You know when grown-ups tell you everything's going to be fine, and you think they're probably lying to make you feel better?
Yes.
Everything's going to be fine.

Very Interestink

I've been fiddling with my old Linux box (Yuri) today, and splutted it twice. Or splutted once and nearly-splutted once; the second time I managed to get it to do a controlled reboot rather than having to switch it off.

This tends to happen whenever I do a very large amount of disk activity on my main RAID array - which is a degraded RAID-5, which is the main reason I'm doing all this messing about with the new computer and copying files back and forth and running checksums and so on.

What's interestink is that there are no disk errors in the log files. None. I do have the dreaded "screaming interrupt" message - rather a lot of those - but no disk errors. Which suggests that the disks are fine but I might need a new SATA controller.

Oh good, I think; a SATA controller will be cheaper and easier to install than a new hard disk. Then I looked at the prices. It would be cheaper for me to buy a whole new motherboard with four SATA ports than to buy an add-on four-port SATA controller. Except that it wouldn't be a Socket A motherboard, so I'd have to buy a new CPU as well.

Hey, look! Adaptec are selling a 16-port SATA RAID controller. Not that I need one, or anything...

Update: I just kicked off a run of badblocks, a Linux utility that checks your hard disk for bad blocks.* All happy happy, then screaming interrupt, then lots of bad blocks, and then splut. (Which makes three spluts, and I'm out.)

Update: A new kernel might fix the problem. Unfortunately, right now I'm at work, and the box is home and splutted, so I can't try it out. Mmm, remote kernel upgrades...

Update: Ooh, shiny! Albeit expensive. PCI-Express x8, 16 SATA-II channels, up to 2GB of cache, RAID 0/1/3/5/6/10 support, optional battery backup...

* The developer originally called it ϖ∂.†
† Well, that looked interesting on my screen at work, but it turned out that this was largely due to my fonts being screwed up. I didn't think that particular letter of the Greek alphabet looked familiar. Rather making a hash of a throwaway joke in the process...‡
‡ In case I've now confused you, I replaced the turned-out-to-be-boring-and-ruined-the-joke symbols with something else.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:48 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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He She It We They

Glenn Reynolds says that Andrew Sullivan thinks that he (Glenn) should be writing more about Abu Ghraib, and less about Newsweek's recent fuckup.*

I think that Andrew Sullivan has gone insane:

FOUR OTHER CITATIONS: Kos blogger Susan Hu has discovered four other media citations of the allegation that Gitmo interrogators desecrated the Koran: one from the Philadelphia Inquirer, and three from Human Rights Watch. Now we cannot know for sure - yet - if these allegations are real, or propaganda. But we do know for certain that other "techniques" designed to use religion as an interrogative tool have been deployed, including the smearing of fake menstrual blood on detainees' faces. This religious warfare was also deployed at Abu Ghraib. I wrote in my review of the official records of the torture

Do I need to unpack that?

Okay, just for Andrew:

You say "We cannot know for sure - yet - if these allegations are real". In fact, we have no evidence whatsoever that these allegations are real.

You say that "we do know for certain that other "techniques" designed to use religion as an interrogative tool have been deployed". In fact, we have no evidence whatsoever that these allegations are real.

You refer to "religious warfare", on the basis of these allegations, when you have no evidence whatsoever that these allegations are real.

You say "I wrote in my review of the official records of the torture" in reference to Abu Ghraib. There was no torture at Abu Ghraib; that is, not after Iraq was liberated. Under Saddam Hussein Abu Ghraib was infamous for torture and murder; it was the prison from which people never returned.

The incident of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib has been investigated by the authorities, and the responsible parties brought to trial (and in some cases already punished). Despite being a relatively minor incident, it has been the subject of an ongoing leftist frenzy since it first came to light - at a time when it was already under investigation by military authorities.

It happened eighteen months ago. Oh, and no-one died, or was even injured.

The Newsweek story was published last week. It led to at least fifteen deaths - not that this is the fault of Newsweek. What Newseek can and should be faulted for is their impenetrable left-wing bias that blinds them to questions of fact, proportion and propriety.

