hp

Dude, that Dell\’s, like, totally bent!

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , ,

I fought with everything I had to get something else. So did one of my coworkers and my boss. But it was for naught. Late on Thursday afternoon, a pile of Dell servers showed up outside my office.

I did the only sensible thing to do: I ignored them until Friday morning.

I didn’t like how the box was taped. That shouldn’t make much difference. But what I really didn’t like was what happened after I pulled the PowerEdge 1750 out of the box.

It bent.OK, maybe “flex” is a more appropriate word. I’m used to working with HP servers. They have a one-piece chassis. Although their 1U offerings weigh about the same amount as these Dells, when you pick them up, they remain straight.

I think that’s a useful feature for something you want to shove into a rack.

Why, of course I suggested drugs as a possible explanation. I can’t let the obvious joke slip by.

I was happy to see that these servers, unlike the last Dell I worked on, actually use a ServerWorks chipset rather than a cheap Intel desktop chipset. The Intel stuff is cheaper, but then all you’ve really gotten is a Dell Dimension in a rackmount case. In all honesty, I’ve run Linux on Intel and Sis and Via chipsets and turned those systems loose as servers, but when you’re spending money rather than repurposing systems, you should spend the money to do the job right.

I was less happy when I went to install Linux on it. The standard Debian 3.0 wouldn’t see it. It was the first time I’d found a system that Debian 3.0 wouldn’t boot.

A Google search quickly turned up a custom Debian boot CD for Dells, which I used to do the installation. Once installed, we compiled a custom kernel so the system would work right. I used to routinely recommend that. That was before I had 125 servers to stay on top of. These days I’m more inclined to use the standard kernel whenever I can–that way, when a vulnerability shows up, I can just apt-get update and reboot, rather than having to compile a kernel and then reboot.

I’m not in love with HP’s service–that’s a story in and of itself, but the short version is that the last time I used their 4-hour-response-time service, it took a day longer than regular warranty service would have taken–but HP’s servers sure make my life less complicated than Dell’s do.

Umax scanner drivers

Dave Farquhar Hardware , ,

In the past I have recommended Umax scanners because Umax has a better history than HP of providing drivers for newer operating systems.I’ve heard from various sources (including the forums on driver sites) that Umax US isn’t providing drivers for free anymore. I guess the trick is knowing where to look. If Umax US isn’t providing the driver you need, Umax UK’s driver page probably does have it. (Remember, Windows 2000 drivers often work in Windows XP.)

I guess I’ve never noticed this because I’ve always tended to download the drivers from the UK.

Buy, don\’t build, enterprise servers

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , ,

Steve sent me some questionable advice he found online–basically, someone advocating that you build your high-end servers rather than buying them, but admitting that it’s difficult for someone to build a $20,000 server and still be able to afford to maintain the thing.

There’s a solution: Buy it.This is the opposite of the best advice for desktops (although I increasingly tell people to just buy their computers because you don’t really save any money by building), but there are lots of very good reasons for it.

First and foremost is maintainability. The last time something went wrong with one of the HP servers at work, an LED on the front case came on before the problem became critical. Pop open the case, and an internal LED next to the failing component is lit up. Does your off-the-shelf motherboard have that feature? It may or it may not.

How does hot-spare memory sound? It’s kind of like RAID. You buy identical DIMMs to put in the system, but you buy one extra one, which goes into a specially designated slot. When a DIMM starts to fail, the system switches over to the hot spare. In the case of the mid-range HP servers, you can even open the case up, remove the failing module, and replace it, without powering down.

Of course you want your server to have RAID, and use hot-pluggable drives, so a failed disk doesn’t mean downtime. All but the very cheapest commercially-built servers have that feature from the factory.

