Rebuilding My Parents’ Network - A Weekend Back Home: Another IT Tale From a [Former] IT Professional

My IT work is never done.

This is not a complaint, mind you — I thoroughly enjoy when I get to fix things, and I gain a sense of satisfaction from making things come together in such a fluidic and beautiful way. My parents’ network is a combination of devices, each booting into a unique combination of Operating Systems:

• Windows 10
• macOS
• Dual-Boot: Ubuntu and Windows 10
• Dual-Boot: LinuxMint and Windows 10
• Windows 7
• iOS
• LinuxMint
• Android OS

Once you add my machines, as well, then you are looking at some multi-booting insanity, straight-up Ubuntu, and whatnot that I have done to my own systems.

And somehow, I have blended this all together, complete with a network share directly through the router.

OK, so some background — since I have been teching for 15+ years, I have proudly kept my family alive in terms of technology. There was a stretch of a good 15 years (which began prior to my professional ventures) in which Dad did not have to buy a computer; I was constantly upgrading his systems or replacing them as we went along. He had purchased a Dell back in 2000 or 2001, a nice Pentium III 1.0 GHz processor, 128 MB or RAM, Windows ME. Over the course of the life of that machine, I slapped in some upgrades: Network Card, more RAM, second and replacement Hard Drives, second and replacement Optical Data Drives, and (of course) an upgrade from Windows ME to Windows XP. Eventually, this started to go, and I got my hands on a system that either (1) I was given because the owner had replaced it because it “did not work” or (2) I had rebuilt and the owner decided not to pay me or told me to keep it because it was not worth it to them. Dad always had a working system, and his system had a primary role as the Print Server — in other words, the printer was hooked up to his computer and shared across the network.

Mom had her own plans, and I kept her desktop system going for the better part of a decade. She also got herself an iPod, iPad, iPhone, and a PC laptop. Also, I have acquired systems over the years, fixing them up for friends and family alike, to the point where I honestly have a system in place in my parents’ guest room, a Samsung laptop hooked up via HDMI cable to a TV, so that visitors can surf the ‘Net, watch movies from our network, and stream as they see fit.

Rare are the times when I am faced with physical damage to one of my parents’ systems. Recently, Mom’s laptop took a small dive — 12 inches or less, landing on the corner — and frankly, it was either the laptop or one of her grandbabies who was about to get hurt.

Good choice, Ma!

The corner of the chassis has minor cosmetic damage in the area where the Hard Drive resides. This is bad news/good news/really good news: the system was acting up as the Hard Drive was damaged/I had wanted to reload the system since the day she brought it home/I had a replacement in the form of a Solid State Drive.

This time, I did my dual-booting magic and brought her laptop back to life, better than ever.

My older brother, on the other hand, is a bit harsher on his systems. I have helped him to find ways around this — he now uses an external mechanical keyboard and an external mouse for his laptops, which really cuts down on the impact that the laptop motherboards were receiving. When he gets going about something, and being on the Autism spectrum, my brother tends to hack away at the keyboard with greater and greater enthusiasm, which sometimes means that the impact of his fingers is less-than-gingerly. I have also replaced his systems, upgrade components, and given him as much support as I can possibly give another person short of buying him a brand new system once a year. He has some rather specific computing requirements as well, and so I’ve tried to get him to branch out and use various Linux Distros in addition to Windows.

This particular weekend, I happened to be home as of Friday, and it was glorious to be back in New Jersey. Say what you will of the place, but remember: (1) we are NOTHING like those fist-pumping jackwagons seen on MTV and (2) it is my home and (3) I live close to the ocean.

Unfortunately, even with some great remote desktop apps, VNC servers/viewers, and even SSH protocols, I cannot consistently maintain and control everything on all of the systems. I even have a Mobile Device Management System to help me keep track of the various networks and the computers therein, but that does not always allow for me to handle all things in a timely manner, as my studies and life in the seminary are paramount. So when the network shared external Hard Drive failed, and various file shares stopped working, my parents were left in the dark for a spell. This was alarming, as I had no idea how to address this, as I could not run certain commands remotely, at least not without the help of someone sitting in front of their system. And frankly, there is way too much for me to work with remotely.

