Monthly Archive for October, 2008
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This morning I turned on my openSUSE work machine and was greeted (as I often am) with a message to update the system.
Today’s message was special however, and perhaps one for The Daily WTF.
I wonder whether “Do not warn me again” means
Don’t tell me when there’s a non-existent update again
Still, it seemed pretty important so I did it straight away!
It’s good to know that I’m protected from security threats so real, they cannot be named 
P.S. If you’re wondering what awesome icon set I’m using, it’s Oxy-GNOME.
Jason wanted to borrow my server for his work, so this meant I had to re-build my desktop machine so that I could rsync my data across. As the computer only boots Linux, I thought I’d use GPT (GUID Partition Table) instead of the MSDOS partition table. There are 4 hard drives in my desktop, which I want to run in RAID 5.
As the new Ubuntu release Intrepid is almost out, I thought I’d try this too. I set my drives to use GPT, but then realised that I wanted to offset the partition to align the RAID array. Because fdisk does not support GPT partition tables I had to use parted. As time was short (and I am not as familiar with parted) I just thought I would switch back to a MSDOS partition table and get on with it, using fdisk.
I did my usual trick of wiping the first 512 bytes to clear the master boot record and the partition table.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1 count=512
But fdisk still warned that there was a GPT on the disk.. hmm.. This just didn’t feel clean, so I wanted to solve it.
Continue reading ‘Fun with GPT’
It’s time for me to jump on the VoIP bandwagon..
This was the post I made to the CLUG list the other day. Why? Mendy is moving back to Australia permanently in December (yay!) and in the mean time I want to be able to call her at reasonable rates. Currently this means calling her Macau mobile at a hefty price through Telstra. Once she is back I also want for her to be able to call her parents in Hong Kong for cheap.
I knew about VoIP and had played a little with Ekiga (the open source VoIP client for GNOME), but that was about it. Looking into it seemed pretty complex, with a myriad of providers, software and hardware. I wasn’t quite sure which provider to go with, what hardware I needed and what was the best way to set it all up. What traps were there? As usual, my fellow CLUG’ers came through with great advice, so thanks!
It appeared that the general consensus were things like:
This is how I got it working..
Continue reading ‘Taking a SIP of VoIP’
My good mate Tthu wanted to make himself a mythtv box. He bought an old Dell online and after a trip to the computer fair to get a 500GB SATA hard drive, low profile PCIe video card and a PCI digital TV tuner card, had everything he needed.
So, at my place we started the install. First thing I noticed was that the video cad had a passive heatsink that took up the space for the only PCI slot in the machine. I gave Tthu the option of waiting and trying to find a more suitable card, or hacking up the box to make it fit. Here began the first of our modifications..
After removing the heatsink from the GPU, we broke off the part that stuck out over the capacitors and proceeded to bend the other fins over. Isopropyl alchohol and some arctic silver later and it was back together again. Perfect.
Then we noticed that the case no longer shut because the hard drive bracket came ever so slightly down onto the back end of the card. I whittled away a little of the PCB, but it wasn’t quite enough. Due to the bracket design, we had to break off a part of the metal. This then allowed us to hack at the bracket itself and with Jason’s trusty multi-tool filed away a perfect gap for the card to slide into (with my trusty Dyson grabbing the filings, of course). Only problem was that the plastic slide rail for the hard drive couldn’t slide in anymore.. so we cut that in half. Done!
End result? Machine works perfectly with the video card running at about 80 degrees, which is well within spec. How long it all lasts for remains to be seen! Only problem now is that the TV aerial can’t get any signal in the basement.. Jason, where’s that multi-tool?
I just came across bootchart, a tool for “performance analysis and visualization of the GNU/Linux boot process”.
Ever wondered what was causing that big delay in bootup? Install bootchart and check!
I installed bootchart on my openSUSE box at work with sudo zypper in bootchart, rebooted and edited grub on the fly, adding init=/sbin/bootchartd to the kernel line.
After your system has loaded, bootchart creates a log of the process which you can then turn into a chart with the command bootchart. You can also specify the log location if required, or change the output format of the chart from PNG to SVG or EPS.
Of course, what you do with this information is up to you Happy hacking.