Much, Mr Sullivan, like your own.

* Apparently this is now the accepted terminology in the mainstream media.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:17 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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From Out Of The Mouths Of Media Personalities

Via Radioblogger, this little snippet from Chris Matthews' Hardball discussing the Newsweek kerfuffle:

CM: This is a really tragic SNAFU by Newsweek.

RW: Oh, it's a tragic SNAFU, two paragraph article that has lasting damage to U.S. policy, to preventing a clash of civilizations that everyone has feared.

RW is Robin Wright of the Washington Post; the Washington Post owns Newsweek.*

What's my point, you ask?

Well, both Chris Matthews and Robin Wright used the term SNAFU to describe this incident.

SNAFU doesn't mean "unfortunate mistake". It doesn't mean "regrettable failure to meet expected standards".

It means Situation Normal - All Fucked Up. So score one for an accurate representation of the mainstream media by the mainstream media.

* Specifically, the company that owns the Washington Post, the Washington Post Company, owns Newsweek. Also six TV stations and miscellaneous bits and pieces.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:46 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Zoom Zoom

So I'm comparing some backups with the originals to see if they match (in which case I can zap the backups, because I now have backups of everything, so I don't really need to keep backed-up backups of backups), and the system is sustaining more than 50MB/sec from the two drives containing the originals and the backups respectively. Which is pretty nice.

Also, my GeForce 6600 just arrived. It turns out that it does do HDTV output, but it doesn't have the cute little backplate for it; it uses this adaptor thingy instead that plugs in to a min-DIN connector. Less cute, but it doesn't take up a slot.

The only problem remaining is that I now need to replace faulty hardware in both my Linux boxes, reformat and reinstall... Except that one is a backup of the other. So I have to rebuild one of them, copy everything across, rebuild the other, and copy everything back. Yay for rsync and gigabit ethernet!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:56 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Checks and Balances

Newsweek 100 Point Publishability Test

Note: Your story must score 100 or more points on this test to be published in Newsweek. If you are unsure of any questions, ask your editor. That's why you have an editor, unlike those upstart bloggers.

Evidenciary Basis

Physical evidence or video/film footage: 80 points
Notarised or verified documentary evidence: 70 points
On-record first-hand source: 60 points
Independent confirmation: 50 points
Off-record first-hand source: 40 points
Second-hand source: 30 points
Some guy you met in the pub: 20 points
Random phone call, letters in crayon, email in ALL CAPS, mysterious voices: 10 points
Left-wing blog: 50 points
Right-wing blog: -50 points

Finance

Makes Newsweek advertiser(s) look bad: -30 points
Makes Newsweek competitors look bad: 30 points
Makes Newsweek competitors look so bad they might sue: -30 points

Other Considerations

Makes for a funny headline: 10 points
Allows Newsweek to maintain a pretence of neutrality: 20 points
Allows Newsweek to maintain a pretence of neutrality while getting in jabs at the administration: 40 points
Makes Democrats look bad: -20 points
Makes Europe look bad: -10 points
Makes America look bad: 50 points
Makes Republicans look bad: 70 points
Makes George Bush look bad: 90 points
Makes Karl Rove look bad: You may already have won!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:38 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Dogalog

I've kicked off a program to catalog every file on every disk on every one of my computers, including helpful data like MD5 checksums, image and video file resolutions, audio sample rates, and stuff like that.

It might take a little while.

Update: 750,000 files catalogued so far.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:58 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Send in the Clowns Cavalry

A GeForce 6600 (non-GT) is on the way to replace my X600 (non-XT). It won't, however, have the nice little HDTV output thingy that my X600 has. On the other hand, it will be 50% faster for running advanced 3D games like... The Sims 2... Which isn't available for Linux anyway.

I could have got a GeForce 6200 with half the speed and half the memory for 93% of the price, but somehow it didn't seem worthwhile.

