hype-o-thetic?com

UPDATE 2010-05-20
I am now running 0.7.1 Shere (revision 5127) since 1 month with Hyperthreading enabled and I had no issue. It seems to be fixed.

UPDATE 2009-09-03
Still running without any issues :)

UPDATE 2009-08-01

Re-installed FreeNAS this weekend and the problem didn’t come back!
Disabling Hyperthreading fixed it!

UPDATE 2009-07-26

Disabling Hyperthreading in the Bios seems to do the trick, I haven’t yet got the error again, I am crossing my fingers.

UPDATE 2009-07-21

Now I am trying to disable Hyperthreading to see if my problem will go away, stay tuned.

ORIGINAL POST

I had some “panic spin lock held too long” problem, my FreeNAS box was freezing without any reasons.

Here’s what I did:

1. Resetted the Bios to default settings (I had turned OFF many things before)
2. Installed using full install amd64 (I was using an embedded install before)
3. System -> Advanced -> activated Power Daemon
4. Network -> LAN -> activated Device Polling
5. Network -> LAN -> Type 1000baseTX / Full-Duplex

And since then no more “panic spin lock held too long”.

Unfortunately, the problem came back :( It seems to be related to when I leave mounted shares on my Ubuntu dektop for a long period without activity. I re-installed my NAS directly with FreeBSD/Samba and the same problem happened again.

Interesting feed: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2009-July/thread.html#51019

1 – Compile and install driver:
Source: http://wiki.cchtml.com/
sudo aptitude install build-essential cdbs fakeroot dh-make debhelper debconf libstdc++5 dkms

# AMD64
sudo dpkg -i xorg-driver-fglrx_*.deb fglrx-kernel-source_*.deb fglrx-amdcccle_*.deb

2 – Generate xorg.conf:
sudo aticonfig --initial=dual-head --screen-layout=right

sudo aticonfig --xinerama=on

Note: you can do “dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg” to reset you xorg.conf to default values.

3 – Bug workaround:
Source: http://jen3ral.wordpress.com/

1. Login to a tty (ctrl+alt F1) and type sudo killall gdm.
2. Type sudo nano (or gedit, whichever you prefer) /etc/ati/amdpcsdb to edit the file. Go to the [AMDPCSROOT/SYSTEM/DDX] section and add:
   EnableRandR12=Sfalse.
3. Type this into a terminal, sudo nano (or gedit) /etc/X11/xorg.conf, to open the xorg.conf file.
4. Under the “Device” section add these options on separate lines:
   Option "EnableRandR12" "false"
Option "DesktopSetup" "horizontal"
5. Now just restart your computer and it should be good to go.

Compiz still not working…

When you add a new network card in your linux box and remove the old one, the new card will be named eth1. If you want to change it back to eth0, you can edit the file “70-persistent-net.rules” to remove the old eth0 card line and also remove the new eth1 line:

vi /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

Then you just need to reboot and the file will be updated with the new network card as eth0.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FreeNX

dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

Choose: “mail sent by smarthost; received via SMTP or fetchmail”

Get root access:
sudo su

To backup:
tar cvpzf backup.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/backup.tgz --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys /

To restore:
tar xvpfz backup.tgz -C /

Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=35087

To backup on an other mount:
tar cvpzf /mnt/data/backup.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys /

Use DeltaCopy (as rsync server) on the Windows box:

http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp

You’ll need to open port TCT/873 in your windows firewall.

Note: To fix the accentuated characters issue in the filenames, you can replace the “Cygwin1.dll” in the DeltaCopy directory by a UTF-8 compliant Cygwin dll (http://www.okisoft.co.jp/esc/utf8-cygwin/). Then restart the service or reboot.

And here’s my bash script running on my Linux box (all the files are in a “backup-tools” directory):

#!/bin/bash

passwdfile=~ACCOUNT/backup-tools/passwd
excludefile=~ACCOUNT/backup-tools/exclude
options="--delete-after --recursive --exclude-from=$excludefile --human-readable --stats --times"

# This gives a  bored user something to watch
if [ "$1" = "--progress" ];
then
    options="$options --progress"
fi

echo "--starting--"

rsync OPTIONNALUSERNAME@SEVERADDRESS::DELTACOPYMODULENAME /WHERETOBACKUP --password-file=$passwdfile $options

echo "--done--"

Then I run it daily in the crontab (command “crontab -e”):

@daily ~ACCOUNT/backup-tools/rsync.sh | mail ACCOUNT -s "daily rsync result"

Ref: http://dailycupoftech.com/windows-backup-with-rsync-and-freenas/

1. Use the Ubuntu “alternate installer” disc
2. At the start menu press F4 and select “Install a commande-line system”
   
3. Complete the installation process
4. After add the gnome-core package and gdm:
   aptitude install gnome-core gdm

Voilà!

I am now installing Ubuntu without a swap partition and I use a swap file afterward.

Here’s the details from Ubuntu Swap FAQ:

Should I reinstall with more swap?

• Definitely no.
• With the 2.6 kernel, “a swap file is just as fast as a swap partition.”(Wikipedia:Paging, LKML).

How do I add more swap?

• Usually, people associate swap with a swap partition, maybe because they’ve been proposed to create a swap partition on install. In fact any file can be used as a swapping device, be it a partition or a conventional file. If you’re considering responsiveness, my advice: add more RAM. Swapping to a partition or a file won’t change anything.
• We will add more swap by adding a swap file.
• Adding more swap is a four-step process :
  • a- Creating a file the size you want.
  • b- Formatting that file to create a swapping device.
  • c- Adding the swap to the running system.
  • d- Making the change permanent.
• We will consider (as an example) a 512 M swap need.
• a- Creating a file the size you want :
  • We will create a /mnt/512M.swap swap file.
    sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/512M.swap bs=1M count=512
    • What is important here is count=512, which means we want our file to contain 512 blocks of bs=1M, which means block size = 1 MegaBytes.
    • Be careful *not* to do this dd of=/mnt/512M.swap bs=1M seek=512 count=0
      Though the file grows to 512M immediately,it will have holes that makes it unusable.
• b- Formatting that file to create a swapping device :
  sudo mkswap /mnt/512M.swap
• c- Adding the swap to the running system :
  sudo swapon /mnt/512M.swap
  • You can see with “cat /proc/meminfo” that your additionnal swap is now available.
• d- Making the change permanent :
  • edit your /etc/fstab:
    gksudo gedit /etc/fstab
  • and add this line at the end of the file:
    /mnt/512M.swap  none  swap  sw  0 0
  • save and reboot

Ref: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq

Dell is working on their smallest and greenest desktop PC (81% smaller and 70% less enegy-consuming). No name yet only this rendered preview. It should also be shipped in recycled and recyclable packaging.  !

Source: GIZMODO

My HTPC lack a graphical display. I want to see the play length of my movies, the temp of my CPU and the upload/download information of my torrents.

I first thought to purchase a VFD based display, but aren’t we after year 2000? Therefore, a greenish old style display is not really appealing.

But, I found what I needed at Matrix Orbital, a Canadian based company specialized in VFD AND LCD display.

They have a complete line of character USB display. And the all mighty Matrix Orbital GX Typhoon USB Graphic Display.

All software and documentation is available on their website: http://www.matrixorbital.com/

In a not so far future, a son goes to see his dad and ask him: “Eh daddy what are “inches”?”. The father think for a minute or two and answer him: “You know my son, the “inches” are an old measurement system, an inch measure 25.4 mm, and it was invented to measure the diagonal size of TVs and computer screens. It took a long time to realize that it had no other application.”.

The son thanked his father and went back to play.

Damn standard units!