General Blather

Maybe it was the unplugged Ethernet cable. more »

I have an old fondness for these low-power, high-performing SPARC systems from days gone by. A 64-thread little monster, with 64GB of RAM, and a couple TB of storage makes for a beefy little database and file storage system. more »

Something you don't want to see when you tell your system to boot: {0} ok boot ERROR: boot-read fail more »

Servers (and clocks and stuff) all went down about 3PM today. Most of the things came back fine. The database server (which runs under this blog, for one) did not start, nor did the VM that runs the database, nor did the database engine. All of that has… more »

Lightning strike may have taken out a HDD! more »

Unable to find some place from which I can get service and a legit download of the necessary firmware (even from a questionable site), I've decided to order a couple of the smaller supported drives to get the box working. more »

I admitted it was probably folly, but I got the Sun Fire X4600 M2. It's in the lab, but still not running. more »