07 Jun 09 So when will the charging ever start?

What the heck is this supposed to mean?  I guess I’ll never know when my laptop will ever start charging.

Tags: laptop, not charging, plugged in, power saver

18 May 09 Backups on Windows and OS X

On all my computers I tend to keep multiple backups.  But what backups do you really need and what isn’t required.  Well, there’s no good rule of thumb.  More is better and using good software tools becomes a BIG requirement if you have > 1 backup.

However, just in the last few weeks I learned something new when my Vista laptop hard drive began corrupting on itself.  As for corruption, you can tell if you delete a file, and it takes forever and doesn’t delete.  Or some programs won’t launch, and random OS crashes begin to occur.

So to illustrate my backup story, here’s what I do.  Hard drives are so cheap now, having good backups is a REQUIREMENT.  I also shoot too many digital pictures to risk losing anything.  

My laptop (Mac OS X Leopard):

• Timemachine #1 hard drive.  I use the same hard drive for > 1 OS X machine. 
• Time machine #2.  Sometimes I do this.  This copy is stored a locked drawer in my office at work.  (offsite backup).
• Aperture backup #1 – realistically a second backup.  The first backup is the Time machine #1 hard drive.  Aperture takes too long to restore if you rely on the Aperture backup system.  I also use a custom rsync script to sync my iPhoto library to this same hard drive.
• Aperture backup #2 – Same as #1.  I store this in a locked drawer at work.  I rotate drive #2 & #1 each month to keep it fresh.

My Vista laptop (Windows Vista Enterprise) for work.  No bitlocker:

• Complete PC backup.  I use Vista Enterprise, so I use the built-in Windows tool.  This is a very important backup because you can restore your machine to it’s exact settings.  It takes too long to re-install programs and install updates on Windows.  This is a good backup for incremental point-in-time restores.  If you rely on your laptop daily, you need this backup.
• Complete files backup.  Sometimes I’ll use the Seagate FreeAgent software for this.  The built-in Vista enterprise version is not as easy as the Seagate version because you can’t access the files on the hard drive.  The Seagate FreeAgent software is a bit buggy because it sometimes has issues copying files, even when you’re admin.  These files backups are very important.  This specific backup protects you from OS corruption.  It’s a good option to restore files onto a clean OS install rather than the full, and potentially bloated or currupted OS sometimes.

For Windows, both types backups are a requirement.   This is because you need a snapshot backup system and you also need file backup in case of OS corruption.  

As for OS X, the Time machine backups work great.  I used the time machine backup to restore my laptop when I upgraded the hard drive.  You can always access the files at anytime, and you can store multiple computers on a single drive.

<rant about RAID>As for hardware recommendations?  I once worked on a hardware RAID box design.  Therefore I don’t trust RAID boxes.  I once worked at a networking company.  I kinda trust network backups, but direct connect makes file restore much faster.  I don’t use RAID specifically because the hard drive is TOO big.  You also only get 1 backup.  For a home or work user, an external hard drive is perfect because it’s simple and won’t require some massive box to run a few drives.  With RAID (say RAID 5 or 6) boxes, if you run out of space, then you need to spend $$$$$ to buy a new RAID box.  Typically, with the failure scenario of RAID systems, including RAID5, if one drive fails, it can be rebuilt.  But if one drive is failed, what does that mean about your other drives?  They’re all the same type, and have been used for exact number of years.  All of the other drives will probably start failing within the same year.  It just like changing one tire on a car when it’s bald.  Your other tires will need changing soon. </rant about RAID>

My main hard drives are OWC Ministack v2 or v3 3.5″ hard drive enclosures.  I use FW400 or FW800 to backup my OS X.  I trust the Oxford firewire chipset that’s in the box and at one time, I had bought many bare SATA drives, different manufacturers and lots.  As for my PC laptop, I use a slim 2.5″ Seagate Free Agent drives.  They’re not super cheap, but I somewhat convinced that there’s good reliability if there’s a 5 year warranty.  I only think of this reason because WD has a 3 year warranty.  The biz model for a 5 year warranty must be hard to calculate too!

Since I standardized on the OWC ministack, I’m able to use the same power supply for everything.  Sadly, I actually don’t use any of the multi interface features of the drive box.  I would recommend that people only use USB or FW drives only.  USB seems to be the best option these days as Apple is dropping FW from their products.  I think ideally if “I had a million dollars”, I’d rather move to all 2.5″ SSD drives for the speed and portability.  But for cost reasons, I’d probably recommend 3.5″ external drives from a major vendors (with a proven track records).  Good, free backup software is also a good thing.  Especially, if you’re backup up a Windows box that doesn’t have the Vista backup software additions (Enterprise only?).

Tags: aperture, backups, freeagent, leopard, ministack, os x, owc, raid, seagate, software, sysadmin, system administrator, vista, vista enterprise

19 Mar 09 VMs. I love it

I was able to run WinXP + Skype in my VM with the sound working perfectly.  Not bad for technology these days.

Tags: skype, vm, vmware

10 Feb 09 Stupid POS

I tend to find The Onion as hit or miss with their jokes. However, I think everyone can relate to this video. I think everytime I’m out looking at electronics, I usually want to play with it for a while to make sure that I get what I want. And as electronics software gets more complex, it becomes more of a requirement.

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn’t Fucking Work

Sadly, I do have to say that they’re insulting Sony a little bit more than they deserve. However, there is definitely a good Sony example of releasing a POS. The reviews for the Bravia wireless music streaming device did make it sound like a POS.

Tags: bravia, pos, sony, streaming, the onion, wireless music

31 Oct 08 Ubuntu 8.04 JeOS eth0 not found

I’ve been playing with Ubuntu JeOS, “pronouced as Juice” today.  I’m mostly interested in it because I can basically run small server appliances to test out random things like standalone postgres, standalone mysql servers, openldap, ruby on rails hosting (ngix, mongrel, thin, etc), etc.

