While i find out how it can be done paravirtualised, i will be intalling it HVM, then i will keep you posted on how i will convert it to a paravirtualised system as soon as i do, Here i will keep you posted how the HVM virtualised goes
Archive for February, 2009
lenny on ubuntu hardy 8.04 with xen paravirtualised
Thursday, February 26th, 2009S.M.A.R.T (SMART) data of hard drives under linux
Thursday, February 26th, 2009The results of the commands on this post are Here
On windows, You can use speedfan, under linux you can read the smart data as follows
Use the smartctl command
1- Checking for smart support, (All recent hard drives have it but you need to enable it in BIOS)
smartctl -i /dev/sdb
2- Enable reading it
smartctl -s on -d ata /dev/sdb
See it
smartctl -d ata -H /dev/sdb
Read more
smartctl -d ata -a /dev/sdb
Now some manufacturer specific smart atributes exist, you need to google them out, Also smart is not definitive, if S.M.A.R.T data says ok but there is a ticking noise in your hard drive, Don’t trust the hardware data, get backup.
Some hard drives like the Samsung Spinpoint come with extensive diagnostics software, My 3 2.5′ disks pass the test, pass the smart test, and tick when warm, i will let you know if it was the tick of death sometime soon
asterisk 1.6 install and deploy.
Thursday, February 19th, 2009Asterisk with chan mobile.
So, my lovely TUSI-M does not work, it has legacy USB ports, I want USB 2.0.
Got an old celeron PC I had somewhere, found out it had 1GB of DDR1 ram, a 2.53GHz processor, a P4i65GV Motherboard with Bios 1.80 (Asrock), And an 80GB hard disk, fits the bill perfect.
the good thing about this motherboard is that it has 8 USB ports (2.0), The bad thing, A Celeron processor, An old celeron processor.
I installed an X100P (That I got in the mail today) on the PC.
1- Installed Ubuntu 8.04 32Bit from DVD, a default DVD install, user name (yazeed), Password (ZeDevildetail), and hostname (asterisk).
2- Now i need to enable VNC access, see This post in the ubuntu forums
3- Restarted Ubuntu to make sure the previous step works.
4- Installed Samba by starting Synaptic Package manager, Searching for Samba, and marking samba for install, 2 more packages are requiered, agreed to
install them when prompted after hitting the apply button, Same to install openssh. And miraculesly, when I start ubuntu on the machine, I can poin my VNC
viewer to asterisk:2
5- I installed RealVNC on my windows machine (The viewer only, if you install the server you will need a serial number).
6- logged in via VNC.
7- Downloaded Asterisk 1.6.0.5 along with the addons 1.6, DAHDI linux, Dahdi tools, and libpri 1.4.7 to /usr/src, DAHDI is what used to be ZAPTEL ,
LibPri is for T1, E1, J1 and I don’t need it, Just thought I’d install it anyway , So I unpacked them to that same directory I am in.
8- Before I install anything, I probably need to satisfy some dependancies, and add some tools so I can make managing the system easy later on,
Running aptitude
LAMP task: PHP would help me write stuff I can fix online !
the, MySQL with root password being “whatdevil”
Now from Synaptics package manager
GCC 3+, G++ 4.1, cpp and other compiler stuff ubuntu tells me about
Ncurses devel
Libtermcap-devel
Kernel development headers
Kernel development headers (SMP)
GCC++
Openssl and its dev package
Newt-devel
Zlib-devel
unixOBDC and unixOBDC devel
libtool
gnu make
Bison for CLI (yacc and)
Libnewt for zttool – ztcfg
Now that i have installed everything with synaptics that looks like the above, i will
Start with the Zaptel – Now dahdi driver….
cd /usr/src/DAHDIblahblah
make
makeinstall
cd /usr/src/asterisk-1.6blahblah
make clean
./configure
make menuselect
…Now from Menu select, i am looking for dependencies that i need so that i can compile everything in asterisk 1.6….
