Vesta

While tux was the most visible server on SkilmNET, there were other machines around the house that ran Linux. One of those was vesta, my old Pentium 90MHz desktop. I converted it over to Linux and it became the gateway router, external DNS server, DHCP server, and NTP server for the network. I loved how much Linux would let me squeeze from old hardware.

SkilmNET DHCP/Testing Server History

• Jan. 29, 2002 - Brought vesta online running Red Hat 6.1 (Kernel 2.2.12-20). Installed/configured Webmin and dhcpd.
• Feb. 2, 2002 - vesta's motherboard had been giving me trouble since Y2K. Apparently, it's BIOS was affected so it thinks it's 2095. While I was at a computer show, someone was selling old motherboards that would fit in vesta. Naturally, I bought one. The board came with a Pentium 100 and 32 MB RAM. I got it and installed it today.
• Feb. 4, 2002 - In an effort to improve performance, I got a new kernel for vesta (2.2.20) and compiled it to specially fit vesta. It ended up REALLY working! My CPU speed rating went from 39.94 bogomips to 199.88 bogomips!
• Feb. 15, 2002 - Set up ntpd. This allows me to coordinate the time on all my computers from a central location. I have yet to figure out all the little nooks of the program, so it isn't quite working yet.
• Feb. 28, 2002 - I just happened to look at the NTP server on vesta today and realized that it is now in sync with the rest of the world! I finally have a working time server! I configured clients on all of the network computers to update their clocks to vesta.
• Mar. 13, 2002 - We had an electrical storm tonight meaning vesta (and the rest of the network) briefly lost power. At the time, vesta was the holder of the all-time SkilmNET uptime record. She had remained functional for over 37 days without a reboot.
• Mar. 20, 2002 - Installed UCD-SNMP on vesta to allow remote monitoring of traffic and other stats.
• Mar. 28, 2002 - vesta's /usr hard disk (the 330MB one) died yesterday, leaving most of the programs on vesta inaccesible. I couldn't even telnet in to fix anything. I ended up swapping the bad drive for a 270MB one I had around, shoring up other hardware issues (floppy drive acting up a little, rearranged some LEDs, etc), I put in some more RAM I'd discovered I had also, bringing vesta up to 40MB there, and I reinstalled Linux, but a newer version (Redhat 6.2).
• May 23, 2002 - I installed BIND 8.2.3 so that vesta can be yet another backup DNS server for the internal network computers.
• May 30, 2002 - Patched a security vulnerability in vesta's DHCP server. I also ended up re-configuring the server so that the default lease is now 14 days instead of 24 hours.
• Oct. 10, 2002 - Updated vesta's kernel to 2.2.22.
• Oct. 22, 2002 - Installed the Seti@Home client on vesta so that it can use it's spare CPU cycles to aid in the search for ET.
• Nov. 23, 2002 - Over the last few days, I've been converting the network over to a configuration that will allow vesta to be the gateway router instead of the old Linksys Etherfast router that was a little limited in what I could get it to do. Having a Linux-based router is not only more "l33t" but it will be much more flexible.
• Feb. 16, 2003 - I recently aquired an old 2.1 GB HDD. I installed it into vesta today. I ended up re-installing and re-configuring vesta to take advantage of the increased hard drive space. When I shut her down, vesta was the all-time uptime record holder for SkilmNET with nearly 85 days since her last reboot!
• Mar. 15, 2003 - After trying to do a kernel upgrade - i.e. something that needed a reboot of the computer - my larger 2.1 GB HDD that I just put in vesta refused to spin up. After messing with it a while, it was clear that the drive was dead. I ended up swapping a few drives around and adding a 4.3 GB in place of the dead drive. All my attempts at re-installing the OS were unsuccessful though, so it'll have to wait.
• Mar. 22, 2003 - I finally got around to re-installing the OS on vesta. I settled on RedHat 7.2. I applied several updates and got her completely re-configured.
• May 17, 2003 - Updated the Kernel to 2.4.20-13 to address a few security issues.
• June 11, 2003 - New Kernel installed. vesta is now running 2.4.20-18 from RedHat.
• July 7, 2003 - Installed new version of Webmin (1.100) remote admin utility.
• July 28, 2003 - Updated kernel to version 2.4.20-19 to address various security issues.
• Aug. 3, 2003 - Applied several security updates. New versions of OpenSSH, WU-FTPD, and NFS Utilities were included.
• Sept. 6, 2003 - Cleaned off vesta completely and did a fresh install of RedHat 9. This gave me a chance to really work out organizing the firewall rules. Ran through the updates as is customary with a re-install.