The previous blog entry was written in mid-November last year. Has nothing happened in the meantime? Well, almost nothing... the computer situation here at home remained unchanged: the old NAS functions as storage for all files; the rather faster Home server acts as a conduit, Download server, and DLNA server. To do that, the Home Server has on its own storage a copy of a number of folders that are on the NAS, the contents of which are synchronized with the NAS every day. The DLNA files are only on the NAS because otherwise, it became a bit too much.

The only thing that changed was precisely what had triggered the whole home server thing. Eventually, it came to the point that that motherboard was lulled into a deep sleep every night by means of rtcwake... until that also stopped working. To avoid having to manually start the system every morning, I chose to let the Home server run continuously. It wasn't such a disaster, because if nothing happens, it won't cost a lot of electricity either... From January 12th. until April 5th. the Home server kept running without stopping. The NAS does turn off every night.

On Tuesday, April 5, 2022 we woke up slowly as always. It seemed like a day like any other. The first thing we do early in the morning is to stroll through the digital outside door using our cell phones. And it didn't work that morning! We were cut off from the outside world. And calling, with the landline, was not possible either. What to do then? Well, first turn the router/modem off and on. That didn't change anything. Our provider is a KPN subsidiary and reported no malfunction. Then to find a phone number for the help desk. Fortunately, my desktop still worked, albeit without internet, but at home, the systems worked just fine. When I was looking for our provider's help desk number, I noticed that we had received an email from them the previous night. Hey! That's funny...could that be a coincidence? No, no coincidence... the e-mail said that the modem would receive a software update the following night. The next night had now become the last night. It would be nice if they would send those kinds of emails a few days in advance, and not an hour in advance. It would also have been nice if I had kept my head a little cool. The email also stated that if the updated modem stopped working properly, you should press its reset button. But please note: the factory settings will then also become active. If you're sensible, make sure you've copied the modem/router's settings before resetting... If you're sensible...

Good good. in itself, resetting an ExperiaBox is not a huge problem. You have to establish a link to the ExBox with a fixed line, not via WiFi, and then set it up again. The IP address of the router and the name of the SSID are especially important because everything in the house is programmed based on those settings. And if you do that right, everything works again... the GSMs, the NAS, the fixed telephone line, the TV, the WiFi connection to the desktop, everything... well, except for one thing... the Home server didn't want to run. But it ran continuously, and after a change in the router, you have to reconnect, usually by rebooting. So Homeserver turned off, and turned back on. And then came the next problem... after that reboot, the Home server's power supply ran for about 5 seconds and then stopped. I spent several hours on this, but nothing helped.

So I finally dragged the entire server cabinet down again and put it on the table. Then removed the motherboard and installed the new board, which I wrote about in my previous blog. To make a long story, of one week in total, very short: everything is running as it should again, but now with my Biostar A68N-2100K mini ITX motherboard with 8 GB of DDR3-Drams. So it took almost a week of sighing and moaning...

Good to record all the steps. On an ITX board you must have a power supply plug of 24 pins in total, not 20. The last 4 pins come from an extra plug and that should not be in the connection that is further on the motherboard. For that connector, you use a plug that is mainly intended as an extra power supply for the CPU.
If this plugging process is done properly, you will notice that after a power-on the system turns on, but does not show anything on a monitor. What now? Hmm. Which Drams had I already replaced? Then try the others. And yes... We have a picture and can go into the BIOS...

Different motherboard, so the Ubuntu setup must also be updated. Ubuntu 20.04 with Rufus burned to a USB stick and installation started. Why doesn't it  work? I can't choose to repopulate the OS partition on the SSD with Ubuntu.

I can, however, choose to use the entire SSD as an OS partition... Then I first secure a number of important files from the backup partition. Files such as /etc/ftab and /etc/netplan. I forget smb.conf, but I'll survive that and timeshift.json I don't think about at all... sigh.

The SSD is filled with Ubuntu, but the result was not really good, so do it again. Strangely enough, I can now divide the SSD into several partitions during the installation. The logic of this eludes me, but it worked out in the end! We're running again! Then installed Virtualmin and got samba up and running. Reconstructed the old smb.conf out of my head. And as the last big step timeshift installed and activated after some fiddling. And finally lugged the server back up. Took a week, but then we were "on line" again. Now with a different motherboard, which, as I predicted, has a less powerful CPU than the ION board from before, but still works better due to more and faster memory.

And the best thing is: rtcwake works as it should again and now uses rtc S5 again, in other words, it really switches off the system completely, every night.

It has taken a whole week since our friends from Budget-all-in-1 provided the modem with other software, but in retrospect, I am happy with the result.