starting over
I love this ministry! It’s a rare thing that a geek is given free reign over a perfect test environment. I’m learning so much about the dos and don’ts of PC/Network administration. Not to mention all the advice I get to use and glean from those who have done this stuff longer than I.
Speaking of don’ts, I paid a little stupid tax and fixed some stuff with the server this weekend.
For starters, there was a lot of functionality missing from the original install like Apache, PHP, and MySql. Secondly, after creating a long list of individual folders for each group and user, I realized a tree structure separating group folders and user folders would have been much more helpful. Finally, the server OS was Fedora Core 4. About 2 weeks later, Fedora Core 5 was released.
Rather than try to fix all these things separately, I thought it would be easier and fast to just format, start over, and fix everything that way. I was half right. It was easy, but not necessarily faster.
I was smart enough to back up the config and server files. After 3 failed attempts at an install, I was beginning to worry. After some troubleshooting, it turns out it was just some poorly burned images. After reburning all 5 CD images at a slower speed the install was flawless. I still flubbed some things up as far as partition sizes and formats. Before all was said and done, I had formatted 5 times. I’m not frustrated though, in the end I got everything out of it I wanted.
The server is now upgraded, tweaked, and we can now create an Intranet site. Sure I could have done all of this without formatting, but we aren’t incredibly dependant on the server yet. I was in a good position to just start from scratch and put in some knowledge I have gained from the experience.
This morning we had a crisis. We don’t have any network printers (yet). Today was Student Led Worship and they needed some things printed stat. But the files were created in a program only used by the Youth Minister. Well, his printer choked. Actually, the spooler choked. I had never seen the error before. After some googling, some safe mode, lots of driver deleting, and a little registry hacking, I got it to work! It was kind of a rush. I didn’t like the pressure, but it was fun to figure it out. It was some kind of driver conflict that wouldn’t let the print spooler service start correctly. I made a friend. Tim was ecstatic I got it working. Lots of love for the computer geek today.
I put in over 12 hours at church today. Clearly, that is a little much. Time for a nap. 