up to now, i need
CURL OK
PostgreSQL OK
sqlite
sqlite3
Cryptographic digital signatures
jabber
netsnmp
spandsp
resample
jack ??
osptk
ssl
radius
freetds
asound
portaudio
res_jabber
iksemel
openh323
isdnnet
misdn
suppserv
nbs
usb
vpbapi
speexdsp
verbis
ogg
curl
gtk
lua
ldap
imap_tk
gmime
Asterisk sound packages in multiple formats, both basic and extra
asus tusi-m bios update
Thursday, February 19th, 2009efore finding out that the motherboard only supports usb 1.1, i was getting the TUSI-M motherboard ready for prime time, i made it fanless (Fanless Air cooling), i put it in a nice little box to fit some furniture that was made by idiots for idiots, and installed Ubuntu on it.
But before installing ubuntu, i didnt want to install a floppy drive, they bring back bad memories, so i had to burn a CD and boot from it to update the motherboard
If you have this old motherboard and want a firmware update to the latest 2003 version, download this tusi-m package, Inside you will find the file DOS-BOOT-WINDOWS-ME.iso, burn it to cd and boot from it.
Wait until you are dropped to a DOS prompt
D:
Aflash
When presented with choices chose 2 and hit enter
When asked for the location of the file enter the following
D:\1018tm.005
You are done, you now need to exit by hitting escape then restarting the computer
With this out of the way, i installed Ubuntu, but then found out about the missfortunate 1.1 USB posts, and therefore, it was disqualified, at least i had pleanty of fun making the case and the external heat sinks…..
X100P FXO card fax modem
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009Got my asterisk X100P but yet to test it.
The minute i got it i opened the package to see what is inside, and the main motorola chip had it’s details hidden with a sticker that reads “Warantee void if removed”, under that sticker was the Motorola
62802-51
QZ0006
E1G32
And 2 more chps from Silicon Laboratories that read
THEN THE 2 Silicon Laboratories chips
Si3014-KS
0409CACABD
AND THE SLIGHTLY SHORTER ONE
Si3021-KS
0346CACACT
This information is already known, this is the card setup that Digium’s founder used to develop asterisk, so why mask it, it is not even your intellectual property !, for your convinced i have posted a photo of the X100P FXO chips etc here
Anyway, this calls for me to give this card a go under asterisk and let you guys know what happenes and all the details about quality etc…
Once i experiment with this card a bit, i will come here and update the information in this post !
Until then, stay tuned
Pro C# 2008 and the .NET platform
Thursday, February 12th, 2009So, i went and got this book, everyone has such positive reviews about it.
To begin with, this is by no means a bad book, It can also take you there if you know any sort of Object oriented programming, or even if you code in a procedural language (C or PHP 4) for example, but surely if you are an OO programmer you can go faster.
I have always done C, C++, PHP, and i feel like i know a big bunch more, but really, the only ones i am really good at are the ones i mentioned here, Unless you like to call SQL a programming language you can consider them 4, And now i am at intermediate level C#.
C# is more like Java++ (I have a good idea about Java),but everything changes on the .NET when you code for efficiency and the like.
Our friend Andrew Troelsen does a lovely Job explaining things that you would otherwise google out, the questions that come to a long time developer’s mind are answered on the spot.
Some are criticizing the book for 2 reasons, the first is that it explains SQLDataSource rather than the new objectdatasource, Others criticize it for missing the cryptographic features in .NET (security and crytography namespaces), I agree with the 2 above fully, No doubt Andrew Troelsen should have explained those in Length.
As to all the other reviews i found online, I totally disagree, here are the points
–Takes 2 long to read
You are learning something new, C# is not small, what do you expect
–Expects you to already know Object Oriented
Not true, in chapter 4 one single page says, if you don’t know OO come back here after you finish chapter 5, and really, i think this is the best way to do it.
