Archive for March, 2008

Another productive Tuesday

// March 25th, 2008 // No Comments » // Tech

Actually, this one was alarmingly productive:

  • Our spam detection rates are back up to something like 99% which is highly gratifying
  • We managed the roll out of a new primary AV engine in just under 3 hours – which is really quite amazing
  • I’ve got two new servers to build as DCC boxes at some point in the not too distant future
  • I’m having cheese on toast for tea :-)

Oh and I’ve pulled the database off the Ram disk for the moment so this site should stay as it is for a while. Am still looking into a D2D solution that will make the whole thing a little more resilient as I really liked the speed boost!

More later, I’m off to play with DRBD

Well that was pretty damn stupid

// March 24th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

Note to self – if suspending your MySQL data directory in RAM, make sure you back it up every five minutes or, the second the power goes down, you’ll lose the lot!.

Sorry to all who commented in the last 4 days – in the move back to the old / new server I managed to lose all but a couple of my more recent posts.

That’ll teach me to rush things :-)

Looooong Weekend Abounds

// March 21st, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

There’s something about the Good Friday / Easter Bank holiday season that always catches me off guard. And it always seems to come at a very busy point of the year.

This year, I have the (questionable) advantage of the GGF having a pretty nasty rota over the next 3 days which means I can grab Saturday and Sunday as work days (I really need to update my server) and still spend a full day together today and Monday.

This means that posting will be thin on the ground for the next couple of days although, as I get bored of work I may resort to talking to you lot just for the hell of it.

In any case – have a good Easter break, and for those of you who do not buy in to the whole Christian / Catholic aspect, have a good looooong weekend.

TTFN – Rob

Frustration

// March 19th, 2008 // No Comments » // Tech

I’ve just found a new definition for the word.

For some weeks now (i.e. about 6) I’ve been chasing a bug through one of our internal systems at work. Along the way, the bug was joined by others and then by a couple more until I was simultaneously tracking 5 seeming unrelated, very weird, bugs through the system.

Today, after 6 weeks of frustration and confusion and other things ending in “ion” I finally found the cause of all the bugs … the MySQL database had not been configured to use a case sensitive collation.

For those of you in the know, a Posix compliant operating system is almost entirely case sensitive. Everything from executable names to directories to variables in programs – case sensitivity is a GIVEN in Linux … except it would seem in MySQL which uses a case insensitive collation by default.

I’m now faced with the less than pleasant prospect of converting the collation of the tables and then switching round our replication setup and all of this needs to be complete by the end of tomorrow before we start a 4 day weekend!

Frustrated I may be but it’s an amazing weight off my mind and I can now relax for a couple of days before beginning the next phase of the onslaught that is my day to day working life.

More Speed Improvements

// March 19th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

Or at least I hope they’re improvements. As well as shifting the DB into RAM (drastic I know but worth it for this server at least) I’ve also grabbed the pre release of Wordpress 2.5.

This has the advantage of giving the site the benefit of a serious SQL overhaul (Wordpress 2.5 has been very neatly redesigned)

I’m also more than a little impressed by the new admin interface – it’s much simpler and easier on the eye. As ever, let me know if you run into any problems… and yes, I know the gravatars have gone – they’re supported natively by WP2.5 but I haven’t updated my template yet t use the new call.

Well that’s pretty darn slow

// March 18th, 2008 // No Comments » // Tech

I rebuilt the web server last night and seem to have incurred some pretty hairy overhead as a result. I’m not entirely sure why this site is now running slower than molasses on a cold day but it will have to wait until this evening for me to look at fixing it.

Of course this whole process would be a lot simpler if I didn’t have to install a specific kernel version every time I rebuild – something that can become pretty tricky when you’re running on software raid.

Which brings me to another point… why oh why does Ubuntu insist on not testing the Kernel before finalising the install? Surely it doesn’t take much to ensure that the chosen boot image will actually boot. this is especially frustrating as there is clearly a version (or two) of the Kernel that works with my hardware out of the box – I’ve just used it to install the os!

Planning Paris

// March 16th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

One of the bigger tactical problems that arise from my otherwise amazing relationship with the GGF is planning holidays.

This is primarily problematic due to the fact that I have previously been awful at planning or booking any kind of holiday in advance and that she works in an entertainment based industry so the times and days I get off are normally the busiest possible times and days at her place of work.

That said, this year we are committed to getting off the island at least twice for a genuine holiday. The first of these breaks is still being planned but is on the cards for the May bank holiday weekend – we’re heading for Paris.

Ironically, despite being only a few miles of the coast of France, getting there is going to cost at least twice as much as it would if we were in, say, Birmingham. The plan as it currently stands is to head over on the boat and then TGV it into Paris proper (I’ve never been on a TGV you know! and am looking forward to a mass transit experience that actually works). I’m currently trawling hotel listings to find the best location / deal for our 3 night stay. In an ideal world I’d like to keep the hotel costs as low as possible (within reason of course) as I’m sure we’ll be spending a small fortune on food and drink whilst out there :-)

And once Paris is done? Well we have the August trip to the UK to plan and a visit to Poland to work out.

