I do contract sysadminning for a small lab that only really needs someone to keep an eye on a Linux box with a Web server and an e-mail server. I charge them relatively little, and in turn can tell them that I'm too busy to fix something if necessary. A good trade for a grad student...

Since I switched the system from RH to Debian my life has been much easier, but hardware has a way of stepping in and reminding you who is boss.

Today's doings:

1. reboot to test on-boot install of new USB disk. reboot fails.

2. discover that the problem is in MBR. further discover disk MBR is unfixable, although the data is 99% entirely accessible. (weird...)

3. spend 2-3 hours doing things like wiping the MBR on *all* of the disks and then having to fix partition tables, etc.

4. finally get to the point where the MBR on a separate SCSI disk is booting the right kernel, then running init etc. off of the original disk. system finally fully functional in a rather hacked kind of way.

5. dinner.

6. returning from dinner, back up entire functioning system to two other disks, plus a remote system. (take that, hardware!)

Now I just have to figure out how to best transfer the functioning system off of the occasionally malfunctioning drive and onto a separate Debian install on another drive. I hope it will be as simple as find+diff to locate changed files; I didn't have to change *that* much to begin with...

On the (only) bright side, I get to charge for all of this.

Did anyone else notice how !#%!# cheap those really convenient LaCie USB and Firewire drives are? Wow -- $200/250 portable gb.

--titus