So when I had ‘rented’ (yes, rented, I don’t own the box this site sits on, I mearly lease it…) this server I ran apt-get upgrade to take care of updating several items on the server and I could have sworn that I masked out the kernel packages. Apparently, i didn’t and apt removed the kernel images and stuff needed to boot. Yar. Not good.

As would happen, I had to reboot and the box would not come back up. My wonderful host looked at it and told me what was wrong, offered to copy my data to a slave drive and reinstall the system from scratch. You would have thought that since this server was up for less than a month, this would be a freebie, but no, they wanted me to pony up $69 for this wonderful service. Mind you, they couldn’t get a kernel on there to get the system booted again to what it once was.

Me, being remarkably resourceful, and knowing a thing or two about admining a debian install (three years as tech support for a web hosting company I figured I could do what they couldn’t, so I had them boot it with a live cd and give me an ip address I could access the box from.

So armed with the ip address, the root password they created and knowledge of google and apt-get I logged on to the box on Saturday morning and ran a simple command:

apt-get install kernel-image-2.6.18-i386

and with in less than ten minutes the kernel had been replaced and I was ready for them to reboot the box minus the cdrom.

Mind you, it must have worked because you’re reading this today… and I still have my $69.

There’s a really good article over at the IBM developer site on automating OS Switching. From their site:

Switch from one operating system to another — without manual intervention — by following these step-by-step instructions for enabling a dual-boot machine. Duplicate this setup for running both Linux® and Windows® on your own machine with the scripts provided with this article.

Why would you want to do this automatically when doing it manually is straightforward enough? The simple answer is that an automated process makes it a lot easier to use multiple operating systems. If you test software on multiple operating system platforms, for example, this ability is especially useful.

Makes sense to me, but then I have three oS’s installed anyways. Of course, i need to warn you this is not for the week of heart!

I’m fed up with comcast. We bought my in-laws house from them in January 06. We’d been living in it since 2004. We had transfered all the bills to either mine or amy’s name except for Comcast (cable). The reason we hadn’t transfered it is because it isn’t as easy as it should have been. Now, if I had my father in law’s drivers license I could have taken it and a bill to one of the comcast stores and done it that way…. otherwise, he had to call, cancel the account and then i had to sign up for a new account. You’d think they could just change the name and SSN on the account.

I started this process on Tuesday. I spoke to a nice lady who was able to actually help me. She took the old account down, brought the new account up and even called me once this was done to give me the new account number. However, when I got home, we had no service. Apparently, since there was now a balance due on the old account (for the half of a month’s service) that had to be paid before the new account could be brought up on the existing hardware, otherwise, I’d have to have someone come out to install new service (WHICH MAKES NO SENSE TO ME). So, I pay the balance, call back and apparently, it takes a business day for payments to come up in their system. So we’re with out internet and cable for another day. Or so I thought.

I was able to disconnect the digital boxes from the cable and plug the cable directly to the TV and we had cable tv. w00t. No internet, but at least we could watch our shows. I call back on Wednesday, manage to get the digital cable on and then learn that there is a problem with new internet service and that it could take up to 24 hours. Well, while talking with the support guy on the phone, it turns out he lives kind of around the corner from us (which was nice to hear in this day of outsourced support) and some how we started talking about real estate in our area and how the prices on new houses can vary so greatly from one neighborhood to the next. It was kind of a random conversation to have with a support call… however he was able to get the issue resolved and by lunch on Thursday we had internet! God Save the King!!