imagine being so pressed for time, not having any OS CDs or a boot server as it’s all gone.
you find these old servers, pull them off the domain and join a new one, and much to your amazement they remember where they were.
endless problems .
but you don’t have the time to format, you need a cluster built of garbage and you need it quickly. Simply run this from PowerShell:
Clear-ClusterNode
running that zapped the cluster config.
which is odd, I thought it lived in AD.
also using TruNAS it doesn’t load for anything over the ilo console. Didn’t have the time again. Using Rufus, use the 2nd option, DD mode, and it installed like a snap.
While doom scrolling on eBay I always seem to stop and look at the upgrade version of Windows 3.1. It has to be the most clearly marked “why bother upgrading” version of Windows, and at the same time the ugliest. Fitting for the season’s ugly sweater theme!
The ugliest Windows ever
It’s amazing how terrible this thing has always looked to me. As far as ‘proof’ I remember being able to fake it out by doing a ‘copy con win.com ^Z’ type thing to create a fake windows directory with win.com & kernel286.exe … I think. But back when this was a NEW! product, I had to install Windows 3.0 anyways to get the CGA driver.
Windows 3.1 in CGA
I don’t know how I used Windows with CGA either.
Speaking of impossible, back in the dark ages of Windows/286 2.1 this thing snuck out:
Microsoft Windows/286 – Italian
One day I’d love to get this Italian Windows 2.1 and frame it? I don’t know who snuck in the Buone Fest onto the box art, but I’d like to think it was subversive, as I hadn’t seen anything like that on any of the other retail Operating System packaging?
It’s been a real struggle this year from the relocation, losing just about everything that I’d tried to do, then losing my job, that brief absolute terror of being unemployed with zero callbacks trying to job hunt to now spending nearly every waking hour at work.
Alcatel – Lucent saves the day
Speaking of stress, I haven’t had to build a physical network in ages, and this was news to me that all the SFP connectors are now vendor locked. Thinking I could just buy some cheap SFP DAC cables and plug away and I was greeted with the fact that neither the Dell, nor Cisco switches would recognize them. Oddly enough, Linux/Windows didn’t care at all. I had ordered some RJ45 10 gig SFPs to run across the data centre, and found out as well that I’d ordered Cisco keyed generic ones, and yes of course they don’t work in the Fortigate firewalls, nor the Dell switches. Those needed their own special ones. Luckily for me I had been pulling out all the old SFPs from decommissioned equipment as I had figured that the single mode fiber optics may be useful if I ever need anything, and there was a couple of these Alcatel-Lucent SFP-GIG-T (1gig) modules that at least saved the day in that I could connect stuff, while waiting for the trial and error of needing 2 weeks to get the appropriate 10 gig interfaces.
Also with mentioning is that Dell switches configure in cluster groups and the 25 gig clusters have to be configured down to 10gig mode to recognize and work with 10/1gig modules.
port-group 1/1/5
mode Eth 25g-4x
!
port-group 1/1/6
mode Eth 10g-4x
For example.
Speaking of, setting up a LACP bundle on the Dell switch was a snap! Just remember your port-groups!
interface ethernet1/1/1
description "WIN-HVN-100 port 0"
no shutdown
channel-group 1 mode active
no switchport
flowcontrol receive off
There isn’t all that much to do in the individual ethernet ports, but you get the idea. Since I’m short on cables, I’ve only got the first two ports populated, but I’m aiming for 4×25 per server!
I did find that by explicitly allowing the VLANs onto the port helped a lot. And by default, the switches do LACP so there isn’t all that much to do.
And checking the LACP status is a snap as well:
hyperv-lan-core-01# show interface port-channel 1 summary
LAG Mode Status Uptime Ports
1 L2-HYBRID up 1 day 21:45:26 Eth 1/1/1 (Up)
Eth 1/1/2 (Up)
Eth 1/1/3 (Down)
Eth 1/1/4 (Down)
Needless to say, I was happy as ‘it just worked’!
