BBUS AND BBWN STATUS UPDATE
Good Morning All:
As of 06:30 EDT, All systems are operational, and ONLINE – This weekend, GMP had to do some work to the lines, and replaced a piece of equipment for safety and reliability in our downtown area. On Saturday Morning, this resulted in a planned power outage from Midnight EDT to 0400 on 5/19. Although we have generators for backup power in our buildings, our UPS unit was able to bring our systems down during the prolonged outage. at 0500, I restarted Cardinal, because there was no communication between it and the router, which meant that no one could access the systems. Our UPS unit can keep machines connected to it UP for 20-40 minutes, depending on the charge in its batteries, which is a GOOD thing, because our Generator takes NO PRISONERS when it goes Up and Down, meaning that it can cause system problems because of the fact that there is NO DELAY between the time the Main Power goes DOWN and the Generator comes UP! The purpose of the UPS Unit is to give us time to properly bring machines down without damaging the hardware.
THRUSH RESTORATION
I have been working since May 1st to rebuild Thrush after a virus brought us down. Thanks to a few good friends and a LOT of support from family and friends, we are ALMOST there now. I will now be more careful and make sure stuff is backed up more often, as a system image of the machine was NOT usable, and this means that any newer files I had on the machine were GONE – Cardinal had backups from 2015, so at least I can rebuild from there, and I have the base programs I need for work. (Office, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Acrobat) I can rebuild the rest, because I have it backed up on an external 2TB drive that rides in my case.
LESSON: Be CAREFUL what the heck you DOWNLOAD: The idiots that make these viruses make them look legit as vanilla ICING, and those that are NOT careful could be downloading god knows what – Ransomware is everywhere, and if you buckle and pay the assholes, they will make MORE of this crap – In a later post, I will show you how to make sure that you have critical files for a restore, and will link to a video on how to use WindowsPE – This is a suite of programs that can be used to start the machine with needed programs to diagnose problems and remove threats and make checks of the Operating System. If I would have had this on USB the first time I saw this virus, I may have been able to remove it, but I may have still lost files – That is the RISK you take when downloading.
OTHER NEWS
Last Month, I deployed HURON – She is an Acer Aspire One with a 64bit install of Windows 10 Professional. In the event of a failure, at LEAST I can get online to function – She is loaded with anything I would need to use at work, so I can leave Bluebird on my desk at work. This machine may be small (160 Gig Drive, C-60 Processor) but she is amazingly fast – Welcome HURON! This machine gave me a Windows 10 laptop that was RUNNING during the downtime and reconstruction of THRUSH
New 32GB Bootable Sticks: I have made these for Windows 10 Home, (32 and 64) Windows 10 Professional (32 and 64) Linux (Ubuntu and Debian Jessie) and Windows 10 P(reinstall) E(nvironment) I also have another Acer Aspire One that is loaded with a Version of Debian Jessie, although the system runs slowly, it works – Now I wont feel DITW next time (Dead In The Water)
That’s all from Here for Now 🙂
Buddy
System Admin
BBWN (Dot Com, Dot Org and Dot US)
