Care and Booting of the Workstations

Reporting Problems

If a workstation doesn't appear to be working, switch the workstation and the monitor off, wait ten seconds, and then switch the workstation and the monitor back on. If the workstation does not automatically reboot and run FreeBSD, send mail to root to report the problem. Please give the number of the workstation, and be as specific as you can about what is wrong.

Leave the Workstations and Monitors On

The workstations should be left on and running FreeBSD when nobody is using them. If FreeBSD is already running, there is no need to do anything when you leave -- just go. If you were using Windows, and there isn't anyone waiting to use Windows on the same machine, reboot the machine as described below. FreeBSD will load automatically.

The monitors will also probably be happiest in the long run if they are left on when nobody is using them, as long as FreeBSD is running. The FreeBSD console has a screen saver that switches the monitors into a special power-saver mode after they have been idle for five minutes. The monitor will switch back into normal mode in a few seconds after any key is pressed, or if any messages are output to the system console.

Most of the equipment in Room 2128 is connected to a large uninterruptable power supply (UPS) located in the server area. This unit provides power conditioning to protect against surges and brownouts that may damage the workstations. It will also continue to run the lab during power outages of a few minutes duration.

Booting the Workstations

Most people using the Lab will probably be using FreeBSD, so if everybody follows the procedures above, there usually won't be any need to reboot the workstations. However, occasionally there may be a hardware or software problem which requires that the workstation be rebooted. Another situation that requires a reboot is if someone wants to use Windows.

To reboot a workstation, press the reset button on the front of the machine. It is antisocial to reboot a workstation on which someone is logged in remotely without contacting them first, so if FreeBSD is running, first run ``who'' to see if anyone is logged in, and try to contact them first using ``talk''.

After the reset button is pressed, the system BIOS takes control and performs various power-on and memory tests. When these have completed, control passes to a boot ROM on the network interface card. This boot ROM contains code to contact one of the servers and load a second-stage bootstrap program over the network. The second-stage bootstrap program by default begins to load the FreeBSD operating system. You will know when this is happening because the console will say Loading kernel... and there will be a little spinning clock thing showing that data is arriving from the server. If you want to run FreeBSD, you don't have to do anything, just wait for it to boot up. Generally, this will take only a few minutes, during which time the system will reboot again once by itself. The system does this to download a ``virgin'' copy of the root filesystem area to the local disk before it comes up multi-user. Under certain circumstances, booting may take much longer if FreeBSD decides that one of the large local partitions has become corrupted and that a large amount of data has to be reloaded. In this case, either wait about 10 minutes for the reloading to be completed, or use another workstation.

If you want to run Windows, reset the system, wait for the BIOS to display the message "Press H to boot from hard drive", then press H. Windows should then boot. For more about using Windows, see here.

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