reconstructing events
[els view - additional input by decoy - still more input by cym]

first meeting at kunstwerk.
cym, irm, decoy, peter1 and el check out the location, discuss organisatory topics (HOWTO get free IPs, hardware, cables, inform people, etc.) and founded FSL - free-software-linux workshop/community.
we decide to start the first fsl workshop right away, on 10.07.00.
during the following week decoy and el put the fsl page online. a mailing list is set up. the word on the fsl workshop is spread.

el and irm tour vienna by car, collecting as many computers, monitors,... from fsl participants as possible and bring everything to kunstwerk.
cym decides to buy another computer - a second hand pentium 166 with one 850 MB harddrive and one 200 MB harddrive (found via bazar).
peter1 of the kustwerk staff has arranged for a little 8-IP subnet generously routed to us by silverserver - everything is ready to start the next day.

official start of the fsl workshop.
cloed, peter2, decoy, el, irm, gabi, toert, cym, yasmina - the hard-core - assemble for the workshop.
cym's new machine is used as test machine - decoy installs linux (suse 6.2) on it.
simultaniously, peter2 installs linux (suse 6.03) on yasminas pc.

day of installation 2 - the original fsl schedule has been ignored from the very beginning ;)
rost and xmess drop by as guests (on their way to have dinner) and are not able to leave the heap of computer junk anymore...
xmess tries to hack the BIOS password of toerts machine (unsuccessfully but insightful).
rost joins several installation processes.
els 486 is too old, weak and ill to accept a suse 6.0 as well as a redhat 6.0 installation.
aaron (nerds on air) drops by and helps out.
cym installs some old redhat version on her new computer.
yasmina proceeds to setting up her pc as a workstation with staroffice and windowmaker. everybody else is sweating about getting the other machines to run.

installations proceed. gabi sets up her machine successfully. cloed and peter start working on their machine.
as expected, various installation tasks fail due to hardware problems. decoy starts compiling a new router kernel for a machine given to us by tymon. unfortunately the damned thing refuses to compile successfully and the project to use tymon's machine as router is dropped.
toert has to leave earlier to dj at rhiz. el joins her and drinks vodka to forget her anger about still failing installation processes on her 486.
later, most of the other fsls also come to rhiz.

lo-res server has been cut off electricity and sealed away in its room ...

[decoy's story]
lo-res.org has been cut off by the landlady who rented the room where the server is to the kustwerk guys. this seemingly paranoid and unyielding individual has freaked because of electricity bills yet to be payed and thus disconnected us from electricity and effectively cut off our service. through several rounds of negotioations aaron, decoy and rost tried to bail out the lo-res org server - unsuccessfully. the landlady - Sabine Bitter - refused to even let us recover our data! claiming she had everything backed by her lawyer she kept refusing us our right to access our machines. decoy resolved to threats with legal repercussions himself since the contract this woman has negotiated with the kunstwerk bordered on the illegal, and her behaviour did so as well. aaron and rost took the role of the 'good cops' and we softened her up as much as possible.

els 486 runs with redhat 5.2. xwindows display does not work yet.
cloeds computer crashes on network devices. was supposed to become the router. peter and el install the 'tymon hub' (an internal 8xhub, pci slot compatibel, evidently a russian type ;) on cloeds machine. eth0 and eth1 change identities, tymon hub is not recognized by the system at all (which - as we learned - is not necessary, for a tymon hub only needs electricity in order to fulfill its function). well, at the end there seemed to be severe motherboard problems ...
peter (peter1) of kunstwerk donated another pc skeleton (motherboard and drives OK) - so peter2 fused cloeds and peter1s pc into a finally working linux machine (though only bootable from disk...)
cym installs redhat 6.2 on her new machine, runs nicely, apache configured, ethernet card configured, everything okay.

toerts pc is newly designated router.
els 486 pings router IP and gateway fine, but cannot reach the outside world.
decoy tries to fix this problem for hours ... only to realize that he had used the wrong IP adress for the external interface - but alas it took him another day to figure that one out. this day enters the history of the workshop as a day full of problems...
gabi's pc refuses to work from there on, and cym's pc as well.
the only good thing is, that peter1 and rost managed to convince the landlady to finally give us our server back - lo-res.org goes online again after one and a half day downtime.
cym puts second ethernet card in her new computer, turns on power, machine is dead, won't start anymore. removing cards doesn't help. cym gives up and plays tischfussball for the rest of the night.

finally it works!
well, the network, at least...
decoy draws a great map and explains the network architecture and connection modes between sil and fsl. finally everybody does learn a bit about TCP/IP and networking. toert records every keystroke dutyfully on a notepad for future reference.
els 486 still is fucked up somehow - doesn't know how to unzip and tar, nor how to c-compile properly, which poses big problems for intended installation processes. but at least she's running xwindows and everything else now.
decoy continues to configure the router and uses fancy ;) sunset xdesktop background gifs.
toert is worn out an leaves too soon :(
peter2 still tries to convince cloeds fusion pc to boot from harddisk.
cym's machine is still dead. cym sleeps on the sofa.

meeting point at kunstwerk, 4:00 p.m.
toert and irm come by car and pick up all but one machines -> one of the surviving linux machines (the one decoy brought with him) is left to the kunstwerk crew.
el & toert bring cym's machine back home, cym turns on power and all works fine again...