Robroy's photos will be unavailable for a few hours today.

[Ranchero50]

Robroy doesn't let on, but he's a networking superhero on his day job. #50 is supposed to be his batcar when finished (no seriously, think bumpside geeksquad smasher).

If you doubt his superhero powers, he helped me get my DOS driven CNC mill talking to my Windows PC's via a TCI/IP wired network.

Jamie

[flyboy71]

Robroy doesn't let on, but he's a networking superhero on his day job. #50 is supposed to be his batcar when finished (no seriously, think bumpside geeksquad smasher).

If you doubt his superhero powers, he helped me get my DOS driven CNC mill talking to my Windows PC's via a TCI/IP wired network.

Jamie

Yeah but can you program it via 4G from your smartphone plus do the laundry and dishes and feed the dog while on vacation in Cancun? I think not!

[BobbyFord]

Robroy doesn't let on, but he's a networking superhero on his day job. #50 is supposed to be his batcar when finished (no seriously, think bumpside geeksquad smasher).

If you doubt his superhero powers, he helped me get my DOS driven CNC mill talking to my Windows PC's via a TCI/IP wired network.

Jamie

True story. The guy is a computer WHIZ He's also a humble, generous man. Thanks, Robroy.

[flyboy71]

Im hoping my son keeps up with his interest in computers and programming. So far he is on the right track.

[Mancar1]

I've got some xtra bailing wire and bubble gum if ya need it. I know just what you are talking about

[robroy]

Good morning Scott, Robert, BiggDogg, Jamie, Jeff, Bobby, and ManCar1, thanks for your great replies!

Wow, I didn't think so many people would read this and be curious enough to post! And thanks for the kind praise, but I don't deserve it! It's hard to be a brick-layer without learning a little bit about bricks; it's just my job.

Jeff, that's great that your son is interested in this stuff! Depending on his specific interests I might be able to give you some suggestions for helping him to get even more motivated. Send me a PM if you want!

In case anybody's still curious, I'll explain this in general terms.

I powered off my two servers to move them from one room to another, and my Web/mail/DNS server never came back up!

These servers are nothing more than two computers that I leave running all the time. The Web part means that it's running the software that's on the answering end when programs like Internet Explorer load Web pages. The mail part mean that it's running software that sends e-mails back and forth between other computers over the Internet. And the DNS software is the stuff that converts hostnames, like "www.fordification.com," to "IP addresses" (numbers) like 66.96.134.29. Computers use the numbers to figure out how to reach each other, kind of like we we use phone books to look up people's phone numbers.

So the Web part sends images and videos and stuff from http://www.robroygregg.com to y'alls Web browsers, the mail part makes my robroygregg.com e-mail address work, and the DNS part lets other computers on the Internet figure out how to reach mine.

Wikipedia "Web Server" article.
Wikipedia "Mail Server" article.
Wikipedia "DNS Server" article.

It's a ten-year-old Sun Blade 100 (the early UltraSPARC IIe model) running OpenBSD/sparc64 4.5.

This is a description of one of those two computers that I moved (this is the one that failed). Here's an image I found of one of these computers (this isn't mine, but mine looks exactly like this):



This computer was made and sold by Sun Microsystems starting in Summer 2000. It was the first-ever affordable Sun computer at a starting price of about $1,000. Previous to this, their most affordable computer started at around $5,000, which is one reason why very few people had them at home.

UltraSPARC IIe is the model of its main chip (also known as "the processor," and also known as "the CPU"). Effectively, this isn't much more than a fancy pocket calculator. It plugs in to the computer's main circuit board (also known as the "mainboard," or the "motherboard"). It can do addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and it can remember numbers. Everything the computer does is distilled down to large quantities of these basic operations.

My reason for mentioning this chip is that after a while, these Sun Blade 100 computers started coming with a "UltraSPARC IIi" chip, which was faster and used more electricity. The main thing about the "UltraSPARC IIe" is that it's really power efficient. When it's loafing, which is at least 90% of the time, it uses only a few Watts. And it's maximum power consumption is only 35 Watts. Many newer computer chips can use over 100 Watts!

OpenBSD/sparc64 4.5 refers to the operating system software that it ran, which fills the role that Microsoft Windows fills on most computers. "OpenBSD" is the name of the operating system software, "sparc64" is the operating system edition that's made for this type of computer, and "4.5" is its revision level.

