Fun with computers (not)
In fact, fun with everything these days! My primary work laptop packed up on Thursday afternoon. Spent Thursday night and most of Friday trying to resolve it, but eventually gave up and logged a fault report with HP. I expect a reply any week now. Since then, have been trying to persuade another laptop (also an HP) to work well enough for me to stay productive while the main one gets repaired/replaced/ignored. I think I’ve got XP stable now, about to start with Delphi, VS, MS-SQL and all the other little things that make an IT Director’s life possible. Once that’s all done I can carry on with Thursday’s work.
In between, while things are installing (especially the seventeen thousand patches MS demands), I decided to see if I could revive my Slug iTunes server, as the FSG refuses this duty. I must be a masochist, because instead of going the tried-and-tested uNSLUng route, I went with SlugOS this time. Of course I can’t get it to work. Now reverting back to uNSLUng.
–sigh–
== UPDATE ==
OK, uNSLUng won’t work now either – apparently there’s a problem switching from SlugOS to uNSLUng which results in the Slug reporting “unable to get Samba information” on the web interface, and ignoring all attempts to update network settings.
Trying Debian next.
The fun just never ends.
== ANOTHER UPDATE ==
The Debian install was horribly long-winded, but not too scary. A bit of confusion finding the Slug afterwards as it had decided to ask the DHCP server for an IP rather than use the supplied one, but I found it eventually by asking the router which IPs had been allocated. Some Linux basics next, setting up users and NTP (the Slug is infamous for clock inaccuracies) etc., then on to mt-daapd. Wow. It just worked. Next: SaMBa – so I can move some music over. A bit of a pain, but once I’d worked out that SWAT was already installed and running, all sorted! An hour of copying later, it’s bulging at the seams with music files.
Great! My Slug is now (at last) serving music once more. But that dynamic IP is bothering me, I really want it fixed back where it was at 192.168.1.77 rather than floating around on every reboot. A quick tweak to the network config, a reboot and…. presto! The Slug disappeared completely, not to be found anywhere on the network. Bugger. Must have got something wrong. Can’t face installing Debian all over again. Try uNSLUng. Oops “unable to get Samba information”. Gave into temptation and ran the much-hated EraseAll utility, and reflashed with the stock LinkSys firmware. That got rid of the Samba error. About to try uNSLUng again. Watch this space. And wish me luck.
== AND FINALLY ==
uNSLUng wouldn’t work at all, just would not format either of the disks it had successfully used before. Back to Debian. Guess what? That wouldn’t work either. Eventually reached the conclusion that the microdrives I was trying to use were unsuitable (despite previous use), and plugged in an old 150GB 3½” IDE drive in a cheapo USB chassis. Suddenly everything worked. Half an hour later, the slug is serving up music.
A long a winding road, but we got there eventually! Now if I can just resist the urge to fiddle…
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