Category: computers

Server…

April 7, 2005

So… I’m trying to figure out what disks to use in my web server when I upgrade/replace bornslippy.nuxx.net.

I’m going to do RAID 0+1, so I need four disks. 80GB disks are $60/ea. 160GB disks are $89/ea. (Both prices are for Western Digital Special Edition 8MB 7200RPM 3-Year warranty disks.)

So, for $240 I can have 160GB total space, or for $356 I can have 320GB. The 320GB option would allow me to back up all the data I have to the webserver… Plus $44 for the pair of disk controllers and a few dollars for some brand new round cables.

This could potentially be good, because it’d give me space for absolutely completely offsite backup.

That said, do I really want to shove all my personal data up to what’s essentially a public server? I guess it’d be all right if I did it via an encrypted filesystem that I mount only when doing backups… That would get the data backups completely out of my house.

This space is definitely not used for the existing content of the site, which I believe currently clocks in at around 15GB – 20GB.

Ideas? Ideas?

Ugh.

April 2, 2005

  PID USERNAME PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE  C   TIME   WCPU    CPU COMMAND
26731 root       4    0  2828K  2220K crydev 0   5:26  0.00%  0.00% openssl

Nothing like watching openssl get unexplainably stuck, and seeing others report similar issues with, what appears to be cryptodev. This is when running openssl speed -engine cryptodev in FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE with a Broadcom BC5805-based crypto accelerator.

computers moved from livejournal

…

March 30, 2005

Stupid fscking Linux-specific apps:

In file included from diag_os_linux.c:53,
from diag_os.c:38:
diag_os.h:110:34: linux/serial.h: No such file or directory
In file included from diag_general.c:30:
diag_os.h:110:34: linux/serial.h: No such file or directory
In file included from diag_dtc.c:30:
diag_os.h:110:34: linux/serial.h: No such file or directory
mkdep: compile failed.
make: *** [.depend] Error 1
p-p-p-powerbook:~/Downloads/freediag-0.3/src c0nsumer$

computers moved from livejournal

VoodooPad

March 24, 2005

After a recommendation from I keep trying to find a way to utilize Flying Meat‘s VoodooPad. This is a sort of desktop wiki system that has ready support for publishing notes online, to iPods, or all sorts of other places. It seems like it would be really useful for getting a handle on random little notes that I have, but I’m not quite sure where to start.

computers moved from livejournal

Help!

March 21, 2005

Could someone who’s familiar with Apache’s mod_rewrite and regexp help me understand what’s wrong with the following statements?

# Slashdot video…
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://*slashdot* [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} /files/videos/bull_512k.mov [NC]
RewriteRule ^$ /files/videos/sorry_slashdot.mov [R=301,L]

I know I’m doing something wrong, but I’m not sure what…

Thank you. :)

computers moved from livejournal

GNU netcat under Cygwin

March 15, 2005

To compile a static copy of GNU netcat under Cygwin:

CFLAGS=-static ./configure –disable-nls ; make

Guh. Finally. Too bad I need to include cygwin1.dll with it all…

computers moved from livejournal

Geek Help

March 14, 2005

Help! I’m having an issue that I just can’t seem to figure out… Hopefully someone here will be able to point me in the right direction. I *think* the problem is with pipes in Windows (XP SP2 specifically) but I’m not completely sure.

Basically, I’m doing this: nc 192.168.0.1 10567 < hugefile.gz on the Windows box, and the destination has been Linux, Windows XP, and OS X, all with the same result.

Hugefile is somewhere around 22GB… What happens is that seemingly no matter where the destination is, it just stops sending after a while, usually with the output file on the target machine being 23MB-24MB. This size is not consistant. I’ve also gotten these results across a pocket-sized 100MB switch, the company’s switch to which I’m connected, etc.

I really don’t know what’s up… I think it’s Windows pipes, or some sort of buffer somewhere?

Sending from Linux to Windows works just fine, as this was how I created the image. (dd if=/dev/hda | gzip -c | nc -w 15 192.168.0.2)

Does anyone have any ideas? I’m really lost…

UPDATE: A bit more info… This is what I see on the sending side:

nc -v -v -v -w 30 130.175.142.190 10567 < createdimage.gz p-p-p-powerbook.XXXXX.XX.XXX.XXX [XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX] 10567 (?) open net timeout sent 24887296, rcvd 0: NOTSOCK

And on the target side:

nc -l -v -v -v -p 10567 > createdimage.gz
listening on [any] 10567 …
connect to [130.175.142.190] from XXXXXX-notebook.XXXXX.XX.XXX.XXX [XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX] 4244
sent 0, rcvd 24215552

So, yeah. I’m running out of ideas…

computers moved from livejournal

TiVo!

March 1, 2005

After what turns out to have been wasting around three hours trying to make it work via Vonage, my TiVo is working. Without connecting it to a phone line.

How?

Well, it seems that on newer TiVo models, if you boot them with a supported USB network adapter attached (most all of them are supported) and you set the modem’s dialing string to ,#401 it’ll appear to be dialing the modem and such, but instead it’ll connect via ethernet.

Imagine that…

Well, the TiVo is now all set up with USB network adapter and all. Being a good geek, I didn’t properly cable it yet, because I wasn’t certain if it had worked or not. But now that it did, I’ll fix it tomorrow.

I’ve also subscribed to a season pass of Good Eats, and the episode of Frontline showing at 3:30am should be recorded. We’ll see how it goes.

Regardless, I’m satisfied. I just wish that the Ethernet-based option for setting up the Tivo would have been a bit more obvious.

I must say, it’s a pretty nifty device… There’s lots of things you can tweak, including a built-in guide for programming the remote to control your HT gear’s volume and mute, turning on and off the front LEDs (this is big to me), network settings, internal diags, log access, etc. Definitely a nice box.

…and now I sleep.

acquired things computers moved from livejournal movies

PowerLeap

February 26, 2005

Has anyone who reads this ever worked with a PowerLeap CPU upgrade? I’ve got a machine that I’m working on here, and it seems to have a PowerLeap PL-iP3/T in it. The machine boots saying that it’s running with a 111Mhz FSB at 800-some MHz, but installed in this PowerLeap device is a 1.3Ghz Socket 370 Celeron. In addition, the documentation that I got with the computer states that one should “Please disregard the speed shown from the BIOS when you boot. This may not be the true speed of your system.”

I’m… not really sure what to make of this device. It’s currently installed in a 440BX-based Slot 1 board with a mixture of PC100 and PC133 DIMMs. In addition, this motherboard has had it’s BIOS upgraded with one from eSupport.com. I’m not really sure what to think of this place. They seem to sell all sorts of interesting third-party BIOS’, CPU upgrades, etc.

Maybe removing the PC100 memory from the system will help…

computers moved from livejournal

Best Buy Part Deux

February 24, 2005

Well, I went to the Utica Best Buy location on the way home. They were not able to duplicate the issue at all. Fortunately after talking to the (much nicer) service guy, I came away with a potential solution. If I can record a video of the problem happening, that will be acceptable as proof. Well, the problem happens a lot, and my phone can record video, so next time it happens I’ll (try) to get video of it. Interestingly, it happened in the car on the way home, but I was so excited that it was happening that I bumped another button before I was able to get the video. Ah well…

acquired things computers moved from livejournal