TJLUG

In my spare time, i will be writing a DNS guide, the internet is full of information about BIND, DNS, MyDNS and other DNS products, little is the content about DNS as a technology and a round tutorial.

So i plan to make my own tutorial for the benefit of everyone, i have already started writing in the DNS Tutorial section on the easywebdns wiki.

Please be advised that this is work in progress, i hope to be able to finish much of it in the comming few months, but i think it is one of the few topics not well covered on the internet in one place, so i will surely work on it as much as i can.

With an API account from godaddy, i was looking for a nice 3 letter .CC, and what do you know, On 2009-08-17 i searched for all 3 letter CC domains, i found 1 that i like (XEN.CC), i woke up 8 hours later, entered that domain and it was gone.

So i thought maybe the API aint that accurate !

The whois information clearly shows that it has been registered the exact time i have searched for it.

http://whois.domaintools.com/xen.cc

And the registrant of the domain name is

Altaway Technologies, Inc.
5190 Neil Road, Suite 430
Reno, Nevada 89502
United States

Domain Name: XEN.CC
Created on: 17-Aug-09
Expires on: 17-Aug-10
Last Updated on: 17-Aug-09

Administrative Contact:
Hostmaster, Altaway  hostmaster@altaway.com
Altaway Technologies, Inc.
5190 Neil Road, Suite 430
Reno, Nevada 89502
United States
(775) 201-0342      Fax – (775) 201-0342

Technical Contact:
Hostmaster, Altaway  hostmaster@altaway.com
Altaway Technologies, Inc.
5190 Neil Road, Suite 430
Reno, Nevada 89502
United States
(775) 201-0342      Fax – (775) 201-0342

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.ALTAWAY.NET
NS2.ALTAWAY.NET

Some DBs are much more write than read, i have been experimenting with Solid State Hard disks lately to find out a bit of what can be gained from adding SSD drives to servers, here are the conclusions.

Do not use SSD to

Host database files where you will write plenty.
Log files are a giant no go
read large files
write large files

Do use SSD (After disabling ATIME)

Databases where you read far more than you write, DBs with mostly constant data
Small image files like the files that belong to a theme of a very popular website, for example the logo file that gets hit millions of times a day

Here are the results.

1- I have dissabled ATIME, with ATIME active, SSDs have almost no advantage in there best case, and a big disadvantage in there normal case, ATIME can be disabled in your FSTAB.

Also note that the above applies to a linux system, for a windows system, you can use delayed write to fix this.

testing 2 SSD drives, the INTEL SSD seems to have a superb controller, the other was miserable, caused the PC to hang including the mouse in certain tests

The other drive is NOT A SAMSUNG, i have heard many good things about the samsung drives, but unfortunatly i have no samsung drive to test, the sofware used for the testing is still setup, and once i get my hands on one i will let you know

In a certain application where small data is retreived from a database (MySQL) in every querry, and the number of rows on that database was in millions, The SSD disk was astonishingly faster, almost 10 times faster on the computer where it may have hit a threshold of some other limit (But i doubt it).

In short, get a good SSD drive, use it as prescribed above.

SSD disks are not the coolest (They are the coolest if you mean temprature) for many purposes, but they are cool for the applications described above.

SSD is not something i would use as my desktop hard disk, it may boot faster with all the reading that is done with no seek time, But other than booting faster, some slowness will pop up with big files and with disk writes, you have been warned, SSDs are not great for MOST desktop users

The advice offered for personal PCs and laptops is based on how i use a PC, there are generally nice improvements in battery power, but this was beyond the scope of my testing since i was testing with Servers in mind.

Zain Jordan Wireless internet is a disaster

This is a story about me paying premium for internet access (1200 U.S.D or 850JD), and then getting bullshitted every day and having no internet access.

This story is my daily issue for almost 2 months now, it is totally unbearable, and basically, zain really really don’t give a damn about you if you paid already, they will see to it that you don’t get a refund and the rest is irrelevant to them.

For starters, i have been a network engineer for over 6 years now, Never have my servers had ANY downtime, My Services are built with network redundancy, and i have been doing this for a living for a long time now, In short, i know what i am talking about really well.

On 2009/06/17 i visited Zain’s 8th circle branch to get an internet connection (WiMAX), Umniah was ok and working fine (Unlike WiTribe) who are worse than Zain, But with all the hype, i had to get the Zain 5Mb/s connection (That never reaches 2Mb, and is 512Kb/s most of the time), So i got myself the Motorola USBw 100 (USBw 35100 to be exact), along with an upsized download limit and a dedicated IP address, All in all i paid 850JD ($1200) for the subscription, and this is where my hard times started.

Here are some points you need to know about… this is a daily misery thing, In general, zain will stall you until your refund period is out, then you have to chase there wild gooses begging for a service since you have no choices (Of refund). I have asked for a refund so many times, and every time they stalled me somehow, not refund is not an option, i once insisted that i want my refund now, and they told me the only person who can refund you is the person who sold you and he is not around at the minute.

