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Date:      Fri, 10 May 2002 02:23:00 -0700
From:      "Taylor Dondich" <thexder@lvcm.com>
To:        <chat@freebsd.org>
Subject:   My horror story
Message-ID:  <000701c1f804$47d5dc00$6401a8c0@penguin>

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Okay, so I finally came across horror in my time of using FreeBSD.  Sit
back, grab some popcorn, I have a gruesome tale to tell.  Well, it's not
that bad, I guess.  Taught me a few things.

I run three servers in my home, all running FreeBSD, of course.  One server
is my internal DNS server, my other two, web servers, each with it's own
purpose; however, one hosts all the sites of my clients, so it's very
important to me.

Well, I just purchased a new Cisco router (go me!) and was installing it on
my network.  Once I was finally satisfied with the configuration and felt I
could leave my server room (wow, I've even got a server room.  Go me!) I
walked out.  On my way out, I instinctively flipped the light switch;
however, I forgot that light switch was NOT the switch to the light, but the
outlet that powered my server goodies.  As my heart jumped in horror to the
sound of hard-drives whirring down, I immediately flipped the switch to the
on position (this was probably a bad idea).  This, in effect, caused a
brown-out situation.  My servers came back up, all beeping in terror.

Now, I've never really came across this situation before.  Only once before
has the power gone out.  I don't have a universal power supply (don't go
me!) and when the power's out, my server's are out.  Not a good thing.  But,
that one time, the machines came up, fsck ran, checked everything out and
booted back up, no problems.

This....was different.

The webserver that hosted my clients came up, fsck said things were a bit
scary but will boot up anyways.  I sighed a sigh of relief, hoping the other
two machines would be the same.  They weren't.  My other webserver screamed
in terror as it said it had a problem with the filesystems and booted to a
prompt, requesting me to get my act together.  I have no experience in this,
so I simply typed fsck, and it went through it's merry way, telling me data
at certain inodes were unsalvagable and would need to be removed (hope
nothing important, I couldn't tell what they were).  But eventually, after
about 3 passes of fsck, it allowed me to boot.  It was in pretty good
condition.  Now, as I turned to my internal DNS server, I felt a shiver go
down my spine.  The errors were different, fsck was complaining more, it
just wouldn't let me go through it.  I didn't have enough experience in
fsck, my hands became sweaty, I wiped my brow with a Microsoft EULA, it was
getting late.

After many attempts, all bearing no fruit, I lowered my head and said my
goodbyes.  My server was gone.

The hard-drive took a serious hit.  And the system was extremely old.  It
held it's head high as it served internal DNS requests and pumped its arms
in fury as my web requests hit it as hard as it could.

It fought a good fight.  Orion, I only had you for a short time.  Your day
will come again.

So it's time to rebuild a new server, and get more experience with
filesystems and fsck.  Any tips you have would be extremely greatful.

Also, I'm now looking into a Universal Power Supply solution.  Something
from APS, I feel.  However, I don't know if the PowerChute software they
supply will work with FreeBSD.  Anyone have any ideas or comments?

Thank you all for listening to my tale.  I scroll up and realize I wasted a
good amount of bytes typing this and hope you found it enjoyable to laugh at
my dismay.  :)

I'm going to bed.

Taylor


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