Running remote X sessions against old Linux distros
I had occasion last evening to connect to a Red Hat 5.2 server. No, Not Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, but Red Hat 5.2, as in, before Fedora.
I built the server for a client when 5.2 was the current release of Red Hat, on a Compaq Proliant 1850R server with dual Pentium II's and 512MB(?) RAM in July of 1999. The only hardware replacements on that machine have been a cooling fan (recently) and one of the redundant power supplies (several months ago). Frankly, it was supposed to have been decommissioned quite a while back, but somehow, we just never got around to it, and as it keeps doing what it needs to do, and the need for the single app which it hosts has been dwindling, it just hasn't been bumped up the list.
At the client's location, we have been plagued recently with some rather nasty power outages, prompting us to increase UPS capacity. We currently have two APC 3000VA XL units in the rack, along with a 2200VA unit. The two 3000's have network management cards in them, and the NetWare cluster and W2K3 Citrix server are configured using APC's Network Shutdown software.
Unfortunately, there is nothing currently available from APC which will run on a 2.4 Linux kernel (please someone, correct me if I am wrong in this regard), and when I attempted to build apcupsd on it, I was thwarted by some outdated libraries (and updating libraries on an 11-year-old Linux distro is a very difficult process). As the machine already had APC's PowerChute 4.5.1 for Linux installed on it (2001), I figured I'd just tweak the settings and cable the server to the UPS via serial.
Naturally, I wanted to have a look-see at the xpowerchute GUI.