garan.org

One of the most useful commands I use on Unix is the cal command. It outputs a simple text based calendar along the lines of:

garan@fastlap:~$ cal
     March 2007
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
             1  2  3
 4  5  6  7  8  9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31
garan@fastlap:~$

and will take command line arguments like this:

garan@fastlap:~$ cal 01 1973
    January 1973
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
    1  2  3  4  5  6
 7  8  9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30 31
garan@fastlap:~$

How can such a simple command get any better? Now today's date is highlighted using an inverse block which means I don't have to type date before typing cal.

After fiddling around with Linux I decided to keep things simple and went for a complete XP based build. I've got a spare hard drive in the box and I'm planning to put a Linux partition on there so that I can play around without destroying my work environment.

I've discovered that Linux is improving, but, at the moment, Windows is still a nose ahead when it comes to putting together a complex web of hardware and software requirements for desktop use.

I started having problems with my desktop PC last week. It was getting slow, sometimes hanging or rebooting itself with no apparant pattern. I tried a rebuild with both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux and had problems with both. The CPU would go to 100% for no particular reason.

I tried re-seating cards and memory, pulling cards out to see if that helped but kept wondering about the hard drives. That particular part of the case was very warm to touch. So I've now removed the Raptor SATA drive that I was using as the Windows system disk and replaced it with a WD Caviar IDE drive. So far everything's looking a lot better.

At the moment the box is running Ubuntu AMD64 Linux. I managed to get both video cards working and all is looking well. But the AMD64 support is still in its infancy. So it's either get VmWare Workstation up and running with XP, rebuild the box on 32 bit Ubuntu which will improve matters but still need VmWare or just go back to running Windows (boo hiss!).

The crescendo of computer related noises in my office has once again reached the level at which I actually notice it so I've spent some time today tracking down the worst clicks and whirrs. First candidate was my desktop PC. I opened the side of the case and the first thing that I noticed was dust. I'm blaming the shredder. Ever since I put it in the office there's been a noticable increase in the amount of dust that's kicking around. Maybe I should move it somewhere else. Anyway. I digress.. I cleaned out the dust. Well that's not quite true. I re-organised the dust using a can of compressed air, taking particular care to make sure all the build up on the fans was cleared off. Normally I grab a Swiffer and use that but that would have meant going downstairs, something I'm not a huge fan of at the moment.

Still noisey so I started stopping fans with my finger to work out what was making the noise. The graphics card fan. Easy one to sort out with a quick visit to http://www.quietpc.com. So once that's sorted I should have a quiet desktop again.

Next it was time to dig out the server that lives hidden away behind the desk. At least one of the hard drives has been making a nasty clunking noise recently. A nose around inside and after pulling a couple of power leads I worked out that it was the root disk that was making all the noise. Typical; the only disk that requires me to rebuild the box. I've ordered some 250GB Samsung SpinPoint disks to replace all the drives in the box. They are probably the quietest disks you can buy which is what I'm looking for. Seek speeds and ultimate performance aren't really required in a file server.

So rebuilding the server allows me to try another flavour of Unix. I was going to go back to Debian after fiddling with Gentoo for a while. But friends have recommended Ubuntu. It's based on Debian with the same package management system behind it; the thing that I love abot Debian. The difference is that it's a lot more up to date with a release every 6 months, come rain or shine. I'll see how I go.

Back to the stairs remark earlier. I hurt my back on Saturday and have been struggling since. I'm booked in to see the Quack on Friday afternoon with a view to being referred to a local chiropractor called The Spine Team. I've heard a lot of good about them and after checking today that they are registered with BUPA, it's not going to break the bank to go and give it a go.

The annoying thing is that I was all rev'd up to start back at the gym on Monday morning. It's now Thursday and I still haven't been. It's making me more determined to come up with the final solution though.

I'm going to be spending somewhere between eight and ten hours on a train this coming weekend so I thought I'd setup a development environment on my Powerbook. I didn't particularly want to download all the sources and complie them up so I tried Darwinports. It didn't quite work and to be honest I wasn't surprised - I've put so many different things on the laptop since I've had it that it's in a bit of a mess.

So I looked for something else and came across Apache Friends. Currently they've got a beta version of XAMPP that installs Apache, MySQL, PHP & PEAR, SQLite, Perl, ProFTPD, phpMyAdmin, OpenSSL, GD, Freetype2, libjpeg, libpng, zlib, Ming, Webalizer, mod_perl, eAccelerator, phpSQLiteAdmin. Sounded too good to be true.

The installer has a .sitx extension which needed StuffIt to decompress. The first time I tried to open it, it fired up Excel - see point above about machine being b0rked! Installed Stuffit and it installed like a dream. There's a little website included that acts like a control panel, allowing you to view the phpinfo(), access the mysql php admin screen and try out a couple of demos.

I'm impressed :)

Over the weekend I've been trying to setup Gentoo with on a server whose motherboard was advertised as having on-board RAID 0 and RAID 1 functionality. It turns out that the 'RAID controller' is in fact an extension of the BIOS that, when accessed using a special device driver that you have to add to the operating system, gives you RAID functionality. The OS can still see the seperate disks in the array and the user is trusted not to access them directly. Madness.

More info here.

I wasted a day messing around with this, trying to get it running using Device Mapper only to find out that the chipset I have isn't supported yet.

I've ordered a 3ware SATA RAID card. It does proper RAID. Watch this space..