Pixy's Tip of the Day: When you create an ext2 or ext3 filesystem under Linux, by default it will reserve 5% of the disk space for emergencies. On a one-terabyte volume, that's 50 gigabytes saved for a rainy day. And if you used the automatic partitioning option during the install, everything is one big filesystem, so you can't unmount it to fix it.

What's the tip then? You don't need to unmount it. tune2fs will work just fine on a mounted filesystem. tune2fs -m 1 will reduce the reserved space to a more modest 10 gigabytes, or you can use tune2fs -r to specify a precise number of blocks to reserve.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:08 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Tiptoes Very Quietly Away

A few months ago, both of the RAID-5 volumes in my Linux box went splut, as is wont to happen here at Pixy Central. Through the use of Vile Necromancy, I was able to reconstitute the volumes even though they had suffered multiple disk failures.

When I tried to back them up, though, they went splut again.

Anyways, I have this new wizzy Linux box here with a terabyte of disk* and I have - oh look - a terabyte of splut filesystems on my old Linux box. So I can just copy them across† and then I can manually unsplut the old system the easy way.‡ Only problem is, the /pixy⊗ volume goes splut clunk and dies when you try to read a lot of stuff (600GB, say) from it, so I decided to back up the /misa⊕ volume first.

Except I had a brain fart and typed in /pixy anyway.

And it's working. 390GB copied successfully so far. No spluts, no clunks. I think it hasn't yet noticed that I'm copying the Filesystem That Cannot Be Copied™ so I will tiptoe quietly away and leave it to its work.

Oh, and I just ran across Pixy's Tip of the Day for December 21, 2003. Thanks a lot, me. Though it ain't that easy to find old, reliable, well-supported PCI Express cards just yet. I thought an X600 would be reasonably safe - and maybe it's the card itself at fault. Yay for console mode, anyway.

And you know what? I still haven't played Knights of the Old Republic. I've even got the sequel now, and I haven't played the original. Considering that I've only recently caught up with games that came out in 2001, I may be a while yet.

Update: Did about 490GB before it splutted. Oh well.

* Yeah, I know I said 500GB. Well, I was walking past the computer store, and these little voices started calling out to me, and the next thing I knew...
† rsync over ssh using blowfish, 17MB/s. Not too shabby.
‡ Wipe the bugger clean and reinstall.
⊗ Yeah, /pixy.
⊕ Of course.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:32 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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More Splut

Fedora Core 4 Test 3 x86: Splut

Ubuntu AMD64: Installs successfully (the Ubuntu installer runs in text mode and is, frankly, crap), brings up nice graphical login screen, accepts my username and password, and then splut.

Windows XP: System doesn't even see the CD. Hmmm.

Looking for cheapish Nvidia PCI Express video cards now. Meanwhile I've left it running Memtest 86 just to make sure everything except the video card is good.

This makes three systems in a row where I've had trouble with the video card. My current Linux box, Yuri, couldn't cope with the GeForce FX 5700, though it's been happy enough with my old GeForce 4. My Windows box, Kei has had to have its video card replaced not once but twice. And now this. I have plenty of spare AGP video cards lying around - for obvious reasons - but this is my first PCI Express system so the parts bin is empty.

PC video cards these days seem to be Suck City.

Update: Installing Centos without X Window. At least I'll be able to use it, and I can update it later when I have a video card that works.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Splut

Centos crashes shortly after starting up X. Ungood. It's either the drivers that ship with Centos 4, or the video card. Given that I've had two flaky video cards in two years, my bet is on the card.

As a test, I'm going to try installing Fedora Core 4 Test 3, which should have the very latest of everything. I'll know soon enough.

Update: Splut.

It's just a little annoying, because this computer was delayed for two weeks while I waited for the video card to come in, and then I changed the order to a different model (costing an extra $60) which was supposed to be available the next day but actually took another week to arrive, and turns out not to work.

Bah.

Maybe it's a 64-bit driver issue. I'll try again with a 32-bit version of Linux tomorrow. That does kind of defeat the purpose though.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:45 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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