[SoCoSA/discuss] Looking for someone to rebuild a server

[Steve S.]

On 8/13/06, Walter Hansen <gandalf at sonic.net> wrote:
> Ruth Harris wrote:
> > Hi Folks,
> >
> > I took a contract job helping reorganize some of the administration at a
> > company in Sebastopl. The collegue who made the connection for me sold me
> > as someone who is not afraid of computers. As a result, along with taking
> > over the HR responsabilites, and working on special projects, I became the
> > in house sys op. My prior experience with networking has been my home
> > network which consists of two Macs on a router. We do have an outside
> > consultant who comes in when I am over my head and has taught me some of
> > the basics. Other than that, it's just me and a copy of Networking for
> > Dummies that is getting us by.
> >
> > A few weeks ago the server crashed and since then has been having
> > recurrent authentication problems. Sometimes one can log on if the name
> > and password have been entered enough times or the password gets reset,
> > etc. and sometimes it takes creating a new user identity. Our outside
> > consultant says the server became corrupted in the crash and needs a
> > rebuild, but he's leaving town for six weeks and will be unable to do it.
> > I know I don't want to go there, so do you know of anyone who might be
> > able to handle a job such as this?  On a weekend of course.
> >
> > Ruth
>
> To even know what their tacking, the person would need to know what OS
> the server is using (version also) and what the specs are on the
> hardware. Also what serving functions does it provide. I'm not saying
> I'm your guy or anything, I'm quite busy, but without that data nobody
> is really going to know if they can do what you want or not.

Agreed.

I'll also note that "Our outside consultant says the server became
corrupted in the crash and needs a rebuild" sounds like a database
rebuild, to me; i.e. there's a SQL server or some such, driving the
backend of the user-authentication that's being so problematic; the db
(presumably) got corrupted in a system crash...

So, in addition to "what OS" &c I'd want the /exact/ specs and
version-numbers of the authentication service (Radius?) and backend
database (MS-SQL?  MySQL?  Etc...)


- Steve S.