The goal was to get the server to the new co-lo by the end of November. We missed it. A big part of that was the Thanksgiving holiday and pretty much losing all of last week. But, another part of it is that it is really hard to do tech support. I have never envied the job of a phone tech support person, and last night just reminded me how frustrating it can be.
 
The member of my tech team, we'll call her Amber, who has the server right now was going to install OpenSolaris on the machine yesterday. Right after dinner I got a message from her, did I have a few minutes? She kept getting a login prompt but she did not have a username/password. That is not right, there shouldn't be a login prompt yet, we have not installed anything. She is certain she told the machine to boot off the CD-ROM. A few questions later about what various screens look like, did she see a pretty blue screen with the word "OpenSolaris" on it anyplace, etc.? No. Grub menu? Yes. Ok, we're not booting off the CD, but we're getting Linux booting off the hard drive.
 
Reboot... darn it the screen flashes too fast... reboot... reboot... reboot, and then she finally gets enough of a view of the initial screens to get in to the bios. Have you ever tried to help someone use a BIOS page for a machine you've never used before? Ick. It is not fun. I do not have experience with many varieties of PC hardware and this server is a brand I know nothing about. We manage to establish that the CD-ROM is set in the 2nd position for boot order but after 2 hours and many reboots we cannot seem to get it changed so that the machine will boot from the CD. Amber is 3 hrs ahead in time so we had to abandon the efforts for the night so she could get some sleep.
 
So, tonight we'll try again.