.. title: My status with Debian
.. slug: 5
.. date: 2004-10-12 17:08:23
.. tags: computers, debian, bluesock

<p>
  I have Debian GNU/Linux happily running on my laptop, though my laptop
  is pretty pokey (it's an Inspiron 7000 that I bought in 1998).
</p>
<p>
  My server at Serverbeach (bluesock.org) runs Debian and it was doing
  fine until the kernel switched the / mount to read-only and then died.
  Rebooting caused the server to fsck everything and I lost /var/lib
  and /var/cache...  Then things got pretty interesting for a few hours.
  My friend gave me a tarball of his /var/lib (minus some random stuff)
  and from that and some useful files in /var/backup, I was able to
  bring most of the server back to life.  Additionally, I found some
  of the files that were missing in lost+found.  Tawdry things like
  mailing list archives dating back to 2000.  Time to institute a more
  rigorous backup system that includes more data....
</p>
<p>
  My dad loaned me one of his monster servers (see figure 1) because it
  was non-functional.  My roommate pulled all the stuff out and put it
  back in again and now it works fine...  Not clear what the actual
  issue was.  Anyhow, once I get it booting, I'm going to slap Debian
  on that machine and start using it for development.  Then I'll switch
  my pokey laptop to mirroring/backing-up bluesock.org.
</p>
<p>
  I've been really happy with Debian.  As happy as I was with Gentoo, except
  I don't have to wait hours for X and various other large things to compile.
</p>
<pre style="border: 1pt solid #000">
   ____
  ||__||   <---- server
  ||__||
  |    |
  |    |
  |____|   . <-- me

</pre>
<p>
  <i>figure 1: an ascii picture of me standing next to the server</i>
</p>