Tech Notes from the Field

So, what were you headaches this week? We all get them! I had one when the weather went from dry, to almost normal, back to dry again. That was a one day actual headache. The daily grind headaches were power supplies and WideOrbit configurations.

The easy fix was the power supplies for my Nautel NV20s. Yes, these are those two which were installed Dec. 2008. Still running strong, but as it ages, those power supplies tire out. What is awesome is they are easy to swap out. Pull one out, put one in. Done. Like taking Advil, pain gone.

WideOrbit on the other hand is a different story. This is combined with the fact that Jelli/Katz shipped new hardware to replace the aging appliances. I changed from 5 separate servers to 2 servers. I got them babies installed and audio plugged in. I changed the ports configured for the WO Device Server. I give Traffic the go ahead to schedule them tests. ALL OF THEM FAILED.

Well, they worked before, so I checked the configurations again. Dug into the actual WO Device Server configuration file on each workstation and what do I find? Instead of changing the “entry” for the configured port, it appended a new one! WTF I say. Check with a colleague and sure enough that is what he has been fighting for months while the pair were nailing down the metadata feeds. Every time you make a change, it doesn’t change anything, it appends the damn thing. Argh.

Last night I thought I had it, and I only received dead air on one station. Sure enough, appended change. Then Jelli and I agreed to move/swap two stations so everyone’s docs matched up. I did a test. Nothing. Wait, I checked and cleaned up the file. Oh, no, there is another line in there which referred to the OLD entry! Things like this makes you want to bash your head against a wall to fix the headache. I corrected those, so we will see how these two stations run tomorrow morning.

I’m saving the last as it has the most complex configuration file as the station uses GPIO along with metadata and Jelli. Best to pick on it separately.

I hope your headaches are easy to resolve and treat. Speaking of treats, Halloween was pretty quiet last night. Remember that next year it will be the weekend, so all Hell will break loose!

Cheers!