I grabbed a copy of JeOS from the VMWare appliance marketplace with the label of “Ubuntu 8.04 JeOS Minimal appliance” and ran with it.

If you tell VMWare Player that “I copied it”.  Then it basically autogenerates a new UUID and MAC address in your virtual machine for you.

The problem that I had today was that this JeOS VM didn’t have the VMWare tools installed on it, so my eth0 didn’t work after clicking the “I copied it” button.  To fix it, I found some info online but I’ll summarize it here.

VMware by default gives a guest instance a MAC address generated in a particular range based on the host. Ubuntu, however, caches the MAC address of its eth interfaces in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules. So when you give the virtual image to somebody else, their VMware generates another MAC for eth0, and Ubuntu will then cache the new MAC address as eth1 (2, 3, etc.). But since there is no eth1, you get no network connection. The trick is to force a persistent MAC address in the VMX file like this (filling it in the x’s however you want):

ethernet0.addressType = “static”
ethernet0.address = “00:50:56:xx:xx:xx”

hsmack fix:  OR you can change the address to match the inside your Ubuntu.vmx file.

To summarize:

Edit your 70-persistent-net.rules file and change the MAC address to match in the Ubuntu.vmx file.

$ sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

# PCI device 0x1022:0x2000 (pcnet32)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:0c:29:70:ee:6f", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0"

My Ubuntu.vmx file looks like (see line 44):

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config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "4"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
memsize = "256"
scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.fileName = "root.vmdk"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "F:"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
floppy0.autodetect = "TRUE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = "FALSE"
usb.present = "TRUE"
sound.present = "TRUE"
sound.fileName = "-1"
sound.autodetect = "TRUE"
svga.autodetect = "TRUE"
mks.keyboardFilter = "allow"
displayName = "JeOS 8.04 postgres"
guestOS = "ubuntu"
nvram = "Ubuntu.nvram"
deploymentPlatform = "windows"
virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"
tools.upgrade.policy = "useGlobal"
 
ide1:0.autodetect = "FALSE"
floppy0.fileName = "A:"
extendedConfigFile = "Ubuntu.vmxf"
 
scsi0:1.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:1.fileName = "swap.vmdk"
floppy0.startConnected = "FALSE"
sound.startConnected = "FALSE"
 
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
uuid.location = "56 4d f5 7d 8d 70 ce fe-6a 3b 18 23 6b 70 ee 6f"
uuid.bios = "56 4d f5 7d 8d 70 ce fe-6a 3b 18 23 6b 70 ee 6f"
MemTrimRate = "0"
powerType.powerOff = "soft"
powerType.reset = "soft"
scsi0:0.redo = ""
scsi0:1.redo = ""
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:70:ee:6f"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
tools.remindInstall = "TRUE"

Tags: 70-persistent-net.rules, eth0 not found, ethernet0.generatedaddress, linux, mac address, networking, ubuntu, ubuntu 8.04 lts, ubuntu jeos, vmware, vmware appliance, vmware player, vmx

31 Oct 08 Linux test environments

Setting up a Linux test environment is quite fun and easy.  My favorite tool is VMWare Player (Windows) or VMWare Fusion (Mac).  VMWare player is free, while VMWare Fusion, now in version 2.0+, is inexpensive for the functionality that it provides.  I only use VMWare since I have paid for Fusion on Mac, however, there are free alternatives like VirtualBox (backed by Sun Microsystems) and KVM.  Those are currently a bit harder to setup and do not have well established production solutions like VMWare and Xen.

I find the portability of the VMWare images very handy when going back and forth on Windows and Mac. There’s also easy downloads of different OSs at VMWare Appliances and VMPlanet.net.

One quick way to get setup on VMWare for free on Windows, is to register on the VMWare site and download the VMWare Player for free.  Then go and download an appliance from the VMWare Appliances page.

So what’s something fun to download?  Definitely Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop.

You’ll find the best support out there, i.e. you can google anything if you need help.  It’s based off of Debian Linux, so it’s using a great package manager (aptitude).   The help site for Ubuntu Server and Desktop is great too.

Tags: apt-get, aptitude, desktop, help guides, linux, lts, server, sun microsystems, ubuntu, ubuntu 8.04 lts, ubuntu help site, virtual machines, virtualbox, virtualization, vmplanet, vmplanet.net, vmware, Xen

31 Oct 08 Talk to me

First post.  I’ll use this to check images and code sample pastings.  Expect this to be edited a few times for test samples of each.

puts "Hello World"


puts "Hello World"


The following languages are supported in the lang attribute:

abap, actionscript, actionscript3, ada, apache, applescript, aptsources, asm, asp, autoit, bash, blitzbasic, bnf, boo, c, cmac, caddcl, cadlisp, cil, cfdg, cfm, cobol, cpp-qt, cpp, csharp, css, d, delphi, diff, div, dos, dot, eiffel, fortran, freebasic, genero, gettext, glsl, gml, bnuplot, groovy, haskell, html4strict, idl, ini, inno, io, java, java5, javascript, kixtart, klonec, klonecpp, latex, lisp, lotusformulas, lotusscript, lua, m68k, matlab, mirc, mpasm, mxml, mysql, nsis, objc, ocaml-brief, ocaml, oobas, oracle8, pascal, per, pic16, perl, php-brief, php, plsql, povray, powershell, progress, python, qbasic, rails, reg, robots, ruby, sas, scala, scheme, sdlbasic, smalltalk, smarty, sql, tcl, text, thinbasic, tsql, typoscript, vb, vbnet, verilog, vhdl, visualfoxpro, winbatch, xml, xorg_conf, xpp, z80