It's time for the computer to have a Kick Boxing lesson!

Today was one of those joyous days where little goes to plan, you know the type of day I mean. Where thousands of pounds of computer equipment behaves like a petulant child, steadfastly refusing to do anything that you want it to do.

I’m normally of the “I’ll just check a few things out then have an other go persuasion”, but today nearly put an end to all that. The problem was quite simple, build a Logical Domain on an Oracle/Sun server. Starting yesterday we overcame several minor problems, incorrect IP addresses and the like and got to a position where all that had to be done was the LDOM builds.

On the first attempt at the build, the error message was “No Disk” – a quick check revealed that the system was lying. The second attempt provided the same error message, on the third attempt the machine decided that there was disk but there wasn’t any space available except when it started it says that there was lots of disk available. Over a period of four hours there were all kinds of permutations but the end result was the same, the system just wouldn’t build – even my friend Google didn’t seem to have the answer.

Then when I got to the “Sod it” moment the system started to build, but it was only because it knew that I was going to give up and go to the Pub. The joy was very short lived as an hour later I was sitting in the Pub, crying into my beer the system still refusing to build properly. Had the system been closer it would now be a small misshapen lump of steel, still there is a chance that it will spontaneously combust (if there is any justice in the world).

It’s a sad day when a systems admin is outsmarted by one of his systems, the type of day where you leave the office wondering – Will it always be like this?