just want to get this started as I hope it will motivate me to finish it, since I have done a LOT of things on my computer since my last post, and obviously I have posted none of it.
So, I got a little impatient about not having my PC functioning, so I I installed Fedora 12 x64 on the rest of my FreeBSD boot drive and I have about 80% of the things on my list done and working. I’ll reference them by numbers here, and you can go read what they were by clicking on “my list” above. I am still hoping to get FreeBSD as my host OS; however everything is working right now with Fedora (except that stupid wireless NIC), although I am still having my “system reached critical temp” error from ACPI, yet the system resource monitor I have running shows a nice pleasant 30C CONSTANT temp. maybe this summer I’ll pickup a liquid CPU cooler… I already have 5 exhaust fans and 2 intake fans, 2 x 240mm exhaust and a 160mm or 180mm intake, I think I have air flow covered. (talked to a friend who is more into the details of technical issues, a network engineer, and he says that an inactive CPU, like when the system shutsdown, can drop 40F in about 7-10 seconds so it might be why I cannot catch it reporting a high temp in the BIOS) The BIOS does not report any temps reaching above 45C ever, so I have no idea why this is happening, I do run widgets reporting the internal temp, but have never seen it change!!!) . most of the time when it shuts there is/has been high CPU/disk IO usage (all 4 cores over 60% sustained, multiple long term large/multiple file movements across drives and/or multiple VMs running). So it could be valid.
I have come up with a couple of things to try to resolve this issue (going with the cheapest first, even if it is not really going to help a CPU issue, it can’t hurt…)
- I could just upgrade some hardware and see if a different BIOS/MB manufacturer makes a difference. I would love a lower watt CPU (or 6 core!), more L2/L3 cache, and USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s, since my current system bottleneck is the SATA 3GB/s HDDs.
- Switch to liquid cooling and installing a new thermal sensor with an external readout.
- buy cute little 5cfm coolling fans to place on my NorthBridge, SouthBridge, and onboard GPU passive cooling fins (cheapest option, not necessarily attacking the actual issue though)
- purchase a pretty new Video card and disable the onboard video (the chip is within an inch or two from the CPU, so there maybe some issue with residual heat from the GPU causing my overheating).
in order from cheapest to most expensive would be 3, 2, 4/1 (really close and might be a tie or within a $20-$30)
My List of things to get working, except this one is for Fedora.
1. VirtualBox is installed, working and I have multiple VMs up and running.
2. Install VMWare Workstation, I have downloaded the newest trial version and it is good for another 3 weeks, but have not gotten around to installing it.
3. Mounting my NTFS drives, all mounted, where I want them, even went through and deleted the Windows OS system folders from all but one.
4. SSH connections, I have started this and was working on it when I decided to start this post, should be done tomorrow.
5. I am posting this from Google Chrome on my Fedora 12 installation right now, so I’d say installed and working. Java shows up in the plugins, although java.com cannot detect it in my browser.
6. Hulu works great in Firefox or Google Chrome, although is a bit spotty when I have VMs running, and the playback is laggy in Chrome… So I am trying to get the Hulu Desktop app running. will make a post after I get some work done on it and let you know how it goes.
7. So far everything is working great, going to try a couple of VM’ed games next week after I get the rest of this done.
8. Firefox is up, running, and is playing hulu; however it does not report Java as installed from the about:plugins page, even though it is and I followed all the steps to link the correct files to the correct places. I believe this is the Firefox 3.6 doesn’t support Java issue though and not an issue on my part.
9. access NTFS drives remotely via ssh and a chrooted account with links to the mounts. After I get my SSH working tomorrow I should be able to test this. I was reading something online I no longer have open and may not have bookmarked that said that I can double mount drives (mount a drive to more than one, specifically 2, locations)
10. convert my NTFS drives to a more suitable linux FS, this again is a last thing item, to be done after everything else is working.
11. convert my drives from MBR to GPT, most likely to be done at the same time as the FS change.
12. GUI package manager for KDE, done, comes with Fedora.
13. eliminate all traces of Gnome from my computer… again, have to be last thing, once all is up and working.
14. build my first kernel, normally done immediately after install, I’ll do it last after EVERYTHING else (including the other things I said I would do last)
15. Wine is installed and works. will try out some things that I have installed in VMs to see about dropping those VMs
16. install older apps, again part of a couple of other items, I will of course be installing older apps on older OS installation I have, and will try them in Wine as stated.
17. X.org port forwarding to Cygwin on a windows machine (laptop) something I might do in a week or two…
18. start regular backups… I’m getting there, I have the drive formated in ext3, I just have not started backing things up.
