On Saturday, June 25, 2011 4:42:55 PM UTC-7, Robert Macy wrote:
Have an old HP LaserJet 5L that is streaking on the page.
The streaks are horizontal [perpendicular] to the paper path.
[and paper feed is problematic]

There are several ways the perpendicular-streak symptom can
be generated. It can be a power or gain fluctuation in
the laser drive (this is rare). It might be a
faulty corona discharge wire/connection; if you can identify
the HV contacts you can clean those with isopropyl alcohol.
it can be a light leak (easy to check, just make test pages
in the dark). And, if toner has made a dirty streak on the
toner cartridge in the past, it MIGHT have transferred a dirty
stripe to the fuser roller. Repetitive streaks tell you the
circumference of the roller that causes this kind of problem.
I've had some luck (not much) cleaning photoconductor drums
with Scotch tape; stick the tape over the deposit, then lift
the tape off and hope the deposit comes with the tape.
Any roller OTHER THAN the photoconductor can be cleaned
with isopropyl alcohol.

For paper feed, clean the pickup rollers (rubbery things that drag the
top sheet of paper) with isopropyl alcohol.

On Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:08:16 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd
wrote:

It might be a
faulty corona discharge wire/connection...

Slight correction. The HP LaserJet 5L does NOT use a corona wire. It
has a "charge roller" inside the toner cart which does the same thing
as a corona wire (apply a charge onto the drum, and later switch to AC
to remove any residual charge).

A picture is worth 1000 Google searches:
http://www.google.com/search?q=charge+roller&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch


--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

On Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:08:16 -0700, whit3rd wrote:

On Saturday, June 25, 2011 4:42:55 PM UTC-7, Robert Macy wrote:
Have an old HP LaserJet 5L that is streaking on the page. The streaks
are horizontal [perpendicular] to the paper path.
[and paper feed is problematic]

There are several ways the perpendicular-streak symptom can be
generated. It can be a power or gain fluctuation in the laser drive
(this is rare). It might be a faulty corona discharge wire/connection;
if you can identify the HV contacts you can clean those with isopropyl
alcohol. it can be a light leak (easy to check, just make test pages in
the dark). And, if toner has made a dirty streak on the toner
cartridge in the past, it MIGHT have transferred a dirty stripe to the
fuser roller. Repetitive streaks tell you the circumference of the
roller that causes this kind of problem. I've had some luck (not much)
cleaning photoconductor drums with Scotch tape; stick the tape over the
deposit, then lift the tape off and hope the deposit comes with the
tape. Any roller OTHER THAN the photoconductor can be cleaned with
isopropyl alcohol.

For paper feed, clean the pickup rollers (rubbery things that drag the
top sheet of paper) with isopropyl alcohol.

I've cleaned lots of 5 HP printer laser prisms and mirrors in industrial
applications. They are very prone to contamination from smoke.



--
Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse

I've cleaned lots of 5 HP printer laser prisms and mirrors in industrial
applications. They are very prone to contamination from smoke.

Interesting experiences....

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On Thu, 30 Jun 2011 01:26:14 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow
wrote:

I've cleaned lots of 5 HP printer laser prisms and mirrors in industrial
applications. They are very prone to contamination from smoke.

Cigarette smog is a big problem with laser optics. When I get a laser
printer that is covered with brown tobacco crud, I have to also tear
apart the laser scanner and clean the optics. It's even worse on a
copier or scanner where I have to clean the mirrors. My worst case is
an auto repair shop, where exhaust fumes and oil gets into everything.

Another day in laser printer hell. This has nothing to do with the OP
problem or the HP 5L, but might be amusing. I was working on an HP
LaserJet 4300dtn that had shredded the fuser driver gear (a common
problem and easy fix). Everything was working fine, until I decided
that the top cover needed cleaning (from my toner loaded
fingerprints). I spray on some 409 household cleaner, and get
interrupted by a phone call. About 2 minutes later, I finish the
call, spray on some more and wipe. I then run a test print and the
output looks like disaster. Very little black, lots of lengthwise
streaks, and a very panicky customer. What happened is that the
design of the 4300 top cover directs any fluids sitting on top
directly into the overpriced toner cartridge. Pulling the cart
confirmed that I had poured cleaner inside. Fortunately, 409 almost
totally evaporates, so it was just a matter of printing some pages,
shaking the cartridge, and printing some more. After about 30 minutes
and 30 pages, it was back to normal.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Sat, 02 Jul 2011 08:18:02 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Thu, 30 Jun 2011 01:26:14 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow
wrote:

I've cleaned lots of 5 HP printer laser prisms and mirrors in industrial
applications. They are very prone to contamination from smoke.

Cigarette smog is a big problem with laser optics. When I get a laser
printer that is covered with brown tobacco crud, I have to also tear
apart the laser scanner and clean the optics. It's even worse on a
copier or scanner where I have to clean the mirrors. My worst case is
an auto repair shop, where exhaust fumes and oil gets into everything.

