First, a PSA: Please do a backup of all your data, if you haven’t done one in the last week!
A good daily backup over the network saved my behind this week, after a hard drive crash on our home “server”. My data was safe, though, I do have some rebuilding of the operating systems to do (Yes, systems, the server is a virtual machine).
I had the craziest time trying to get the time in the VM to stay in sync with the universe. There are many posts on the web about a dozen different tricks and settings for making the time in a Linux VM work properly. In my case, I think it turned out to be a simple problem, I didn’t have VMWare Tools automatically starting at boot time.
This page gave me the hints I needed: http://www.sonoracomm.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=54&Itemid=32
I had to do a song and dance to restore my DAR2 backup, but, generally I’m happy. I still can’t access SME Server’s “/server-manager” web based GUI… that may be the next post on the PSI blog.
Background: My home server runs SME Server, formerly known as E-smith, from contribs.org. I’ve been running this Linux based, server bundle for years, maybe even a decade. However, a couple years ago, I migrated it into a virtual machine to reduce the number of computers that are running 24×7 at home.
Epilog: It might be time to do RAID at home. Backups are good, but reconfiguration of a highly customized computer still takes a while.