Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category

I finally figured out what was wrong with one of the computers I am currently troubleshooting. The motherboard wasn’t getting enough power. It wasn’t that I had forgot to connect something, it was that my PSU didn’t actually have a 12v power cable. So I ran down to Maplin to get one of these and finally got the machine up and running.

Having managed to install Windows Server 2003 I booted up to find that it defaults to the classic Windows 9x look still (as does Windows Server 2008 I believe). It’s quite minimalist when you start it up, there is a security configuration help file on your desktop and the recycle bin in the bottom right corner. Also the system tray is empty – completely. There are quite a few other querks too such as it still ships with Internet Explorer 6 and it won’t let you change the security levels.

I’ve yet to fully play around with it as a server though so the fun is yet to come.

My new CPU having arrived for my would-be Windows server arrived yesterday so having 10 minutes or so before uni I decided to install it and boot the machine up. So I took the old CPU out, put the new one in, connected everything back together again and plugged it all in and booted it up. The lights on the front of the case now come on. That’s it. Still no output to the monitor! I’m not entirely sure what could be wrong with it now, I’ve replaced the motherboard, I’ve replaced the CPU, I’ve replaced the memory. That’s basically everything in the machine. What else could be wrong?

Well, another day, another few hundred pounds piled into my file server.

I’m now on my second motherboard, third RAID implementation, waiting for a hard drive to arrive back from CCL, second graphics card, the list goes on.

My new RAID card arrived this morning. I eventually managed to get it installed and wired up. I didn’t want to go in at first because the card was bent (physically) but I managed to get it in. I then booted into the BIOS setup to find my hard drives were registering was SATA-150.

I took them out and after some searching around was told I needed to remove the jumpers on them. Apparently Seagate ship all their hard drives set to run as SATA-150 rather than SATA-300. So I removed the jumpers and put everything back together again.

Booted it up again and created the RAID partition. Booted up into Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop via the Live CD to see what would happen if I tried to install it. It couldn’t detect any drives. So I downloaded Ubuntu 7.10 Server (alternative install) and ran that but that couldn’t detect any drives either.

High Point so supply the source code so that you can compile your own drivers which is what I may end up doing. There are no instructions on how to do this though and most of the people on the Ubuntu forums generally agree that it doesn’t work with Ubuntu. It seems to want me to save it to floppy drive though. I don’t have one. Why would I?

So I could always just give in and install Windows Server 2003, that should be nice and simple right? Well, almost except according to the install instructions on my manual I need to boot into Windows Server 2003 (you know, before I’ve installed it) and run the software to burn the driver to floppy drive (which again, I don’t have).

The moral of the story is this. If you are thinking of building yourself a file server with RAID, to save yourself a lot of hassle, rather than doing it in hardware, simply write down every binary digit by hand onto a writing pad. It’s a lot easier.

Every time I move onto a new computer I realise how some of the default Firefox settings annoy me. Such as it searching Google.com instead of Google.co.uk. Luckily it’s easily fixed by adding Google UK from the huge list of available search engines on the Mozdev page.

Today my replacement motherboard finally arrived. Huzzah! I eagerly installed it into the computer, put it all together and got ready to connect the ATX power cable to the board. But wait, it isn’t long enough. How does that happen?

So that afternoon I ran down to Maplin and picked up an extention cable. I then plugged that in allowing me to connect my motherboard. I pulled the monitor cable out of the back of my desktop, plugged in a power cable and started the computer up.

Nothing happened.

Apparently the motherboard isn’t dead (despite us testing every component and working out it was the motherboard). I’m sure I did test the CPU but that it the only thing I can think is wrong. I’ve tried two motherboards, the first with a graphics card I had just bought and the second motherboard had integrated graphics so it’s very bad luck if it was one of those.

So now I have two motherboards for this machine. And the one I’m not using in the machine is bigger than the one that is installed in my machine so it doesn’t fit in the box or even the anti-static bag so it’s currently sitting, wrapped in a carrier bag, on my desk. Fantastic.

As you may know, I’ve been having a bit of a problem getting my long awaited file server up and running that I ordered months ago. It was a fairly continuous theme through posts like this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one and this one.

I finally got it out and plugged everything back in again (sort of, not know really what needed to be plugged back in internally, I thought it all was but apparently not) and turned it back on to come up with the age old problem of verifying the DMI pool data.

I go into the BIOS and reset the settings to fail-safe defaults. This time when I try to boot it records an update success on the verifying DMI pool data moves onto the next line, which is blank and leaves the cursor to blink indefinitely.

Having given up on the motherboard I started looking around for alternatives. I start browsing around but have to ignore most models because they simply don’t have any specification. You would think basic things like what ports a motherboard had would be included. Apparently not. How am I supposed to work out which motherboard I want if all there is, is a BS paragraph uptalking the company?