1- There Zain’s WiMAX customer care representatives will not help you with an existing ticket unless you give them a ticket number, when adding a new ticket i ask for a ticket number and they tell me we don’t give ticket numbers, tickets are tied to your Zain phone number, i ask then why do you ask for one every time, and they tell me there are two separate systems, one without numbers and one with numbers, i ask them to add my ticket to the system with numbers and they tell me “Mish min 3inna siiiir”, Ok, i comprehend, Although in no way IT specialists, they sure have a master’s degree in bullshitology, If they know how to bullshit you, it does not matter how much they know about networking, and believe me the don’t know what DHCP or connectivity means, What is there to explain about the word connectivity, it is derived from the word connect, they ask for an elaboration for the simplest of statements, only to answer a question you never asked.

2- They send me in the middle of a traffic jam on a very hot day to Zain’s 8th circle to send my USB doungle for testing, i get there and the guys at the 8th circle tell me, “Which smart support line representative sent you to us”, the problem is not with the hardware and there has never been a need for you to come here…

3- When i get to talking to an actual engineer a month+ later, he tells me to visit them again, i say i will not visit, and he says, ok, i will resolve it without you coming, which he did not, now he does not answer my phone calls any more !

4- A guy from the 8th circle gave me his phone number before the engineer mentioned above, but obviously he never answers that phone, in the geniuses own words, Call me tomorrow morning and i will fix it for you in ten minutes.

4- Some of there customer representatives tell me, We know that we have this problem sir and we are working on it (For almost 2 months now), others tell me with an aggressive tone, what ignorant colleague of mine told you we know about this problem, we have no problems what so ever, what you think is a problem (No connectivity) is just your imagination (Not literally, but this is what a statement from Y**** or Z**** boiled down to).

5- I call them on Saturday, in the middle of the conversation the line was dropped, i called again and asked for same person so i don’t have to go over everything again, and the rep that answered R*** told me that i have to explain things again, because the other rep i was talking to had a computer crash, and she will help me, then she proceeded to tell me there is no one in zain who can help you on a saturday, call us tomorrow.

6- I ask for a ticket that says connectivity is lost after connecting for 1 or 2 minutes, the rep asks me it is a “Obtaining IP address problem”, i told him i have that problem in addition to this one, but the obtaining ip address DHCP problem is bearable since i can connect once from every 4 times, let us stick to the connectivity issue, he registers the ticket about the problem he suggested and totally ignores what i tried explaining to him for over 15 minutes, the ticket stated my not so urgent problem and left out the original problem, the problem that even when i am connected, connection is lost after 2 minutes and stated to be active by the motorola connection manager.

7- I call to check on my ticket, and the Zain support representative tells me “Over here it is marked as resolved”, they decided it was resolved regardless of weather i can or can not connect to the internet.

8- I ask for a refund for the 10th time, they tell me i can not have one simply because they stalled me until the refund period is over, although i CAN NOT use my subscription, And no week passed without a problem that spanned an entire day, nonetheless i can NOT get a refund either, it’s like selling me virtual internet, you paid therefore we will claim you have internet, You can brag in front of your friends too if you like.

Umniah’s support is not much better, i told the guy, DNS is not resolving although your DNS servers are registered on the router and on the PC, he tells me, what in the world is DNS, talk to me in arabic, don’t tell me DNS w ma DNS, This was a transient problem, but it is probably why i considered Zain’s WiMAX service anyway (MADA WiMAX)

In short, umniah is best, Zain and WiTribe are not usable, So beware.

مأساة الإنترنت اللاسلكي زين في الأردن

In my Surveillance / NAS computer, there is a Pentium D (Power sucker), An NVIDIA 8800GT that folds for stanford University (27 idle but 270 when folding), 5 hard drives, and 3 power supplies

It all happened when my 600W decided to scare the living crap out of me, i entered the room and it was filled with white smoke, it has been weeks since i took backup of the many Terrabytes on that computer… the the white smoke is coming out with the power supply fan.

It may be that there are excellent power supplies to power the 5 Hard disks, the GPU and the CPU, but this time i am going split…

Inside the ordinary case, i fixed 2 power supplies with Epoxy (Glue) to the floor of the case, from the main power supply (A new one surely) i connected a cable to the mains power from within and made the AC cable come out with all the other cables, i made it extend into 2 AC in plugs for the 2 power supply sockets, Gave the GPU it’s own power supply (Since the 8800GT takes power from a molex adapter not the PCI-e), the hard disks got a second power supply, and the Pentium D (Older pentium Dual Core) and the motherboard got a third

To make the other 2 power supplies (Not connected to a motherboard) work, you will need to short circuit the GREEN cable with any of the black cables (I chose the one right beside it in the mobo plug).

Then, to make things less crowded, i added a sata multiplier in a case and moved the hard drives there, i also needed to short circuit the green on the new case, and the hard disks are now outside that hot case, i used a SIL 3132 PCI-E on the motherboard, and the sata raid multiplier is something that starts with a 4 if i remember right, something like 4726 (Tiy also need an e-sata cable).

Then, you need some software to setup that port multiplier to JBOD (steelvine), and we are good to go, You also need to remember to turn the extra hard drives on before the computer, and turn them off after you turn off the computer so that Windows can boot with them and share them on the network, otherwise you will need to restart Windows network sharing deamon (probably called service in windows) to have your data on the LAN.