But if you really have a budget of $20,000 per server, you shouldn’t even mess around with local storage. Buy some kind of a Storage Area Network instead. Basically, it’s a large bank of disks that connects to any number of servers. Some use a Fibre Channel connection, while others just use an Ethernet connection. Then you buy disks, slap them in the SAN, and configure the SAN to split the storage up between the servers. Ever run into a situation where you need 40 gigs of storage, and one server has 10 gigs free and one has 30 gigs free, but there isn’t much of anything you can move around to consolidate that free space? The SAN eliminates that. You can add one monster 300-gig disk to an array and split that storage up however you want. And one hot spare protects the entire array–no more need to buy one hot spare for every server on your network. On a big network (40 servers), that alone can pay for the SAN.

Finally, as far as spare parts go, a company ought to keep a couple of spare hard drives around for the times when a disk in a RAID array or SAN fails. But you put the servers on a maintenance agreement with someone like HP, IBM, or EDS, so that when anything else fails, that company comes out and replaces parts with its inventory. Outsource your server organ donor bank. You’ll save money, not just on the parts themselves, but also on physical storage space.

When I can get all of these features (except for the SAN) in an HP Proliant server that costs about $3,000, there’s no point in my employer wasting time building its own servers.

Advice on troubleshooting and buying printers

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Troubleshooting , , , , , , ,

I gave some out-of-character advice this week when someone came calling looking for help troubleshooting an inkjet printer.

Essentially, I told him that unless the problem turned out to be a problem with his cabling (it was–his USB hub had gone bad), he’d be best off just buying a new printer.

Read more

Beware the “flat screen” scam

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , ,

I was just pricing out some parts for the pending Compaq Presario upgrade when I remembered the latest scam–well, it’s not technically a scam, but it’s definitely deceptive advertising. Many stores offer a bundle with a low-end PC and a 17-inch “flat screen” for an unbelievable deal, like $499. Chances are, if you read this site, some relative of yours is going to be asking about that, if they haven’t started asking already. And I’m pretty sure you know that right now $399 is a pretty good deal for a 17-inch LCD flat panel alone.
Needless to say, that 17-inch “flat screen” isn’t an LCD. It’s a CRT. Sometimes they even use camera tricks in the picture to try to make the CRT look like an LCD.

In all truthfulness, that 17-inch monitor being advertised as a bargain flat screen probably does have a flatter screen than whatever your relative is using right now. And CRTs continue to improve steadily. But it’s still a CRT, and it’s probably not what your relative is looking for.

Tell your relatives to read the fine print and look for an LCD. And tell them to keep in mind nobody’s giving away LCDs right now, because LCDs are one of the very few things in the computer field that have held steady demand for the past couple of years. At least one consumer electronics chain used a 14-inch Mag Innovision LCD as a Black Friday special, pricing it at $99 after rebates the day after Thanksgiving. I expect that deal will reappear once or twice in the coming year, but a 14-inch LCD gives the same screen real estate as a 15-inch CRT. It’d be great for a second computer–I’ll eventually buy one to keep in my study, where a small and quiet computer is ideal–but it’s probably not what LCD bargain hunters are looking for either.

Oh, and speaking of the Presario, if you’re looking for a replacement power supply for it on the cheap either for a motherboard upgrade or because one has failed, the product you want is the Foxconn Allied ATX200SFX, priced at $19 at Newegg.com. It’ll also fit an eMachine and the small-form Gateway and HP PCs. The trick to recognizing an SFX power supply is to look at how it’s bolted into the chasis. If it’s held in by three screws, with two on one side and a third on the other side towards the middle, it’s probably an SFX form factor. A lot of smaller ATX power supplies use four screws. So ask your vendor lots of questions, and buy as much wattage as you can get in whatever size you’re stuck with.

Thinking on Compaq Presario upgrades

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , ,

I’m going to be upgrading a Compaq Presario 7360 here pretty soon. It should be fun to shatter some of the myths surrounding recent Compaqs. It’s a standard microATX PC, nothing more, nothing less. With a $20 replacement power supply (Newegg.com calls the form factor used by low-end eMachines, Compaq, HP, and Gateway PCs “mini ATX”), it’ll handle any modern microATX motherboard.

