed to work through all the applications I really could not do without on Windows and was preparing to move my secondary machine over to Linux (Mandrake 9.2).
So, I did, and the games began.
First, a little background.
I have a home network with a standalone router box NATing my broadband to all the machines in the house.
I have(had) a windows 2000 box (Athlon 800) and a Linux (Mandrake 9.1, Dual Intel P3 550).
Somehow I allowed a spambot to infest the windows box, so I tried to get it off (but felt that this was the final straw and I wanted to switch it to Linux), so I didnt try very hard, but instead told the router to drop any packets from or to the windows machine. (this was about 2 months ago)
I finally get around to finding replacements for the utilities I really USED on the windows machine and performed an install of Mandrake 9.2. Ok, this worked ok, but for some reason X is not working... so I have a machine that can neither get onto the internet nor show me graphics. (ok, its a start, its something to work on, I can handle this)
BUT...
My dual P3 machine is quiet old and one of the fans has had to be rebuilt (read dusted) a couple of times as it gets noisy. I can't GET p3 coolers anymore...
So, it gets noisy, so I turn it off until I can get to messing with the fan.
Back the the Athlon, I power this up, and because I have turned the other machine off and it has been a couple of hours... Yes, you guessed it, the DHCP leases have expired and the Athlon picks up the IP meant for the other machine, so now it CAN get onto the internet but it can't show me as X is not working.
Bring the other machine up and wow... no network, but X is ok (but I still have to cope with the squeeky fan!)
Ok says I, I will log onto the router to remove the blocking rule. Oops, forgot the password.
Ok, checks the manuals, either press the reset switch at powerup (hmmm, no reset switch I can see!) or log into it across the serial link for console and reset the password...
Great says I, jobs a goodun, I digs out my serial nullmodem, plugs it into the pc, and into the router... nope, the router uses an RJ45 for the com connection (WTF, an RJ flippin 45!)
Ok, so I could get a new router (expensive for such a stupid problem, but hey...) only there is a fly in the ointment. The routers WAN connection has an overridden MAC address as I originally registered with my ISP using a normal ethernet card in my linux machine to make it a NAT box, and the ISP uses the MAC to identify me, so to ease the installation of the router, I just told it to advertise itself using the MAC address from the old network card. If I was to get a new router, I would either have to tell it the MAC address or re-register with the ISP (which is a pain) And just where is that old ethernet card now? hmmm...
Ok, thinks...
Bring up the athlon, get the good ip address. reconfig the IP address manually to the badun.
bring up the intel machine, it picks up the goodun as the badun is in use.
Take down the athlon and bring it back up, it now picks up the lease for the bad ip.
Back in business, I still have to reset the password on the router, but I have access where I need it and only have the athlons Xwindows problem. I am happy to stand on that for a day or two and earn some money.
None of these problems is really annoying on its own, but I am sure you will agree that having this litany of problems can turn even a normally sane person a bit bitter, and I would not claim to be normally sane at the best of times.
I feel as if I have been living a particularly funny Mr Bean episode
Ok, so, what could I learn from this? Well, I should keep a paper log of some of these config items as it would really come in handy when the brown sticky stuff starts heading in the general direction of the whirly thingy.
What HAVE I learned...
Not a damn thing, that was 4 days ago and I have just had a lovely time(3 hours) moving my intel machine from its old case into a nice shiny new thermaltake, but this is a tale for another day as if I write about it now, I am going to cry...