Another day in laser printer hell. This has nothing to do with the OP
problem or the HP 5L, but might be amusing. I was working on an HP
LaserJet 4300dtn that had shredded the fuser driver gear (a common
problem and easy fix). Everything was working fine, until I decided
that the top cover needed cleaning (from my toner loaded fingerprints).
I spray on some 409 household cleaner, and get interrupted by a phone
call. About 2 minutes later, I finish the call, spray on some more and
wipe. I then run a test print and the output looks like disaster. Very
little black, lots of lengthwise streaks, and a very panicky customer.
What happened is that the design of the 4300 top cover directs any
fluids sitting on top directly into the overpriced toner cartridge.
Pulling the cart confirmed that I had poured cleaner inside.
Fortunately, 409 almost totally evaporates, so it was just a matter of
printing some pages, shaking the cartridge, and printing some more.
After about 30 minutes and 30 pages, it was back to normal.

LOL!. I used to do a lot of industrial clients. Steel cutters and
shapers, platics, rubber etc.. None of the stand alone lasers or networked
suffered cig smoke because it wasn't permitted in the office area. But
access to the offices was directly available to the plant. So the smoke
and fumes little as they may be directly influenced printer optics.
Probably any laser printer but 99% we sold were HP. One steel shaper
plant that cut specific shapes used magnetics to lift steel plate
and put them into the plasma CNC. The office complex attached to the
building was steel studs behind drywall. You could see the stud patterns
on the outside of the drywall outlined from metal particles being
attracted to the now magnetized studs. That was the first fiber job I
did. Ethernet wouldn't work with the high level of EMF to some
workstations 150 at the back end of the shop. So out of the server room
came fiber from the then 10 mbit HP hub with fiber transducer ports.
I later upgraded to 10/100 once we weened them off of Novell.
The environment in the office area was hell. Every time I got a call
and the CEO saw me you could see $$$$$ signs steaming off his head.
Nothing I could do about it except answer the service calls and respond.
I had a Safari van with bins full of replacement parts and usually didn't
have to order stuff. They were completely dependent on CAD going to their
CNC stuff as their orders came in.


--
Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse

On Jun 29, 5:00*pm, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:08:16 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd
wrote:

It might be a
faulty corona discharge wire/connection...

Slight correction. *The HP LaserJet 5L does NOT use a corona wire. *It
has a "charge roller" inside the toner cart which does the same thing
as a corona wire (apply a charge onto the drum, and later switch to AC
to remove any residual charge). *

A picture is worth 1000 Google searches:
http://www.google.com/search?q=charge+roller&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
#http://802.11junk.com* * * * * * *
#http://www.LearnByDestroying.com* * * * * * * AE6KS

Jeff et al,

Thank you for your excellent replies. Google had not provided access
to the usenet groups, for some unknown reason, until now.

Arfa Daily had kindly forwarded the frist responses that got me
started.

Again, the symptom: The streaks were only on the print side, well
sometimes backside too. Thought cartridge was going low and this was
a symptom so just put up with the streaking. Cartridge went so low
that white regions started to appear, so put in another cartridge and
the FIRST page was as good as ever [terrible, with low contrast, but
readable] Then it started streaking on the print side also. The
treaks appeared to be from a fairly small diameter roller. Dark bars,
not necessarily a repeated pattern, but at least every 3/8 to 1/2
inch.

So based upon excellent suggestion, I wiped everything I could get at
from the opening of cartridge access with water. Tremendous amount of
black toner came out. Took 4-5 paper towel sheets before started
being less. Never touched the cartridge. Should I? After reassembly:
put back in cartridge and shut door, nothing worked for a while, made
horrible grinding noises even. Thought wet so waited when kept doing
that, reseated cartridge, closed door, and now, the printer works and
the print appears to be better, less streaking. But still there.

Will keep trying since I've learned I don't damage it much.

On Sun, 03 Jul 2011 09:37:34 -0700, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

Download the service manual for instructions.
http://www.eserviceinfo.com/equipment_mfg/HP_22.html

Oops. Try instead:
http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/reference/manuals/public/hp

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Mon, 4 Jul 2011 10:19:35 -0700 (PDT), Robert Macy
wrote:

Thank you for the fixyourownprinter website! Registered and found
the manual

Moe knows his printers. Of course, we've disagreed on one or two
issues.

I agree the 5L is a piece of garbage. The worst contrast I've ever
seen. However, I inherited the free LaserJet 5L from a client. The
printer contained a cartridge, plus had an additional sealed
cartridge. Can't refuse such a bargain.

Sometimes, I wish I could do the same. I have the really bad habit of
dragging bargains home from the recylers or thrift shops. All are in
need of "just a little repair". All too often, the repair costs
dearly in time and money. When done, I have a working piece of junk.
Like drugs, just say no.

Use it attached to the Win98
for the occasional hard copy (rare requirement) Thus, my budget for a
great printer is zero.

Sigh. Another dinosaur.

Also the same client had 6 of these printers
in storage to be trashed. They upgraded to a whizbang HP printer on
their network, which even printed B size sheets.

