On 8/17 I did a remote Debian 40r0 update to the piece of crap IBM box that runs EXPERIMENTAL II.
I think Debian dropped the ball on this round of updates. A new kernel (in my case 2.6.18-5-686) was installed, but the reboot notification did not appear. When the server entered a period of quiet time I rebooted it and it did not come back up.
Not much I could do. I was at work and EXP II was at home. Sucks to be Hinky.
The same update on a variety of other boxes and VMs had the same problem (no reboot notification), but EXP II was the only one that did not come back up.
Then I remembered the RaLink rt61 wireless driver.
Ooops.
It doesn't come stock with the Linux kernel and if you upgrade the kernel, you have to recompile the driver. Not a big deal, but it completely slipped my mind, or what's left of it.
Since EXP II run headless in the corner of the Dink Family rumpus room and connects to DinkNet wirelessly, doing anything at all to it is a Major Operation™.
But I girded my loins (heh), unplugged it, and dragged it over to the workbench to recompile the rt61 driver.
Huh. No headers for the new kernel. You'd think those would come with the new kernel, but no. So I got those, ran make install, and rebooted.
Son of a bitch overwrote my interfaces file and set it up for DHCP. I don't have any any philosophical issues with DHCP but in my experience these RaLink drivers just don't do DHCP well.
Fixed that, rebooted again, checked everything out, shut 'er down, shoved it back into the corner, powered up, and let 'er rip.
I love this shit. Gives me something to do.
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