8:30 AM Interesting weekend. Spent Saturday here at the office for two reasons; one, to be out of the house while Keri and two of her friends redecorated, and two, to accept delivery of three new servers. These are development machines for a special project, and they're not the usual stuff we get; for one thing, they're Compaq 6400Rs instead of our normal Dell 2400s or 2450s. After playing with them all day Saturday, I've come to a conclusion that wouldn't startle many who know me.

I hate them.

They work all right. Except that they take twice as long to boot as a Dell of the same capability. Where the Dells are smooth and cleanly engineered - everything fits together cleanly and logically, like a good engineer designed it with some thought. The Compaqs are rough, clumsy. Ugly, too. More like my kid brother threw parts at a box and hoped they'd stick. I spent five minutes looking for a good way to add RAM, and I never did find one; just lots of bad ways. Last but not least, they've turned the engineers into the marketing team. The rack mounts for these servers consist of a pair of mounting rails. Nothing unusual. But let's compare with the Dell mounts...

Dell sells racks, and of course they'd like you to use their racks. So the mounts come preset to the width of a standard Dell rack, which is pretty much the same as any other rack you might have. Just in case you don't have a standard rack, though, the mounts are adjustable; just use a small crescent wrench to loosen a few bolts, adjust it to fit, then tighten it back down. Takes about three minutes per rail if you're being careful.

Compaq has decided they aren't that nice. They also sell racks, and, understandably, they want you to use their racks. So their mounting rails come set to that width, too. But they're not adjustable; they're a solid piece of steel. To use them in our NON-Compaq racks (they're not Dell, either - they're Encore 80U racks, good, solid, fixed position units rather than the wheeled models Dell and Compaq both sell. To install these Compaq servers, I'm going to have to partially disassemble the rack, move the rear rails to the right position, and put the rack back together. Not fun. I am... unhappy. Not to mention that they're instructions are unclear and wrong. (I glanced at them, never having installed a rack-mount Compaq before, even though it looked the same as Dell. Wasn't too concerned until the instructions made mention of using five screws on a part with three screw holes. Hmmm.)

So that's where I'll be today; buried in a rack in a chilly, noisy server room, cursing and muttering imprecations upon the the souls - should they have any - of the misbegotten sons of unwashed goats who came up with this design. And Compaqs are the top-selling servers in the world? Just proves that popular opinion is not always right.

9:30 AM Two hours so far this morning dealing with a spammer. These people are worse than... than... Compaq engineers! <G>

Speaking of which, I finally got those machines in the rack and (mostly) working. I stand by my convictions. Granted, once I had the rack rebuilt and ready, the machines went in smoothly and easily; the incorrect instructions didn't matter, because it was child's play to install. But the fun was just beginning.

Got all three servers in the rack and powered. One machine refuses to boot. Compaq is not being very helpful. (What do you mean "check the connections?" Feh.) I suspect the power supplies, but I'm not certain because the documentation is crap. Oh well, let's get started with the other two.

Have you ever configured a RAID controller? It's easy with Dell. Boot the machine, wait for the controller to initialize, hit <ALT> <M>, and you get a graphical menu type thing that reminds me of the old setup programs in DOS 6.22. Menu driven, easy explanations, it's a snap. If you know or can guess what RAID is, you can configure that controller.

Then there's Compaq. I've been doing this for nearly eight years - since I was 14 - and I still can't get the damned thing to work. There's no BIOS-driven interface. Instead, the aformentioned crap tells you to boot to a "QuickStart CD." Wonderful idea - except that the bootable CD doesn't. Now what? Well, they never though of that apparently. Feh. Piffle. Kumquat. More curses and maledictions...

11:00 AM Running late and slow today. Pager went off five times from email problems. Why? Well, hell, it's tough to tell when someone turns off the logging and monitoring system. Grumble grumble. Feh. Piffle.

I did find a redeeming feature of the Compaq servers yesterday. See, those CDs that you have to boot to configure the drive arrays, logical drives, and so on, and they also, while you're at it, start up the NT install for you. Where the "good" part comes in is that you can have the system record your choices in a script that it will automatically execute on other servers. They're supposedly even making a cluster system where the master will replicate itself to the slave system, changing the IPs an names, of course, and bring it up into the system without user intervention. Very nice for enterprise-class installations with dozens or hundreds of systems, less useful when you have three to install. Still, that makes it a little more understandable why so many companies choose Compaq. I was asked yesterday why I thought so many companies use Compaq if I'm so sure Dell machines are better.

I had to think about that one, but then I remembered. Most people are idiots, so their usage or non-usage of a product means little or nothing to me. <SEG> Seriously, I still prefer Dell servers for most tasks. But when you need 100 servers, all exactly alike, it's be tough to beat this scripting solution. Except, perhaps, for something like ImageCast, but that's another story...

8:30 AM Good morning. And how are you today?