My kind of client. A long lost customer grew from a tiny one person
retail establishment, to a major online and brick-n-mortar retailer.
During the growth, the owner was always worried about the latest
upgrade failing in some way that required reverting to the previous
computah system. So, he would either continue to operate the old
system, and store the earlier systems, in working condition. As late
as 2000, I was tinkering with a S100 (Compupro) system. He never had
to go back to the old system, but the security it offered made the
effort worthwhile.

Junk the Windoze 95/98/ME boxes. W2K is worth saving. Or, just run a
small footprint Linux:
http://antix.mepis.org

I'll keep working on this to see if anything comes up that was the
obvious focus of failure causing the streaks. So far, it's like I
just wiped out the interior (which had little toner dust) and the
rollers (which were solid with toner) May have simply stumbled over
the repair solution.

If you can wipe toner from the printed page, then the fuser is not
doing its job. It melts the plastic dust into the paper. If that's
not happening, the fuser is a problem.

Judging from the list of symptoms, the printer has multiple problems.
So far:
1. Toner mess inside.
2. Fuser not getting hot.
3. Dead toner cartridge.
4. Encrusted toner on rollers.
5. Melted toner on the fuser pressure roller.
6. Toner overloaded pressure roller.
7. Possible paper jam (all LJ 5L/6L paper jam).

Thanks again, for jumping in.

I just hate to see a grown man suffer. Defenestrate it (and be sure
to make a video as it hits the ground).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestration

Using the manual from the URL, just printed a Test Page, which only
has horizontal bars [streaks was a bad description] on print side,
with a pattern repeating every 3 inches.

Measure the spacing exactly. 3 inches would be a roller with about a
1 inch diameter (divide the spacing by Pi). I don't have a 5L handy
to measure the various rollers, but find a roller with the proper
diameter. It's not the feed roller as that appears dead center along
the length of the page. At 1" my guess(tm) would be the hot roller in
the fuser.

Each edge of paper has about 3/16 inch uniform ...nevermind, looks
like a 'frame' around the print, part of the Test Page.

Yep. There's a white area around the lines where the printer doesn't
print.

At least now I can use this printer, then fax to increase contrast.

Ummm... clean it out first.

Any idea fwhich roller is responsible for the bars?

Whichever one is about 1" in diameter. Hard to tell from here and I
don't have a 5L handy.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Jul 4, 4:25*pm, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
.....snip.....
My kind of client. *A long lost customer grew from a tiny one person
retail establishment, to a major online and brick-n-mortar retailer.
During the growth, the owner was always worried about the latest
upgrade failing in some way that required reverting to the previous
computah system. *So, he would either continue to operate the old
system, and store the earlier systems, in working condition. *As late
as 2000, I was tinkering with a S100 (Compupro) system. *He never had
to go back to the old system, but the security it offered made the
effort worthwhile.
....snip....
--
Jeff Liebermann * *
150 Felker St #D * *http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann * * AE6KS * *831-336-2558

I like the way this guy thinks. Don't EVER move from point A to point
B without the ability to move back to point A.

Back in the 70's [I think] RCA (or was it GE?) had a recipe for an RF
transistor that was 'knock your socks off' fast, low noise, low power
{for RF] and cheap to make. It was head and shoulders above any
competitor. As you can imagine the demand was incredible. To gear up
Production, the Management built a huge facility with the required
increased through-put capability across the street from the smaller,
original facility. Not sure why, or how, but the original line was
shut down and dismantled before the new line was operational, probably
to save a few coins on the furnaces and clean room equipment to be
used in the new facility. Starting up the new facility, it NEVER
produced product that recreated the specs of the original transistor,
could never make transistors as fast, anywhere near the low noise, and
there was essentially no yield out of any run. In other words, they
had lost the recipe. It is my understanding that no one ever found
out why. Since they had dismantled the original facility, there was
no way to even go back to making smaller quantities to keep hold of
the market. Thus, I always hear ringing in my head, "Don't move from
point A to point B, destroying point A. You may need to return to
point A."

Regards,
Robert

On Tue, 5 Jul 2011 10:05:49 -0700 (PDT), Robert Macy
wrote:

I like the way this guy thinks. Don't EVER move from point A to point
B without the ability to move back to point A.

Only the paranoid survive.

In this case, it was well handled and worthwhile. However, there are
times where it doesn't work. Also in the 1970's I was working for a
marine radio manufactory that had a similar mentality. Whenever
something went wrong, instead of fixing the problem, someone would
always suggest going back to the old way of doing things. For
example, when the fancy new Swiss made wave soldering machine decided
to make a mess of the PCB's, instead of fixing the problem, someone
suggested resurrecting the ancient solder pot out of storage. It took
considerable effort to convince them that there may have been a reason
why it was buried in storage. As soon as the new wave solder machine
was back in action, I was more than happy to assist in emptying the
old solder pot, and delivering it to the local scrap dealer. This was
not done to recover the cost of the solder pot, but to prevent
mis-management from ever making a similar suggestion. Several other
upgrades were followed by intentionally disposing of the old junk to
prevent similar incidents.

