Gateway is down.

My default LAN gateway has been down since Sunday, apparently (no emails have been coming in since that day, so...). I thought it went down Monday.

I couldn't fix it on Monday, because I had to work on Board Meeting reports all day... erroneous billing from 4R, delays on the TB spreadsheet by MCAJr, etc.

Tuesday (2 days downtime): I started to observe what the problem is. I noticed that upon bootup, the computer is quick until it hits the initialization of eth1. So I thought, it might be a dead LAN card. So I replaced it with a similar model (Davicom Cnet Pro200). To no avail. Still snail-paced from that point I mentioned, and for ever until it is forcefully shut down (unplugged).

I tried 4 LAN cards in different combinations, no improvement whatsoever.

So I tried my work PC. I transferred the hard disk of the gateway to it, but I still couldn't access it. I kept getting tx timeouts. So I thought the Cnet LAN cards weren't compatible with the dual-core CPU... but I couldn't pursue this line...

I decided to install Endian Firewall Community 2.2 RC2 (latest available)... but I still couldn't access the PC thru the network! WTH???!! This was when I noticed that the Fortigate which was functioning as the switch for the gateway was very hot. Looks like it needs to get a dose of compressed air... I also noticed that the activity LED lights went off whenever I manipulate the gateway's UTP cable/plug, so I tried another LAN cable. Voila! I could access the gateway thru the network now, ALBEIT intermittently. I think it was due to the overheated Fortigate. :-(

I hoped it was only the LAN cable which was causing the problem, but when I tried to re-attach the old gateway PC to the network, it was still going like a snail when it hit the eth1 init. Sigh...

Perhaps I'll just go with EFW 2.2 RC2 tomorrow... after all, they say it already has a DNS server, which was the only thing lacking in the old version, and this prevented me from using it on the gateway...

I'm crossing my fingers...

Today I was able to run BCMS thru a ssh tunnel, while at work. Man, I thought I was accessing it from our new PLDT DSL account to our old Bayantel DSL account! I was very ecstatic!

Unfortunately, it was short-lived joy.

I tried opening up ssh on my gateway/firewall to my home DSL IP and to my new DSL account, to no avail.

I was able to login to a bash shell from home ONCE, though. Unfortunately, I didn't save the tunnel and I didn't know I could set one up on the fly, so I wasn't able to test mysql-front.

After a few more hours of trying to get back in, to no avail, I have given up.

I'll continue "the fight" tomorrow.

Today I learned from a PLUG post that greylisting is the MOST EFFECTIVE front-line defense against SPAM.

So I searched for ways on how to make postfix use greylisting and found some instructions.

I followed one of them informal user-made how-to's and, upon finishing, discovered that my postfix was too old (ver 1.1.12 or something) and that I need version 2.0.xx or later to be able to use greylisting. I decided not to pursue this for now.

Whoa! After two years and change, I'm back! Again! Hopefully, for good this time.

My new server (at work) will be delivered on Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2006. I'll be using it as a dedicated MySQL database server. Hopefully, it will serve well all our payment centers along with the main offices, once I get them all connected. I'm so excited about that... :-)

I've learned a lot about Linux since my last post. Well, I should, it's been two years!

Unfortunately, I cannot recall everything at the moment to blog it. :-(

Suffice it to say, though, that one doesn't need certifications to be able to administer and maintain a few mission-critical servers successfully and reliably.

Wow, it's been several months since I started this blog (and my 2nd and last post, hehe)!

I've been pretty busy at work, that's why I couldn't even post here.

I've not learned a new "thing" about Linux, but I have been slowly but steadily learning more on the existing apps/tools on my servers.

Soon, I will install Linux on one of my home computers, so I can learn faster.

During my hiatus of 7+ months I attempted to install MRTG on our office gateway, but I couldn't finish it, because my web server is BEHIND my gateway/firewall machine, and my users should be able to access their mail thru the internet. My firewall rules include ROUTING web requests from the external network to the internal web server.

I hope I can get more help on this soon, I want to see graphs of our bandwidth usage, they'd be kewl to show my boss. :-)

Oh, by the way, I also created a tripod-hosted weblog 'coz I lost the link to this one. That blog will contain all my accomplished tasks at the office, for my boss to see (that I am a good sys admin). Check it out : my Tripod weblog.

So, it's time to log my linux experience yesterday.

I was trying to install NIS in preparation for separating the web and email server from our file server. I followed instructions on the HOWTO file I've downloaded. I've finished the master server side, but when I was configuring the first NIS slave server, I got to the part where I needed to create a startup file or something, using nisinit, but I couldn't find it anywhere!

That's it. I think I really am being forced to learn LDAP... It just seems so difficult to learn, I don't know where to begin!

Okay, so I've bitten the bullet and signed up with Blogger for my own blog. Sadly, though, I found the free time to do this signing up just after office hours, so now I don't have time to do my intended post.

So I guess I'll start tomorrow afternoon, as I am on leave for the morning for my firstborn's First Communion. Initially I didn't want to attend it because of so much work at the office, but now that I've blogged it, I think it's cool to witness him take his first host. :-)

That's it, cya tomorrow.