oldspeak

Drawing up a list of criteria, and researching possible candidates, for a hardware purchase is an increasingly time-consuming process. Especially if the device in question is to be running Linux. Increasingly, reviewers trot out page after page of arbitrary statistics for things most of us will never attempt — instead of answering the important questions. Whilst it is pleasing to know that a reviewer has successfully installed the device to a point where it can be demonstrated in this way, sometimes it would be more useful to know exactly how this was done.

Take for example the subject of this article, the search for a replacement for an Intel D945GCLF motherboard that was struggling to fulfil some of the (possibly inappropriate) tasks thrust upon it.

Ever run snmpwalk on an SNMP-enabled device and been disappointed by the available information? There may well be a very simple reason for that.

The Net-SNMP implementation of the SNMP stack has some default settings that may be far from optimal in many cases. Specifically, the snmpwalk and snmpbulkwalk applications poll only a specific subset of the full MIB tree.

After the changes of last week things were still not quite right. The WET would still periodically fail, usually only for a few seconds, but sometimes for much longer. I began to suspect that this was an external problem; something in the house was interfering with the signal.

After a few days of monitoring the link, I could find no correlation between the intermittent failures and changes in the local environment. Back to the proverbial drawing board.

Following a recent rearrangement, I found a number of my computers on the wrong side of the lounge and a solid wall from the ADSL router. The layout of the room, and the solid floors and walls, ruled out running cables but with a wireless access point already in place, running the incomparable Tomato Firmware, the solution was obvious: Install a second wireless router (with Tomato naturally) and make the connection that way.

After writing so confidently about finding a fix for the earlier kernel problems with an Intel D945GCLF board, it returned with a vengeance shortly afterwards. Frustration finally won the day and a completely fresh install followed.