Having abandoned CCL’s website I head over to eBuyer in hope of better specifications. There is some improvement and I decide to do a little more research on one specific motherboard. I head over to Asus’s website which causes an error every other page that can for some reason be solved by refreshing several times until it works. As usual the product name on the retailer website doesn’t match the one given by the manufacturer so you just have to guess which models match up to which names.

I finally find what I think the specification I want is which mentions RAID support, hurray! However, it seems to suggest it only supports them on two ports. Yes, suggests, it doesn’t go as far as to make it clear but it says “support is provided by x and x” which I take to mean support is not provided from the other ports. Which would also explain why you can do RAID 0 or 1 but not 5.

Having done some researching around, it doesn’t look like there is a solution. Basically, from what I can see, all of the RAID options require a driver. This is utterly retarded as it means you have to install an OS and install the driver before you can use RAID. So how do you install your OS on a RAID configuration? The answer apparently, is that you don’t.

However, I’m not even sure about this. The Intel documentation for one of it’s RAID cards that I was reading explains how to install the driver when installing Windows which suggests that you may be able to do it then. Why, why, why is this so complicated?

Having written a long and winding post about the various problems I was having last night I’ve decided to be a bit more upbeat. I’m playing around with my new boxes at the moment. They are both running Ubuntu so not much good for doing anything other than programming or running services but there is plenty of fun to be had there.

I’m also quite pleased with my monitor array that allows my to dual screen my main desktop and have a seperate screen for one of my new Linux boxes. I’m sticking with one keyboard and mouse given I have such a monster sized keyboard so I’m hoping my KVM arrives ASAP.

My mouse having given up on my recently I’ve ordered a new set of peripherals. It started with my getting sick and tired of not being able to play WoW in the dark so I was umming and arring (what, those are real verbs!) over getting a backlit keyboard. I narrowed it down to the Logitech G15 or the Microsoft Razer Reclusa.

So when my house packed up on me I decided I might as well get a decent one and replace my keyboard while I was at it. In the end I went with the Reclusa as although the G15 has the cool LCD screen and better macro programming, the Reclusa is a bit more comfortable and better suited to non-gaming applications. Add to that the Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 3000 and I have a nicely branded package :D. I’m interested to see if the 4-way scrolling feature is any use. Probably not but I don’t feel that detracts from it’s coolness.

Finally, I also threw in a Logitech 2.4Ghz Cordpress Presenter for when I am giving speeches and presentations (which with A-Soc’s timetable this year is a lot!).

My sister has just got a new computer so trying to get a few things up and running on it for her I got playing around with Vista.

It’s an interesting experience. I realise that a lot of the problems caused are just due to the fact that I’ve never used Vista before – for example trying to find my way around the computer settings would take equally as long if I was using any version of Windows for the first time. Also, we are a species, generally don’t like change. So I tried to bare these in mind when complaining.

First of all, Windows prompts you for everything. It’s not enough to say that you want to manage the user accounts on the system. Once you’ve tried to go to that screen you then have to tell Windows you give it permission to show you that screen. While I’m sure this has security advances, I think the fact I have just clicked “manage user accounts” indicates I would like to manage user accounts.

Secondly, when saving a file from the internet you are given what is basically a small web browser rather than the standard Windows file save dialog. You get an address bar with the C:\Wherever as you would expect. You do not however get any kind of folder navigation and if you click the drop down arrow to find the other locations on your computer you will in fact find it is actually just a web address bar and will be presented with your most recent URLs. How quite you save a file to http://www.google.co.uk/ I don’t know but that appears to be what Windows is suggesting. It then moans if you try it and you need to switch to the folder browsing mode instead.

Things generally seem to take a bit longer. I can’t just hit control alt delete and access my task manager. I’m then taken to a sub-menu where it thinks I want to log off where I then have to select task manager. The start menu no longer appears nicely spaced out across the screen, it’s now all stuffed into a corner with an expanding tree still menu.

That said there are some nice touches to it. When alt tab’ing through the windows the desktop is now included in the list so you can easily hide all your programs to get access to your desktop icons. Also if you hover over anything on your task bar it will show you a thumbnail of the window.

What address was this email sent to?

It sounds like a simple question but one I can’t find the answer to. If someone knows how then please let me know.

I have an email sitting in my inbox which I myself sent out from the A-Soc email account an hour ago. It’s To: address is sent back to the A-Soc email account and all the addresses are done via blank carbon copy. Therefore there is no record in the headers as to which address the email is sent.

So later on my mail client goes and checks all my mailboxes, downloads the email and puts them into my inbox. But doesn’t say which account it got the email from. It simply expects that information to be obtained from the email headers. Thunderbird and Outlook Express are both guilty of it. You would think in the days of such frequent phishing scams that much up emails to mail boxes would be a pretty standard feature. Apparently not.