I decided I was going to use swaret to upgrade atlas (which ran Slackware 10.0). However, the upgrade was less than successful. At first, I only thought that, for some strange and unknown reason, that most of the upgrades failed. Well, a couple days later, Sharon couldn’t log into atlas because of an error in glibc. Well, sure enough, it appeared that swaret had upgraded bash without upgrading the dependency! In trying to fix the problem, I only made it worse and completely hosed bash. So, what’s a good little admin to do but reinstall the OS. Fortunately, I burned the newest version of Slack (10.2) for Sharon recently, so I installed that and went to work. All was well until we rebooted the computer.
For a while, atlas has had a minor display problem that would slightly obfuscate what was on the screen. And it wouldn’t always occur. Since I solely use SSH to use atlas, it’s never really been a problem. Well, the problem got a lot worse and won’t go away now. So now I can’t make out what the computer is displaying on the monitor. And, unfortunately, something isn’t right with the ethernet or SSH configuration, so I can’t just boot it blind and log in from odin. So now both Sharon’s and my work has been trapped on there for two days. Fortunately, we made a backup of all data on to her computer (seaman), so the data is accessible, even if seaman isn’t quite set up for the task.
What I’m thinking (and hoping) is that the intermittent nature of the problem implies that the problem lay in the GeForce4. If it were some sort of motherboard problem, it would have to be isolated to the graphics card (since I know that all the other hardware in atlas works). That limits the number of problems it could be severely, and none of those I can think of could possibly be intermittent. There are no indications of circuits having blown out anywhere, so that’s an unlikely possibility. So Sharon and I are going to try putting seaman’s card in atlas and see if we fare any better (assuming atlas’ motherboard can support a 4xAGP card, about which I’m unsure at the moment). Then I’ll have to buy a new graphics cards (probably a 30-40$ outlay) and see if that remedies the problem. If not, then it’s the motherboard, and atlas’ time will be over.
In the scenario of atlas’ demise, I’d have to consider whether it would be worth the money to create atlas2. Admittedly, I have grown quite fond of and dependent on atlas since it became a Linux box after building and setting up odin. It’s great as a development platform, allows me external access to all of my files on atlas and odin, and gives me a local server for various services (httpd being number one on that list). At the same time, I could use odin for development if I found an IDE to my liking, install no-ip on odin for external access, and install Windows versions of almost any service I need. One thing I can’t do on odin that I can on atlas is compile programs and projects that just make source available without compiled binaries. I currently can compile Firefox on atlas for bug testing/fixing and such. That wouldn’t be possible on odin without cygwin, which I refuse to install because it hoses the hard drive’s MFT with approximately 100,000 files. Also, I had plans to hook up atlas to the home entertainment system, and watch video files residing on my computer on the TV. I *could* do that with odin, but it would far more preferable to have a computer independent from my main machine doing that.
Creating atlas2, given my assumptions, would require a new processor and motherboard. Also, while not absolutely necessary, I would be intelligent in getting a new hard drive for it as well. Currently, atlas is running on its original root hard drive, a standard consumer-grade Western Digital 40GB, for 4½ years. Generally speaking, you don’t want to risk important data on a decently-used hard drive that’s much over three years old. If they were made to last over five years, hard drive manufacturers would have given them five-year warranties long before they were forced to. So to put atlas’ original hard drive in atlas2 as anything more than auxiliary/emergency/temporary storage would probably be a bad move. Could the drive last eight years? Sure. But it’s just as likely that it will fail next week. So, hypothetically speaking, it would cost about 550$ to get atlas2 up and running (200$ for an Athlon 64 3500+, 120$ for a compatible motherboard, 150$ for 1GB of RAM, and 80$ for a new hard drive) on top of the new graphics card. Is it worth it? Well, there are also external factors that would have to be considered, so it’s a decision I’ll have to make if I need to. With any luck, I won’t need to right now.
If atlas does survive this round, it’s debatable how much longer it will survive. Sharon and I feel it’s unlikely that atlas will make it through to the end of 2006. There aren’t many more things that can go wrong without a full overhaul. If the RAM, motherboard, or processor fail, atlas is done. If the hard drive fails, I can put atlas’ 80GB that’s currently in odin back into atlas, but that’s also 4½ years old. Even though it was a secondary hard drive and hasn’t seen as much use, it’s still old and a liability. To summarize, atlas is on its last legs, and it’s only a matter of time and chance before atlas is done for good. Having had it since August 2001, atlas has been loyal and faithful, even if occassionally ornery. Considering it came from Gateway, I consider 4½+ life span pretty good.