Stage 5, day 7:
Wow. Time has passed very fast. I haven't seen it pass. Already 5 days since the last update.
Ok, so finally, yesterday I did unroll my sleeves and started the project to replace my current desktop with a more powerful one.
I turn it on and connect to it remotely. It has been years since last time that I did use it. Simply making packages upgrade has been painful. Package manager was too old. It couldn't uncompress the new compression format packages (zst file format). I had to manually recompile few packages. I though the first thing to upgrade was the manager itself. Error. The new manager couldn't run anymore. It had dependency on a new openssl version. I compile manually openssl. Now, I need a new glibc. but I cannot install it with the manager. I did find out that untaring a package from the root was essentially how you can install a package manually without the manager and this is what I did for glibc.
That alone took me about 2 hours. After that, I have been able to fully update that PC to the latest software versions.
Final touch would be intall my current env into the new PC and I thought that I would need a temporary workplace to do that. I have done so much remotely that I might be able to get away with that step but, my temporary working place is currently occupied by a second server that I have built already many years ago (maybe 2 years) to create a NAS. It was meant to replace a small embedded Linksys NAS device that I bought at BestBuy but ended up to break. That thing was so slow... Making copies was horribly slow. The key to have a fast NAS is to actually build it with a headless Linux box. That is what I did. To complete the NAS server installation, I did realize that I already had a server (a old 32 bits Pentium 3) that I use as my proxy DNS cache/DHCP/IMAP archive server. Now that my NAS is a Linux box, I could merge those 2 servers into one.
In the last 2 years, I have never done it because there is not much incentive to complete a task when status quo is perfectly working. I always had more important stuff to do but the end result was that my temporary PC installation workplace was occupied by the NAS box. So that was my second task yesterday. I finally did it. I did turn off server #1, and server #2 took over the first server responsabilities.
TBH, I felt a big relief and a big satisfaction feeling. Some task that I have dragged along with me is finally done. As an extra bonus, DNS lookup has become much faster with this new fast server.
As if it wasn't painful enough. I had to reboot my current desktop machine. Linux system is very robust and can tolerate a bunch of failures and still be responsive but there is an achille weakness. having pending NFS requests on a gone NFS server. IDK why, but this particular situation is kinda creating a kernel deadlock and the system stops working properly. It has been like that for as long as I started using NFS mounts...
So I had to reboot my desktop. Once shutdown, it did refuse to reboot. Power goes on the motherboard, I can tell by the lit LEDS on it but pressing on the power button has zero effect. This is a known issue. I suspect that it is the CPU or MB that is in the process of failing. I have known that for months that at some point I would have to upgrade it with my spare box or minimally upgrade the desktop by replacing the CPU/MB/memory trio. Every time that I boot this machine, I need to press the power button for many minutes and eventually it finally boots. (then I keep the computer on for as long as I can. Many months in a row!) Everytime that I have to boot it, I wonder if it is going to be the last time that I'm going to be able to boot it as every time it takes more and more time before booting. This morning, I was pretty sure that it was it. The box was finally dead. So as I was calling a computer store to see if I could buy spare parts, I have learned from the employee that due to the lockdown, spare parts were extremely hard to find as everything is out of stock every where. According to him, it could take up to 3 weeks before I'm able to get hold of the required parts to repair my broken box but by some incredible luck, as I was speaking on the phone with the computer guy, my machine decided to boot at least one last time....
but that is not all yet. Because I have an old Nvidia card and it isn't supported anymore by my distro packagers, the X server refused to boot. The graphic drivers have to be recompiled every time that the kernel is upgraded... I had to do that task myself since prebuilt packages aren't available anymore. OMG, running this desktop is becoming an epic herculean effort each time!
It took 2 days to take care of everything... I knew that the task would be painful... This knowledge has probably played a role in me trying to push it for as long as possible for so long... I'm currently writing this entry with my resurrected machine ;-)... I'm almost done with the desktop transfer... I think that I'll be extremely happy about the result. Simply interacting with the spare desktop remotely, I could feel how much faster it is than my current machine... That means that in the long run, it should make me more productive....
The aim is to write my next journal entry with the new more powerful desktop!
