on a mission part 2: Tech Jargon

Let me start by saying sorry for the tech jargon, but I know there are at least six of you who will be interested.
I arrived at work my first morning and this is what I saw, a pile of wires and components.

This is the rig. It isn't really that complicated. It just looks it.

The list of problems was short, but proved to be difficult. They wanted their internet to work, to change the password to access the internet, and to get some computers working again, also the file server did not serve files anymore. The hospital has no IT staff. That is why they called me. They needed someone that could come in and tell them at least what was broken. I did my best. The back story I got was a local computer guy came and turned it off then on again. It worked for a few minutes then no more. The first several hours I worked on the system I was not sure I could fix it. Everything was password protected and no one knew the passwords. The cables went everywhere and none of them were labeled. It was a bit overwhelming.

This is the complicated part. Lucky for me the phone system was working perfectly. It was really just the top half that I had to work on. The 24 port switch and patch panel are easy to see with all the white wires stick out of them. The satellite modem is standing up in the back behind the switch with a yellow and black wires coming out of it. The wireless router is next to the switch with the green blue green lights on it. Laying next to the router is the VOIP converter box. The VDSL modem is on the half-shelf below and to the left of the patch panel. It is sort of obscured by the long light grey wire that runs across the whole picture. 

I started with figuring out what everything was. There's a Satellite modem connected to a Satellite dish outside. There's a wireless router, A twenty four port Ethernet switch, a 24 port patch panel, a VOIP to Ethernet converter box, a corresponding phone system distribution and fuse cluster, and a VDSL Ethernet extender. I think that is all.  All this was powered with a voltage regulator with a battery backup. The rest of the clinic had wireless internet from three other wireless routers spread throughout the building. Additionally, three other offices on the other side of the complex have an internet connection via some buried Ethernet cables.

I started with unplugging the satellite modem and seeing if it had internet connectivity. It did, so I had google to answer any and all questions I had. I plugged it back into the system and it didn't work. I tried turning it off and then on again. That didn't work. I suspected it had something to do with the router. But since I didn't have the password to the router I could do nothing. So, I left it unplugged from the rest of the system and continued to solve other problems like, why didn't the file server work, or why do these computers continuously BSOD and reboot continuously.

The server turned out to need some new drivers for its network card. Fairly straight forward. When I was working on the server I saw a file called 'network' or something. I opened it and I was excited. It was a document that had the network configurations on it. It had logins and passwords for routers and firewalls and a map that showed where every cable went. Without that document there's no way I could have fixed their internet. With that document I traced an unknown cable that I suspected to be the cause of the network crash. It led me to an office in another part of the hospital. When I got there I knew something was wrong. There were Two routers in the corner. One router had three cables plugged into it, and the other had one cable plugged into. Very odd, why would someone terminate this cable with a router? 

Next was the computers. They had recently gotten a set of four windows 8 laptops from the USA. They were nice, light, powerful machines. (I later found out that they have a one star rating on Toshiba.com) Only they would crash and reboot continuously and or they would not connect to the internet. Normally in these situations I would boot a windows computer to safe mode. Unfortunately I could not figure out how to do that. The computers naturally booted into a recovery screen that asked if you wanted to revert windows to a previous configuration or restore point. Or you could reset it to factory settings or you could just continue. I tried all the options, none of them worked. I was very disappointed in windows. I eventually found a way using a linux boot CD that had a program to watch windows load drivers and see which one makes it crash. It turned out to be the network driver that causes the crashes. Once that driver was disabled, I was able to boot into windows. Windows then asked me if I wanted to send a report and check the internet for a solution. As if. I updated the drivers then re-enabled the network adapter. Instantly the machine crashed and then started the crash reboot cycle. So, I again disabled the network adapter.  I checked the event viewer log and it confirmed the driver I thought was suspect. Microsoft support had a solution through windows updates. I am still wondering how I am going to do windows update on a machine with no working network adapter. I eventually decided to rollback the driver to its first edition(an edition previous to the machine's factory settings) and surprisingly it did not crash. I was then able to windows update and the newest drivers then worked. 

There's a lot more that happened and there is a lot more that needs to be done at that hospital. That whole experience showed me the great need for IT personnel in mission hospitals and in missions in general. The hospital was going through lots of stress because it didn't have communication with the outside world and the tools they use to do their jobs were making their jobs much harder. I was just happy to help in the small way I did. Hopefully I have informed them enough of how the system works so that they can keep it running themselves. 

So, if you are into IT stuff and want to feel like a super hero to people. Come to Africa and volunteer at a hospital that needs help!

Fresh bread! and bags from IKEA! It's almost like I was in Seattle for the week.