Server upgrades haven't been so smooth lately. We've been upgrading the Iodynamics core servers to Fedora Core 4, but it just seems like every upgrade we do something goes wrong.

Today, for example, Adam and I are upgrading what is, perhaps, the most essential server for the company: castro. I decided we should upgrade some hardware while we're at it and maybe that was a bad move on my part. Maybe we should have stuck with the hardware that had been working fine.

It's raining outside.

Anyway, we threw in a new motherboard and CPU and started the reinstall process with FC4. As soon as the drive formatting was complete and the install was about to start... Kernel panic. It happened every time.

The panic message said something about journalling. That indicates to me there's a problem with the kernel's interaction with the ext3 filesystems on the hard disks. Very strange considering the hard disks have been running fine.

Adam and I thought maybe the problem was due to bad memory (which was also odd considering the memory was also in the previous motherboard). We ran a memory test regardless. No errors.

The CPU temperature was pretty high: 85° C. The fan was seated well and turning when the system was turned on. The heatsink was getting real hot. Very weird.

I just sent Adam to a local computer store to get two new hard drives, more RAM, some thermal goo, and possibly a new fan. We'll see how it turns out.

(Time passes.)

Adam returned. We attached the new hard drives (SATA drives to replace the aging PATA drives) and the motherboard's onboard SATA controller BIOS won't POST. We tried EVERYTHING to get that SATA BIOS to POST and it wouldn't. We even used a USB keychain drive to update the BIOS on the motherboard, but that didn't seem to affect anything (i.e. it was already running the latest and greatest BIOS.)

So. Adam set out again... this time, to our office, to get yet-another motherboard -- one that we know works because Adam's been using it in his workstation at the office.

It's been nearly five hours since we started. Hopefully, this will be the last hurdle.