OpenBSD belongs to a class of operating system software called Unix. Many people like to use Unix on their computers instead of Microsoft Windows because once you learn how to use it, it's actually easier to customize and keep running over long periods of time. Once it's set up, it has a strong tendency to keep going without causing problems--often for five years or longer. So it can be simpler in the long run.

I was one of maybe fifty guys at The Santa Cruz Operation that worked on another kind of Unix, off-and-on from Winter 1999 to Fall 2005.

The Sun Microsystems Wikipedia article.
This part of the Sun article that talks about this type of computer.
The OpenBSD Wikipedia article.
The Unix Wikipedia article.

To get things back up in the meanwhile, I've made an ESXi virtual machine running OpenBSD/amd64 4.8.

ESXi is the name of a computer operating system product made by VMware Inc. in Palo Alto, California. I was one of several hundred guys working on this product at VMware from July 2006 to July 2009.

ESXi stands for (E)lastic (S)ky Xi. About six years ago VMware hired some fancy artist to invent two colors to use in their advertisements, and the artist came up with a blue color and an orange color. The name chosen to describe the blue color was "Elastic Sky." This also became the name of a musical band that a group of VMware employees started. The "X" was tacked on to the acronym to make it look cool--it has no meaning. And the "i" is also an arbitrary part of the product name.

Unlike other computer operating systems with Microsoft Windows and different kinds of Unix, ESXi is a special-purpose operating system. It wasn't made to do all the general stuff that people do, like Web browsing, playing games or sending e-mails.

Its special purpose is that it allows a single computer to run multiple operating systems at one time, and have them all active and usable at once. So once you've loaded ESXi on to your computer, you can install on top of that multiple copies of operating systems. For instance, you could run five separate editions of Windows and several kinds of Unix all at the same time.

This might be hard to grasp, but it does this by implementing a real computer in software instead of nuts-and-bolts. Then operating systems can be installed and run in these "software computers." These "software computers" are called "virtual machines."

The main reason people want to do this is that most computers in the world sit idle almost all of the time. And as computers get faster, this is becoming increasingly true. So a single physical computer is now capable of doing much more than people typically make use of. They're capable of doing such a huge amount of work so quickly, in fact, that it's possible to take the work that used by require twenty computers, and get a single modern computer to do it all by itself.

So the special purpose of this ESXi operating system product is to make it easier to replace a bunch of old computers with a single new, powerful computer. That can save a lot of electricity!

To replace the failed Sun Blade 100 computer, I installed the OpenBSD operating system in one of these ESXi "virtual machines." ESXi itself is running on a modern computer that's much more powerful than the Sun Blade 100.

The VMware ESX Server Wikipedia article.
The Virtual Machine Wikipedia article.

Current Status:

• The Web/mail/DNS software's up and running now.
• All photos and videos that I posted prior to October 17th are now available again. That's when I did my last backup.
• I'm gradually restoring the few videos and photos that I posted more recently. Most of them I still have copies of, although there are a few images that I'll need to re-make.
• This old Sun Blade 100 has more or less "bit the dust." I'll want to get it working again ultimately, to use it as a toy, but I won't put it back in service again.

Scott, Robert, BiggDogg, Jamie, Jeff, Bobby, and ManCar1, thanks for your excellent replies!
Robroy

[cozadlance2]

love the pics!! love the threads. you are one of the ones who always helps if possible... u rock, dude!

[robroy]

Good evening CozadLance2 and Frank, thanks for your kind replies,

Tomorrow the power company will have the whole area turned off from 7AM to 4PM Pacific Time. I'm turning stuff off now just in case they get a head start! Photos will re-appear tomorrow when the power's back.

Thanks very much!
Robroy

[robroy]

Good day,

In case anybody has a mind to blow off the thick dust layer I've let grow on my old threads today, I thought I'd mention a photo and video outage. The photos and videos in my threads will be unavailable for a few hours today, and then they'll be back.

For the computer fans among you, I'm updating the computer from VMware ESXi 4.0 to 5.1. I'm doing this now because I forgot its root password, and there's no other easy way to reset it to something new.

Happy Saturday to y'all,

Robroy