* Originally in crossfire
* Crossposted in FN_SYSOP
* Crossposted in MATZDOBRE
* Crossposted in debate
* Crossposted in WIN95
* Crossposted in Z1C

Hello All!

On Sunday May 25, 2008 I awoke to find the mail hub machine powered down,
my other two systems were ok. All my systems operate with uninteruptable
power supplies and I saw no indication of a overnight power failure, after
all the microwaves clock was still keeping time..

The mail hub machine handles all of my publically accessible operations,
obviously the mail hub itself, the jamnntpd server and bbbs, it was running
under Xandros Linux, a debian variant.

I had recently replaced the machines power supply so I knew that couldnt be
the problem or rather shouldnt so I held my breath and hit the power
button.

It sprung back to life, but I had no X, the GUI environment, all other
aspects of the mail hub, including the jamnntpd server and bbbs were fully
functioning. All attempts to restore the GUI failed. I was able to see that
it was reporting many errors including claiming I had no display, missing
fonts etc..

When I settled on Xandros, I made a stupid mistake by choosing a distro
that charges for it. granted a highly customized distro.. But I was
disturbed that X would all of a sudden go out, it wasnt anything I did, I
hardly use the machine, it runs on auto-pilot most of the time. I do not
know if the system was hacked, the only vulnerability it might have would
be the bbbs web daemon?
Everything else is blocked except for binkd. On the otherhand, why would a
hack disable X and nothing else?

Anyway, not wanting to take any chances, I elected to blow Xandros off the
system and I installed Ubuntu 8.04 on the machine, I looked at Ubuntu early
on before I got Xandros, I forgot why I didnt select it.

But anyway, mail hub ops are mostly back to normal now, but if you had
noticed any outages, this is why.

I still have tweaking to do.

I have to say, Ubuntu's desktop is real nice, clean and lean.

==
Ross
Fidonet Feeds Or Fidonet In Your Newsreader: http://www.easternstar.info
E-mail: ross(at)cassell(dot)us | Blogs/Other Places: http://links.cassell.us
... A Independent: A Democrat who is in denial.
--- GoldED+/W32 1.1.5-30413