Read more

More tips for playing with toy trains

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , , , , , ,

As you can probably guess from the length of time between postings, the Lionel has proven to be quite the distraction. A welcome one, but definitely a distraction.
I’ve picked up a few tricks along the way.

Clean old plastic buildings quickly. My buildings had accumulated a decade or so of dust and grime sitting in a box, and they probably weren’t clean when they were boxed either. The solution? Put a dab of hand soap and a small amount of laundry detergent in a bucket, then fill it with warm water. Just put in enough soap and detergent to make some suds. Disassemble the buildings and drop them in. Let them soak for a few minutes, then scrub with a toothbrush. They’ll look almost new. Note: Don’t do this if they have decals, or if you deliberately weathered the buildings. If you don’t know what weathering means, then go get your bucket.

Cleaning severely rusted track. To clean severely rusted track, give it a thrice-over with a drill’s metal brush attachment. It’ll mark the track up badly, but it’ll clean it up fairly nicely and may allow a dysfunctional train to run again. Don’t worry about ruining a prized collectible; used Lionel track sells for 25-50 cents a section at a hobby shop. This also means you shouldn’t put a lot of time and effort into salvaging rusty track–especially considering the new stuff sells for a dollar.

Lubricate your cars’ wheels for smoother operation. Unlike the engine, WD-40 is fine for this. Put a small quantity of oil into a bottlecap, then use a toothpick to apply it anywhere that the axles come in contact with other parts of the car. After doing this, your train will run more quietly and smoother, and your locomotives will be able to pull approximately 30% more weight, so you can feel free to add another car or two.

Buildings on the cheap for the nether regions of your layout. If you have some kind of structured drawing program (Adobe Illustrator, KDE Kontour, Macromedia Freehand, or even something like Visio) you can draw the basic shapes of buildings, print them out on heavy card stock, and cut them up and glue them together. Get started by taking measurements from an existing building and use that as a guide to help you learn the height of a door, window, and floor. Export the file to some kind of raster format (JPG or PNG) prior to printing and use GIMP or Photoshop to add textures if your drawing program doesn’t support it. For added realism, cut out the windows and glue in pieces of transparent plastic (kitchen plastic wrap is fine but cutouts from clear plastic bags are nicer). It doesn’t take any longer than assembling and painting a plastic model, the results are surprisingly convincing–the only advantage plastic offers is more realistic texture–and you’ll never beat the price. And if something happens to the building, you can always print out and reassemble another one.

Polystyrene sheets for scratchbuilding plastic models on the cheap. Once you’ve built some paper models and want to move up to building plastic buildings from scratch, you can pay $7 for a small sheet of polystyrene at a hobby shop, or you can buy 88-cent Beware of Dog signs from the nearest hardware or discount store. It’s the same stuff, only bigger and printed on one side. Put the printed side on the inside of the model and cover it with paper if you want to keep your secret safe. If you live near a big city, I’ve heard that plastic distributors sell big 4’x8′ sheets of polystyrene for about $7. A square foot of material makes for a good-sized building, so a 4×8 sheet will probably yield more than 30 buildings.

Easy and secure remote Linux/Unix file transfers with SCP

Dave Farquhar Linux , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sometimes you need to transfer files between Linux boxes, or between a Linux box and some other box, and setting up Samba or some other form of network file system may not be practical (maybe you only need to transfer a couple of files, or maybe it’s just a one-time thing) or possible (maybe there’s a firewall involved).
Well, you should already have SSH installed on your Linux boxes so you can remotely log in and administer them. On Debian, apt-get install ssh sshd. If you’re running distro based on Red Hat or UnitedLinux, you may have a little investigative work to do. (I’d help you, but I haven’t run anything but Debian for 2 or 3 years.)

The cool thing about SSH is that it not only does remote login, but it will also do remote file transfer. And unlike FTP, you don’t have to stumble around with a clumsy interface.

