After reviewing the proofs of my latest book, Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell (falsely credited to my boss, Mitch Tulloch), I felt intoxicated with delight at what I had accomplished. Dreamily, I gazed out of the window of my second-floor hotel room in Zermatt, Switzerland and watched the setting sun cast golden shadows upon the stark face of the Matterhorn. Then I turned to my associate, Bob, and said:
"My mind is made up--we'll take the job."
Something in my tone struck him, and he looked up from his laptop and saw the steely cold resolution in my eyes.
"You're not serious."
"I am," I replied. "Deploying Windows 2000 on the top of the Matterhorn is one for the record books. We can't pass this one by."
"Then we'll die together," said Bob. "I'll never desert you."
I went to bed, but what woman can sleep on the brink of such an enterprise? The day we had arrived for our vacation, the Swiss Federal Railway company (Schweizerische Bundesbahnen or SBB) in Zermatt asked us if we would consider an offer of a job: They wanted us to set up a small Windows 2000 network in a meteorological observatory that had recently been established a few hundred meters below the peak of the Matterhorn. I thought it would be a nice way to write off our vacation as a business expense. Had I known the difficulties we would face and the human cost ahead, I would have decided differently. However, everything seems possible in the Alps, where men and women daily challenge fate and face death with cheerful indifference, fortified with plenty of milk and cheese.
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Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell |
I rose before dawn to begin my planning. Every great deployment needs a plan, and I certainly needed one now. The obvious approach would be to set up a wireless network between the base station and the remote observatory, but this was quickly ruled out when we discovered that the two were on opposite sides of the mountain. Satellite networking was my next consideration, but the hardy meteorologist who lived up at the observatory was a former Unix man and only knew how to run Telnet sessions. Satellites would provide unacceptable latency. I finally decided to lay a single 10Base2 thinnet cable from Zermatt up the mountain to the observatory. Fortunately, the Swiss are good at providing anything in quantity if you request it urgently enough, especially cheese.
By early afternoon I had a list of staff and supplies needed to undertake the project. It looked like this:
Project staff:Transportation:
Equipment:
I approached my expedition patrons, the SBB, with my list of requirements. They promised me everything would be ready by 6:42 p.m. that evening. I relaxed and went to dinner at the hotel restaurant. At 6:43 p.m. the equipment arrived with profuse apologies. (I'll never believe another Swiss railway timetable again.)
After giving instructions I went to bed. I arose at 4 a.m. to the finest sight I've ever seen: Our staff of 59 was stretched out in a procession almost half a kilometer long, securely roped together with the coax cable. I felt proud of being in charge of such a great team, and I proudly took my place at their head.
At 15 minutes past 4 I gave the command to begin the ascent, and we slowly moved out of town to the cheers of the local populace, which had gathered to see the spectacle. The cows responded by ringing their bells gaily. The whole scene was splendid!
We proceeded across the valley and forded a cold mountain stream, carrying the servers on our shoulders. (The mountaineers carried the milkmaids.) At 7:30 a.m. we stopped at the base of the mountain for breakfast (cheese) and afterward began our ascent. The morning sun glinting off the overhead massif pierced my heart with gladness. I was too full to speak.
The temperature soon dropped and a dismal fog appeared. We began to experience difficulty due to the weight of the cable, and we began to wish that we had used Cat 5 instead of thinnet. We climbed some terrific steeps and the milkmaids were starting to complain from exhaustion. I re-roped the milkmaids so the cows were just ahead of (and above) them. This kept their mouths shut but soiled their dresses somewhat.
Our troubles thickened. About the middle of the afternoon the four guides called a halt and held a consultation. After looking north, south, east, and west, it turned out that none of them knew where we were. I wished I had brought along a fifth guide who knew where "up" was.
Plainly, we were lost. I decided to signal the base station by connecting my laptop to the free end of the thinnet cable. Unfortunately, my PCM card had only a UTP connection, but I took out my Swiss Army Knife and used its UTP-to-thinnet adapter to make the connection. (These Swiss Army Knives are useful for anything.) I asked one of our translators what the SBB's URL was. He translated and asked another translator, who asked another, who asked another. I took a stab at it, thinking it might be www.sbb.com. But no luck. Then our traveling hotelkeeper offered me a piece of cheese, and in a fit of inspiration I typed in www.sbb.ch. Clearly, ch is the top-level domain for cheese.
Unfortunately, the site was down. So much for Swiss trains. I was dismayed, but clearly this was no time to show weakness. I made a speech to my staff, encouraging them that we were on a great mission, as great as Edward Whymper's first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865. A guide then reminded me that four of the seven climbers had died on that expedition. I told them we were better equipped since we had cows in our party.
