Archive for the 'Gear' Category

It started innocently enough. I was considering upgrading to a larger format monitor sometime in the next year or so. I like having lots of video “real estate” and, although my ViewSonic VP201 20″ LCD display has served me well, I am starting to feel crowded.

The display format I’m considering is a 30″ 2560×1600 size, perhaps something like this Samsung. An important consideration is the number and type of video inputs: I want something that can have at least two computers connected and switch between them. So I’m still pondering, and before I can go for the new display I need to do some serious reorganization of my work space at home.

Which leads to today. As I was considering this potential future monitor purchase, I started considering the impact on the rest of my computer. My PC currently supports a 1600×1200 display, and the video card (an ATI X1950XTX) is getting a bit long in the tooth. A 2650×1600 display would mean the video card would be pushing twice as many pixels: over 4 million of them. That has to have an impact on performance and, even if I scale back most games to say 1600×1000 or something, I imagine I’ll notice it. And I’m already getting fussy about the performance of my machine.

The only solution to this problem is, of course, more hardware. I’m not quite ready to build an entirely new PC, but ATI just released a new dual GPU video card, and the price is actually pretty reasonable (under $500). Naturally, I have that very card in my hands at this moment: the Diamond ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2.

I’ll post some data on the card once I’ve done my pre and post upgrade benchmarks. I’m expecting to double my current video performance (d’uh: dual cores = double), but I’m not sure how that will impact my “seat of the pants” perspective of performance in various games. And as for the 30′ monitor…I’m still pondering. I’ll likely end up making the plunge some time later this year, though. The allure of all that space is compelling, and getting the whole “wall of video” thing going on is just too geeky for words.

In my previous post, I mentioned a couple of gotchas regarding my server upgrade and the Linux install thereon. A day later and things have changed again.

One thing I thought I had fixed: the network autonegotiate problem. I found network performance was once again sucking royally today, and I tried to re-create the circumstances that permitted good network performance the other day. Unfortunately, no luck: disabling autonegotiate on the Cisco RV016 hub and on the NIC didn’t seem to solve anything. One possibility is that I have to disable autonegotiate on both, then reboot both. However, I’m also observing hundreds of errors in the following form

sky2 eth0: rx error, status 0×2940002 length 660

The sky2 kernel driver apparently has known problems with the Marvell 88E8056 Network Interface card and similar Marvell products. One comment in the linked thread that leapt out at me:

The sky2 module is a pile of steaming dung.

Perhaps that is a bit harsh, but…there seems to be a problem here, and what I’m seeing could be related.

Update: I added a small Gigabit ethernet/wireless 802.11n router to my network, hanging it off my RV016 as an access point. I hooked my webserver to it, and suddenly the rx errors in the servers log files stopped. I then moved the other machines on my network with Gigabit-capable NICs to the little router (a DLink DIR-655), and all of the port packet errors associated with them on the RV016 seemed to vanish. That is… the number of packet errors on the port via which the DLink is attaching is significantly less than the aggregate total of the packet errors on the ports the PCs were originally attached to.

The implication… well, I’d speculate (and this is nothing but an educated guess) that the RV016 isn’t happy dealing with the Marvell 1000/100/10 Mbps NICs, but the DLink has no problem with the same NIC. Side benefit: I can now transfer files between my Gigabit ethernet machines at up to 20 MB/s (200 Mbps): at least on initial testing. Handy

One thing I thought wasn’t going to be fixed: the problem with vncserver/tightvnc and keyboard mapping. There was a response on the thread I linked to yesterday that provides a link to a package of updated files someone thoughtfully and kindly assembled. I installed them and voila: the keyboard mapping problem is gone, and I can remotely control my server. Many thanks to AndrewL733 for creating the fix, and site admin awilliamson for hosting the download!

I seem to have reversed the forces of entropy! The new server is basically operational, and this blog is now being served by fresh, clean hardware. I’ll post something detailing the innards of the new box this upcoming weekend.