I have another customer, with a particularly ancient computer system,
that prints out every invoice, transaction, inventory, etc on a daily
basis. The toll on paper and printers is severe. So much for the
paperless office. However, when the computer crashed, and they were
down for several days while I tried to put Humpty Dumpty back together
out of sparse backup tapes, they were able to continue operating from
the paper copies. According to the owner and staff, it made the paper
pile worthwhile.

Last year, one of my former customers went with a cloud computing
service, dumping me in the process. No loss, but I made sure that the
old system was still functional, even if it wasn't being used (or
paying me). Sure enough, there have been several "regrettable
incidents" that shut down the whole company, and required temporarily
resurrecting the old system. A more spectacular example was another
company, that did something similar, only to get audited by the Feds.
They needed reports from the old system, which they stupidly gave me
to recycle, but instead which I stored for a few months. Premonition
I guess.

These days, I don't work on any machine that I don't first make an
image backup of the hard disk. When I'm done, I make an other. Cheap
insurance.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Jul 5, 11:26*am, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
....snip...
These days, I don't work on any machine that I don't first make an
image backup of the hard disk. *When I'm done, I make an other. *Cheap
insurance.

--
Jeff Liebermann * *
150 Felker St #D * *http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann * * AE6KS * *831-336-2558

Jeff,

I have an OS on an ailing HD. Some key pieces of the initial
installations are missing -- sloppy storage and record keeping. For
archive functionality would like to be able to run the PC from time to
time. The idea is that while HD is working copy it quick.

Is there any free software that will take an image of a relatively
small HD (20GB, I think), place it in a region of a larger HD (say,
40GB), then later move the saved 'image' back onto the proper sections
of a similarly sized HD?

Regards,
Robert

On Wed, 6 Jul 2011 07:47:50 -0700 (PDT), Robert Macy
wrote:

I have an OS on an ailing HD.

Make and model? Is the HD failing with bad sectors, or is the data or
filesystem trashed?

Some key pieces of the initial
installations are missing -- sloppy storage and record keeping. For
archive functionality would like to be able to run the PC from time to
time. The idea is that while HD is working copy it quick.

Is there any free software that will take an image of a relatively
small HD (20GB, I think), place it in a region of a larger HD (say,
40GB), then later move the saved 'image' back onto the proper sections
of a similarly sized HD?

I use Acronis True Image Home 2011 for imaging.
http://www.acronis.com/backup-recovery/
The catch is that it needs a CD or USB flash drive to boot. This
sounds like an old machine that might not have these. For those, I
remove the drive, attach a USB to IDE adapter cable, and do the backup
on a different machine. It is also important to check the setting
that has it ignore bad sectors or this is likely to take a long time.

There are also free image backup programs, but I don't use them.
http://www.clonezilla.org
http://www.partimage.org

Another program I use to recover data from a trashed or failing drive
is:
http://www.restorer2000.com

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Tue, 05 Jul 2011 10:05:49 -0700, Robert Macy wrote:

On Jul 4, 4:25Â*pm, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
....snip.....
My kind of client. Â*A long lost customer grew from a tiny one person
retail establishment, to a major online and brick-n-mortar retailer.
During the growth, the owner was always worried about the latest
upgrade failing in some way that required reverting to the previous
computah system. Â*So, he would either continue to operate the old
system, and store the earlier systems, in working condition. Â*As late
as 2000, I was tinkering with a S100 (Compupro) system. Â*He never had
to go back to the old system, but the security it offered made the
effort worthwhile.
...snip....
--
Jeff Liebermann Â* Â* 150 Felker St #D Â*
Â*http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA
95060http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann Â* Â* AE6KS Â*
Â*831-336-2558

I like the way this guy thinks. Don't EVER move from point A to point B
without the ability to move back to point A.

Yep Jeff is one smart cookie. Redundancy is your friend. I learned that
working on live computer systems for commercial clients that ran 3 shifts
of CNC. Take them down for half an hour is a big deal. Screwing something
up big time and not having a redundancy plan to return before the upgrade
will lose you the client. Happened to me once on an old Novell 3.10 server
running a golf course point of sale system. Upgraded the OS to 3.12 and it
died in the process. Later figured out after a couple hours that the dos
partition was full and that's where the boot files are. Deleted some
orphaned files, re-ran the upgrade and all was fine. Didn't lose the
client but they spent a lot of time entering sales they wrote down on
paper back into the system. I couldn't charge my time ethically so I lost
300 bucks. That taught me a good lesson.



--
Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse

On Wed, 6 Jul 2011 22:23:35 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow
wrote:

Redundancy is your friend.

Well, not exactly. Cover thy ass, backups, and disk images are best.
RAID, mirroring, and tape backup are the road to hell. Been there,
done them all, and learned some really expensive lessons.

I learned that
working on live computer systems for commercial clients that ran 3 shifts
of CNC.

