Yup, gotta be the hardware, I think...

Can't figure out any other reason right now that segmentation fault 11 errors AND panics occur. And when the make/make install is issued in /usr/ports for perl, it crashes almost immediately. Then another make will get it to go farther. Then another makes it farther. Then, unexpected errors occur.

Oh, well. I suppose I can waste time with my friends when this chore is done. Must get perl to work!

make install whine

What a day. First, the Clover school's theory professor whined about how he couldn't get Asterisk to work on a hard drive on one of his overpowered (but underfunctional) computers while we students looked up the answers FOR HIM, and now my IDS hardware appears to be flaking out.

Yesterday, I installed FreeBSD on one of the machines designated for use as a sensor. Today, it decided all checksums were completely invalid and then something decided to fandango on core.

I'm installing Windows 98 on the drive, then I'll install FreeBSD back on top of it.

I love computers. I just don't love when they misbehave suddenly and without warning. I know that Sguil works because I've seen it and I've implemented it at a site or two. It's just a matter at this point in having the time to fight with hardware and software issues. I love FreeBSD. I just don't love how it comes to an anxiety-attack style halt and can no longer function without having a boot to the head. I love Sguil unconditionally.

Is it maybe that I've got a big ol' USB device attached to it when I'm attempting to download and untar the ports collection? This is the same machine that won't reboot if same USB device is attached...

I dream of restore

In order to accomplish more in a shorter period of time, I decided to try to image the working Sguil drive for one location so as to reuse the good stuff elsewhere. Paragon's Drive Backup ESE didn't like the fact that the drive to be copied was BSD. Kept complaining my Linux drive was "invalid". Ghosting using Norton Ghost was similarly unsuccessful.

Bummed, but still determined to make this work, I Googled for a solution.

Dump and restore? Native to FreeBSD, which means no complaints about "invalid Linux" partitions. But will it work for what I need?

I decided to test it out. And I'm still testing. But something interesting happened last night.

Some background: I'm still working full-time and going to school full-time, on top of the wedding planning and mommy duties. When I sleep, it's a welcome change. I'm also sick with the stuff that's going around and have just acquired a prescription for amoxycillin.

This morning I woke up at a quarter to five with "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles in the echoes of my mind's ears. (Wait, do minds have ears? You know what I mean!) Fading from just behind my eyes:

"restore -r -f - /dev/ad0s1a".

The last time I dreamt in code, it was Assembly back when I was learning mainframe programming. This is a good thing, since it was right around then everything went "click". Another year with FreeBSD and I might be able to put it down on my resume.