AMD Epyc 9454 48-Core Processor
Speaking of which, I deployed Hyper-V 2019 Server. Shame VMware had to go get Broadcomm’ed as there won’t be any more free Hyper-V servers, but for now it’s fine.
I had meant to write more on setting up Hyper-V as doing it through PowerShell is a bit daunting at first.
First setup your load balancing network team. In this case I’m using a 4 port 25gig card:
New-NetlbfoTeam -Name "Converged Network Team" -TeamMembers "Integrated NIC 1 Port 1-1","Integrated NIC 1 Port 2-1","Integrated NIC 1 Port 3-1","Integrated NIC 1 Port 4-1" -TeamingMode lacp
The port names are 100% system dependent, but you can get the idea. And setting the LACP was surprisingly easy.
I just load everything onto the same switch as I’m old, and trust my VLANs. And the servers are 1u so they don’t exactly have a lot of NIC’s for splitting stuff out but as always do what works for you.
The next step is to add the virtual network card onto my management VLAN in this case it’s 75
From there you can now use the ‘sconfig’ and setup your management IP address, load up Windows patches, load more drivers, and manage the server using the remote RSAT tools. Be sure to enable the remote desktop, unless you really love to type.
I went ahead and installed these services to get my servers onto an existing Hyper-V cluster. I’m sure some can be removed, but YMMV as always:
And of course, don’t forget your shared storage, in this case my servers have that 4x25gig card, and a smaller custom 2×25 gig card that I used to storage A/B. Fun times!
From there I could use sconfig to join my machines to the domain, and then finally add them into the cluster, and start moving my workload over to the new servers, which is what I’ll be doing throughout the Christmas break.
Speaking of work:
A very Christmas Vacation like tree
They ordered this very Clark Griswald like Christmas tree. They had to cut it down to get the base to fit the lobby area with it reaching into the 2nd floor. It’d been so long since I’d seen something like this at work. But thats me working remotely for nearly 20 years.
Something awe inspiring about it.
real life Snoopy
Which reminds me of this Snoopy I saw on twitter. As terrible as life feels from time to time, there is a bit of hope, and fun here and there as my muse is always quick to point out when I’m feeling down.
And sometimes it’s better to just get it out, as who knows, maybe this could be useful in the future somehow.
Thanks for everyone’s ongoing support over on Patron and here. It really means the world to me.
That’s right ARM Linux userland! I still have high hopes for Windows on ARM (I have 2 Windows RT devices now!!) although I’m not holding my breath.
Maybe there will be some ARM boards that are suitable for the desktop that aren’t over 1k USD.. That’d be nice.
Interesting trivia is that the Linux Subsystem started it’s life on ARM as a way to run Android binaries on Windows Phone. And true to everything Microsoft does, it got to the point where it could start to run things (albeit poorly) and was summarily killed. Although it’s found life despite the original false start as a general ‘text mode’ subsystem for Windows.
However running Linux binaries on Windows currently just shows that NTOS isn’t as efficient as the Linux kernel when it comes to emulating the Linux ABI. Although this was the original ‘dream’ of the microkernel, and a POSIX subsystem for NT was always part of the original design, although it really was more of a checkbox for GSA contracts, and outside of being able to use pax & vi it really was handicapped by not having BSD extensions, and especially by not having any access to the TCP/IP stack.
EDIT*
I should add these notes from the future past for the future me, when messing around with Windows Server 2019 build 1809 when they finally brought the Linux Subsystem into the fold. Unpacking the distribution and running the ‘setup’ sets it up DIRECTLY into that directory. So put it where you want it.
When you mess that up, you have to use the wslconfig program!
Of note is:
wslconfig /list /all Lists all distributions, including ones that aren’t currently usable. They may be in the process of installing, uninstalling, or are in a broken state.
wslconfig /unregister <DistributionName> Unregisters the distribution from WSL so it can be reinstalled or cleaned up.
This way you can now clean up your mess, and get Linux installed right.