Ugh. Don't remind me. I had a customer running some APT program on
Lisa Xenix. They had two Lisa machines so theoretically, I was
protected. However, the system as stable as a house of playing cards.
Since Lisa Xenix wasn't getting updated, I didn't have that nightmare.
Instead, I had hardware failures, corrupted filesystems, and just
plain bad luck. So, to cover myself, it was:
find . -depth -print | cpio -odB | compress | \
rcmd machine_name "dd of=/dev/rStp0"
before attacking. That saved my posterior more times than I care to
admit.

Take them down for half an hour is a big deal.

I tried every variation of being considerate and nothing worked. Even
showing up at 2AM to do maintenance at the local hospital was a
problem. So, I went the other direction. I decided that I would set
the maintenance schedule and to hell with anyone that dared to
interfere. After checking with management, I would send out email and
post signs indicating that at 5:00PM, the servers would be down for
maintenance. At 5:00PM exactly, I would invoke the sacred
incantations:
sync; sync; haltsys
and wait for the screaming to start. Invariably, someone had files
open, or unsaved data. I didn't care. Trust me, it works far better
than trying to be considerate.

Screwing something
up big time and not having a redundancy plan to return before the upgrade
will lose you the client. Happened to me once on an old Novell 3.10 server
running a golf course point of sale system. Upgraded the OS to 3.12 and it
died in the process. Later figured out after a couple hours that the dos
partition was full and that's where the boot files are.

Ummm.... I think you mean 3.11. There was no 3.10. Next time, check
your disksapce with Volinfo and clean up marked for deletion files
with the purge command. Going from Novell 3.11 to 3.12 was a not
major project but did require having quite a bit of empty disk space.
incidentally, I have a (non-paying) customer running 3.12 on a 4GB
drive.

Deleted some
orphaned files, re-ran the upgrade and all was fine. Didn't lose the
client but they spent a lot of time entering sales they wrote down on
paper back into the system. I couldn't charge my time ethically so I lost
300 bucks. That taught me a good lesson.

Well, if you only did that once, it's probably not a major disaster.
In my case, I'm always finding new ways to burn my time. Todays mess
is a classic. Virus infected laptop. Customer wants me to save some
of the junk in the Documents dumpster. She said it was ok to reformat
and start over, so I didn't see any reason to remove the virus. I
copy the files to a USB flash drive, and shove the flash drive into my
main office machine with the intent of scanning for viruses. I didn't
have to scan as autorun.exe conveniently installed the virus on my
machine. It took me about two hours to get rid of it (mostly spent
scanning). Argh.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

On Wed, 06 Jul 2011 17:28:01 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Wed, 6 Jul 2011 22:23:35 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow
wrote:

Redundancy is your friend.

Well, not exactly. Cover thy ass, backups, and disk images are best.
RAID, mirroring, and tape backup are the road to hell. Been there, done
them all, and learned some really expensive lessons.

Redundancy means cover thy ass. Any way you can. Had my fair share of the
Dell PERC2 RAID controller battery failures and complete loss of RAID
containers. Dead Fujitsu drives on the second day of service for a
Poweredge server. I could go one and one...

I learned that
working on live computer systems for commercial clients that ran 3
shifts of CNC.

Ugh. Don't remind me. I had a customer running some APT program on
Lisa Xenix. They had two Lisa machines so theoretically, I was
protected. However, the system as stable as a house of playing cards.
Since Lisa Xenix wasn't getting updated, I didn't have that nightmare.
Instead, I had hardware failures, corrupted filesystems, and just plain
bad luck. So, to cover myself, it was:
find . -depth -print | cpio -odB | compress | \ rcmd machine_name "dd
of=/dev/rStp0"
before attacking. That saved my posterior more times than I care to
admit.

Most I remember about Xenix it was an AT&T product I think. Mine is all
NT4 server, NT4 Hydra, NT4 Terminal Server with Exchange, Citrix
Metaframe,
Windows Server 2k, 2003, Novell 3xx, 4.xx. BSD and linux for routers
(before the hardware appliances) Cobalt Cube mail servers, managed
switches, fiber the whole shebang.

Take them down for half an hour is a big deal.

I tried every variation of being considerate and nothing worked. Even
showing up at 2AM to do maintenance at the local hospital was a problem.
So, I went the other direction. I decided that I would set the
maintenance schedule and to hell with anyone that dared to interfere.
After checking with management, I would send out email and post signs
indicating that at 5:00PM, the servers would be down for maintenance.
At 5:00PM exactly, I would invoke the sacred incantations:
sync; sync; haltsys
and wait for the screaming to start. Invariably, someone had files
open, or unsaved data. I didn't care. Trust me, it works far better
than trying to be considerate.

Most of my nets were hybrid Novell/Windows. I sent a message to the
Novell clients to inform upon an impending shutdown so people could
save their work. Hell I charged by the hour so it didn't matter to me how
long I waited for everyone to back out. I could tell who was still in and
what files were open from the Novell server. I also had to do backups onto
Travan with open files for the corp systems running CNC 24/7. Skipping
open files wasn't an option. 21 tapes rotated weekely, one kept off site.
I never had an issue with viruses or malware. New virus definitions were
automatically deployed from the server running CA.