19. Java, I think it works in Chrome, I was able to see the animated maps on the NOAA website, which most people use to test their Java. not working in Firefox 3.5.9.2
20. Flash, Hulu is working in Firefox and Chrome, so all good here.
21. Yakuake is fully functional and working.
22. Picasa 3.6 (I think) is installed and working great, except I don’t seem to be able to find the facial recognician system.
23. No idea on this one, can not find where I posted what it was, only that it was completed on BSD.
Unfinished items for Fedora: 2, 4, 9, 10, 11, 19?
apparently Open Office will not load, for an unknown reason, looking into it at this time.
Although I was away for a week, I managed to get a few things accomplished over the weekend. I’ll go ahead and relist my list of things to do now and then add some comments about them below…
- install VirtualBox (done but not running/needs configuration)
- install VMWare Workstation (I have a license for either 6.0 or 6.5 on ebay for linux x64 a while back for $5, I was the only one who bid. I have the iso somewhere on one of my drives)
- mount all my ntfs drives and setup nfs support (all done before I started writing this except for 2 folders I want mounted in specific places)
- test my remote and local network ssh login (should be setup already, except forwarding the port on the router)
- get Google Chrome working
- test audio and video playback (can I watch hulu?)
- get my VM’s to launch and successfully run programs (should be easy after installing the correct apps and configuring them, worried about the ATI drivers)
- install Firefox (my backup browser for when web pages don’t work in chrome)
- test remote access to FreeBSD for my mounted ntfs drives (I have a friend in Korea that is willing to help)
- begin converting my ntfs drives to a better FS
- convert my drives from MBR to GPT to utilize GUID’s
- find a port/package manager GUI interface for KDE
- eliminate all traces of Gnome from my computer (several packages I have installed have dependencies that have Gnome in the name, need to find out if they are necessary and nuke em if not!!)
- build my first kernel
- get wine installed and working (in case I have something that will refuses to run in a VM)
- either install some older DOS games (<—two different links there) or find something newer out there install and get them working (VM or wine, just for fun and to say “oh yeah I love that game, I still it installed on my system…”)
- get Xorg port forwarding to work with cygwin.
- setup a respectable backup system (currently my backup drive turned into emergency storage when I had a few HDD’s all fail within weeks of each other last year, now I have new drives and enough storage space, I even copied the data off the external backup, but have not yet done a backup of FreeBSD. Might make this item number one!!)
- get java working (part of getting hulu to run)
- get flash working (part of getting hulu to run)
I guess I’ll start at the top.
1. 75% in progress, troubleshooting and more testing needed. I have gotten my user added the the “VirtualBox” user group, but I get this error when I try to execute VirtualBox from the command line ”VirtualBox: supR3HardenedExecDir: couldn’t read “”, errno=2 cchLink=-1“ I tried loading VirtualBox from KDE and it was loading for about 12 seconds then nothing happend, also it did not install a manual page. I’ll have to do some forum surfing to figure this one out. this exact error is referrenced in the FreeBSD handbook noting that it should only occur if you are using an older version on VirtualBox.
2. 0% not started. no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete.
3. 100% complete. everything is automounting at bootup and it is doing it where I want it to.
4. 100% complete. I am working almost exclusively via ssh now and can connect to it remotely as tested via an Android cell phone ssh client (props to connectbot)
5. 10% in progress, researched only. Chrome can be installed as a Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, or Fedora package, I just need to set my system up to handle RPMs and I might be able to get it to install, hopefully the newest version will work easier than last august when everyone was trying to hack the install to make it work, especially since every forum I went to never had a successful complete port available and there were no posts from 2010.
6. duplicate issue. going to delete this one, as #19 and #20 pretty much sum it up.
7. 30% in progress, trouble shooting and additional testing required. as noteded else where VirtualBox is installed but not able to run, and I have not started on VMWare.
8. 90% complete. Firefox 3.0.14 is installed and running. this appears to be the newest version available for FreeBSD according to the ports tree, as FreeBSD does not get listed on the Mozilla Download Page. Ha HA the jokes on me, when 3.6 came out they moved it to /usr/ports/www/firefox and left 3.0 in the /usr/ports/firefox3 folder, so I apparently have installed the older version… now I have to uninstall it and install the newer one…
9. 90% in progress, trouble shooting and more testing needed. self testing shows that a user is able to ssh in and access the drives, but is not able to ftp in and access the drives. I used “sudo ln -s /mnt/<directory> /home/<user>/<directory>” I haven’t used links much and need to see if the -s (symbolic) is what is preventing the user from accessing the data via ftp.