The weather was clearly getting worse, so I looked around for shelter and saw a cave a short distance below a precipice. A bridge of ice connected us to the cave, but jagged boulders lay like sharp teeth 800 feet below. I sent the mountaineers across first, carrying the servers.
Things were going well until suddenly one of them slipped. Everybody gasped, but the hardy man managed to grab hold of a ledge and break his fall. The server wasn't so lucky, however. It was dashed from his grasp, and it tumbled down a precipice, striking the rock wall four or five times, spinning and tumbling, until it shattered into dozens of pieces against a rock at the bottom.
I wondered if Dell would still honor its on-site warranty, and spoke comforting words to reassure everyone. The man who had carried the server explained that the problem lay in the fact that Windows 2000 had been installed instead of Windows NT. The extra few million lines of code added weight to the machine making it difficult to carry. I wondered how easy it would have been if we had decided on Linux instead.
I now considered our situation: The ice bridge had been weakened by the incident, and this presented a serious difficulty. I decided we would use our network cable to try to rappel down to the cave below. I don't actually know what rappel means. I think it's some kind of protocol. Anyway, we proceeded to implement the plan. Fortunately, the cows had rings in their noses, which made our job easier.
We huddled together in the cave trying to keep warm as the sun set. Demoralization was spreading, and I realized something drastic would have to be done soon if we were to survive the coming night. I asked our two chaplains to pray for us, but this started an argument between them; so I told them to pray silently instead. Then I opened my copy of Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell to look for help on what to do in our desperate situation.
"Say, I've been meaning to ask you," my friend Bob said, "Why did your boss Mitch Tulloch get all the credit for this book if you did all the writing?"
"Tim O'Reilly's idea," I sadly replied. "He thought it would be better for sales if an established author like Tulloch was credited with writing it. I guess I need to get an agent."
I looked over our sorry crew, shivering in the near darkness. The cave was small, with no room for toilet business. Good thing we carried lots of cheese.
I turned again to my book to see if I could find wisdom that would guide me in this dark hour. The sections in Chapters 3 and 4 on Terminal Services spoke deeply to me of how I might find reserves of inner strength to control myself in remote places, but I didn't dare mention the word "terminal" to my compatriots. Chapter 7 on the command line offered me ideas on how to command in times of crisis, but I didn't have the heart to issue commands to my party in their downtrodden state.
I knew what I had to do. I unpacked all 20 of my author's copies and began to tear the pages out one by one, using them as fuel for our small fire. Tears rolled down my face as I consigned my poor book to the flames. It was the longest night I ever passed. My mascara was ruined.
When rays of morning dawn came I was down to my final copy. I knew our situation was desperate and would soon be beyond hope. I glanced at a torn page in my hand and my spirit leapt for joy. The passage referred to installing Windows 2000 from the CD. The CD! I thought what fools we were in our IT profession to always seek easier and more manageable deployment solutions such as network distribution points, disk imaging, Remote Installation Services, and other exotic technologies. The bottom line is, when you're at the end of your rope, it's nothing but the good old CD installation that can save the day and the butts of all concerned (including the cows).
I ripped open my pack, emptied its contents onto the ground, and rummaged through them until I triumphantly held the CD in my hand. I stepped outside to the edge of the precipice and held the CD up to the sun and used it as a mirror to send signals to the base station at Zermatt below. In a few minutes they were signaling their reply. They said that they would build a railway up to our location and would rescue us within three hours and twenty-seven minutes. I told my party everything would be fine in three hours and twenty-eight minutes, and I passed the remaining time using my Swiss Army Knife to carve this story into our last block of cheese--just in case our rescuers didn't make it in time.
The rescue effort was successful, and we arrived at our Gasthause later that day after many hardships and perils. Our magnificent undertaking had failed, but the SSB nevertheless rewarded us handsomely for our efforts by giving us lifetime railway passes and a framed picture of the Matterhorn painted in silver on black velvet. I still have that last piece of cheese on which I carved the story of our adventure. In fact, I made a necklace by hanging it on a piece of our famous thinnet. To this day I still wear it constantly around my neck. It remains a precious reminder for me of our daring exploits on the Matterhorn. It's no wonder, though, that I don't have many friends.
Don't miss Networking in the Alps, Part 2--After failing in their attempt to deploy Windows 2000 atop the Matterhorn, why not strike once more at greatness by installing a network inside the Niederhorn massif, deep within the St. Beatus Caves? Read how Samantha was saved once again by Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell.
O'Reilly & Associates will soon release (February 2001) Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell.
Sample Chapter 2, Quick Start, is available free online.
You can also look at the Table of Contents, the Index, and the Full Description of the book.
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