Screwing something
up big time and not having a redundancy plan to return before the
upgrade will lose you the client. Happened to me once on an old Novell
3.10 server running a golf course point of sale system. Upgraded the OS
to 3.12 and it died in the process. Later figured out after a couple
hours that the dos partition was full and that's where the boot files
are.

Ummm.... I think you mean 3.11. There was no 3.10. Next time, check
your disksapce with Volinfo and clean up marked for deletion files with
the purge command. Going from Novell 3.11 to 3.12 was a not major
project but did require having quite a bit of empty disk space.
incidentally, I have a (non-paying) customer running 3.12 on a 4GB
drive.

My bad, 3.11. Yeah I didn't check first. My mistake. I had been thrust
into Novell because the Novell guy quit after only two weeks training me.
I was learning Terminal Server at the same time. We had one problem
Terminal server where this guy didn't put the server into the install mode
before installing Exchange server on it. What a f'ing nightmare it was
rectifying all the errors. Took Microsoft paid support. After that it
never worked right. Memory leaks galore. I eventaully wiped it, Poweredge
2300? RAID 5 box dual Pentium 2's at 266 mhz IIRC LOL! The Novell 3.12
server was the same hardware. They ran FaxPress on it. Them people at the
steel plant expected me to be their god. It was rough for sure and I'm
sure you know the story. Everyone had their own special need. I'm trying
to link Macola ODBC, Pervasive SQL workstation clients with MS ODBC with
third party modules, FaxPress functions for faxing and emailing out of
Exchange with one keystroke. Stuff like that. Nightmare.

Deleted some
orphaned files, re-ran the upgrade and all was fine. Didn't lose the
client but they spent a lot of time entering sales they wrote down on
paper back into the system. I couldn't charge my time ethically so I
lost 300 bucks. That taught me a good lesson.

Well, if you only did that once, it's probably not a major disaster. In
my case, I'm always finding new ways to burn my time. Todays mess is a
classic. Virus infected laptop. Customer wants me to save some of the
junk in the Documents dumpster. She said it was ok to reformat and
start over, so I didn't see any reason to remove the virus. I copy the
files to a USB flash drive, and shove the flash drive into my main
office machine with the intent of scanning for viruses. I didn't have
to scan as autorun.exe conveniently installed the virus on my machine.
It took me about two hours to get rid of it (mostly spent scanning).
Argh.

LOL...sorry I use Win 7 inside Oracle Virtual machine for such things.
Have an install of Malwarebytes and Sophos on it. I don't do anything in
Windows except to keep it handy for remembering how it works. I do have a
netbook with Win 7 on it but hell I hardly use it. Mandriva 2010.2 is my
main OS, I love going to pages where they try to upload and run malware
like that virus checker crap. I feel very safe using linux. My first
linux box was a Slackware 3.xx box used without x-windows for a cable
modem router in my home. Again before the Linksys appliances were on the
market. Had to find experimental drivers for the 3Com 305 10/100 network
interfaces so that tells you how long ago that was



--
Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse

On Thu, 7 Jul 2011 02:05:58 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow
wrote:

On Wed, 06 Jul 2011 17:28:01 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Wed, 6 Jul 2011 22:23:35 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow
wrote:

Redundancy is your friend.

Well, not exactly. Cover thy ass, backups, and disk images are best.
RAID, mirroring, and tape backup are the road to hell. Been there, done
them all, and learned some really expensive lessons.

Redundancy means cover thy ass. Any way you can.

Well, ok. I'll use your definition. If I have two identical drives,
each 90% reliable, how reliable are two of such drives?
0.9 * 0.9 = 0.81 = 81% reliable.
If I have a RAID array of 4 drives, with the same reliability, it
would be:
0.9 * 0.9 * 0.9 * 0.9 = 66%
The data might still be safe or recoverable, but limping along with
one drive is not acceptable. Even worse is that identical drives tend
to fail identically. The point where I gave up on the RAID idea was
when I had 2 out of 4 drives fail within 2 weeks, and there were
indications that the other 3 drives (RAID 1+0 with parity 5 drive
array) would soon follow. I was lucky was able to replace all the
drives before they all failed.

I had previously purchased several identical drives as spares when the
RAID array was first installed. The plan was to use them as
replacements in order to keep the rotational sync problem to a
minimum. The drives just sat on my shelf. When I crammed two of them
into the RAID array as replacements, they started showing signs of
impending failure. Just what I didn't need was a fundamentally
unreliable array of drives.

Had my fair share of the
Dell PERC2 RAID controller battery failures and complete loss of RAID
containers. Dead Fujitsu drives on the second day of service for a
Poweredge server. I could go one and one...

Argh. The AMI or LSI Logic controllers use a proprietary parity
algorithm that is just short of being encrypted. Of course, LSI Logic
won't divulge the details and Dell claims it's not a problem. Various
companies have reverse engineered the system thus allowing uses to
make a backup. You can always tell that there's a problem, if there
are companies specializing in recovering RAID data:
http://www.raidrecoverylabs.com/dell_data_recovery/
http://www.raidrecoveryguide.com

Most I remember about Xenix it was an AT&T product I think.

