Running Systems

I’ve had problems with this one. Although it had a built-in module in the kernel tree, it didn’t work. I’ve had to search a bit, and even when done, new kernel required new solution.

I’ve managed to locate the exact place. First, if you have a Philips webcam, OV5xx, which gives these kernel prints: drivers/usb/media/ov511.c: No decompressor available you might consider my post here.

First, go to this page and download and go to the 2.xx section. There you can download a rather new source package, which can, finally, compile smoothly on your kernel, assuming you use 2.6.14, like I do.

Well, for me it worked correctly, and, although I don’t use it much, I’m happy.

I know hibernation is cool, and I know it’s possible even under Linux, but up to now, I’ve never had it as stable and reliable as one could have expected. However, using SWSUSP2.2RC on 2.6.14.2, I am impressed. I’ve been using my laptop for the last week or so, ever since I’ve discovered the problem with my Desktop’s video card, and it has worked flawlessly so far. Good as it’s supposed to. Not only that, but it worked correctly both with my built-in wireless (it used to have lots of problems in the past), and with NDISwan. Couldn’t ask for more

First and foremost, although I’ve purchased a new display card, I haven’t installed it in the computer yet, as my NVidia has decided to behave. Maybe it’s something to do with some specific build of Firefox, as it’s the only main package changed during the last two or three days.

Second, I’ve tape-recorded into my cell an event, and wanted to play it, afterwards, on my desktop. I discovered that it’s being saved in AMR format, which is rather annoying, and uncooperative. Google brought me this site, pointing to an important place on the web. Them both gave me a hint. I’ve been able to download Nokia’s package, and although it got compiled, it segfaulted, so using the second site, I’ve noticed the changes required both to the Makefile and to the code  itself, and it works correctly now.

Second, I’ve had problems with the script. I’ve altered it a bit, to fit my needs, and it’s attached here covert-amr-to-mp3.sh.txt.

You need to copy the compiled “encode” and “decode” to /usr/local/bin in this case, because it’s the right place for them.

It works correctly now, and I’m as happy as I can be. Got some good laughes out of these records.

One more thing – As today I’ve started working heavilly with VMWare, I’ve discovered a bug in it. I will probably verify it in the near future, but it can be replicated following these steps:

1) On an existing Win2003 Ent. Server install VMWare GSX 3.2.1

2) Check “Host Settings” to make sure it uses “C:\Virtual Machines”

3) Create a storage partition on another disk, formatted to NTFS, and mount it to “C:\Virtual Machines”

4) Repeate step 2. Use “Browse” to set it up right, if you’re not sure.

5) If you don’t have enough space on your C:, for example, less than the default Virtual Disk of 4GB, even if your mounted partition “C:\Virtual Machines” does have enough space, VMWare wizard will complain about “not enough space”, and will not continue.

6) Setting drive letter to the storage partition and defining VMWare to use it works correctly.

So I’ve encountered it, and will try to repeate it on the next server I get to use. Could be interesting if I can actually reproduce it. Didn’t find anything about it in their documentations and knowledge-base.

I don’t know why, but ever since the last shutdown of my desktop, I’ve had stability problems with my X. I’m using Xinerama, and it’s been working rather OK, for the last month or so, however, now, especially when using Firefox version 1.5, it tends to halt, with “NVRM: Xvid: 12

” error, which means some crash with NVidia card. I’ve had this before, for a short period of time, and it might be due to failure of the fans, or the likes.

During the search for a newer driver, I’ve read NVidia’s README, and got to the understanding I can either use Xinerama, which is a software based multi-screen solution, or I could use Nvidia’s built-in “TwinView” mechanism. I’ve decided to use it, and after short while of tempering with it, got to the following config file xorg.conf-nvidia-hardware-enabled.txt, which works correctly.

It did not solve, however, my crush problems, and my X keeps on hanging once a while. I might just purchase a new, medium class NVidia card, for that matter.

Weird behavior of my Orinoco_pci wireless network interface. On my home 802.11b network, I get performance of about 600KB/s, instead of 1.1MB/s, which should be the approximate speed to expect to. Not only that, but browsing to external websites and the likes (I compare using wget), I get speeds of <7KB/s, and sometimes decreasing to a stall, on a 2Mb/s line. My desktop reaches speeds of >150KB/s, so I could either point at my wireless router/AP, or my wireless NIC. Using PCMCIA RTL8180 802.11b NIC, and using it with NDISwan drivers, I’ve got speeds of above 150KB/s, which points at my built-in Orinoco wireless interface.

I’ve tried downloading the newer orinoco driver, 0.15rc4 (instead of my existing 0.15rc2), and got similar results. I got stalled a bit later (testing with 18MB zip file), but it could be random point, just as well. Using the PCMCIA, it worked correctly *ALL* times. Pity. I will have to pay the “price”, regarding battery life, and extra accessories, regarding wireless for now. I might try this same test with some other router/AP sometime, when I get near one of those.

My tiny laptop has worked rather well so far, but I’ve decided, due to some unexplained problems, to upgrade it to a newer version of kernel, aka 2.6.14.2.

Based on my own blog’s entry (what good are blogs if not to hold some long forgotten knowledge?), which can be found here, I’ve upgraded my kernel and used the following config file config-2.6.14.2.txt.

One thing which I’ve had to do, maybe due to some upgrade of mkinitrd tools, or the likes, and it took me one misserable hibernation and restore (or a failed restore) to discover was to add the line “echo >/proc/suspend2/do_resume” to /usr/share/initrd-tools/linuxrc (my exact file is linuxrc.txt), so that the system would actually restore from hibernation. Now it works correctly.

On another issue, I’ve been asked to advise during Oracle DB installation on Linux setup, with High Availability solution. Although, long time ago, I’ve installed Oracle on both Solaris and Windows (without fine-tuniing it, anyhow), I’ve started searching the net, and came to the following link. The documents linked there are worth their weight in gold and diamonds. I’ll be testing them in the next few days, for my own personal advantage, but I think it’s gonna succeed, and as it seems the place for such issues, I can only put my thumb up for such sites and information sources on the web. It reminds me of the good in it. I was very impressed.

I’ve got to get one of those. It’s like the coolest thing in the world. You can aim and shoot, and all directly from your PC. The challenge, afterwards, would be to make it work under Linux, either directly, or via Wine. Who cares?

And later addition: Also one of those, but they’re so expensive… I want one. Really.

In the long forgotten days of NT4, there was not Unicode. In these older days, one could use English, and the language the server machine was predefined for. In our poor and sad case, English alone.

This is a story of a poor filer, member of a multi-site NT4 domain, which, due to latency and delay in the creation of the VPN connection between sites, had to become BDC.

Now this server acts as BDC, and all is fine, but as a filer, although Hebrew files can be saved and recalled to/from it (Hebrew names), it cannot access them interally. It cannot backup/restore Hebrew named files, it cannot copy/move them either. We’re stuck.

I’ve got two possible directions: The first would be to "upgrade" or "reinstall" the server using an Hebrew Enabled version of NT4 Server (and with luck, much luck, it might work), or to silently replace it by a Linux acting as NT Domain BDC, caching accesses, etc. Maybe it will work, donno. Worth a try.