I have created a web based e-commerce site for a client a while ago. Was quite impressed to notice today that machine I have built using Gentoo linux and JBoss for the AS has been running for more than 500 days now:

dXrTle ~ # uptime
17:45:02 up 503 days, 1:36, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.02, 0.00

One thing you'll learn (if you have not already) is that SQL Server 2005's Maintenance Plans (which are actually SSIS workflows executed by SQL Server Agent Service) do NOT provide useful error information. I had to set up a script for a customer but spent my (very) early morning tearing out all the hair on my ageing head.

See, I got this from SQL Server History: Failed:(0) Alter failed for Server 'servername'. If that rings a bell for you then congratulations. It did not for me.

Today I stumbled upon the solution - thanks to a guy named Brent_Dorsey from sqlug.be:

Finally - 23 days early - my Most Precious has arrived via FedEx.

Not all resources are equal:

Continuing my frustration with changing my password on this one Linux system, I tried to be clever. So I logged in as root, then used:

passwd accountname

to force set the password. So much to my surprise, when I tried that, and I saw this response: