so i couldn't get the internal network to work last night. that had me completely stumped because i have a pretty decent catalogue of things that can go wrong in my head, and i had run through all of them twice. or so i thought.

it helps to sleep. i got up and pondered "hm. well, theoretically it could be the cable itself". i had checked the connections the night before, but didn't replace the cable. ok. replaced the patch cable. nope, that didn't change anything. *sigh*. i stared at the hub in frustration.

wait. there were no lights on the hub. none at all.

checked the power cable. it had come loose. replugged it. tested. internal network fine now. *duh*.

in my defense, i did originally check that everything was plugged in, before i started with the whole process -- that's a pretty standard first item. but the plug must have come loose when i was rerouting another cable underneath -- i can't see the hub from where i am sitting. and the plug connection is a bit loose. i think i might tape that.

anyway. am now upgrading the system, since i haven't done that since before i went to montréal. save this post, and reboot. oh, and i think i might've figured out what got into lilo's craw -- it could be that during a previous upgrade lilo was not actually rerun properly after the kernel image got installed. and if the location of the kernel image changes, even if the kernel itself and its size don't, well, lilo doesn't like that (with good reason).

had the first power outage of the season, and it was long; 6+ hours. got to burn some candles and make tea on the camp stove.

thanks to the UPSs, everything shut down cleanly. but when the power finally came back up, aegis didn't. got an error message from LILO i had never seen before: "EBDA is big: kernel setup stack overlaps LILO second stage."

it really sucks when the gateway goes down, because it runs both the connection to the outside as also the inside network. and it's been a while since i last needed to connect another system to the ADSL. telus permits us two MAC addresses, but of course the second system was still set to my laptop, which no longer has a functioning screen. i wasn't looking forward to figuring out how to change the second MAC address without having net access (it involves finding a working modem and the right dialup numbers). but good news, telus has actually spiffed up its network, and as soon as one connects, one gets an IP address within a local network, and they pop up the registration website for the MAC addresses. this is so much better than it used to be. i should remember to write them with my compliments.

so now i am on drynwyn connected to the ADSL and finding out what i can do about the LILO problem. this is a good time for that rescue floppy. i actually have one, yay. well, i had one. it seems to have gone bad just sitting around for more than a year without being used. the slightly older rescue floppy is also bad. clearly my sysadmin skills need some upgrading; i should build rescue CDs, since we only have one floppy drive left anyway, and floppies are really old tech now.

that's giving me the opportunity to learn about the mac's capabilities in the CD burning department. so far i've burned one that's not bootable, and have figured out that i need to use disk utility instead. alright. now downloading somebody else's rescue image.

the main problem with running debian on our gateway has turned out to be that things don't go wrong often enough, and i therefore don't get a lot of practice solving problems, and that means i have to do research every time. i guess it's back to documenting everything in detail, and in hardcopy this time.