Interesting gotchas from the install

• always pay close attention to disk space when migrating / backing up old servers: I spent several hours trying to fix a problem that was nothing more than my old server running out of disk
• Linux drivers still have problems with network autonegotiate: Or maybe it’s Cisco/Linksys with the problem? For about a decade now, twisted pair Ethernet hubs and NICs have often failed horribly when trying to agree on 100 versus 10 Mbps, and particularly on full versus half duplex. I noticed my file transfers between my two Linux boxes were very slow (on the order of 60 KB/s). I checked my Cisco hub status monitor and, surprise of surprises, both Linux boxes had negotiated themselves a half duplex connection. I changed their configuration to forced 100 Mb/s full duplex, and suddenly I was getting upwards of 6 MB/s of encrypted transfer
• Linux GUI software is sometimes better than the command line: Examples include:
• • installing OS packages/software components- in the GUI, you get a nice list showing what you have installed already and can search component descriptions visually
  • sftp: the command line sftp must use horrible default settings- I was barely able to get to 1 MB/s using it between two computers on a 100 Mbps LAN (the maximum on a 100 Mbps network would be around 9-10 MB/s); the GUI based FileZilla, on the other hand, happily pushed bits at about 6 MB/s
  • USB file system mounts: plug a drive in to the computer, and the GUI autodetects it and pops up to tell you it is mounting it and it just works: basically, just like Windows and OSX

  I am leaving the GUI (KDE) running on this box; now if I could only get the remote desktop (tightvnc) to work without corrupting the keyboard input, I’d be set

• sometimes it is best to give up: One of the things that didn’t work quite right was my install of vncserver/tightvnc. This software allows me to remotely connect to my Linux box with a graphical interface: I use it around the house (not over the Internet) when I’d rather not go and sit in front of the server. Unfortunately, the current install with Mandriva only works until you try to actually use it: at that point, you encounter two problems
• • the vnc session fails with a fatal “fixed font not found” error. I fixed this by installing the XFS package, but it took me several hours to figure out
  • at this point I was able to open a session and see it on my other computer. Unfortunately, anything I typed came out garbled: E.G.: typing “l” would seemingly send an “r” character

  I banged my head against the wall for hours trying to get this fixed, then read this post. Apparently, this “bad character mapping with Mandriva’s tightvnc implementation” problem has existed for months…

• Avhai/ZeroConf/Bonjour are cool: I decided to set up the new server so I could get at its filesystems using my Mac. to that end, I configured Avhai. To get this to work, I followed some guides referred to by this guy. The short story: install and config netatalk, then install (if necessary: it was already installed in my Mandriva build) Avhai for the afp service you just added. Avahi and its friends are really just advertisers: they aren’t “services” in and of themselves, but the let other machines on your network know what is available. For the record, my file share services are blocked by my firewall: sorry Once complete, the services offered by my Linux box show up on the Mac: file shares, terminal services, and potentially other things. I also noticed that the network performance of AFP seems better than SMB. Note that this is purely a seat-of-the-pants observation

There will likely be a few more brief outages over the next couple of weeks as I finish up installing things and tuning the configuration a bit.

I mentioned a few days ago that I ordered parts for a new webserver. I picked up the pieces on Saturday, and finished the physical assembly in a couple of hours. It is a very compact and, dare I say, “cute” box. I’ll have to take some pictures of it once everything is finished.

I was making such good progress on Saturday that I started right in to the OS install and config. Install of Mandriva Linux 2008 went very smoothly, but post install config caused me some grief.

• First, there was a problem with the screen saver… basically, the power management features of X Windows powered off the display output, and no amount of moving the mouse around or tapping the keyboard would fix the problem. I overcame the issue (I hope) by turning the display power management feature
• Second, vncserver (tightvnc-server) refused to launch generating a “fatal” error due to not being able to find any fonts. I corrected this problem by installing the xfs (X windows font server) package
• Third, vncserver corrupts all keyboard input. The display and mouse works fine remotely, but anything typed turns into gibberish. Apparently I am not alone in experiencing this problem, but there doesn’t seem to be a solution yet

While trying to correct these various problems, i successfully broke my install three times in succession. Since the install is so new, I decided to re-install the OS each time so that I would have a “clean” build. But that means that my progress has been… disrupted. At one point, I had all of my MySQL databases migrated and was starting to think I might have an 80% complete working replacement for my webserver in place today- unfortunately, that has been undone. I’m giving up for now, with the server sitting on my desk in a seemingly functional but incomplete state. I’ll see how it looks in the morning.

