BigSur2

On Monday afternoon I noticed that the CPU fan was not working on the workstation to bigsur. Obviously, this failure is related to fan problems we noticed earlier. I'm not sure if lubricating the fans prolonged or decreased their lifetime. Whatever the case, this hardware failure forced me to stop procrastinating and swap the PCs.

On Tuesday morning I had to take BigSur offline to configure the new computer. I had a humorous and embarrassing call to IT that I should relate for posterity. I had the computer properly networked then I installed Topspin 2.1 and the computer wasn't pulling the right IP address and hence, not getting on KU's network. You'd think after years of graduate school I could follow a simple cause-and-effect. Topspin statically sets the IP of your nic so that you can communicate with the spectrometer, properly. Unfortunately, I registered that nic in Proteaus (technically I didn't register anything in Proteaus because I don't have access. My colleague Jim Knoop register it for me) before the TS install. So I had to set that nic back to pulling dynamic IP. I think I set the other nic to talk with the console. If I can't get the console to communicate the network configuration will be the first thing I check.

At any rate, I set up the network, reset the exports to share drives, reset the mount points on all of the processing stations in SBC, set up samba and I think I'm ready to go.

Except, I don't have the license file from Bruker. I hope they get that to me soon, because I'm frying the processor of the old workstation every second I run it. Let's hope it survives.

Justin

update on BigSur workstation upgrade

We've had some issue with upgrading the workstation for BigSur. I don't want this to turn into a whiny blog, so I'll try to stick to the facts.

#1) I was impressed with the feature of Topspin 3.0 when I saw the demo at the ENC and I thought that this software would be very convenient for users of BigSur. When faced with the need to upgrade the workstation, I saw an opportunity to expand our capabilities.

#2) Topspin 3.0 requires a 64-bit computer and CentOS linux. We purchased a nice Dell Precision T3500 64-bit workstation and I installed CentOS. I'd configure the workstation and was ready to install Topspin 3.0 and connect to the spectrometer.

#3) Then my good friend Asokan mentioned that he didn't think Topspin 3.0 would work with older consoles. Older consoles - I thought maybe it wouldn't work with DRXs, but BigSur is an AV, purchased in 2004. Turns out he was right. Topspin 3.0 requires hardware that BigSur does not have (a digital receiver unit rather than a RX22 receiver). Hence, even though this console is only 6 years old, it is not eligible for the latest software. NMR technology is advancing rapidly!

I'm a bit frustrated because I told my sales rep my BH number before placing the order for TS3. Clearly, I should have asked more questions, but it doesn't seem too much to ask for Bruker to not sell me things I don't need. Lot of negatives in that last sentence - sorry.

#4) I reinstalled RHEL4 and am configuring the workstation. Strange issues with this too, because the NIC on the motherboard isn't compatible with my kernel.

http://www.linuxcompatible.org/RHSA-20100394-01_Important_kernel_security_bug_fix_and_enhancement_update_p144094.html

Fortunately I have another NIC, but I get to go through the fun of setting up one NIC in Proteaus to upgrade the kernel, then reset Proteaus with the second nic.

#5) We're still waiting for license for TS2.1.

Hope that wasn't too whiny. Cowboy up.