10. 0% not started. no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete.
11. 20% in progress, 1 out of 5 drives is currently running with GPT. the new 1.5TB drive was setup with GPT when installed into the system. the new 500GB drive (FreeBSD boot drive) is still MBR as the FreeBSD fdisk application did not have an option for setting the drive boot record to GPT, although I have found documentation on converting the FreeBSD boot drive to GPT.
12. 0% in progress, initial research turned up nothing useful.
13. -30% not started, situation worsening, additional packages labeled as “gnome-xxxx” or “xxxxx-gnome” have been added as dependencies during other package installations. 
14. 10% in progress, initial research has turned up useful information; however I am not currently in a possition to proceed.
15. 0% not started. no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete.
16. 0% not started. no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete, will require at least one of #’s 1, 2, 7, or 15 to be complete before work can begin.
17. 0% not started. no updates yet, holding off till I get some of these other tasks complete, not a priority and very near the bottom of the list of things to do.
18. 20% in progress. I know it is not recommended for backups, but I have rsync installed and am looking into using it. I will continue to look for alternatives; however I like the this setup. I would like to have the system fully setup before I start making backups, but I will probably get this completed in the next 48-72 hours, even if just running it with rsync.
19. 60% in progress, I thought I had it installed, but when I went to the test if you have java installed page of www.java.com it failed to test my java installation (might need to add the plugin for firefox, will check); however the java download page only lists “Windows, Mac OS, and Linux” as OS choices, so I will have to do more research.
20. 40% in progress, I thought I had it installed, but when I went to hulu it told me I need java 10.0.22, also amd.com told me I need the flash plugin installed; however again there is no FreeBSD listing on the download page as a supported OS, so I will have to do more research.
21. 100% complete. (I know I added this one) get Yakuake working in KDE, well I did a “sudo pkg_add -r yakuake” and it started downloading, it has about 6 dependencies and those had about 150 dependencies, most of which I already had installed. the problem I saw was it force downloaded KDE 3.5 and all of it’s dependencies, I hope that doesn’t screw anything up. If I remember correctly from when KDE 4.0 first came out they specifically named the port KDE4 instead of just KDE so that there would not be conflicts on systems that had both versions installed. after it finished I ran a “sudo pkgdb -F” it found a lot of stale dependencies and fixed them, one thing I noticed fly by was firefox 3.0.## which tells me I need to check my firefox and see if it is 3.0 or 3.6…
22. 10% researched only. Get Picasa installed and working, this will be just like chrome and will require using RPM packages.
start off with some non-techie stuff first…
I head back to see my surgeon next Monday, where he will tell me that in another week or two I should start putting some weight on my leg (toe touch, or partial weight bearing?) when at my PT. I am also hoping he will tell me it is okay to get my incision wet, as it has been making it very difficult to take showers!
ok, on to the good stuff.
So, I am not at home and do not have my desktop machine available for use for the last week, I have been going through withdrawal… but having to work on someone else’s machine, and my wife’s laptop (I think I mentioned before, I gave her mine, and sold her old one) has taught me one important lesson, why I prefer Linux.
My number one reason for preferring Linux over Windows is system maintenance. What do I mean? well, I mean keeping everything up to date, this latest round of Adobe patching should make this make sense to everyone. I don’t use Acrobat on my Linux machines for this reason. However; back to the point, when I need to check for updates on my Linux machine I open Yakuake with a quick hit of F12 and type “sudo yum update” and it comes back and tells me every single thing installed on my system that has an update available, period, end of statement. On windows, I have to launch 5-8 different apps, find their “check for updates” button/link and wait for the results (I have learned by doing this that OpenOffice.org does not notify you of a new version being released, only if there are updates for your version. example, I have 3.1 installed, and 3.2 is now available. clicking the check for updates menu option tells my “There are no available updates for this version” (maybe not word for word, but that is just about what it says). I run windows update, Acrobat Update, Java update, Picasa update, Chrome update, Firefox update, and on and on… (yes I know there is an Adobe Updater, but I don’t know how to initiate it in Windows, and never cared enough to look it up, but now that I have mentioned it I sure I found instructions and have put a link to them here).
Simple and easy to manage, most distros even let you run their package manager and it has a button to click to check for updates for your system, making it easier and more time consuming all at once to do the same thing. (Yakuake is always running and it takes me about 1.5 seconds to type that line into the terminal, it takes a lot longer to load the package manager from the application menu and then click the check for updates button, but you don’t have to type that way!)