If you want to transfer files from a Windows box, just install PuTTY. I just downloaded the 240K PSCP.EXE file and copied it into my Windows directory. That way I don’t have to mess with paths, and it’s always available. Make sure you’re downloading the right version for your CPU. The Windows NT Alpha version won’t run on your Intel/AMD/VIA CPU. Incidentally, Putty.exe is a very good Telnet/SSH client and a must-have if you’re ever connecting remotely to Unix/Linux machines from Windows.

SSH includes a command called SCP. SCP works almost like the standard Unix CP command. All you to do access a remote file is append a username, followed by the @ sign, and the IP address of the remote server. SCP will then prompt you for a password.

Let’s say I want to move a file from my Linux workstation to my webserver:

scp logo.jpg root@192.168.1.2:/var/www/images

SCP will prompt me for my password. After I enter it, it’ll copy the file, including a nice progress bar and an ETA.

On a Windows machine with PuTTY installed, simply substitute the command pscp for scp.

I can copy the other way too:

scp root@192.168.1.2:/var/www/index.php .

This command will grab a file from my webserver and drop it in the current working directory.

To speed up the transfers, add the -C switch, which turns on compression.

SCP is more secure than any other means of file transfer, it’s probably easier (since you already need SSH anyway), and since it’ll do data compression, it’s probably faster too.

Using your logs to help track down spammers and trolls

Dave Farquhar net.culture , , , , , , ,

It seems like lately we’ve been talking more on this site about trolls and spam and other troublemakers than about anything else. I might as well document how I went about tracking down two recent incidents to see if they were related.
WordPress and b2 store the IP address the comment came from, as well as the comment and other information. The fastest way to get the IP address, assuming you haven’t already deleted the offensive comment(s), is to go straight to your SQL database.

mysql -p
[enter the root password] use b2database;
select * from b2comments where comment_post_id = 819;

Substitute the number of your post for 819, of course. The poster’s IP address is the sixth field.

If your blogging software records little other than the date and time of the message, you’ll have to rely on your Apache logs. On my server, the logs are at /var/log/apache, stored in files with names like access.log, access.log.1, and access.log.2.gz. They are archived weekly, with anything older than two weeks compressed using gzip.

All of b2’s comments are posted using a file called b2comments.post.php. So one command can turn up all the comments posted on my blog in the past week:

cat /var/log/apache/access.log | grep b2comments.post.php

You can narrow it down by piping it through grep a bit more. For instance, I knew the offending comment was posted on 10 November at 7:38 pm.

cat /var/log/apache/access.log | grep b2comments.post.php | grep 10/Nov/2003

Here’s one of my recent troublemakers:

24.26.166.154 – – [10/Nov/2003:19:38:28 -0600] “POST /b2comments.post.php HTTP/1.1” 302 5 “https://dfarq.homeip.net/index.php?p=819&c=1” “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7”

This line reveals quite a bit: Besides his IP address, it also tells his operating system and web browser.

Armed with his IP address, you can hunt around and see what else your troublemaker’s been up to.

cat /var/log/apache/access.log | grep 24.26.166.154
zcat /var/log/apache.access.log.2.gz | grep 24.26.166.154

The earliest entry you can find for a particular IP address will tell where the person came from. In one recent case, the person started off with an MSN search looking for information about an exotic airplane. In another, it was a Google search looking for the words “Microsoft Works low memory.”

You can infer a few things from where a user originally came from and the operating system and web browser the person is using. Someone running the most recent Mozilla Firebird on Linux and searching with Google is likely a more sophisticated computer user than someone running a common version of Windows and the version of IE that was supplied with it and searching with MSN.

You can find out other things about individual IP addresses, aside from the clues in your logs. Visit ARIN to find out who owns the IP address. Most ARIN records include contact information, if you need to file a complaint.

Visit Geobytes.com IP Locator to map the IP address to a geographic region. I used the IP locator to determine that the guy looking for the airplane was in Brooklyn, and the Microsoft guy was in Minneapolis.

Also according to my Apache logs, the guy in Brooklyn was running IE 6 on Windows XP. The guy in Minneapolis was running Mozilla Firebird 0.7 on Linux. (Ironic, considering he was looking for Microsoft information.) It won’t hold up in a court of law, but the geographic distance and differing usage habits give at least some indication it’s two different people.

