Well, today just sucked. I was sent to a client out in Montclair NJ at 9:15 AM. His PBX went down and I am the second most skilled tech for his system. It made sense to send me, so I didn’t complain. I get on the train at 9:37 AM and wait for the train to leave. The train gets delayed for 20 minutes. Finally, the train moves again and I get off my stop. I meet the client and he takes me to the PBX.
The PBX system is about 4 years old and was pretty cheap server for those days. The chassis has 2 hot swappable SCSI drives, which is pretty cool. Well, the reason why the server died is because the RAID controller failed. We were slated to fix this on Friday, as we knew this was going to happen. Unfortunately, it died Wednesday instead. I go out and replace it when I notice that the new RAID controller is a full PCI slot as opposed to a 1/2 PCI slot.
SHIT
Well, I then try to rip out a RAID controller from another server. The RAID controller, however, does not have any drivers and is ancient. The client did not want to use this so he started calling around local shops. He found one place that has a SCSI controller that he can sell. It needs an adapter to go from 50 PIN to 68 PIN but he was ok with this. We install the card and setup the drive. I go to install windows and half way through, the install bombs. It starts saying that files were corrupted and rebooted randomly in the middle. I scratch my head, try another drive, and the same thing happens. It seems that the bay chassis must of died. I tried replacing the cables, so it is the only thing left…
SHIT
The client then says he has a IDE harddrive laying around. He gives it to me and we find out that it is 120 GB. Perfect! I install it on the same cable as the CD-ROM drive and the thing fails to detect.
SHIT
I didn’t want to get involved in jumpers, so I install it on its own ribbon. It works and I install windows. I then install the PBX software and recover from a backup I did a few months ago. Apparently, the PBX files were not being backed up by his server. Who knew? He told me they were. Its a good thing I backed up the configs when we first found out about this problem. Well, I get the PBX running and then the client says that he has a great idea! Hes going to buy another IDE drive and we are going to remove the SCSI cage from the chassis and mount the IDE drives in there. By this time it is 3 PM and I really wanted to jet out of there. I mean, I am already 40 minutes south of NYC. I need to make up this time…I reluctantly agree.
SHIT
He runs out and gets the drive and I start taking apart the chassis. I get the bays out and we mount the IDE drives. I go into BIOS to detect the drives and it fails.
SHIT
I play around with the jumper configuration but cannot find the jumper setup for the CD ROM Drive. Eventually, I said, lets get the harddrives setup and mirrored, and we will revisit the CD ROM issue. Booted into windows without a problem and setup the mirror. NOTE: I need to research how to make the boot.ini boot from both drives. I have forgotten how to do this. The client then looks at me and says, now about that cd rom drive….
SHIT
We take the CD ROM out and start playing with the jumpers. I figured eventually, I would find the correct combination. I needed to make the CD ROM the master and the primary harddrive the slave. The HD was already set to slave, so how hard could it be? After 3 jumper configurations, I finally got it to work! The computer boots up and the mirror is building. I think I’m done, but alas, its never that easy. Its 4 PM and now he wants me to look at the backup jobs to make sure they are running.
SHIT
I tried to add the altigen files to backup but the share fails to authenticate me. I remember another time I had a mirror break and I was resyncing it that it turns off the shares. I inform him of this and so we call it day. He drives me to the train station and I barely miss the 4:45 train. I looked up the schedule and say there was a 5:23 PM. No big deal…
5:35 rolls around and I look at the schedule again. Apparently, I cannot tell the difference from AM and PM as 5:23 was AM. The next train will arrive at 6:17 PM.
SHIT SHIT SHIT!
I wait until 6:17 and board the train. The train arrives in Penn station and I figured I would treat myself after an eventful day. I took one of those bike taxis to grand central. I get into grand central and just barely make the train. That is where I stand today! All in all, a very eventful day!
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