7 days ago SCSI disk on ubuntu-hr.org server died. It was an 8 years old IBM disk. It died a day before a scheduled meeting about plans for Edgy translation. On that meeting we agreed about what hardware we are going to buy to replace that disk and we've actually collected money for this task.
Next day I went to local IT stores to buy IDE disk, but none of them had 300GB IDE disk. They were all SATA. But that server was from pre-SATA age, so buying SATA disk would mean buying SATA controller. All right, I buyed two SATA disks (with RAID1 on my mind) and went in a quest for SATA controller. Sure, there were controller for 200-300 euros. But I'm not going to buy an 8 port controller for two disks, not yet. I searched for one two-port 3ware controller that was around 80-90 euros. But, I couldn't find it in any store. Actually, only controller I've found was a no-name for less than 30 euros. Right, like that's going to work. But it was that or 8 port gorilla. So, I buyed that non-name controller and called a colleague from work to meet me in city center for a coup of coffee (most of our clients were still on vacation, so we had lots of free time).
His answer was "Sure, it's not like we can work now, our building's on fire.". And there it was, two apartments above our office were in flame, and we were looking fire fighters pumping water in that building. Water and computers don't mix. Since there wasn't anything we can do, I packed my disks and cheap controller and went to faculty to restore ubuntu-hr.org portal.
After 2 hours of trying I've smashed that no-name controller against the wall :). I buyed a new one; Highpoint. It was the last SATA controller under 100 euros with it's manufacturer actually having a web site :)
Dapper doesn't support that controller but this isn't a big problem since there are open source drivers and it was easy to include it in installation and make everything work. Since it was 9PM, I've decided to continue installation next day.
Luckly, our office wasn't damaged and we were able to work in it, if you ignore the smell :) ubuntu-hr.org was back on line too, so with new SATA disks in mirror, I synced whole archive to disks. Day after I've applied it for a official Croatian mirror, which it did became, on that same day.
So, week started with birthday, ended with official ubuntu mirror, but everything between those two days wasn't funny. At all.
