Finally! Took a day off from preparing for the (Advanced Architecture and Design) course I'm hosting next week, and spent the time getting my local infrastructure back on its feet after a breakdown some weeks ago. Basically the LAN server died... motherboard or CPU. Suddenly we realised just how much we've come to depend on that little machine! DNS caching, plus names for all the machine on our farm-LAN1, HTTP proxy, local Subversion server, file-share, music streaming, and not to mention supplying the base-infrastructure for some Jini services that come and go as we play around with Jini and JavaSpaces.
So now that we've beefed-up the CPU and disk a bit, it was "just" a case of getting all the bits of server software installed and cleanly configured. Nothing difficult, but it all takes time! Especially when you're a bit.... fastidious?... about getting the config "right", as opposed to "just poking things until they work". I truly despise "voodoo config" where people don't really make the effort to understand the impact and effects of what they're doing, and fuck it up royally as a result. "Oh, well, I'll install mod_disk_cache and mod_mem_cache... after all, two caches must be better than one, mustn't they?" Ding! You Do Not Win The Lounge Suite!
Well, its been fun! And finally I can forget all about it again until the next hardware failure. The only thing I really would like to achieve is to get the server quiet2, and get its power-consumption way, way down! And maybe have a few more tiny-little servers...
[1] The term "server farm" takes on a whole new significance ;-)
[2] Yeah, I'm a complete arsehole about noise. I really, really, really hate noise...
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