Failed Windows versus Linux Rant

I'll be honest, I was coming to write to you all today to give windows another well-deserved roasting.  Unfortunately, I found the same issue in Linux.  Well, when I say issue, perhaps this is my own expecting something more logical from a system.

Lets take a look at the folder I'm talking about:

  

It's any folder you like, within it, I've created a folder called ".example", another without the leading period "example" and then a file which includes the word "example" within it's file name.

When I go to search this directory, with the explorer search bar within the window presented, I expect it to work by using exactly what I type...

So, if I search for "txt", only the "example.txt" file should come up, and it does...

But if I search for "example", I'm getting three results, as they contain the word, therefore I aim to be more specific and search for ".example"... The result of this last search:

Yup, I still get all three results.  Clearly only one item matches ".example", and this annoys me.

And I jumped to Linux to take screen shots of this not working this way, but I found ls does work this way too... To be more specific I had to use "find":

This annoys me, I want the search to be specific, unless I add wildcards like "?" or "*" then I want what I type to be what it searches for, and if they have to put dumbed down searches in there, make it obvious that what you're getting is not an exact match.

The reason?... Imagine you have 300,000 files and you select 2,49 of then based on an exact filename search, and you give it a cursory glance, assume it to be correct, select all and delete?!?!?!

Yes, you end up deleting a load of stuff you didn't intend.

And I know, I know, I assumed what it was doing, and I know assumption is the mother of all fuck up, but still....

Even more annoying however, whilst setting up this example on windows, I did find something minor to moan about:

You can't create a folder which starts with a period in Explorer...

But you can with DOS/Command Prompt!

Dell 2950 Server - Fan Modification - Part 1

This is the first in a series I'm putting together, not to tutor, but to chronicle my altering the Dell 2950 servers I've just received to quieten them down.

The fans can be seen with the orange plastic handles.

I negotiated for the servers from a recycling shop, and got two for £80.  When the first two arrived, I was very happy with the look of them, one is 6 x 3.5" bays, one has 9 x 2.5" bays, but other than that they look in really good shape.

Inside they're clean, not perfect, but good.  Unfortunately someone not in the know has "set them up for shipping", so I have a bent front cheek on one unit, and then the memory in both is wrong, one has a single stick of 2GB RAM... and the other has 3 sticks of 512MB... First off, the servers ONLY take matched pairs, they complain without at least a matched pair... So from these sticks I can only manage to get 1GB as 2x512MB installed at the moment.

And then the big problem, was that one of the machines only has a single CPU installed, I only selected these as they were to come with two quad core CPU's...

But the vendor very kindly sent a replacement machine, unfortunately this machine has been dropped, so the rear of the case is very mangled.  But, never mind, that third machine is going to become a donor for spare parts on the other two!

So, what is the fan mod?  Well, I've read three different tutorials, taken a look at my unit, and watches lots of videos on the topic of quietening Dell server fans in general, but the 2950 specifically.

It is a two stage mod, the first is hardware, to fit a resistor to the red (power) cable on the four main input fans within the case.  This makes them run more slowly, and hence more quietly.

The problem with this is that the RPM meter then records a far lower rate, and so the system monitor/BIOS starts to complain that it has a defective fan, or four!...

This leads to the second stage of the modification, which is to modify the BIOS to stop this, by lowering the internally stored alert rates.

To prepare for the first step I removed my fans, and set about soldering the new resistors into place, I've started out with 47ohm 0.5W resistors, which are pretty high, some people have said they've had issues with fitting such a high resistance, in that the fan got way too slow.  So I have both 27 and 39 ohm resistors winging their way to me.

Once all four fans were soldered, I wrapped the fixes in insulation tape (I have no shrink wrap)... Refitting them of course left them running a lot slower, but the machine was not happy.

Therefore I'll move onto the next step, which is to fix the BIOS... See you all soon, to report how I get along.

Original Hand Wand Style Iron, which exploded

Oh, and during this step, I had the rubbish £10 soldering iron I was using explode (again), so I've gone and splashed out on a £50 digital one from Maplin, look out for a review of that soon!  (It soldered pretty well for a novice/hobbyist like me!)

Nice new Solder Station

Checking the work for continuity and then wrapping insulation.

A Golden Rule for IT Infrastructure

Maybe I'm too old?.. Maybe I'm not aware of some other rule... But when I were a lad, and first started out in a professional IT environment, the key was to keep things available and running, and always the same.  Now, the latter item is somewhat of a grey area today, what do we mean by "always the same"?