Nope. Originally a Microsloth product, which was almost immediately
taken over by SCO (Santa Cruz Operations). At one point, it was also
sold by IBM. I still have one customer using Xenix 2.3.4 on a 386.
Totally reliable for late 1980's character based applications.

You're probably thinking of AT&T Unix SysV and others.

Mine is all
NT4 server, NT4 Hydra, NT4 Terminal Server with Exchange, Citrix
Metaframe,
Windows Server 2k, 2003, Novell 3xx, 4.xx. BSD and linux for routers
(before the hardware appliances) Cobalt Cube mail servers, managed
switches, fiber the whole shebang.

All for one company? Seems like a rather strange mix of server
operating systems. Ever consider reducing the number of OS's in order
to simplify maintenance?

Most of my nets were hybrid Novell/Windows. I sent a message to the
Novell clients to inform upon an impending shutdown so people could
save their work. Hell I charged by the hour so it didn't matter to me how
long I waited for everyone to back out.

I mostly charge by the hour, but I also had some service contracts. My
problem was that I would usually book several service calls per day.
An extra hour at the morning customer, would cut into the time I had
allocated for the later customers. I didn't care if it took longer,
but only if I could leave at my predicted time. Also, if I left it to
the customer to declare that the computer was can't be shut down, it
would be more like several hours delay.

My mistake. I had been thrust
into Novell because the Novell guy quit after only two weeks training me.

I got into Novell when all the local consultants decided the company
was a loser after Novell unilaterally tweaked the relationship in
their favor. I decided to give it a try, which worked until Novell
started insisting on expensive certifications and bizarre financial
requirements. I bailed, but managed to keep a few Novell customers.
Mid 1990's I think, maybe.

Them people at the
steel plant expected me to be their god.

Naw, I don't look good in a toga.

Everyone had their own special need. I'm trying
to link Macola ODBC, Pervasive SQL workstation clients with MS ODBC with
third party modules, FaxPress functions for faxing and emailing out of
Exchange with one keystroke. Stuff like that. Nightmare.

That is a nightmare. I've seen it happen and do everything I can to
prevent application proliferation. Every new hire has their own
favorite application that just has to be installed immediately.
Fortunately, I was dealing mostly with Unix/Xenix boxes, where choices
of the major applications were fairly limited. At the time, I would
have sold my immoral soul for a VM type system, where I could
sequester individual users and their strange applications in their
very own private pig pen, and let them wallow in their own bugs.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Thu, 07 Jul 2011 08:11:36 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Thu, 7 Jul 2011 02:05:58 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow
wrote:

On Wed, 06 Jul 2011 17:28:01 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Wed, 6 Jul 2011 22:23:35 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow
wrote:

Redundancy is your friend.

Well, not exactly. Cover thy ass, backups, and disk images are best.
RAID, mirroring, and tape backup are the road to hell. Been there,
done them all, and learned some really expensive lessons.

Redundancy means cover thy ass. Any way you can.

Well, ok. I'll use your definition. If I have two identical drives,
each 90% reliable, how reliable are two of such drives?
0.9 * 0.9 = 0.81 = 81% reliable.
If I have a RAID array of 4 drives, with the same reliability, it would
be:
0.9 * 0.9 * 0.9 * 0.9 = 66%
The data might still be safe or recoverable, but limping along with one
drive is not acceptable. Even worse is that identical drives tend to
fail identically. The point where I gave up on the RAID idea was when I
had 2 out of 4 drives fail within 2 weeks, and there were indications
that the other 3 drives (RAID 1+0 with parity 5 drive array) would soon
follow. I was lucky was able to replace all the drives before they all
failed.

I had previously purchased several identical drives as spares when the
RAID array was first installed. The plan was to use them as
replacements in order to keep the rotational sync problem to a minimum.
The drives just sat on my shelf. When I crammed two of them into the
RAID array as replacements, they started showing signs of impending
failure. Just what I didn't need was a fundamentally unreliable array
of drives.

Had my fair share of the
Dell PERC2 RAID controller battery failures and complete loss of RAID
containers. Dead Fujitsu drives on the second day of service for a
Poweredge server. I could go one and one...

Argh. The AMI or LSI Logic controllers use a proprietary parity
algorithm that is just short of being encrypted. Of course, LSI Logic
won't divulge the details and Dell claims it's not a problem. Various
companies have reverse engineered the system thus allowing uses to make
a backup. You can always tell that there's a problem, if there are
companies specializing in recovering RAID data:
http://www.raidrecoverylabs.com/dell_data_recovery/
http://www.raidrecoveryguide.com

The one most remembered was a Poweredge controller with RAID 5.
The owner shut it down over the winter against advice and without my
knowledge. It's a golf course and vacated for 5 month a year.
I was unaware of the battery problem in the controller but that
didn't matter. Once the configuration is gone in the controller
there is no way to restore the lost container. Luckily they did
back their data up the week before shutting the server down. I created a
new container, installed W2K Server and the point of sale software
and SQL server. Some ODBC stuff, their sales and price data restored
and they were ready to reenter any changes made after the backup.
It was a fairly elaborate system for me. Touch screen terminals
and receipt printers for 4 point of sales and two outdoor starter
gazebos. A connection to a Windows XP PC running two phone cards
for dial in course reservation bookings. So there was quite a bit going
on. I re-did the entire system previously running Novell 3.12, TCNS
and DOS workstations. Also added a 2 channel 64k ISDN to the network. The
fastest they could get at the location.


