[PLUG] the appliance whose name shall not be spoken

[jeff <jeffv@op.net>]

Work has some old SNAP server, long since decommissioned.  We were sold
a bill of goods on this particular (alleged) server, more correctly
referred to as a storage appliance.  It was never supported well by the
mfgr and was a real nightmare for many reasons, the first being some
bizarro linux rights implementation that did NOT play well with a
Windows network.  Plus the web GUI from hell.

Its really good point, aside from availability and RAID5, is its data
security.  It held onto the data so securely that I couldn't remove 25%
of it.  It wouldn't let me, regardless of login.

Taking the back way, I decided to beat up on the volume.  No luck.  Then
I went after the RAID array.  It blew its nose in my general direction.
 As a token, it let me take one drive out.  Yes, folks, this is data
retention at its finest.

Meanwhile, we had a naming party.  The one we settled on caused much
hilarity for the greater part of the evening.  We took steps to make
sure it would never be visible to the network.  And if I were to type it
here, I'd have a bunch of manual xmission-driving geeks chasing me out
of the group (but 8 cylinders always beats 4)  :)

The fellow who sits next to me and knows 10 linux commands because he
HAD TO, turns on the internal SSH server and POOF - there we were,
inside the appliance.  I had root shortly thereafter, largely due to
their hilarious security implementation.

In spite of FTP being switched on via GUI, it wasn't FTP-ing.  This
turned out to be because it wasn't actually running.  I located the
config file and went to edit it.... no nano.... no ted.... (How about
jed?) no jed... not even a DOS edit.  [cue Jaws music] It was time to
face.... VIM.

A lesser man would've wet his pants and run.  A better man would've
sucked it up and faced the enemy.  I chose to locate nano.

Oops... no apt-get.  Uh-oh.
Bloody hell, it's RPM.  Now I have to remember how I did it during my
long two weeks with Red Hat 5.2.... no web browser, barely a connection.
I looked nano up on a workstation and found that it wouldn't be a
problem; I could choose from any of 400 variations of nano, specific to
distro.  Never mind that I didn't know which distro it was.

Uname provided gobs of information.  It told me it was Linux.

And that's were I left it yesterday.  I expect success today, but I will
spend more time trying to avoid vim than I would just doing it.  And
that's me.

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