To make things even more interesting, my wireless hub died on me. Fortunately, I still had my ancient but not-so-secure Linksys sitting on a shelf, so I have basic wireless back again. The timing is crappy, though- I want to buy a new Apple Airport Time Capsule 802.11n/Gigabit wired Ethernet/NAS device, but that’s not quite shipping yet. Ah well, life is full of challenges.

I’ve been pondering the replacement of my web server, the machine that runs this website, for about a year now. I finally took the leap today and placed the parts order with my favorite computer component dealer, NCIX. A new chassis, motherboard, processor (Intel!), memory, and flat panel display are now waiting to be added to my credit card.

My main objectives with this upgrade:

• physically “shrink” the size of the server. The machine I have is a big, noisy, dual processor box. I want to put the machine itself in our attic crawlspace or on a very small stand, and that means smaller
• upgrade the OS and related components. I’ve found it challenging to complete in-place upgrades on the server. I’ve done it several times, but this go-around I want to do a clean wipe of the machine. Without having a new computer to perform the build on, this would have meant a lengthy (couple day) outage
• minor performance and capacity upgrade. The existing machine is a dual processor 1.6 GHz system with 1 GB of RAM. The new machine will be a dual core 2.6 GHz machine with 4 GB of RAM. I expect the increased memory and, to a lesser extent, faster processor will have some positive effect on performance of some of the odds and ends running on the machine (E.G.: BF2, TeamSpeak- things you folks looking at the web don’t interact with normally)

I don’t expect to get around to actually building the new server for a while, and when I do it will be done without touching this site until the actual switch over. I’ll post the exact details of the new configuration when I deploy it.

The funny thing is, I feel more sentimental about the old server (which I built originally in April, 2003) than about my main gaming PC. Almost five years ago: it has served me well during that time, with very few complaints other than some early heat problems. I hope the new system will serve as well…

Steve Jobs and his reality distortion field apparently put on a relatively quiet show at MacWorld today. Apple stock dropped about $10 on comparatively underwhelming (to the analysts) product announcements- basically, there was no iPhone this year.

The big announcement was the MacBook Air. From my perspective, this is a rather boring release: a very thin MacBook with an underpowered processor, low-end (Intel) video processor, and no user ability to add RAM, upgrade hard disk capacity, or replace the battery. Nothing about it appeals in any way beyond its impressive industrial design: it *is* pretty thin, I’ll give them that. But it still weighs over three pounds, so it isn’t exactly what I’d call “light”. Of more interest to me were the Time Capsule NAS/Airport hub and the improved Apple TV set top device.

Time Capsule is basically network attached storage built in to an AirPort (802.11n) and Gigabit Ethernet hub. But the important consideration is that it works with Leopard’s Time Machine backup application to perform wireless continuous backups. I like backups, so much so that I now have about 1.2 terabytes of hard disk storage dedicated purely to backing up my computers. Unfortunately, I just spent several hundred dollars setting up backup for my MacBook. Buyers remorse…yes, that’s what they call this.

Apple TV has been around for a while. It is essentially a small set top box to store and stream video to your TV. The idea originally is that folks would have digital movies and such, or DVDs that they would rip and store on the Apple TV. Unfortunately, its lack of any built-in mechanism for acquiring legal movie or TV content limited its appeal. The MacWorld announcement regarding Apple TV doesn’t really change the device at all: it gets a software update, and that is about it. The big news is the introduction of licensed movie content available for rental and download directly using the device. 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Touchstone, MGM, New Line, Sony, Miramax, Lions Gate Films: they are all on board to provide movies for Apple TV. Oh, you live in Canada? Oops, sorry, no movies for you.

Yes, that’s right: once again the CRTC has managed to impede another cool technology. It took us years to get satellite radio, TiVo is only just arriving, and TV shows on ITunes are limited to Canadian only content like Corner Gas and NHL hockey. Hurray for Canadian content…. Oh well, maybe one day someone will take the CRTC and its regulations, pack them up in one of those ugly metal shipping containers, and ship them to some country that wants them. Like maybe Zimbabwe: that would be a good home for the CRTC.