Wow. Time has passed very fast. I haven't seen it pass. Already 5 days since the last update.
Ok, so finally, yesterday I did unroll my sleeves and started the project to replace my current desktop with a more powerful one.
I turn it on and connect to it remotely. It has been years since last time that I did use it. Simply making packages upgrade has been painful. Package manager was too old. It couldn't uncompress the new compression format packages (zst file format). I had to manually recompile few packages. I though the first thing to upgrade was the manager itself. Error. The new manager couldn't run anymore. It had dependency on a new openssl version. I compile manually openssl. Now, I need a new glibc. but I cannot install it with the manager. I did find out that untaring a package from the root was essentially how you can install a package manually without the manager and this is what I did for glibc.
That alone took me about 2 hours. After that, I have been able to fully update that PC to the latest software versions.
Final touch would be intall my current env into the new PC and I thought that I would need a temporary workplace to do that. I have done so much remotely that I might be able to get away with that step but, my temporary working place is currently occupied by a second server that I have built already many years ago (maybe 2 years) to create a NAS. It was meant to replace a small embedded Linksys NAS device that I bought at BestBuy but ended up to break. That thing was so slow... Making copies was horribly slow. The key to have a fast NAS is to actually build it with a headless Linux box. That is what I did. To complete the NAS server installation, I did realize that I already had a server (a old 32 bits Pentium 3) that I use as my proxy DNS cache/DHCP/IMAP archive server. Now that my NAS is a Linux box, I could merge those 2 servers into one.
In the last 2 years, I have never done it because there is not much incentive to complete a task when status quo is perfectly working. I always had more important stuff to do but the end result was that my temporary PC installation workplace was occupied by the NAS box. So that was my second task yesterday. I finally did it. I did turn off server #1, and server #2 took over the first server responsabilities.
TBH, I felt a big relief and a big satisfaction feeling. Some task that I have dragged along with me is finally done. As an extra bonus, DNS lookup has become much faster with this new fast server.
As if it wasn't painful enough. I had to reboot my current desktop machine. Linux system is very robust and can tolerate a bunch of failures and still be responsive but there is an achille weakness. having pending NFS requests on a gone NFS server. IDK why, but this particular situation is kinda creating a kernel deadlock and the system stops working properly. It has been like that for as long as I started using NFS mounts...
So I had to reboot my desktop. Once shutdown, it did refuse to reboot. Power goes on the motherboard, I can tell by the lit LEDS on it but pressing on the power button has zero effect. This is a known issue. I suspect that it is the CPU or MB that is in the process of failing. I have known that for months that at some point I would have to upgrade it with my spare box or minimally upgrade the desktop by replacing the CPU/MB/memory trio. Every time that I boot this machine, I need to press the power button for many minutes and eventually it finally boots. (then I keep the computer on for as long as I can. Many months in a row!) Everytime that I have to boot it, I wonder if it is going to be the last time that I'm going to be able to boot it as every time it takes more and more time before booting. This morning, I was pretty sure that it was it. The box was finally dead. So as I was calling a computer store to see if I could buy spare parts, I have learned from the employee that due to the lockdown, spare parts were extremely hard to find as everything is out of stock every where. According to him, it could take up to 3 weeks before I'm able to get hold of the required parts to repair my broken box but by some incredible luck, as I was speaking on the phone with the computer guy, my machine decided to boot at least one last time....
but that is not all yet. Because I have an old Nvidia card and it isn't supported anymore by my distro packagers, the X server refused to boot. The graphic drivers have to be recompiled every time that the kernel is upgraded... I had to do that task myself since prebuilt packages aren't available anymore. OMG, running this desktop is becoming an epic herculean effort each time!
It took 2 days to take care of everything... I knew that the task would be painful... This knowledge has probably played a role in me trying to push it for as long as possible for so long... I'm currently writing this entry with my resurrected machine ;-)... I'm almost done with the desktop transfer... I think that I'll be extremely happy about the result. Simply interacting with the spare desktop remotely, I could feel how much faster it is than my current machine... That means that in the long run, it should make me more productive....
The aim is to write my next journal entry with the new more powerful desktop!