Most I remember about Xenix it was an AT&T product I think.

Nope. Originally a Microsloth product, which was almost immediately
taken over by SCO (Santa Cruz Operations). At one point, it was also
sold by IBM. I still have one customer using Xenix 2.3.4 on a 386.
Totally reliable for late 1980's character based applications.

You're probably thinking of AT&T Unix SysV and others.

I knew I read it somewhere in the past:
Xenix is a version of the Unix operating system, licensed by Microsoft
from AT&T in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) later
acquired exclusive ...

AT&T was the original developer.


Mine is all
NT4 server, NT4 Hydra, NT4 Terminal Server with Exchange, Citrix
Metaframe,
Windows Server 2k, 2003, Novell 3xx, 4.xx. BSD and linux for routers
(before the hardware appliances) Cobalt Cube mail servers, managed
switches, fiber the whole shebang.

All for one company? Seems like a rather strange mix of server
operating systems. Ever consider reducing the number of OS's in order
to simplify maintenance?

No no no no no. Just my experience, and a considerable amount of
experimentation.

I had to work around the needs of the network, the current business
software, and if that software could be ported over to Windows.
I wanted to do away with all the Novell stuff but a lot of people were
running their business suites that were not fully ported for Windows yet.
I remember one company that tried to switch their Macola suite over to
Windows. A rep from the company came with her own server to do the
conversion. It failed. Macola makes you sign a release stating they
can't be sued for problems with their product. So we gave up on the
switch. I got fed up with the CEO and CFO of the company wanting me
to try to figure out all these damn ODBC connections so they could fax
stuff directly from the CAD department and a long list of other near
impossible database crap of similar nature. Some companies charged a
couple hundred bucks for each ODBC driver. And they wouldn't send you
a sample to see if it would work without paying the full price.
I got tired of all the torture, free support, gray hairs and turned
that client over to a friend who had some resources I didn't in writing
database stuff.

Most of my nets were hybrid Novell/Windows. I sent a message to the
Novell clients to inform upon an impending shutdown so people could save
their work. Hell I charged by the hour so it didn't matter to me how
long I waited for everyone to back out.

I mostly charge by the hour, but I also had some service contracts. My
problem was that I would usually book several service calls per day. An
extra hour at the morning customer, would cut into the time I had
allocated for the later customers. I didn't care if it took longer, but
only if I could leave at my predicted time. Also, if I left it to the
customer to declare that the computer was can't be shut down, it would
be more like several hours delay.

Whatever works. We didn't have contracts. Hell most of these clients
didn't even have a budget for IT. So I usually designated the most
computer savvy person with the highest worker ranking to do scheduled
stuff an proper server reboots when needed.

My mistake. I had been thrust
into Novell because the Novell guy quit after only two weeks training
me.

I got into Novell when all the local consultants decided the company was
a loser after Novell unilaterally tweaked the relationship in their
favor. I decided to give it a try, which worked until Novell started
insisting on expensive certifications and bizarre financial
requirements. I bailed, but managed to keep a few Novell customers. Mid
1990's I think, maybe.

I never got past 4.xx. A couple non-profit organizations were running it
on Compaq Prosignia and Proliant. Had one commercial running two Proliant
cluster servers. Once I saw where version 5 was going I bailed.

Them people at the
steel plant expected me to be their god.

Naw, I don't look good in a toga.

The receptionist at one printing firm used to bow to me when I walked
through the front door. Windows 2K, NT4 servers in the back for the
Appletalk storage in CAD to printing. They made custom banners up to 12
feet wide IIRC.

Everyone had their own special need. I'm trying to link Macola ODBC,
Pervasive SQL workstation clients with MS ODBC with third party modules,
FaxPress functions for faxing and emailing out of Exchange with one
keystroke. Stuff like that. Nightmare.

That is a nightmare. I've seen it happen and do everything I can to
prevent application proliferation. Every new hire has their own
favorite application that just has to be installed immediately.
Fortunately, I was dealing mostly with Unix/Xenix boxes, where choices
of the major applications were fairly limited. At the time, I would
have sold my immoral soul for a VM type system, where I could sequester
individual users and their strange applications in their very own
private pig pen, and let them wallow in their own bugs.

I really got to hate these CFO/CEO that had some computer savvy and
wanted stuff to integrate this and that way. I was happy to dream at night
about the way it was with one Novell server and diskless workstations
booting off the server images. Once windows 98, W2K and XP it was utter
chaos.



--
Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse