@ oddpetal.net Status

This website is currently off-line, pending my getting+installing a new PSU and upgrading the OS+software of the host server.

See, what happened was... I recently completed a cross-country move, and, when I attempted to power up my server in my new home, all I got was a loud bang! (perhaps like a cap exploding in the PSU?) and a quite-acrid smell. And the PSU doesn't power on any more.

I disassembled the PSU to check for damage, but I didn't see anything too obvious (note: the 550-W Enermax PSU, while ~5–6 years old, is quite sturdy and well-built; I didn't take it apart all the way—I basically just took off the top, front, and back side panels). I searched fairly well (I hope) on the motherboard and didn't see anything, either. At this point, I'm hoping and praying that it's just the PSU, not any of the peripherals—especially the HDDs. I mean, I'm fairly sure all the data partitions are in RAID-1 configurations, but I still don't want to have to do any array rebuilding.

Anyway... the next steps are for me to: find+buy+install a new PSU; and power-on and see what happens. Presuming (hoping!) that everything's cool then, I'm planning to back-up everything and do a fresh OS install (I've already done manual upgrades—via YUM, mind you, in "1" [e.g., 7 to 8] increments— from, like, Fedora Core 4 to Fedora 8 or something, and I don't really think it's a great idea to keep that up for 8 to 11, especially considering I purposely don't run any custom-compiled software). After the install, it should just be a matter of me copying/restoring data.

Please stay tuned.


Update, 2009-11-24: I've gotten and installed my new PSU: the Corsair CMPSU-850HX. And it's working wonderfully so far (in fact, I had thought that the server had a faulty power button, but apparently that was just the old PSU glitching). I'm currently working on cleaning out and backing up the entire system, after which I plan to install Fedora 12.