I first encountered Microsoft in terms of buying their products in about 1981. I bought a game for my Apple II- Adventure (aka “Colossal Cave”, the original Crowther and Woods text based adventure) from them. I followed Bill Gates’ career from about that time, and always felt like, in a weird way, he and I were twins separated at birth… even though he’s older than me and I’m far, far sexier.

In about 1990, I had a beer (several, actually- I think it was a post-training course social thing) with a fellow in Seattle who told me I looked just like Bill. He then proceeded to tell me how his family used to have a summer cottage near the Gates’ clan when Bill was a kid. He described summers sharing BBQs and swimming with the Gates’ family, and turning down a job offer from Bill in the early 1980’s. My momentary pride at being described as “like Bill Gates” was quashed when the guy described the young Bill Gates as a pain in the neck smartass geek, and how he once nearly drowned Bill while swimming because he was so irritating.

In later life, I realized that the “pain in the neck smartass” was a lot more like me than I was probably willing to admit.

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If there is one thing that can make me giddy when I’m working on a computer upgrade project, it is a well-designed case or chassis. Well-designed means:

• the pieces slot together with minimal effort
• I can open the box without special tools or fiddly screws
• the edges and corners are nicely turned with no sharp edges
• the paint/finish is clean, smooth, and elegant
• there is more than adequate room for all the necessary cables
• all marks/writing/labels are clear and easily read during assembly and future disassembly
• the chassis as a whole feels massively solid and robust: no wobbles, no crappy plastic-y bits
• lots of spare parts and cables included
• good cooling/heat management design, with space for additional/optional fans where appropriate

My favorite case manufacturer to date has been Antec. Their cases generally meet or exceed all the items on my list of requirements. My most recent full computer chassis from them was the P180: it’s a fantastic case, and I’m very happy with it.

Choosing a hard drive enclosure early this year seemed like a no brainer since I like Antec cases so much. I bought Antec’s MX-1 “actively cooled” enclosure. It looked like typical Antec: well made, easy to open, all screws easily accessible and nicely sized, with excellent cooling. Unfortunately, after just a bit over six months of use it died…rather completely. And finding a replacement wasn’t a picnic…

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I was starting to think that the tide might be turning away from ATI + AMD: my favoured platform for the last four years or so. Both Intel and NVidia have been ahead of ATI/AMD now for about a year in terms of top-end video card and CPU performance.

But ATI, at least, seems poised to introduce some interesting technology during 2008. It appears that my long-held hope that “two GPUs on one card” would finally become a reality is about to be fulfilled. ATI has already been talking about four video cards in one machine- which really doesn’t interest me that much. But the 3870 X2 has two processors on one card…which is much more appealing.

My disinterest in having two video cards boils down to three main things: heat, power, and space. If you’ve ever looked at a single high-end video card of moderately recent vintage (such as my existing ATI X1950XTX), you know they are large beasts with big fans and a requirement for their own power lines. They throw off a ton of heat, and are noisy. Two of them in my machine would mean my huge tower would actually be *crowded*, and my 650 watt power supply would likely be strained keeping up with the power demands. It has always struck me as an ugly way to increase video performance.

Now I have an option: perhaps a four core AMD Athlon with a dual GPU ATI 3870 X2? That might be an upgrade worth waiting for. I get the impression NVidia has something similar in the works…I guess I’ll have some work to do to make a decision

I have a deep, dark secret to admit: I often send email using HTML/rich text features. I know, it is shocking: but I fear the seductive features of things like fonts, bold facing, and colour have turned me from the true path of pure text.

When I started using the Macintosh, I set my email options to use rich text format for composing messages:

You’d think that, with this setting, any email message I compose would be formatted using rich text, right? Well, apparently Apple wants to think on my behalf. In their infinitely wise thinking, the setting above is actually more of a request than a command. Apparently, they think I mean “use rich text, if you think that’s wise”. Because what really happens with the above setting is that rich text/HTML format will be used *if* I put something in my email message that demands rich text. Like a font change, or a different colour. Otherwise, the message will still be sent as plain text.

I discovered this behavior after my friend Chris noticed that emails I was sending him were arriving devoid of any formatting, with lovely courier-style fonts. I don’t see a quick way to fix this other than to maybe select some kind of odd font or always make at least one character in every email I send boldfaced or some such. I’ll probably just ignore the problem for now