I’m Working on a New Server (Geek Alert) 5

Which should resolve some of the speed problems.

I picked up a Dell Dimension 4700 at the local computer secondhand store (which, by the way, has the only repair bench which I will allow to touch any of my boxes). I also got a nice KVM switch from Radio Slum, so that I didn’t need an additional keyboard, mouse, or monitor.

At first, I was unable to get Slackware Linux 11.0 to see the hard drive on the new Dell, till, thanks to Linux Questions dot org, I realized that I was starting cfdisk with the wrong switch.

The computer has and SATA harddrive. Linux sees that as a SCSI (pronounced “scuzzy”) drive.

So, to create the partitions, I had to start cfdisk like this:

cfdisk /dev/sda, (translation: cfdisk /device/scsi drive a)

rather than like this:

cfdisk /dev/hda (translation: cfdisk /device/harddrive a). The later works for IDE drives, which is what most older computers have, but not for SATA drives.

Since, of course, no good deed goes unpunished, there is another wrinkle–Linux is not seeing the network card in the computer. The next step will be to dig up an old network card, slap it in there, and see if Linux sees that (Rule One of Troubleshooting–Rule out hardware problems first).

Since I’ve loaded Slack on at least five or six boxes so far and never run into this before, I’m inclined to think it is a hardware problem, since, with Linux, networking is not an afterthought–it was built in from the beginning.

Once I get this puppy on line, it won’t be long till I retire my PC300 to being just a file server.

And maybe I can get my sidebar back.