Fettled any computer stuff today?

[Greenbank]

Code: [Select]

ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
ata2.00: irq_stat 0x40000008
ata2.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED
ata2.00: cmd 60/06:00:f1:08:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 3072 in
         res 41/40:06:f1:08:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F>
ata2.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
ata2.00: error: { UNC }

Important stuff recovered from said drive (mounted read-only), now to order a new one and consign this one to the bin.

[David Martin]

Currently copying data from my old hybrid drive (SSD cache, spinning disk main) which had been getting progressively more tardy to a shiny! new! SSD on the mac powerbook that is now running 10.8 instead of 10.6 and moving like a greased weasel instead of a slightly bemused sloth staring at beach balls. 9 hours to go over a USB2 connection.

[woollypigs]

Not really fettling anything, just surfing along happily and looked at my always open terminal and saw this :

Message from syslogd@rodney at Feb 13 20:14:46 ...         
kernel:[63296.540525] Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP
Message from syslogd@rodney at Feb 13 20:14:46 ...         
kernel:[63296.540869] Stack:                             
Message from syslogd@rodney at Feb 13 20:14:46 ...         
kernel:[63296.540910] Call Trace: 
Message from syslogd@rodney at Feb 13 20:14:46 ...
kernel:[63296.540978] Code: 8b 04 24 75 d6 eb e0 31 c0 48
M85 ff 74 45 48 8b 47 10 48 85 c0 74 0c 48 39 70 10 76 06 48 39 70 08 76 30 
48 8b 57 08 31 c0 eb 1a <48> 39 72 d8 76 10 48 39 72 d0 48 8d 42 c8 76 0f b 47 148 8b 52 10 eb   
Message from syslogd@rodney at Feb 13 20:14:46 ...
kernel:[63296.541082] CR2: fffffffffffffffd

Eh!?!

[Bledlow]

Sorted a computer for a handicapped bloke.

Found & removed his trojans, re-set his default search engine back to Google from Bing, & his home page away from MSN, which it had mysteriously set itself to, got his AV & firewall working properly, uninstalled some stuff he said he never uses, tidied up a load of junk, got all his e-mail accounts connected to one client, & installed remote control software so we (the charity I volunteer for) can fix things for him without anyone having to trek to the furthest flung reaches of Basingstoke's suburbs.

[Polar Bear]

Top man Bledlow.  I do a similar volunteer role locally.   I don't have to worry about visiting though as we have a 'base'.   

[Greenbank]

Not really fettling anything, just surfing along happily and looked at my always open terminal and saw this :

Message from syslogd@rodney at Feb 13 20:14:46 ...         
kernel:[63296.540525] Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP
Message from syslogd@rodney at Feb 13 20:14:46 ...         
kernel:[63296.540869] Stack:                             
Message from syslogd@rodney at Feb 13 20:14:46 ...         
kernel:[63296.540910] Call Trace: 
Message from syslogd@rodney at Feb 13 20:14:46 ...
kernel:[63296.540978] Code: 8b 04 24 75 d6 eb e0 31 c0 48
M85 ff 74 45 48 8b 47 10 48 85 c0 74 0c 48 39 70 10 76 06 48 39 70 08 76 30 
48 8b 57 08 31 c0 eb 1a <48> 39 72 d8 76 10 48 39 72 d0 48 8d 42 c8 76 0f b 47 148 8b 52 10 eb   
Message from syslogd@rodney at Feb 13 20:14:46 ...
kernel:[63296.541082] CR2: fffffffffffffffd

Eh!?!

Long answer: http://www.linuxforu.com/2011/01/understanding-a-kernel-oops/

Short answer: If it's a one off then ignore it. If it keeps happening it might be a hardware/driver/kernel-module issue.

Without ECC Ram kernel oops can be relatively (once a year or two) common thanks to cosmic rays flipping random bits.

