[Cafe] Debian LTSP server + The Boiler issue

[John Cahill]

Hi  All,

Debian LTSP server.
Thanks for the help Alan, I'll check this out on  Saturday. Naomi and I 
did get the LTSP server up and running OK besides that issue. We also 
got a thin client booting successfully over the VLAN you setup. I've got 
an oldish machine I can donate for another thin client if it is 
required. The new LTSP server and clients live safely in the VLAN Alan 
has ceated so we can play about with them without wrecking anything 
else. The machine with the LTSP server also has a tftp server and dhcp 
server living on it. I've set up one LTSP server before but that was on 
Ubuntu. On Debian this turned out to be a bit of a pain. I only 
relucatantly chose Debian because Ubuntu failed with an initramfs error 
during the OS installation, (any help on troubleshooting? Anybody?). The 
wiki I found for a Debian LTSP installation was not as good as for 
Ubuntu so I ended up relying on the latter to fill in the gaps in the 
Debian one.

The Boiler issue.
This whole affair has turned into some sort of dystopian farce akin to 
Terry Gilliam's film Brazil! Just to clarify what's happened so far, I 
removed the front panel from the combustion chamber of the boiler and 
found that the spark ignition system wasn't working, (i.e. no spark was 
present on boiler start up). I continuity checked the cables that carry 
high voltage to the spark gap in the combustion chamber and found no 
shorts between the cables and earth and no breaks within a given cable. 
I also found no shorts between the cables. I suspected arcing. I 
inspected the cable insulation and found scorching in several places. 
There was a gaffer tape repair of one of the damaged areas!! I powered 
the boiler up and heard and saw arcing between an exposed wire and the 
boiler tank. The bodged repair I discovered was completely at odds with 
health and safety and the cable should ideally have been replaced. If 
the connection between earth and the boiler chassis was to have become 
in  anyway deficient or damaged this would have allowed for a person in 
contact with the boiler to be exposed to a potentially lethal electric 
shock! This was a dangerously shoddy piece of work.
I have performed a temporary repair by insulating the entire length of 
the damaged cable with heat proof tape, (of the sort used in gas fires). 
This should allow us to use the boiler safely until this farce comes to 
an end. If Kier Group/Sheffield Homes has anything to say on the matter 
then you can tell them I am considering reporting their earlier work to 
the health and safety executive.This is just the sort of thing that 
happens when you let the bloody private sector get involved with the 
provision of public services.
If the majority view is that we should leave the boiler off until we get 
this sorted officially then I will go along with that but... wait a 
minute, is it just me or has the world gone bloody mad? Dennis had the 
right idea when he threatened to go on strike if we didn't get the 
boiler sorted. Get the brews in Dennis and I'll get the placards out ;-)

Yours Comradely,
John

Erstwhile Urban Peasant

Alan Dawson wrote:
> Last time I saw John, he mentioned that he was working on a machine, and after
> replacing a failed network card, the new nic had been named eth1 rather than
> the eth0 as he had been expecting.
>
> At this point I realised that I had seen similar behaviour in a laptop, when
> replacing a pcmcia interface, the interface had been renamed ath2 rather than
> the previous ath1 ( and goodness know where ath0 went )
>
> Anyhow...  Dunno if you cracked it John, but.. I discovered the wonders of udev
> ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udev ) and SysFS (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysfs )
>
> on Debian etch based systems  
> edit /etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules 
> identify the line that names your device and edit the name to the one you
> prefer.
>
> This file is machine generated _but_ it does say
>
> # This file was automatically generated by the /lib/udev/write_net_rules
> # program, probably run by the persistent-net-generator.rules rules file.
> #
> # You can modify it, as long as you keep each rule on a single line.
> # MAC addresses must be written in lowercase.
>
> HTH
>
>
> ps here are some photos from the recent Rutland CC Midsummer Road Race. Sadly
> I'm not passing the the finish in 1st place
>
> http://www.xsfoto.com/categories.php?cat=12
>
> Alan Dawson
>