Oh, f*ck

[tigerfort]

Last night, the Sheevaplug that functions as my house mail/web server crashed hard. It's done that a couple of times before, due to overheating, and has rebooted happily once I've let it cool down. Not this time. I'm pretty sure overheating (thus ultimately me, for forgetting about the need to let it have some airflow for cooling) is to blame on this occasion, but there's no indication of activity except for the power light - the status indicator doesn't come on, and it doesn't respond to network or serial traffic.

I'm thus currently burning a Debian netinst CD for a hurried conversion of the one old machine I didn't get rid of recently into (hopefully) a functional if much larger, noisier, and more power-hungry replacement. Of course, the last time I did any meaningful Debian configuration was when I set up the plug, around three years ago. I wonder how much I can remember in a real hurry....

ETA: and when I say "currently burning", what I actually mean is "about to go to the shops because all the writeable media in the house are in fact dead of old age so that I can burn".

ETA2: this also, of course, means that I'm currently only getting mail that's sent to Chiark; anything else will go on hold (if your email provider is sane) or into the bit bucket (otherwise).

Comments

[ceb]

Oh no! Hope you get sorted out without too much hassle...

[tigerfort]

It could definitely have been worse. And, as noted in the tags, "my private email server has crashed" is definitely a first-world problem. If I decide I'm happy with the Pi, I suspect I'll wind up getting a spare to prevent repetitions of this panic.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Maybe you should publish your currently-not-working email address so that the rest of us can test the sanity of our email providers ;)

This crashed bit of kit sounds like a whole heap of faff for you, I hope you get it fettled soon.

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

I'll consider your suggestion, should it happen again :)

[emperor]

Urgh. Will your standby-machine boot off usb-stick?

[tigerfort.livejournal.com]

Short answer: not sure.

Long Answer: not sure about the machine (it's of an age where such things were possible but not guaranteed), and the only USB stick readily to hand was one that at least one machine had refused to boot from in the past. I did in fact decide to give it a try, and it was after writing the iso to the USB stick that I realised I had no way of getting video output from that machine :)