Tim's Web Log #3

Tim's Web Log #3
Thoughts and opinions of an opinionated person

Mon, 17 Feb 2003

We replaced and upgraded the operating system our main gateway server today. We had made a LOT of customizations to the old Red Hat 5.2 system, so we expected trouble. Fortunately, we had been planning this for months; the machine has been going flaky for quite some time, and it is difficult to keep up with all of the security updates. Thanks to all the planning, the upgrade itself wasn't too bad. We had been running it offline for a couple of weeks, and thanks to all the preparation, it only tooks about 4 hours this afternoon to do the switch and clean up all of the leftovers.

The thing that amazes me about this is the amount of guru mungling that I had to do. Very often, when I have finished with some delicated computer operation, I wonder what "mere mortals" do when they have the same kinds of problems?

I suppose they just throw them out and start over, which, considering the amount of trouble we have, might not be a bad solution overall...

[20:45] | [observation] | # | G | Comments(1) |

# From wari at Tue Feb 18 06:54:00 2003:

The system administrator in me loves to do such migrations :) I've done a few gateway replacements as well as some other big tasks before. I guess the most fun in doing such things is to study the function of the old server, and amaze or be amused by what the previous admins did, and what type of weed were they smoking while setting up such a system. The best type of migration would just be machines running at the same time, a switch would just be an IP address change, no downtime unless you screwed up somewhere. The others would involve routers and gateway system, and telcos (if you need some lease line upgrade and what nots). Yup, I loved my old job :)