Going home was essential, necessary, and proper at this point. I needed to go see my people, I needed to smell the ocean, go to the comic shop, and of course fix all of the broken things.

Every system needed to be updated on some level. I had mentioned in an earlier post that I use an installer from Ninite.com (www.ninite.com) on the Windows-based systems to not only install but also to update non-Microsoft apps, such as Chrome, iTunes, VLC media player, and more. I love the simplicity of it for my end-users — double-click, say “Yes”, wait for the green bar to finish, and then click “Close”. Look at that, simple! But just as updating manually, it requires sitting in front of the machine, which cannot always be done. There were also OS updates to be addressed, and multiply that times 2 for the dual-booting systems. Toss in the tablets and whatnot, and while I can push app updates out using the Mobile Device Management System, I still needed to update the OSes manually.

Time consuming as it was, I managed to get all of that done. In the process, I started looking into the issue with the network shares. Each one was giving me grief for a different reason. The external Hard Drive that had been hooked up to the router was failing; the unit was old, about a decade or so, and it had served me well. It died a good death, having lived a good life, and there was no dishonor in its demise. We replaced that with a brand new 8 TB unit (Shiny!), and then I had to reset the sharing options via the router control. Windows boots found it with relative ease, macOS boots were linked in, and the Linux boots were the only ones where I found myself having some trepidation.

Silly me, having unfounded fears. A little edit to the “fstab” file, a quick command line prompt, and we were back in business.

Now to the stand alone system. This was Mom’s first desktop PC, and I had maxed the resources in terms of RAM and SATA-based drives, both Hard Drives and Optical Data Drives. There was very little that I could use it for, so I locked down some security on it and decided that it would make a terrific multi-service box: a jump box for Windows Remote Desktop Protocol, a backup print server, and a file server. Basically, it is a glorified external Hard Drive right now, but with some special bonus features that I can fix remotely (with a wee bit of physical help on-site) in less than an hour, if I play my cards right. At the start of my repairs, this system was not doing the file sharing properly whatsoever. I had a single shared internal Hard Drive and a single external Hard Drive that I had shared across the network, including some subfolders from the external unit (I know, that seems redundant, but I wanted to make finding the movies, pictures, et cetera as easy to find as possible).

I decided to retract all of the sharing and permissions for the respective drives on the system. Rather than try to “fix” what was broken, I decided to “reset” the system — pulling all permissions, disconnecting all users, and just blanking the slate. I reinstated all permissions, one at a time, and tested the access on a Windows boot, with great success. Next, I mapped the shares to macOS and tested the conditions upon logging back in and rebooting. The last leg of this was in Linux.

Editing the “fstab” file is basically a harmless thing to do insofar as network shares. It is easy enough to handle, but the syntax is exacting and typos are not welcome, permitted, or tolerated lightly. Thankfully, such errors are only truly alarming when it comes to the physical drives built into the system, and are only annoying when dealing with network shares. That being said, I knocked it out of the park on the first swing.

At this point, there is literally only one more thing that concerns me: retrieving the data from the failed external Hard Drive. I honestly have the data on my own drives as well, so the exact extract [hehe] is not that big of a deal, I just want to really analyze how much damage was done to the drive itself when the enclosure for it went kaput.

My parents were thrilled that it was all done and working. I messaged them when I got back to Philly last night, and I joked as to whether or not I could still be their tech or if they were going to hire a professional (á la Dad’s parents, as seen in https://steemit.com/computers/@phoenix32/the-traumas-of-a-former-it-professional Tale #2). We got a good chuckle out of that, and they assured me that the door would always be open, whether or not I was teching, and that I was never, ever going to be fired.

As I’ve said, I do so enjoy teching. And to have my work appreciated makes for a better experience. And to further know that I am appreciated not only for my efforts and works really makes it less of a chore and so much more a delight.