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<title>The Foolish Things We Do With Our Computers LG #103</title>
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<p id="fun">...making Linux just a little more fun!</p>
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<h1>The Foolish Things We Do With Our Computers</h1>
<p id="by"><b>By <A HREF="../authors/okopnik.html">Ben Okopnik</A></b></p>
<p>
<p>"Foolish Things" is a now-and-again compilation that we run based on our
readers' input; once we have several of them assembled in one place, we get
to share them with all of you. If you enjoy reading these cautionary tales
of woe, proud stories of triumph, and just plain weird and fun things that
happen between humans and silicon, that's great; if you have some to share
so that others may enjoy them, even better. Please send them to <a
href="articles@linuxgazette.net">articles@linuxgazette.net</a>.
[ You can even tell us that it happened to A Friend of Yours, and we'll
believe you. ]
<p>
-- Ben
<hr>
<h3>Washing Away Your Sins</h3>
<p id="by"><b>from Brian Duhan</b><br><a href="http://www.locallinux.com">localLINUX, inc.</a></p>
<p>My friend Raj assembled a new computer a couple of years ago and he
still had its mid-tower case laying down on his workbench. While the
machine was on and running he spilled an entire glass of water on the
inside. Luckily he realized what had happened and used his lighting
fast reflexes (learned from hours and hours of video games) to switch
off his power strip almost immediately after the accident. The contents
of the glass hit the motherboard at about the same time as he was able
to turn it off. After a good drying out, the machine works fine and he
sold it to me a few months later (he was going to study for the MCAT;
wanted to get rid of distractions). Since then it has been my main
machine and regularly stays on for months at a time under heavy load.
<hr width="50%">
<h3>A Bolt Out Of The Blue</h3>
<p id="by"><b>from Lou Mariotti</b><br>A1A Internet Cafe</p>
It was a beautiful morning, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping.
I walk up to my computer and see that the screen is blank! I couldn't
believe my eyes. I thought to myself NO!!! Not the video card again. I had
just replaced the video card with an NVidia 32MB. Anyways, I'm looking
around for some reason the monitor is blank. I check the connection to the
tower and all is good. So I decided to use my wits and open up the monitor
to see if maybe the backlight had blown. (By the way, this is a 15" LCD
monitor). So I'm digging around inside and I don't see anything suspicious.
Suddenly, there's a sudden flash of bright light and *whack* I'm blind.
About two minutes later, when I get my sight back, I see my wife on the
computer and using the monitor, which is working fine. She holds up the
A.C. power cord and says, "Forget about this?"
<p>
Rule #1: Women rule this world<br>
Rule #2: Refer to rule 1<br>
<hr width="50%">
<h3>Slipping Between Two Electrons</h3>
<p id="by"><b>from Ben Okopnik</b></p>
<p>A number of years ago, I was teaching a computer repair class in St.
Louis, and ran across a very nasty problem. At that time, Compaq was using
some sort of boot manager that did strange things to the Master Boot
Record on their proprietary (read "expensive") drives. The last day of
the class was when the students actually got to test and repair their
machines (I would gently "break" them in various ways during lunch. :) The
problem was a result of several factors:
<ol>
<li>It turned out that the computer was infected with the 'Stoned' virus
(unsurprising in a rented PC);
<li>'Stoned' modifies the aforementioned MBR to execute itself and then the
boot code - and stores its own code several sectors after the MBR;
<li>The student, being a clever fellow who had listened when I talked about
boot sector virus removal, deleted the virus code and rewrote the MBR...
<li>...which made this Compaq - and as I found out later, any Compaq in
a similar scenario - respond with a <b>"Track 0 bad"</b> error.
</ol>
<p>End of set, end of match, end of game; virus: 1, computer techies: 0.
"Track 0 bad" is almost always a hardware-caused error, one which means
that track 0 - which is the only place where the MBR can live - is damaged,
and the drive is unusable. In this case, I knew better - but the computer
did not, and (of course) refused to recognize the drive.
<p>By this point, all my students had clustered around this poor dead beast
and were looking at me with that "say, aren't you the expert?" look in
their eyes. Ummm, yeah... only the expert had never seen a software-caused
"Track 0" error before (nor, other than Compaqs with that exact problem,
ever again - thanks to the Universe for small favors.)
<p>I tried using Norton DiskEdit, which had pulled my fat from the fire
before. It could see the drive despite what the BIOS said, halleluja!...
but only in "read" mode - even the "/M" (maintenance mode) switch didn't
help. I had the original MBR backed up onto a floppy, but couldn't write
it back. What I needed was for the computer to read a good MBR from the HD
- at which point I would be able to put the original MBR back on. It was a
Catch-22 problem, in the classic manner.
<p>The solution was simple - and simply horrible... but it worked (the
students applauded, at the end.) I took an identical but working drive out
of a similar Compaq - there was only one more in the room - booted the
machine with it, and then, <b>while power was still on</b>, unplugged it
and plugged in the "bad" drive. I was being ultra-careful to not 'stutter'
when making or breaking the connections - the <i>last</i> thing I wanted to
see was a spark! - and I somehow made it, with both drives and the
motherboard surviving the experience (one of my students said that I must
have "slipped in between two electrons".) The machine now "knew" that it
had a good drive, and I was able to rewrite the MBR.
