Digital Diatribe

What kind of server comes with make but not gcc or any tools to compile stuff from source?

I run make, and get complaints about gcc being missing, so I apt-get install gcc and then get errors about stdio.h being missing, which is never a good thing when you’re compiling C. So I google for the package I need and come across a suggestion to download build-essential.

If build-essential is so fucking essential why the fuck don’t they include it in the installation? Do they think you’re never going to install anything on your spanky new ubuntu server?

It’s just re-enforcing my views on ubuntu not being all that great for getting shit done out of the box in a server environment.

EDIT: I just realised this only happens on the 64 bit version of ubuntu server. I went to do an apt-get install of build essentail on the i386 version and it was already there.
I guess it’s because there are a few versions you can run on the 64bit machines, which makes it tricky.
Ubuntu is not that bad really :hugs:

This is the first in what will hopefully be a new trend with me writing about my new job and all the exciting things I get to destroy^^^^^^^play with

The PERC raid cards and the powervault 114T both ship with the same default SCSI ID of 6.
Now normally, this wouldn’t be an issue if you ordered any of these devices separately, and tried to plug them into a poweredge 2850.
This is because the poewedge comes with it’s onboard SCSI controller set to an ID of 7.
If however, you would rather use the dual channel PERC card because it’s faster than the onboard one, you’ll have to remember to change the SCSI ID of the tape drive.
Which is where we start today’s lesson…

Not soon after I’d powered on the tape drive I heard a beeping sound coming from somewhere.
I’d been trying to run some commands on the server and had been encountering I/O errors so I thought I’d better go and have a look.
I very soon realised that the beeping sound was emanating from the new RAID controller card.
Looking at the box, I saw some brightly flashing orange lights and after looking up the audible error code in the manual found out that two of the disks had failed.
I thought this very odd and somewhat coincidental, but it still took me a while to work out exactly what had gone on.

I tapped the keyboard attached to the server and saw that one of the drives had failed and the system was now running in read-only mode. Which basically meant I couldn’t even issue a shutdown command So I powered it off and went into the PERC bios to have a look.
It was reporting that both the hot spare and the first disk in the system array had failed.
This is where my memory of events gets a little fuzzy.
At some point I noticed that instead of PROC, ID 6 was reading TAPE. This is what tipped me off that something had gone wrong.

I tried booting on the remaining drive in the array, but this wouldn’t work. It looked like a few of the drives got scrambled when plugging in the tape drive, as no matter how many times I swapped the hot spare and the system drives they would always show up as the same drive in the same channel, which seemed odd, as the Dell tech I was now on the phone with assured me the controller could keep track if you moved drives from one drive bay to another.
What we eventually did was force one of the failed drives back online, and turn the one remaining ready drive into a hot spare.
We then powered off the powervault and made sure the system would boot using only the one drive, which worked fine.
This allowed me to boot the system in a degraded state and simply wait for the array to rebuild.

After about two hours I turned the powervault on only to find that the first 5 disks in the array were now all reporting as failed and there was an NVRAM mismatch error.
This was solved by simply saving the current disk configuration, but the drives were still all reporting as failed.
I knew none of them had in fact failed, so I decided to force them all back online and reboot.

I then changed the SCSI ID of the tape drive to 7, plugged it back in, turned everything on and magically I can access all my drives again.

This whole process took the better part of 7 hours.

So remember kiddies, always check the SCSI ID of a device for conflicts before plugging it in.
I have recommended to Dell that they not ship the PERC cards and the tape drives with the same default SCSI ID, although I’ll happily admit I should have checked to see what the PERC default was instead of assuming it was 7 like the onboard LSI card.
I never thought that a duplicate SCSI ID could cause such a catastrophic failure though. Live and learn, as they say.

I just got a Sony Ericsson W810i and it’s a pretty awesome phone.
One of the main things that suprised me was just how good the included headphones are. They are canalphones, so they are like earplugs and sit right in your ear, which if you are sensitive to pressure on your eardrum, like I am, can be a little uncomfortable at times. Like when in a train, or in the lift.
But the good thingabout them is just how much bass you can get out of something jammed into your ear canal. It really is quite amazing, especially when compared to ipod headphones.

The main gripe I have with them is that they are made only to be used with the headphone attachment that plugs into the bottom of your phone, they are too short to use for anything else without an extension cord.
Why Sony didn’t just put a 3.5mm audio jack on the phone I don’t quite understand, maybe there just wasn’t enough room for it, but it means you can’t charge the phone and listen to music at the same time. At least not without buying a desk charger.
Also, you can’t use the radio without the headphones, so if you want to wake up to the radio (which is entirely possible thanks to an alarm function Apple would do well to copy [OMFG you can choose WHATEVER SONG YOU WANT TO WAKE UP TO!!!!1]) you can’t leave it charging overnight. Unless you have a desk charger.

I think Sony wants me to buy a desk charger.

The audio quality out of the device is pretty bloody good. I haven’t tested battery life, some people claim it’s shocking, but then I only ever use it for short commutes or at the gym. If I need 14 hours of battery I’ll use my iPod.
But, much like the ipod, playback is not gapless, which I find annoying. The gaps seem to be pretty massive too, a good 3 seconds between tracks, but that could be the tracks I was playing (I’ll have to check)

The bluetooth just works when you use it with OSX. It’s an under pain under windows with FMA on the macbook pro.
I have it set up in OSX as a proximity sensor, so my screen locks when I walk away and unlocks when I come back. It takes about 20 seconds, but it works really well.
Synchronisation with isync works flawlessly as well.
Downloading images and videos is amazingly simple too.

Did I mention the camera? OMFG, it’s awesome. The photos are better than any camera phone I’ve ever seen, and with a 2MP autofocus camera, you’ll bloody well hope they would be. In poor lighting conditions, the shots look grainy, even with the included light, but for outdoor shots or well lit ones, the quality is great.
Samples will appear below when I can be bothered to upload them.

The quality of the speaker is pretty good too, although I still can’t hear it at full volume if I’m outside an it’s in my pocket, but then that’s probably my overly bassy ringtone. The vibrate function makes up for that.

The keypad is the best of any Sony Ericsson phone I’ve used in a long time.

Reception is good which is uncommon in Sony Ericsson phones in my past experiences. Voice quality is also good, especially when using the supplied headset.

All up, if your after a phone that does it all, but you still don’t want 3G then this is the phone I’d go for. It’s got the best camera out of any of them.