Well, I'm not talking about the same box, doing the same job, and nothing changing on it... That is very old school and something you have to think about in the sense of "big iron", when you had only one (for it's day) powerful machine, effectively a main-frame, mini or even just a large server.  So, armed with only the one machine, you were forced to think about keeping the status quo, to keep everything the same, everything happy and you paid lots to have people like me, and hugely expensive support contracts to keep that status quo.

That though is old thinking, that is not how modern infrastructure should work, or even be thought of, now today with powerful servers at lower price points, you can think about "high availability".  This is a concept many many older IT bods and even folks in executive level posts are struggling to swallow.

It means they pay out for many smaller boxes, and they virtualize to spread the work between those boxes.

If one box goes down, the virtual machines, or services being run on it, simply up and migrate to another box in the group.  This is the core concept to modern cluster computing and really only depends on the number of boxes you've bought, or hired, and the back-up/snapshot ability of your storage solution.

So we're talking about boxes, running you a SAN solution, we're talking dedicated high bandwidth between the storage and the processing servers, and then many servers booting locally perhaps, to then load virtual machines over the wire/fiber.

What has all this got to do with the status quo?... Well, very simply in this modern infrastructure, no matter where your virtual machines are running, no matter what their services are, if you've not told your customers in the work-place that a change is coming, NOTHING should change from their point of view.

To change anything at this juncture would result in their feeling, and even spending precious time, checking why something their end is no longer working.. When really it's not their end, something changed in your infrastructure.

So don't do it!

Publish changes, push out a change log, or an update mail or even just have the courtesy to tell them.

And worse still, if a customer comes knocking on your IT office door and tells you they can no longer do today, what they were doing yesterday, don't fob them off with phrases like "if must be your end" or "nothing has changed chap".  If nothing changed they'd not be talking to you, customers don't just get off their seats and show themselves as being in the dark unless something is bothering them.

Your role in IT is not just to provide the infrastructure, but to understand your customers, not all of them are moaning, know nothing, morons... Some are, don't get me wrong, some are, and you are paid to mediate with them.  But then things are changing customers notice, and their frustration will ultimately be taken out on you.

Software Engineering with 252117761

What's with this strange number Xel?... Well, this is a very useful number to help you determine how a remote system, or your network, is presenting numeric values.

When we program, we generally stick to one system or one platform at a time, however, life is never always so vanilla, and we've had a problem in the office today of talking to a raw network connection from a remote system.  We didn't know anything about this remote system, through a combination of lingual differences and a total lack of documentation (SNAFU).

So, we didn't know what endianess the remote processor was treating numbers as, and we also didn't know if the network was doing conversion between endian settings.

Apparently someone else had puzzled over this for a few weeks before giving up.

I however, channelled the power of the number 252117761.

What's so special about this number?... Well, it's a 32bit number, so we have four 8 bit bytes in there, and it's binary pattern is:

00001111000001110000001100000001

If you can't see the use of this pattern already in checking your networking and endieness, then you might have a problem.

It helps you check out the received values back, if you know you assign a value on one side as this integer, and we call for it across the link, we can see whether we get the above, or a change of order:

00000001000000110000011100001111

For example was the return we had, which is a change or ordering.

But you can also see whether you get:

00000011000000010000111100000111

Which is a short reordering.

Why 32 bit?... Well in this case, because we did know that the word size of the remote system was 32bits, but you can use this trick with any number of bits, just total up your values...

111111101111111001111110001111100001111000001110000001100000001

Might be a good 64bit pattern, and has the value 9187131167487755009.

Virgin Media - Getting The Service You Require

I've had a bit of a battle with Virgin Media over the last month, I noted I was suddenly, and for no reason, on a very slow connection (at least slow to my liking) it was showing up in tests as between 46 and 52 mbit... STRANGE!  Since I thought I was on 100Mbit and was trying at the time to get onto the new Vivid200 mbit.

Anyway, after doing some calling around, and basically being given the run around by sales, I got through to a chap in the right department, who was able to sell me things AND look at my account; they seem very able to sell stuff to you, and take your money, but you ask for something and you get stone walled.

So, this chap checked my account, 50M sir, you're on our 50M service?... I thought I was on the Big Bundle thing, on the tele?.. 100Mbit etc... Oh You were sir, but your contract ended in 2016...

