Fedora Linux
Work, work, work
I know I don’t usually talk about my work much, but I’ve got to say something about the last month, and what’s been achieved by myself and others. It’s been a marathon – if you’re not particularly IT-savvy, this may or may not interest you.
We’ve had to shut down and take apart our server room at work: 8 racks of servers and UPS systems had to be removed from our server room. The UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) units were the real killers – at least 50kg each – but they’ve all had to come out. And we did this in three days, labelling everything (including fibre channels), and getting the stuff out. Why were we doing this? Well, we now have a room-based UPS that runs far more efficiently together we a cutting-edge air con system that also heats certain rooms at work too. Both are designed to reduce our carbon footprint and power consumption – the server room is now drawing 10% of what it was! The three of us also got the server room back up and running within a week!
What else? Well, although I’m not involved directly with the move from Novell Netware to Active Directory, I am going to be helping, with my work to implement ZCM (Zenworks Configuration Management) - a software deployment, asset management and desktop clone/imaging tool. I’m working on that as I’ll need it in place for the OTHER project I’ve to implement. It’s pretty much second nature to me now when it comes to using Zenworks – I’m NERCs “go to” guy for deployment and software installs after the Office 2007 rollout I did last year. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to go on a course in London for a week which will enable me to use ZCM successfully. I wish I could attend the course in Edinburgh, but there’s only three running in the UK.
The next big thing I have to do after that is gear up to move CEH to Windows 7 and Office 2010. This is a big project: we’re looking at rolling out 64 bit editions, as 32-bit is pretty dated now. Even agreeing on the flavour could be problematic (Enterprise or Professional?) – obviously those with large numbers of mobile sites like BAS are keen to have Enterprise with its BranchCache and DirectAccess applications. However, the latter requires IP6 – that’ll be another project away down the line! Its going to require very careful planning and the security implications of the XP Compatibility mode are pretty staggering – it’s likely that we’ll need to lock down that particular add-on with a GPO.
This is on top of my daily work which consists of the usual user support and maintenance – and I also have a video conference unit to build, a server array to repair/rebuild, and a field site server to upgrade with Fedora Linux!
Whew!
Wasting my time…
It’s been a pretty good weekend so far. I’m writing this on a Sunday morning – LSD is still asleep. We went out last night and caught up with Dave and Karen who’d come down from Aberdeen. We went for cocktails in the Newsroom after Dave and Karen caught their train back. Well, I had Guinness, and LSD discovered a new cocktail – French Blues Martini I think it’s called.
I sent most of yesterday morning messing about on the PC. It was bit of a pointless exercise at the end of the day. I wanted to see if I could upgrade the schema of the MySQL database used in the wiki part of the site. After installing MySQL, PHP 5.1, Apache webserver and then messing about trying to get them to work, I was still in the same boat with the schema. Still, it was an education and I learned a few things. I’ve removed the New World Wiki – it’s now embedded in the Liber Mandraconiss wiki area. It seemed better to move it to the same area as the other setting info. It’ll use up less disk space and should make things easier to update later, especially as regards style sheets and Mediawiki updates.
I’m typing this on my netbook, which I’ve just updated to Fedora Linux 11. Has a much cleaner look than some of the earlier ones.
Been a long time
Definitely been a while since I logged anything!
I’m reaching the end of two weeks off. I’ve not really achieved much other than giving the flat a damn good cleanup. The weather has stayed nice, and I am totally and utterly relaxed. Back to work on Monday, but I don’t begrudge it.
I’m converting Ashes of Freedom to 3.6, my amalgamation of 3.5 and 4th edition D&D. So far I’ve done the skills, but I’m looking to convert the remainder, including the powers. Tomorrow, I’m going to create the 3.6 Character sheet. I’m of two minds whether to use Adobe Indesign or MS Publisher to design it. Publisher is much more straightforward, so I’ll likely use that, despite my dislike of MS products generally. Trying to integrate the two systems of D&D is quite easy, although the various powerific classes could cause problems. I’ve already decided to rule out psionics – it may make me unpopular, but it doesn’t fit in the campaign.
Fedora 11 is out soon – so I’ll likely install that on both my netbook and laptop, after a few weeks. My experience with Fedora linux so far has shown me it’s far more powerful than Windows, but the learning curve is far steeper. I’m getting my head around linux, but it’s taking time.
