archGFX

current tune: frou frou - let go

so monday, while i was installing microsoft's small business server 2003, everyone else worked on finish office construction, which had gone on haitus since october 2003. this included building a cage for me and the server

illustration A

illustration B (context)

apparently i smell. more likely, people want some sort of barrier for when i randomly swear at server components for their failures.

after talking to several compnaies, and everyone being backed up until february, this guy was actually able to come out and look at things at 10:30 monday morning. amazing. so, since things had completely crashed on friday, he poked at the server to see if he could figure out why it A) was now refusing to allow _anyone_ to authenticate and B) why it so staunchly refused to become the domain controller.

the answer to A was that smbd was failing shortly after it sarted, although he didn't elaborate as to why, since that would have been free consulting (matt never paid the guy, it was purely an evaluation). the answer to B was likely that the workstations were remembering their connection to node-4 for domain control, and refusing to look elsewhere. his solution was to either reformat and use slackware, since that's what he's more comfortable with, or reformat and use SBS 2003.

so matt, knowing that i plan on leaving in the not-to-distant future, went with SBS 2003. before anyone says "smart move", remember that he already paid for the time to convert the server to linux. if he was going to pay microsoft licensing, he should have done so in august. or in november. or at new years. but certainly before the server went down for a week.

nonetheless, i'm coming home at 5 now, and most of my time is spent figuring out how to set up fancy exchange features, or how to set up certificates so that the vpn is more secure. i did toss everyone's user account (and recreate them). apparently i could have migrated everyone using ldifde, but we only have 10 CAL's and far more users in the old domain (former employees, etc.), and i wanted to get things done fast. fast=knowing everyone's password during setup, and not trying to learn any more new tricks.

i'm less happy admining SBS 2003, since open source lost here for some really stupid reasons. sidenote: node-4 is running still, and has been running since before new years. no linux means no ssh, no being able administer _everything_ from my workstation, my home computer, or my cell phone (i really wanted a reason to buy a sidekick). there's remote desktop included in server 2003, but i think 10 CAL's only covers that for administrative purposes. sftp would have let everyone use files off the server for free. nonetheless, the exchange server is really cool, and setting up this would have taken a long time, not to mention, the outlook connector isn't open source.

on the other hand, i won't be around to admin the server much longer. and linux sysadmins aren't as cheap as people who "know" microsoft systems. but then, lyle thinks he "knows" microsoft systems. and if matt thinks he can depend on lyle, he's sadly mistaken. lyle could barely handle NT server 4.0. he hasn't seen active directory, and group policy is going to blow his mind. matt will most likely wind up hiring yossi (cartissolutions) to admin the server anyway, and would've been better off switching to slackware at the outset.

in other news, the guy who inteviewed me from pappageorge finally got a hold of matt yesterday, a full week after my interview, which smells to me like they're interested, although it's annoying that matt is that hard to get a hold of. i'd really like to work there, even if pappageorge is as overbearing as matt thinks, he can't be worse than matt. and i'd be working on a mac. that would make me very happy. as would a steady paycheck.