–I already do C# and i wanted to be updated, i only need 25% of this book
Really, he wasen’t targetting you alone as an audience, it did the job for you, you can go faster on what you already know, and he did the job fine for all other programmers of all sorts
–Useful but no advanced material. Bloated writing style
You can’t be serious, “the depth is limited and for those areas with which I was familiar, there was little new.” So it seems you are already master of C# why read this book ?
The book explains pleanty about new things in .NET 3.5, or is it that the sound of your own voice soothes you when you say “As a professional programmer”….
– Real hard topics (Understanding Object lifetime, Behind the scenes of Linq etc.) are more like touch and go type
It says PRO in the title, what do you expect… and i think the hard parts are explained in a very nice fashion
–Maybe a little disappointing the examples
The examples are simple and quick. the best kind i know
C Sharp
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009So, i am not really happy about this C# thing, although i have to learn it i don’t get the idea behind this .NET framework, i discovered all about salamander and all the decompilers out there.
I don’t even understand how Microsoft can claim Virtual Machine running your code can be faster than native code, for one thing i know, if this is true then they have not put enough effort on the native compiler.
Easy, straight forward, if you want me to stay here, you need to give me means of pre-jitting my software at the factory before i ship, Not as the user installs !
IP, Speed, Compatibility, Support for those extra processor flags i learned to love, What’s wrong with you Microsoft !
Windows 7
Saturday, February 7th, 2009Not so impressed with Windows 7, i must admit some features like the native VHD support are nice, but it will all depend on the pricing to me, most of the changes are very welcome if they dont cost a fortune !
I have started looking around Windows 7 already, and i plan to write all my findings on a website about Windows.
So, my review of Windows 7 is still in the makes, So stay tuned
Data CD and DVD are not for me
Saturday, February 7th, 2009It may be true that CDs and DVDs are cheap, I think they are very cheap, especially DVDs, but they are not the way for me, they become bulky, and finding them is not easy, you have to physically go through them time and time again !
I already have hundreds of data DVDs and CDs, What i do is, i make an ISO file from the data CD or DVD, store it on the network and then mount it from there on any OS.
Most (All the ones i know of) linux distributions can mount an ISO file, Under Windows, i found this very nice utility that is also free called Virtual Clone Drive (Others may exist).
Install that, Double click any ISO and then you will find it in My Computer Area of your personal computer.
The only question that remains is, are DVDs and CDs worth it ?
1- When doing the math, you might be tempted to devide the price by the number of GBs and see the cost per GB, this is not very accurate, for every 4 or 6 disks need a computer to host them right ?
You can also use NAS enclosures to do the magic right ? yes you can and for this example i will do the math with a NAS enclosure
At the time of writing, the seagate 1.5 TB costs $130, That is around 8.5 cents per GB (Impressive).
Add to that the price of a NAS enclosure for about 40 Dollars (If you have extra SATA ports on your PC or network this is not necessary). the cost per GB becomes. ((130 + 40) / 1500) = 11 Cents per GB !
But is that cheaper than DVD ?
Last time i got DVDs, they were 20 Cents each, this means they cost around 5 Cents per GB.
So, no doubt, that today, DVDs are cheaper than disk space, but the question remains, can the low cost of a DVD justify its use ? they are harder to manage, but they do have advantages,
1- Security, If it is stored away from light, Humitdity and other things, you can’t loase data that is on a DVD like you can lose data on a hard disk, Hard disks are very reliable, But never as reliable as a DVD.
2- Cheaper, as we have just seen.
3- Portable, You can carry them around easily
4- they come in smaller chunks, you can not lend 2 GBs of your hard drive to your friend
So, DVDs may still have there place (And other forms of optical storage), for me, i would go the hard disk route, and when i need a DVD i can just burn one from the ISO files on the hard drive.
NOTE – If you go the hard drive route, the cost doubles if you want to back up your data !