I hate 'meta' posts - but here's one anyway...

I really don't like talking about blogging in a blog - especially when it's supposed to be an 'on topic' blog like this one. None the less, here I am.

Life's been 'interesting' lately, and I'm just not having the time to create my home server - forget blog about it too. Apologies. The entries are still coming, and I hope to get back to at least every couple of days until the initial setup is complete, but I'm not going to be there in the next little while anyway.

To keep this from being a totally wasted entry I can mention this - I applied a fresh coat of heat transfer paste to the cpu and heat sink, then ran a memory check over night with no reoccurance of heat issues or memory problems. Looks like that machine is back in business.

Just as a backup, I also tested a very similar Dell GX110, which has roughly the same CPU and 256 meg of old fashioned SDRAM. So, if things fall apart with machine A I can just keep right on going.

If you're tired of waiting for entries whenever I happen to get to them, I'm giving you an out.

Here's the Cole's Notes version of installing and using eBox from howtoforge.com.

This blog - endless regular entries - condensed to three pages....

Well, kind of anyway.

Let me know what you think of the entries so far!

Snafu Number One

OK, so to test the hardware I grab my hot off the cd burner copy of the eBox installer and walk over to the system. That's weird - I could have sworn I left it on sitting at the BIOS settings screen.

Turn it on, see Warning - the previous system shutdown due to a thermal event!

Doesn't sound good. A thermal event? I guess you're saying it overheated? I don't image they come with ice monitors.... Maybe it's just another example of poor translation, but sometimes I really wonder why engineers try so hard to sound like English professors being paid by the word.

I turned it back on and booted up from the cd. It looks exactly like the Ubuntu server cd - eBox isn't mentioned anywhere. I started checking the cd for defects. After a couple of minutes it turns off :-(

Same warning when I power it back on.

I don't get it though! There's only two fans and they are both turning, and all the dust bunnies where kicked outside.

I pull out the air deflector around the CPU (where it vents out the back) and I note that the heat sink is clean and fastened down ok - but moves on the cpu.

On old machines like this normally the heat sink grease has welded the two together, but on this one the bond has been broken. I don't know when that happened, but it seems like the culprit. I'll have to dig up my heat sink grease and try again tomorrow.