After sorting all that lot I’m going to need a holiday just to recover!

More New PC Considerations

// March 15th, 2008 // No Comments » // Tech

Looks like I may have settled on a graphics card :-)

The Sapphire Technology Radeon X1950Pro looks like my best bet. Also – anyone ever used an Ageia Physx card? Are they worth the Doh Ray Me? I know the UT3 requires one to look half decent so that may be enough of a reason to grab one but I’m jiggered if I can think of anyone who’s used one.

Desktop PC – Rob’s Newest Project

// March 15th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Tech

I’ve got a new computer!!! And it’s a bit of a fixer upper. I picked up the base unit off a guy in the Island for £250. It’s an older box – with an AMD Socket 939 Mobo but some very nice features for that. First off it supports hardware RAID 0 via the rather tasty nVidea RAID controller. Second it has dual channel ram support, third it comes in a case that glows!

It’s going to need some work before it’s completely ready to take the place of my MacBook Pro, namely:

  • A better power supply – this is actually done. I had a 480 watt PSU kicking around from my dad’s old machine which is only 18 months old. Dual rails mean I can run the GPU nice and hot without risking the rest of the system and it should easily support:
  • HDD Upgrade – the system came with a single SATA HDD which was about 120GB and I’ve added a 180GB PATA drive to use as shared storage and backup. Nice enough but this is a RAID ready system so that’s going to need sorting out. My current feeling is to go for dual SATA drives in RAID1 and use dual PATA drives in RAID 0 for backup and system imaging. This should give me the confidence of RAID 0+1 without the overhead of involving the PATA stuff at the hardware level – Cost? Well sourcing SATA 150 drives could be fun but I reckon I can sort the whole lot out for a little under £140. Of course I’d love to go down the SSD route but looking around I can’t see much out there for desktops
  • Processor Upgrade – this is a biggy. The main reason for going with a Socket 939 mb is that it allows me access to the AMD Althon 64 FX-60 (aka Opteron 185) the fastest dual core CPU AMD in teh FX range – and, more to the point, eminently over clockable :-) The only problem? They tend to retail for about £150. That said, it will be money well spent as I’m really feeling the lack of dual cores on the machine at the moment
  • RAM – never one to shy away from maximums I’ve worked out that the most RAM I can get in the machine is 4GB. That said, it only supports (or seems to support) 512MB DIMMs in dual channel so I’ll leave the current 1GB on 2 DIMMs and grab another 2GB in 1GB DIMMs – 3GB should be enough and hopefully the 1GB dual channel will allows my shiny new processor to take full advantage of the dual channel architecture… maybe…
  • New GPU – Currently I’m running with a GeForce FX 5900 256MB which is enough to get by but I can look at upping this to a newer card. Problem again – it’s an AGP system which means I’m limited to older hardware. Finding an AGP 8x card is harder than you might think (I don’t want second hand for a GPU thanks – too much potential for hassle) especially as I’d prefer an nVidea card. Still, I reckon I can pick one up for < £100 - unless I want a Quadro in which case it's more like £1,000

I’ve also spent a fair whack of time making the PC glow as little as possible but with hind sight I may re-instate some of the lighting – it does look very cool!

All in all it should be a fun little project which will sate my PC tweaking desires for some time to come. I’ve also grabbed another WRTG54L to run a wireless bridge to the bedroom / study area which is working rather well.

Life Update – and why that number isn’t going down

// March 15th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

It seems that just when I get myself back up to speed with this blogging lark something comes along and takes the wind from my sails as effectively as a salvo of Chain Shot*

Without going into too much detail (there are some things that simply don’t belong on a blog) the GGF has recently suffered a personal tragedy and that, combined with ongoing work related crisise have kept me from the WP-Admin page for sometime.

The personal matter I will not be discussing further. If you want more info and believe that I would readily give it to you then you know the number. The work issue? I’m not sure how much to say. Suffice to say that the 5×9s service I look after has been more like 5×5s recently due to a collection of hardware failures and some serious bad luck. It turns out that even dual redundancy can let you down some times.

I’m still dealing with the fallout of this one (although have set a new personal best for provisioning a new MySQL slave / master setup – 23 minutes!) and am in the process of reworking much of the architecture of the system to prevent a re-occurrence. This redesign was always scheduled to happen but I’ve been forced to move up my schedule a little.,, well 3 months.

And true to form I’ve also got a ton of other things to finish / sort out, I’m not very well (I think I may have brought something back with me from Bristol) and all I really want to do is curl up in bed :-)

* Yes I have been playing Pirates again – see next post for details