On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Khimenko Victor wrote:
> In <Pine.LNX.4.10.10007251640210.15492-100000@dax.joh.cam.ac.uk> James Sutherland (jas88@cam.ac.uk) wrote:
> JS> On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Khimenko Victor wrote:
>
> >> For example our server do not have floppy drive at all. It does not have
> >> kerboard or attached monitor as well.
>
> JS> How do you handle situations where you need to take it down to single-user
> JS> mode, no network?
>
> Why you think it's ever needed ?
You do all your system maintenance with the system online, serving users?!
> >> And it's quite possible that vendor's image will be unable to cope
> >> with our Ethernet cards with 17,20 & 21 IRQ and will be unable to find
> >> IDE with 22 IRQ so any drive attached to that IDE will be out of reach
> >> for update program...
>
> JS> Can't Linux find your IDE adapter??
>
> Not if it's compiled without APIC support (in 2.2.x it's coupled with SMP
> support, in 2.4.x it's separate option AFAIK).
Assume it will be available in the bootdisk. If this is a problem, they
could allow you to add "noapic" to the command line, or supply two kernel
images. Not a huge problem.
> >> > That way, they can't blame it on your anti-virus daemon, your NIC,
> >> > the kernel version you're running, etc.
> >>
> >> Without my NIC I'll be unable to do ANYTHING with my system, sorry.
>
> JS> You're pretty much stuffed when your NIC firmware upgrade fails, then.
>
> Correct. But I have THREE NIC's there. So I can access system if ANY of them
> fails (even more: if one NIC is fryed backup will be activated automagically).
OK - supposing it's the system BIOS you just fried remotely?
> JS> You have bigger problems than not getting a nice point&drool interface for
> JS> low-level hardware modifications.
>
> Perhaps. Usually if one NIC is fryed I can shedure replacement procedure for
> month or so later - I have more then enough time for that.
IF it's a redundant component like that. Some aren't - the system BIOS,
perhaps.
> P.S. NIC can be fried by static electricity, not only from cracker. That's
> why this backup system was invented in first place.
You don't seem to have any procedure in place for recovering if/when the
upgrade fails. If you can't get the NICs online, or boot into Linux, what
are you going to do?
James.
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