A week without XTension

[Steve Hume]

It all started with the install of the last Tiger security update on  
my Server, an up till now trusty 10 year old "Beige G3" with a 533MHz  
upgrade. It died on reboot and was resuscitated and in a Coma with  
directory index blockage that the best Apple Disk Doctors declared as  
incurable.

I was using XPostFacto to run Tiger on it and this led to the first  
complex surgery. First I ran a Data Rescue on the drive to save the  
latest files as it was my active Mail and Web server and this proved  
useful in the end as today I am finally mostly recovered without  
having lost anything other than uptime. The next surgeon called was  
DiskWarrior which rebuilt a directory in 2 3-hour operations. The  
first operation failed as my rescue firewire boot drive had energy  
saver settings that activated in the middle of a recovery since  
DiskWarrior does not check in with the OS often enough. I fixed the  
energy saver settings to stay awake and a second 3-hour Disk Warrior  
repair was successful.

This was a one day outage and now I volunteered to try the new  
XTension beta as a G3 Tiger regression test, while waiting for the new  
X2Web toys.

James delivered, and I installed the "666" build and things were fine.  
My mind is fuzzy after a week of "Unix command line" but the Server  
fell deaf with directory index blockage again.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting  
different results."
Albert Einstein

So....... I have to do plan B. My server is now on life support using  
a Firewire boot drive with another Disk Warrior operation so that I  
can copy mail directories again. I have yet to pull the plug or put a  
new disk in it.

My 6-year old "QuickSilver 2002" drew the short straw ( I couldn't get  
my kids to trade for it ) and it was in the line of succession to take  
over XTension, Master of the House, duties. It now is running the  
house a week later.

It took a week because some things are more critical than XTension,  
believe it or not. I leave enough manual switch control, like the  
Kitchen, so as not to die an early death myself in such a circumstance.

My QuickSilver was already Leopard but I needed to rebuild many server  
items. For the curious, DNS, SurgeMail, Clamav, Apache2 (macports),  
Perl stuff, MovableType, Webmin, SSL certs moved, IPNetSentry,  
WhistleBlower (still works James!), PureFTPd, XTension, WeeXTX, new  
Keyspan, X2Web(new beta, now I have some real Leopard feedback for  
James; to be mailed separately), fastcgi, WebDAV, Retrospect  
configuration, MySQL,Move my iTunes Library to another drive.

My family actually missed XTension and is now coming to me with  
remarks that it is working again. My front porch lights just stayed on  
at 10% all week as no one is ever in charge of turning them on or off.  
Now they brighten up as doors are opened and go off in the daytime.

We are so used to leaving the basement without turning off the stairs  
light that it too stayed on for most of the week. Fortunately, the  
kids woke up as my wife's "Slow Dawn" light was out of commission.  
That light also is normally turned off a night and stops my wife from  
reading too late; considered a good feature that was missed. No "rope  
lights", so more careful navigation was required in the darkness.

The garage lights no longer came on when putting out trash. The kids  
could not use their remote keychain switches to put out their lights  
before bed. The family room lights needed to be plugged in manually.  
The HEPA air cleaner did not come on with the furnace fan.

Now things are back to normal, and I am even getting requests for  
better algorithms on the family room lights. The new X2Web is  
installed and I am ready to move forward again. The irony is that now  
the server is fully TimeMachine. I still do not wish a directory index  
blockage on anyone but, I am probably better prepared for the next one.

There was never a question of not using XTension, just supportive  
waiting for it to be back again.

Steve Hume