[tech] Merlo/Dispense broken

[Andrew Adamson]

Hi All,

A few people mentioned they couldn't dispense things so I took a look at 
merlo, and its file system was read only.

Long story short, the most recently replaced disk is FITH, and the 
remaining disk has bad blocks, though I could get it to mount on another 
machine. We should be able to get the important parts copied to a new 
disk ASAP.

Merlo's hardware is a little picky about disks I'm afraid - it won't play 
nice with SSDs, and the case only takes 2.5" disks. I have a spare ?320GB? 
spinning disk at home I can donate - has anyone got something about that 
size so we can have raid again.

Alternatively we could move across to a different case, but we would need 
something with 3 serial ports. Anyone got some pci serial cards we can 
borrow?

In the mean time, merlo is offline, so no dispense and (more annoyingly 
over the holidays) no door.

Andrew Adamson
bob at ucc.asn.au

|"If you can't beat them, join them, and then beat them."                |
| ---Peter's Laws                                                        |