<p>As a side note, I later found out that the Western Digital low-level
format application would wipe the drive clean even though the BIOS didn't
recognize it, which would also have fixed the problem (not that I had one
with me at the time, but this solution was far less risky.) I also met
several repair techs who had thrown away Compaq HDs exhibiting that "Track
0 bad" error. When I told them about my experience, they inevitable cursed
up a storm; IDE hard drives were then brand-new on the market and very
expensive.
<hr width="50%">
<h3>Chillin' Under The Hood</h3>
<p id="by"><b>from Heather "Editor Gal" Stern</b></p>
<p> Linux is cool. FreeBSD is cool. Suns run a little toastier than PCs,
but Sparcs are cool.
<p> Unfortunately, when your server closet really is a converted coat
closet, it doesn't really matter whether you favor PCs or Sparcs. They
do not run cool when they are packed tightly in bread racks. I do mean
literal bread racks - purchased a lot more cheaply from restaurant
supply than the local rackmount shop, or stores specializing in
storage solutions. Is that hum I felt in the metal of the bread rack
really supposed to be there? No, I suspect not. Is it from induction
by the monitors' electromagnetism, or simply static from the waves of
heat warming up this room? It doesn't matter - I recommend wearing
light gloves when working in here.
<p> But packing your systems a bit too tightly, while foolish, is just not
enough of a Foolish Thing to write home about. In such a closet as I
have described, what does seem foolish - now - is what I did when what
little that passed for air conditioning finally gave out. The office
manager had called for maintenance, but it was going to be several days
before they would come to clean and repair vents that should have been
replaced years ago.
<p> There really was *some* clearance. The air conditioning was barely
useful anyway; I figure its best use was air cirulation. The room had a
little table (with yet another computer and monitor on it) and a little
bit of clearance for the sysadmin's chair. So I propped it just so, and
placed a standard household "box" fan on the chair against this table,
pointed at the rack. That helped... a little. It was now possible to
stand behind the bread rack to work on cords without having sweat pour
off of you.
<p> I thought a good blast of cold from the fridge would do me well, right
about then. And I remembered... we have a brick of Blue Ice cooling in
the fridge, from someone's lunchbox. I am not going to be so rude as
to steal the brick that cools someone's lunchbox. But what an idea...
<p> For those of you not familiar with it, "Blue Ice" is thr brand name for
a semi-liquid gel sold in a plastic brick, which can be placed in a
cooler where you might place a small brick of ice, however (1) it weighs
less and (2) it stays in its plastic container. It swells a little but
not a huge amount when frozen. It takes hours to thaw. It was perfect.
<p> So I bought two of these marvels of modern science at the grocery across
the street during lunch, and by late afternoon the server closet was
essentially swamp-cooled, by having air circulate past a cool blue brick
and fed past the otherwise sweltering servers. Because of the swelling
we could tell when to swap the brick for the one in the freezer. It
lasted okay enough for overnights; the servers survived until maintenance
came by.
<p> P.S. Don't forget to wipe the Blue Ice down with a towel before you put
it in or take it out of the freezer, unless you also want the humidity
of the Florida Everglades to go with the jungle temperature.
</p>
<!-- *** BEGIN author bio *** -->
<P>
<P>
<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
<hr>
<P>
<IMG ALT="picture" SRC="../gx/2002/tagbio/ben-okopnik.jpg" WIDTH="199" HEIGHT="200" ALIGN="left" HSPACE="10" VSPACE="10" class="bio">
Ben is the Editor-in-Chief for Linux Gazette and a member of The Answer Gang.
<em>
<p>
Ben was born in Moscow, Russia in 1962. He became interested in electricity
at age six, promptly demonstrated it by sticking a fork into a socket and
starting a fire, and has been falling down technological mineshafts ever
since. He has been working with computers since the Elder Days, when they
had to be built by soldering parts onto printed circuit boards and programs
had to fit into 4k of memory. He would gladly pay good money to any
psychologist who can cure him of the recurrent nightmares.
<p>His subsequent experiences include creating software in nearly a dozen
languages, network and database maintenance during the approach of a
hurricane, and writing articles for publications ranging from sailing
magazines to technological journals. After a seven-year Atlantic/Caribbean
cruise under sail and passages up and down the East coast of the US, he is
currently anchored in St. Augustine, Florida. He works as a technical
instructor for Sun Microsystems and a private Open Source consultant/Web
developer. His current set of hobbies includes flying, yoga, 18th century
reenactment, blacksmithing, sea-shanty singing, and writing; his Palm Pilot
is crammed full of alarms, many of which contain exclamation points.
<p>He has been working with Linux since 1997, and credits it with his complete
loss of interest in waging nuclear warfare on parts of the Pacific Northwest.
</em>
<br CLEAR="all">
<!-- *** END bio *** -->
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Copyright © 2004, Ben Okopnik. Copying license
<a href="http://linuxgazette.net/copying.html">http://linuxgazette.net/copying.html</a>
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<p>
Published in Issue 103 of Linux Gazette, June 2004
</p>
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