The saga continues...

[haase]

Well, I'm sick with the flu today and bored out of my mind with nothing to do, so I might as well give you guys a worthless update on my saga to get a better server implemented here in my basement.

After 3 frustrating days of trying to get the latest Mandrake to anything besides stare back at me with a blank screen, I decided to try Red Hat.  Fortunately for me, when I cleared some drive space for the Mandrake install, I deleted the 5 Red Hat 8 ISOs I hadn't burned yet cause I wouldn't need them anyway.  So I now get to sit here an wait another  10 hours for them to download again (87 kb/s is actually pretty good for my less than average DSL connection).

I figure, I may even go with Mandrake when there's an official release available, but as of right now my whole users and groups settings are completely fried, barely usable, and I'd rather install Linux than re-install W2k for the 4th time.  But I don't want to have the server down for days at a time either...  so I'm now in a rush to get that practice install/setup done successfully.

So I'm going to put this one on my main box, see if I can configure it.  By that time, either the latest Mandrake will officially releasee, or  I'll be comfortable doing what I need to do on Red Hat anyway.  Or I'll try something else.

So that's what's going on over here in my corner of the world...  thanks for listening and pretending to care.

Did I mention I had the flu....

Oh yeah, I did  say that...

[KillJoy]

Sorry to hear you have the flu.
I hope you get it together soon.  I wish I had time to work on my stuff at home.  I wouldn't trade my health for it, though...

Good luck.

[haase]

I'll probably never get it completely together, but at least I'm enjoying the research.  And anyway it can't be anyworse than my half-ass attempt at a Windows Server.

My first big milestone I posted a couple of weeks ago was the revelation that Samba can be configured to be PDC.  Today the revelation is Linux NTFS Info.  An RPM that [should] allow instant NTFS access to Redhat.

[Mephisto_kur]

Windows 98 rocks!  woohoo!

(lets hope its not that weird flu that kills people that is floating around, eh?)

[haase]

A flu is a virus, that thing that's killing people is an infection...  a strain of bacteria.  Sorry, I used to do medical education programs for anti-infectives

[Mephisto_kur]

Hmmm, I always thought that the respiratory infections that cause pneumonia were caused by viral infections - cold or flu.  Interesting to note.  I wonder why we can't kill it quickely, then.  We have been the masters of bacteria for half a century.  I assume it doesn't respond to antibiotics?

[haase]

Well, in an extremely quick summary, bacterial resistance to antibiotics is skyrocketing.  Say "Darwin" and look no further.  The more a particular strain of bacteria is exposed to the antibiotic, the more likely it is to mutate and become immune.  American Health Professionals and Scientists are fully aware of this, yet we constantly dilute the potency of our drugs by including them as a regular part of diet in our livestock as preventative medicine, and 80% of doctors are likely to give their patients an antibiotic when they have cold or flu like symptoms, just because the majority of patients feel ripped off if they go to the doctor and he says "You've got the flu, take some tylenol to bring the fever down and it'll go away in a couple of days"

There are some antibiotics that bacteria are much less resistant to, particularly flouroquinolones.  Cipro - advised for Anthrax - was the weak sister, the first version of flouroquinolone to come out.  The newest ones are much stronger.  I have a feeling that the CDC was pushing Cipro because it's effectiveness was weakening anyway and widespreak panic during an Anthrax break-out would render the drug worthless.  The high power quinolones have only been around a few years, so it's not likely they are widespread in places like Rural china.  I'm sure the particular bacteria they are experiencing was first treated with a low-grade penicillan, and was alowed to progress to the point of severity where only the highest grade of IV anit-biotic would be effective.

Just to bring this back around...  I went to the bookstore and actually bought a book on "Linux Server Administration."  It looks pretty straightforward, and even explains concepts such as DNS (see previous thread) in a way that can be understood.  More of a "How to" instead of "A completely theory and inpractical guide" which might be found in MS documentation.

[haase]

I managed to fry my system.  This is going to take a lot longer than I thought...

[haase]

Alright...  typing this from Mozilla on a Linux machine.

[haase]

Okay.  I need a bit of help.  I'm starting to get used to this whole thing/way/approach of doing things, and it only took me about 4 hours to get Apache running.  Some nonesense was happening about a mod_unique_id process not loading and it was causing the whole thing to crater.  Anyway, besides that,I can view the site from internally, but I need to know if an external user can see it.  If one of you would please navigate to www.greghaase.com and verify that you see the boring Apache Test Page, I'd appreciate it.

[KillJoy]

We apologize. The server or file that you are trying to access is currently not available. Please try back later.

[Mephisto_kur]

Thats what I see, too.

[haase]

Okay.  That is the only page on my free verizon webspace.  I've got dns2go configured to point there when the server is not responding.  I found some bad advice somewhere.  They said add "/usr/local/bin/dns2go" to your rc.local file.

When you run dns2go in a terminal window, it stays open, you loae your prompt and if you close the terminal you close dns2go.

When I restarted, the same thing happened during launch.  As soon as dns2go started, the rest of the launch process was blocked.

That, and I switched my mouse to an intellimouse and fried my X configuration.  I should have everything back up and running now. *Greg knocks on wood*

any idea how I can get that dns2go to run on bootup without screwing up the rest of the boot process?

[Mephisto_kur]

I certainly have no idea, being a non-linux guy.

[KillJoy]

If you're starting it from the command line on a Linux system, you just add the ampersand (&) to the end of the command line, and it will run in the background.

At the command line, type "jobs" and you'll see jobs running in the background, if any are.  You can bring it to the foreground using
$ fg %dns2go (if dns2go actually refers to it)

I have no experience.  Don't listen to me.  I just read about Linux and run it at home for fun.  I've never heard of dns2go.  I'd check dns2go support online http://www.deerfield.com/support/dns2go/.