Yes, I’m still alive

Dave Farquhar Personal , , , ,

I had to take some time away to clear my head and find myself. It’s a survival tactic; the guy other people wanted Dave to be hasn’t been getting the job done.
Besides, anyone who’s worth anything will like the real Dave better than Dave the Chameleon anyway. Those who like Dave the Chameleon better can go find themselves someone else to be a chameleon. There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of people who are willing. But I think it’s rude to ask someone to change before you really get to know him or her, don’t you?

So I’ve been ignoring the site partly because when I’m paying attention to it, it’s really tempting to try to figure out what to write to make myself popular. And partly because it’s a distraction when I’m trying to figure out who I am. Writing is a big part of me, but it’s only part of me.

So I dug out some things I enjoyed in the past. I’ve been reading F. Scott Fitzgerald and listening to Peter Gabriel and U2 (early stuff, long before they got popular) and Tori Amos and Echo and the Bunnymen. The way I used to do things was to go look for stuff that most people overlooked, rather than letting current trends tell me what to like. So none of that’s cool anymore. Big deal.

The majority isn’t always right. Exhibit A: Disco.

I remember when I was in high school, either my freshman or sophomore year, a popular girl a year older than me came up to me and told me I needed to be more of a rebel. I thought about that and came to the conclusion that I was a rebel. She and her crowd were rebelling against authority figures. I was rebelling against conformity.

Oddly enough, I ended up sitting next to her boyfriend in Spanish class not long after that. We couldn’t stand each other at first, but then it turned out we had a lot more common ground than either one of us could have imagined and we became friends.

I can’t help but think of Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was the spokesman of his generation, a generation not at all unlike ours, a generation that lived to excess and partied harder than any generation before, and up until GenX came along, or since. It’s obvious from Fitzgerald’s writing that he saw the excesses and even though it fascinated him, obviously there was a lot about it that he didn’t like. Yet his lifestyle didn’t change much. The result? The Voice of the Twenties was dead, aged 44, in 1940. Although some of his contemporaries recognized his greatness then, he was mostly remembered as a troublesome drunk.

Would Fitzgerald had lived longer if he’d been more of a rebel of a different sort? Well, I’d like to think so.

I’ve also been playing with computers. I pressed my dual Celeron back into duty and upgraded to the current version of Debian Unstable (I last did that sometime last summer, I think). It’s much, much faster now. I suspect it’s due to the use of GCC 3.2 or 3.3 instead of the old standby GCC 2.95. But I’m not sure. What I do know is the machine was really starting to feel sluggish, and now it feels fast again, almost like it felt to me when I first got it.

I’ve also been playing with PHP accelerators. I know I can only speed up a DSL-hosted site by so much, but my server serves up static pages much faster than my PHP pages, so I want that.

I’ve played around with WordPress a little bit more. It appears the new version will allow me to publish an IP address along with comments. I like that. I’m sick of rude people slinging mud from behind a wall of anonymity. I’m sure they’re much smarter than I am. So they ought to set up their own Web sites, so they can say whatever they want and enlighten the masses. If, as my most recent accuser says, what God wants is for Dave Farquhar and people like him to shut up, it won’t take much to drown my voice out.

OK, I’m done ranting. I’m gonna go in to work tomorrow and be my own person. I’m going to do what’s right, and not what’s popular, even when doing what’s right makes me unpopular. I’m going to stay focused and driven. The possibilities ahead are more important than the mistakes of the past and whatever happens to be missing from the present.

And there’ll be less missing with my vacationing coworkers back in the office.

And everything that’s true about work is true about life at home as well. Speaking of which, when I was out this weekend I noticed I was drawing second looks from girls again. Eating healthy again must be helping. That can’t be bad.

Well, this has to be the most disorganized and unfocused thing I’ve written in years. But I need to post something.

I’ll be back when my head’s more clear.