Requiescat in pieces

[mdlbear]

The YD's desktop computer died in Wednesday's power outage, which lasted about an hour and a half. So did my 8-port GigE switch, apparently, which led to another hour's worth of confusion getting the network back up when I came home in the evening. (I had cleverly turned off the fileserver and my desktop machine from work. If I'd had any sense I'd have sync'ed my to.do file first.)

The YD's Windows machine was the big one, though: it wasn't recognizing her hard drive. The older Windows box in the public area upstairs recognized it just fine, but of course all her files were private. You'd think there'd be a way for an administrator to unprotect a directory, but I'm not a Win$ expert.

What worked, yesterday evening, was putting it in my desktop Linux box and rsyncing it onto both my local hard drive and the YD's external drive. She was delighted to get her homework back.

There was a lot of stress involved in the process, of course, on all sides. I seem to have a very bad habit of saying the YD's name, at increasing volume, to get her attention when she's yelling in panic or frustration; I ought to look for a gentler alternative to shouting her down.

There was also a lot of stress during the network diagnosis and bring-up phase Wednesday evening -- nothing like a housefull of laptop-using family and guests to add pressure to an already frustrating experience.

I'd been sort of looking for an excuse to buy a 16- or 24-port switch, but... I really didn't need the extra expense this month, either.

Comments

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Rather than buy a switch, why not just use a wireless network? Much less expense.

[mdlbear]

For the connections between the file server, the desktop machine that has the backup drive, and the gateway (which also has backups of all the media files), I really like having gigabit.

Besides, the house is already wired, and there is an 802-11g network for laptops.

As for the communication problem

[capplor.livejournal.com]

(A wise friend of mine once said, "Toddlers, teens; it's all the same".) If it isn't a life-or-health-or-immanent-destruction emergency, our standard approach to panic is to very calmly say, "I can't help you until you calm down, and slowly explain the problem." Then patiently wait for it. If there's no need to get information, then "I can't work until you let me concentrate quietly".

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

Walk next to her, gently touch her shoulder or upper arm, and say in a quiet, but firm voice, "I'm listening," or "I'm here to help you if you need it."

Often the upset person will match registers, and will lower her voice to have a calmer communication.

Shouting at a person who is yelling escalates her tension, and activates more panic. They have a harder time "hearing" you, and the brain, with adrenaline activated is "stupider" at making calm decisions.

[mdlbear]

Many thanks! I can probably remember to do that.

[screaming-angel.livejournal.com]

As far as her machine is concerned, if you've got the hardware to do it, I'll be happy to come over and get it installed and going. Just give me a call when things are ready to go, and we can make arrangements.

For the shorter term, I'm glad she was able to salvage her homework. :)

[mdlbear]

Thanks. I have plenty of spare pieces floating around; I should be able to cobble something together by Wednesday.

[aerowolf.livejournal.com]

As administrative user:

Go into Group Policy (poledit.msc). Go to Windows Settings, Security Settings. Ensure that "Administrators" is listed in the "take ownership of files and other objects". If it isn't, add it, and reboot.

Then, once you're back up, right-click the folder, select properties, Ownership, and then 'take ownership'. You may get a statement of the form "Your current permissions do not allow you to view the current access control list, but you may take ownership of the object." If this is the case, then click OK, then 'take ownership', then select Advanced Permissions, set it to Everyone (Full Control), and "replace all permissions on objects contained with inheritable permissions from this object".

A less-annoying way, I believe you found, is to mount it with ntfs-3g on a Mac or Linux box. :)

[mdlbear]

Yeesh. Yeah, I used ntfstools and rsync. Worked fine.