Win2k3 Server Migration
At work I have a Windows 2003 server running on a Dell Poweredge 2650 that's just fallen out of warranty. I have a brand new Dell Poweredge 2950 that I want to bring up as a replacement. The thing is, I don't want to have to manually create the 200+ file shares, 400+/- local groups, and permissions on the new box. It'd be so easy to P2V the old server and turn it into a VM, but that's not an option here. So, I figured out a pretty halfway decent way to image the server over using free tools.
The long and short of it is that, on the old server, you need to load the drivers for the new RAID controller. You'll have to do it manually. (Add new hardware, have disk, etc.) Then I took a CentOS 4.7 rescue disk, booted it, and DD'd the disk over to an image file on an NFS share (my iMac). Then on the new server, boot the CentOS rescue disk, dd the image from NFS to the local disk, and reboot.
Windows comes up, and will complain about needing to find new drivers for everything. But the server is now running on new hardware. Sweet. Linux to the rescue in a Windows shop!
Goodbye 2008
As the year winds down I figured it would be a good time to make a new blog post. I have been rather lax about posting here, spending most of my time on Facebook instead.
In a few days I will be starting my new job as a Senior Sysadmin for Facilities IT at Princeton University. I'm looking forward to the change in scenery. I leave behind a lot of friends and good memories at my last job. Despite Matt saying that I am now banned from New York I'm sure they'll see me again. Besides, if they ban me than New Jersey needs to ban all the bennies coming down from Staten Island during the summer.
My plans for launching the redesigned NJPB site in time for 1/1/09 probably won't come to fruition thanks to some distractions today. It was worth it, though.
In any event, here's to a great 2009!
Drupal 6 Update
I have been busy porting the site over to Drupal 6. Since Drupal 5 themes won't work with Drupal 6 I've had to go and make a new one. I am using the Zen theme engine since it's pretty dead simple to work with and the final result is far more attractive than what I have now. The site looks more Web 2.0-ish. Things are much simpler now, but there's some interesting eye candy in the form of dynamically generated drop shadows under the sidebar divs. It's so much easier than making tables and grey PNGs. Of course anybody who visits without Javascript (or using the stupid NoScript Firefox extension) will be out of luck but at this point the web is pretty much broken for folks that don't allow Javascript to run, so I am not going to stress too much over it.
Porting the content was the hardest task so far. Cut and paste, cut and paste. Boring, boring work made harder by various gotchas in the editors. I spent a lot of time fixing word wrap issues.
I'm hoping to launch the new site on Jan 1.
Drupal Decision
I've made a decision about which way I am going to go with my Drupal site. I'm going to ditch vBDrupal and go right with the mainline Drupal 6 distribution. I'm going to lose the nifty vB powered commenting system, and will have to manually create Drupal users for all of my contributing authors, but the fact of the matter is that it's a small price to pay to get back to a platform that's more actively developed.