I thought this was it – well it wasn’t…
This weekend I put everything together again: the server and all four harddisks (one system hdd and three data hdds in RAID 5). I put the server in the closet where it usually resides and powered it up. Then I tried to connect to it, but nothing happend…
The problem – as I could diagnose after dragging the beast back to screen and keyboard – was that it was hanging in grub, asking me which kernel to boot since obviously I had interrupted the last boot process…
Today I finally soldered a serial communication cable between my server and the SmartUPS 900 which is essential in the fluctuating power grid which Vattenfall operates here in Uppsala. Before I just relied on the UPS to be powerful enough to get my server over all the small glitches and black outs, but with the new start of the server I also wanted to get full control over the UPS. The UPS is now monitored by apcupsd.
Warning message from my UPS: replace the batteries...
But the very first thing I had to discover was that obviously I need to get a new set of batteries. These batteries have been only running since I moved to Uppsala in September 2006 – I would have expected a slightly longer lifetime… A new set of batteries (there are four of these inside the UPS if I remember it correctly) will set me back another SEK 1200:- while a newer UPS with a single battery costs slightly less. However, I have no idea what those replacement batteries would then cost or how long they would last.
Hrmm that was weird, my comment got eaten. Anyway I wanted to say that it???ê?ès nice to know that an individual else also mentioned this as I had trouble finding the very same info elsewhere. This was the first location that told me the answer.