[ian]

Not really fettling anything, just surfing along happily and looked at my always open terminal and saw this :

Message from syslogd@rodney at Feb 13 20:14:46 ...         
kernel:[63296.540525] Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP
Message from syslogd@rodney at Feb 13 20:14:46 ...         
kernel:[63296.540869] Stack:                             
Message from syslogd@rodney at Feb 13 20:14:46 ...         
kernel:[63296.540910] Call Trace: 
Message from syslogd@rodney at Feb 13 20:14:46 ...
kernel:[63296.540978] Code: 8b 04 24 75 d6 eb e0 31 c0 48
M85 ff 74 45 48 8b 47 10 48 85 c0 74 0c 48 39 70 10 76 06 48 39 70 08 76 30 
48 8b 57 08 31 c0 eb 1a <48> 39 72 d8 76 10 48 39 72 d0 48 8d 42 c8 76 0f b 47 148 8b 52 10 eb   
Message from syslogd@rodney at Feb 13 20:14:46 ...
kernel:[63296.541082] CR2: fffffffffffffffd

Eh!?!

It's the Matrix. Of course.

[woollypigs]

Well what ever it was it made my xserver or xorg or nvidia driver fall over, so I have been trying to get a bit of GUI going this AM, ended up installing crunchbang again.

[Afasoas]

Just installed mediawiki on the netbook webserer - ginally means I'e got somewhere to brain dump all the bits and pieces I'm learning.
Next job is installing/configuring request tracker.

Also started learning Python. The plan is using a configuration file to backup the websites (and their databases) I'm looking after. I want to store details in a configuration file and the Python program does the rest. Will schedule it as a daily cron job. Will probably use RSync to backup the files and then a mysql script to generate the DB backup.

[barakta]

My win laptop needs a new win install, it's unusable at present.  Too ill to do that today and I don't know where its XP disk is.

I am going to label all my Mendelay papers in my dropbox instead cos that's the level.

[drossall]

The wi-fi hot-spot at church went down again

Silly problems. Last time, it was the CMOS back-up battery on the control computer. The PC gets restarted occasionally, because of being powered off the same connection as the computer club's machines. After the battery failed, the wi-fi system started seeing wrong dates, threw up its hands in horror, and stopped accepting connections. The private network was fine, because it doesn't depend on the computer.

This time, it was the lack of a keyboard. The BIOS settings went with the battery, of course. It was fine when I tested it, because I'd temporarily attached a screen and monitor, but the next time it was restarted the POST failed

[pcolbeck]

Got Open Vswitch working on my Arch Linux PC today and talking properly to VMs hosted in Virtual Box. Strangely they can only talk to the outside world if connected to tun1 not tun0.
I think I will reformat the PC and install Ubuntu instead. Arch is great with bleeding edge everything but for lab work like this a better supported OS would be less likely to throw odd results (or at least I wouldn't be the first person to run into them and a fix would probably be documented).

[tiermat]

Upgrading my filestore to F20.

It's just finishing now, so shall reboot and see if it comes back up.  It didn't last time until I had power cycled it $TOO_MANY time....

[Afasoas]

1) Context menu on laptop (Win7) hanging windoze explorer each time it was opened, alleviated by disabling the Acronis True Image shell extensions.

2) Keyboard error on laptop as if a key was stuck down. Said laptop keyboard had been generating random characters for some time before hand. Keyboard now disconnected and USB keyboard used in its place. Second hardware failure on this machine in a short time. Considering ponying up for a replacement of the Mac variety.

3) Win 7/8/8.1 start-up repair disks created, installation media I've collected over the years for various flavours of Windows organised, Hirens BootCD on USB and another USB with a whole suite of useful portable apps installed (inc. NirLauncher and SysInternals suite, ClamWin, SpybotSearchAndDestroy etc. etc.) on another USB. Should mean I can deal with many problems at a moments notice.

4) Windows 8.1 Update installed on desktop.. restart pending.. fingers crossed!

[David Martin]

Nearly. I replaced the cracked screen on the tablet of #2 son but the replacement LCD wasn't, so I have had to order a different one.
Bugger.

[Dibdib]

Fettled myself a copy of Debian-in-a-VM. For various reasons I'd ideally like to move back to primarily using Linux on my desktop PC, but want to get everything working properly first. I imagine the stumbling blocks will be peripheral-related, especially my Garmin and the selection of iThings.

Scratch that. As I had half-expected, network connection sharing seems to needlessly complicate things - as a starting "let's just see if this works", I can copy a music file from a SMB share to my home folder and play it from there but it won't play directly from the network. It doesn't seem to play nicely with USB sharing my Garmin either. As this was only intended as a stepping stone, I CBA to figure it out - I might as well just go the whole hog and dual-boot.