The actual GUI interface for Windows an Linux and even MAC are so similar these days, that I don’t care which I am using as far as that is concerned. I have come to the understanding that there will always be applications/games for an OS, other than the one I am using, that I want to use/play (take iPhone for example, they have the best Air Traffic Controller game I have played, and I’ve hunted those down and played quite a number of them, but I don’t own anything made by Apple, and probably won’t ever, unless the 2nd gen iPad totally rocks… but I will be getting an Android Tablet this year (possibly the Notion Ink Adam, or the HTC Google Chrome OS tablet), so I still probably won’t get an iPad). My concern at this point, as I spend more and more time as a Unix Admin is maintenance. The system I use at home needs to be practically maint free, as most Linux and Unix machines are, they will run for years without being touched by an admin, the best I know of are an AIX Server and a OpenVMS server, the AIX server has been running since 1991 and has never been patched, updated, reconfigured, or messed with in any way. It is setup to contact a NIM server for logins, so no new users have ever been added to it, it has never crashed, never lost power, never been rebooted. That to me is the greatest achievement of humankind (in technology anyways, and some of these companies need to take a look at the AIX OS and learn something from it!!!). The other machine, the OpenVMS machine has been running since before 1994, but has not been patched, never been upgraded, never been rebooted, since 1994. now I know next to nothing about OpenVMS, and have not personally logged into the machine itself, but a friend and co-worker of mine used to be the sole admin for the OpenVMS machines at that company and although that one is the only one like this, it is still running today without interference from humans. I am sure some other machines are out there doing the same, but these are two that I know. The longest Windows Server I have heard of running without rebooting or crashing was about 2.5 – 3 years, after which the hardware components in the server failed and the machine was replaced. Some people have told me about Windows servers being up for 4 years and then being restarted by some new guy, but I have no validation of it and they could not give me a more exact time frame.
not sure if I made a compelling argument or not, but I need some medication and to go prop my leg up, so I am done here. Also expecting UPS sooner or later for an over night supersave shipment… and it takes me 5 mins to get downstairs… :)
Right, so lets see if I can close this back story up now (edit: okay, I broke it up into 2 posts, as it was getting pretty long!!). not that I am not enjoying recalling my endevors, but it might actually take me longer to recount all of it if I keep up the pace I have been following. So, onward.
I RMA’d one of my Seagate HDD’s, a 240gig, I was disappointed they did not offer me an “upgrade” option. When you RMA with Seagate they “may” give you the option of upgrading to a different model (in the same series) at a discounted rate; however this was not an option with my drive. Needless to say I was disappointed, as I would have loved to get a larger drive in exchange as I may just be upgrading it anyway. well after almost 3 months of begging and hunting for a box from someone to ship the drive out, I started getting bad sector reports from another drive (may have mentioned this in a previous post) so I decided I was going to buy a 640gig 7200 RPM SATA2 with a 32 meg cache drive and ship my RMA out in the box that the new drive would come in. Things happened, and I ended up doing something else with the money. So one day I was digging around for stuff in the bin I keep my pc parts and cables in.
time for another tangent… at least this one is related. I move a LOT, actually right now is the first time I have stayed in an apartment complex for more than 12 months, and on average I move every 6-9 months. Except for the few times I have lived in a house, this is actually the first time my street address has not changed at least once in a calendar year since the 18 months I spent at the same apt in college (that was a decade ago if you are curious). So anyways… I have found that moving in garbage and grocery bags is very non-productive. so one year (I have no idea how long ago, although I do at least know in what state!!) I was wandering around in a Target (I think, could have been Walmart, but I do not think so) and saw that Christmas colored 14-18 gallon plastic bins were on sale ½ price (this would be either January or February) so I bought 23 +/- 3 or 4 plastic bins, and have been moving in them ever since, several of them got left in my parents place in Las Vegas, but other than those (and the ones I returned after moving that year (late 90′s)), I still have some of those that I am using today. Since then I have picked up some lovely Halloween colored bins as well, and a couple blue ones when I had to move in the middle of the summer a couple of times these last 4 or 5 years.
So, my pc parts are in a Halloween bin, onwards… I was digging through my PC parts bin and came across the box for the 500gig Maxtor (Maxtor is now Seagate) Western Digital Caviar green HDD I bought in Best Buy 2 or 3 years ago, it had a plastic clam shell instead of the foam padding, but it was “original packaging” so I figured it should count… got it packaged up and shipped out (this was late October, early November. yes I sent the RMA in during late June, early July, and YES, I had to submit a new one). my replacement drive came back nice and quick and is working well.
(edit: right forgot to mention this post was generated using Firefox on a Fedora 12 Virtual machine)
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