So, did they continue charging me?.. Oh yes.. Full whack, but they slowly eroded both the channels on the TV package and the speed of the internet, I guess hoping they could provide less and charge the same, or even more!

I set about trying to rectify this, and got exactly nowhere, online chat, telephone calls, even twitter didn't budge them into action, they didn't give a hoot!

Therefore, I set about getting what I wanted the underhanded way... 

What I wanted was to jump from 50mbit to 200mbit, leaving the TV and landline telephone as was, the problem?... No human operator on any channel, in any department, nowhere could give me this, I was even told you could not order this combination!  That my kit didn't support it!  That the wires were wrong!!?!?!

When I pointed out that the wires and kit are theirs, sort it, they basically hung up on me.

Online in my account however, I could see an upgrade offer... For a free I could upgrade to some new cables.. DOCSIS or some such thing... So, I ordered that...

A week later, I checked again, the new offer was for a free upgrade from 50mbit to 70mbit.  Are you still with me here?... So I chose that.

A week yet further on and I had 70mbit, and the option to pay £1.50 more per month to upgrade to 100mbit!  So I ordered that.

And yet another week on, I finally have the option to order 200mbit for an additional £5.50 a month, with 6 months at £2.50...

I have this arriving, through the ether as we read this...

So why the delay?  Why did the humans say they could not leave my TV and landline alone to just uprade the speed?... Well, seems they could, they could all along, they were lying, or their training didn't expose them to the workings of their own systems.  Whichever it was, I was very very frustrated by the whole affair, and I've made it known.

https://twitter.com/OriginalXelous/status/725670550601867264

21 Degrees: The Office Nirvana

There's drama in the office... And to be honest, I'm on the loosing end of it...

We've recently had lots of work done in our office, we've had new double glazed windows, which no longer allow fresh air, so then they added a new air system, which supposedly brings in ten cubic meters of fresh filtered outside air per person, but it's never on, you can really tell when it is, and it's great, but it's never on.  Then they added a very expensive set of air conditioners.

Now, I know, and you all probably know and office is not meant to be warm and cozy, if you want a place to sit and read or code which is very warm and comforting, try the local library; if it's not already shut through budget cuts.

No, your office is meant to be slightly cool to the feel, around 21 degree's I've always been lead to believe.  High ceilings are best, and if not, air condition to that temperature.

How do I know this?... Well, I used to be an office manager, and I managed the air conditioning, and I managed the people, all shapes, sizes, ages and sexes... The consensus was too warm and most people drop off late afternoon.

So, what's my problem here?  Well, I'm the latest arriving person on the flex, I always arrive around 9:30-10:00, which means I'm always the latest to leave, around 18:30-19:00.  The problem?  Everyone else in this area want the air conditioning warmer, the reason is they're all cold in the morning, they all wonder in around 7am, and disappear, leaving their phones ringing and desks empty around 15:30... This is a problem.

It's a dichotomy, because right now they're all moaning it's too cold, according to my desk thermometer (a hang over from being an office manager and worker for many years) says 21 (this is centigrade before anyone complains), and it's perfect.

The other folks around me are complaining they're cold, they're wearing jumpers, and cardigans and one chap has the biggest fleece on... They're all a lot older than me, yes at nearing forty I'm the young one, and I can't help but believe it's their age.

And, don't get me wrong, I understand they're cold, but they might need to get up and get moving, have a warm porridge breakfast, something, other than disturb the cool air situation.

Because when they've all gone home, and the sun is around this side of the building, through the un-opening double glazing, it's boiling at my desk, literally boiling.  And in this ridiculous circus I end up needing a desk fan on, because the temperature goes way up to 26+.

21 Degrees people, please, and you deal with it, I'm not the only one to know this.

Updated Tutorial - Installing SVN (Subversion) on Ubuntu 14.04 Server

Back in May 2012 I posted a pretty complete tutorial on how to create a virtual VMware machine image for ubuntu, install apache2 and svn upon it, and configure it for access over your LAN.

Tonight, I've just migrated that very installation to a new Ubuntu Server 14.04 installation on a new XenServer.

And I noted I needed to add an extra line of configuration, therefore, I've added a little video note, which also shows the server working for me locally on my LAN:

The original tutorial can be found in it's full glory here: http://megalomaniacbore.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/virtualizing-installing-and-using.html

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