[Kim]

Scratch that. As I had half-expected, network connection sharing seems to needlessly complicate things - as a starting "let's just see if this works", I can copy a music file from a SMB share to my home folder and play it from there but it won't play directly from the network. It doesn't seem to play nicely with USB sharing my Garmin either. As this was only intended as a stepping stone, I CBA to figure it out - I might as well just go the whole hog and dual-boot.

That sound like you've done something "user friendly" like use the Gnome "connect to server" wossname, rather than create a network filesystem entry in /etc/fstab the way god intended.  The latter probably involves manpages, seamlessly^[1] integrates with the filesystem in the way you'd expect, and applications see it as just another directory.  The former tells the graphical file manager to show you the contents of some network share, but doesn't actually mount it anywhere properly.  Sufficiently Gnomeish apps may be able to extend this behaviour in a useful manner, but that just lulls you into a false sense of having a network drive.

User friendly my arse.


_{[1] Permissions and other capability differences aside.}

[Phil W]

Got my base REST service up and running on one of my websites. Haven't implemented all of the end points yet, but very pleased with the API base.

[David Martin]

REST is not an API, it is a paradigm.

[Chris S]

REST is not an API, it is a paradigm.

TBF, I don't think Phil's post says that - just that his API happens to be REST ish.

[Dibdib]

I've stuck an extra pair of RAM sticks into the desktop PC, which is now up to 4x2GB. I accidentally ordered RAM which is rated faster than my motherboard - 1600mhz rather than 1333mhz - but it seems to work fine (at 1333 of course).

Tonight I'm also sorting out backups, including trimming the fat of the old ones and duplicating some stuff onto an old drive to drop off at mum's house when I'm next there.

This is all in preparation for The Big Movearound Of Computer Bits this week, including a beefy new-to-me Core i7 CPU for the desktop machine when it arrives from Fleabay, putting both of the big hard drives (and all the Stuff on them) into the desktop PC, and retiring the Atom-based media player which almost never gets used.

Needless to say, I am BORED.

[GraemeMcC]

In readiness for post-XP independence, I've finally installed Mint15(or was it 16?) on the deskie 
Just got to suss out what apps and setup now - and printer setup! Firefox looks a little different - need to migrate my FF-profiles so hope that Mozbackup is linux friendly...
But what a difference that the ubuntu base can use NTFS format files so doc/music/photo sharing is so much easier now - same shared partitions as with XP!

And, so impressed was I with the Mint demo, that I'm going to add that to the EeePC to dual-boot that with Win7.
So I've bought a 32Gb stick to create a Win7 Recovery backup. Then I'll re-partition that and hopefully get a higher-speed holiday music box/browser. Though, Win7 Home Starter means that there'll be sod all usable tools, so I foresee a stack of de-crappifying and installation of partition managers, etc, coming v soon before the great Mint flavouring.

And, whilst buying sticks in Staples, I got 2 x 8GB SD cards to use as Readyboost for the EeePC and the Laptop, free-ing up valuable USB sockets for speakers/mouse/etc. Should have done that ages ago!

[Biggsy]

I've stuck an extra pair of RAM sticks into the desktop PC, which is now up to 4x2GB. I accidentally ordered RAM which is rated faster than my motherboard - 1600mhz rather than 1333mhz - but it seems to work fine (at 1333 of course).

I think the rating might be just for the motherboard's default setting.  You might (or might not) have a setting in the BIOS to overclock it (as well as the CPU).

Have you got an SSD yet? 

[Dibdib]

I've stuck an extra pair of RAM sticks into the desktop PC, which is now up to 4x2GB. I accidentally ordered RAM which is rated faster than my motherboard - 1600mhz rather than 1333mhz - but it seems to work fine (at 1333 of course).

I think the rating might be just for the motherboard's default setting.  You might (or might not) have a setting in the BIOS to overclock it (as well as the CPU).

Have you got an SSD yet? 

To be honest, I'm happy with them the way that they are, especially as the original RAM is only rated to 1333 too.

And nope, no SSD yet. Damn you Biggsy *wanders off to eBay...*

[Biggsy]

Manufacturer-reconditioned SSDs from OCZ can be great value (and they don't wear out easily these days).  I better not post any direct links. 

By coincidence I just got an email advertising the new Revodrive 650.  1.8 GB/s.  That's twelve times faster than an ordinary hard drive.  Crumbs.