* * * * *
Knocking on silicon
It's Sunday, and I go to check my email, only I can't. For some reason, the
mouse isn't moving to the Linux screen [1]. Odd. Perhaps Synergy [2] crashed
or something, so it's good thing I also have a KVM (Keyboard,Video, Mouse)
switch installed as well. Only the keyboard isn't working [3].
Sigh.
Swapping the keyboard connections on the KVM didn't work. Plugging in the
keyboard cable for the Mac into the Linux system didn't work.
Sigh.
Okay, let's try rebooting. Only the machine didn't come back up [4].
Sunday had been bad enough. I decided not to think about the computer at all.
Until today.
It was a rough few days and not without some panic. While I do have a backup
of the files on the machine, it's a few months out of date, and the backup
drive is a native Linux file system, so even if I had a current backup, I
wouldn't be able to read it on the Mac (Important note: transfer some
critical files to the Mac). And I run my own DNS (Domain Name Service) server
on the Linux box, so I had to work around that for a few days.
It turns out the computer is mostly fine—it's just the video card got fried
somehow. And now I'm having to:
1. set up a regular backup scheme;
2. find a replacement video card;
3. and get used to one screen in the meantime …
[1]
gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2009/06/15.1
[2]
https://symless.com/synergy
[3]
gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2021/08/18.2
[4]
gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2021/08/18.1
Email author at
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