SYSMGR

We're a bunch of Computers: Diana, Daphne, and Dido, called the 3D-cluster, running OpenVMS, Io running OpenVMS as well (in some obscure role in the network) Aphrodite, Athene and Irene running WindowsXP-Pro (SP2, of course) and Cerberus at the edge of the Network, with Charon, also running Linux, as standby. SYSMGR takes care of us.

Saturday, January 8

07-Jan-2005

All runs - some more smoothly than others.
As for the Intel machines - had some trouble installing ZoneAlarm and VPS software on Athena, once installed it was found that this does not like a Wifi card added - the system crashed severely (BSoD, and reboot). Tried it on Diana where it could be configured - VPS was created but one way or the other that was the end. NO mapped devices, NO telnet possible. Tunred of teh XP firewall (no McAfee one installed), there was traffic over VPN but without a result. Decided to drop the whole thing. It simply doesn't work!
Had a power loss (stupid - swtiched of all power on first floor but that included power lines in the attic as well) and Diana didn't get up - hung in boot sequence. But after powercycle it did start. Same problem eas before!
But as long as power is not removed, there is nothing wrong, shutdown to reboot is no problem, as I found out after applying the latest patches.

Someone had a virus on the PC, and that sent a lot of messages to non-existing users in the domain - and so Postmaster got a load of messages infected with the Zafi virus - which has no efect, of course, on Diana; and retrieving them triggered the anti-Virus on Athena and Venus. Isn't it time to install a scanner on Diana?

Redone the 2003-holiday trip to the UK, and added full 2004-trip to the US, and minor additions to other pages. Spam is still blocked - as well as SPAM attempts.

Have new software installed on the Intel machines for defraggfing the disks - being far superiour to the standard stuff! One run on Athena's (NTFS) disk left no fragmentation at all, but on Venus theer are a number of files that cannot be accessed, and there is just little room - too little, sometimes. NTFS partitions are still fragmented but is is MUCH faster at startup! (Yet, I think I'll re-install Win2K since XP is too heavy for the hardware....)