Couple of quick ones off the top; first, an interesting article on viruses and Linux by Simson Garfinkel. The basic premise is that yes, viruses (and, potentially more dangerous in an Internet world, worms) are possible under Linux, and in fact potentially more dangerous than a Windows virus. If that's true, then one, why hasn't it happened yet, and two, what can we do to protect ourselves from it? Let's face it, as much as we complain about having to reload Windows, it takes less than a day for the average user to reinstall Windows and their primary applications. Even a "power user" can do it in a relatively short period of time.

Contrast that with Linux. Sure, if you're using a more-or-less standard distribution, you can have the base OS loaded very quickly, faster if you've got some sort of script to follow. Now you have to go through and apply all your patches, install your myriad little applications, tweak things to your specifications. My Linux workstation would take days to rebuild, and I'd be pretty unproductive until that was completed. So, it only makes sense to protect my machine from that possibility, be it through regular backups, a cd of all my tools and config files, or anti-virus software. Something to think about.

The second item I saw this morning was that Iambe, the self-proclaimed Garden Variety Goddess and usually-amusing columnist for User Friendly, has broken her arm. Now, of course that's a bad thing and I wish her well, but what was interesting was the way the "UFies" are handling it; they've posted a jpeg image of a square from a cast. They're asking everyone out there to sign a square, and email it back to be edited into one cast-shaped image, most likely a really, really big one. An interesting idea, I kinda like it.

And now, it's time to head back into that huge pit of despair I call work. Later all...

8:00 AM TGIF.

My machine blue-screened this morning for the first time in months. I'm depressed now. <G> Granted, it blue-screened because I loaded some scripts on it (accidently, honest) that I had intended for one of the web servers. No, I wasn't trying to blue-screen our servers, it's just that the scripts were making calls to modules and custom iTOOL APIs that, naturally, aren't installed here. I realized my mistake, but before I could kill the process, the process killed the machine. Ah well. Such is life. <G>

Dan Bowman and a few others have put up lists of the things they have to do in the coming week. Hmm. Let's see.

• Load test iTOOL account creation on multiple server platform
• Upgrade iTOOL to the latest version on all servers
• Reinstall and create a new Windows 2000 domain forest for Development
• Entertain my parents and siblings for a week while doing everything else

Joy.

Let's see. What else is in the news? Ah. Yes. First, a fairly good security article for Linux. Basic level, but detailed just the same. Good balance. Also, an article on Ars Technica concerning the Ten Best Things in Windows 2000. A good list, very well thought out. I have to disagree with Bob; I think Windows 2000 will do well. Yes, a million copies in the first month is "low" compared to what most people expected out of Windows 2000; but let's face it. This is not a service pack. The upgrade path to Windows 2000 is long and convoluted; even Microsoft's own engineers and support teams are telling customers to replicate if they can, upgrade if they must. This really is an incredible product, but it's not a fast product. Nor is it going to be enough to save Microsoft all by itself. But it's a good start.

And as long as we're disagreeing with people, you're next, Brian. <SEG> I think you got a different read from Garfinkle's article than I did. What I got from it is not that Linux is inherently more susceptible to virii and worms than Windows. Properly configured, it's not. The problem lies in those two words, "properly configured." NO distribution is secure out of the box. They all require tweaking, adjustments, and configuration before they're ready to be put on the 'Net full-time. And as Linux becomes more mainstream - as more and more people try "that Linux thing they heard about" - there are going to be more and more improperly secured linux boxes on cheap DSL or cable connections. Suppose someone wrote a Perl script that used exploits in, say, the default configuration of RedHat 6.1? A self-propogating script? How many machines would that take down today? Well, it'd likely take down quite a few; but not as many as one that hit Windows boxes. Why? Because Linux isn't mainstream yet. Your average Linux user is still a hacker or at least a geek, someone who knows what they're doing and the basics of security. Even those that don't know that much are people that are unlikely to just leave things alone; they'll change things because that's what geeks do.

Now fast forward three years. Whole companies and corporations running on Linux. Your mom uses Linux to send you email. The average user is no longer someone who knows what they're doing, it's your parents and coworkers - the ones that, regardless of OS, still need help figuring out that mouse thingie. For them, an install is going to mean putting in the CD, turning the machine on, and typing in their name as requested.

How many machines does your script take out now? Hell, we've been sitting here saying Linux is the best, most powerful OS for years. All right, it's powerful. So all you need is for RedHat (or any other distro maker) to build a major release with some then-unknown root exploit. Three days later, the exploit is discovered. A week after that, a self-contained script containing the exploit is on every security-related website out there.

The cautious, intelligent user who knows what they're doing has already patched the exploit and moved on. Did your coworker? Did your Mom?

That's what Garfinkle was calling for, and that's what I was agreeing with. Something very much like Symantec's Norton AntiVirus with LiveUpdate. A central storehouse of all the available security patches, with a standard, automatic installation package that this hypothetical program taps into, downloads, and fixes on a regular schedule. Mom can run it, even that coworker.