Dave Lachapelle

So, I just encountered a very strange issue with PHP’s FTP function and thought I’d take a quick sec to write about the problem, in case anyone else is having it.

Essentially we have a module in our application that moves a few files around via FTP.  Now this works fine on some servers, but some have problems – ftp_put returns ”, and creates a 0kb file on the remote FTP server.  Turns out – after much diagnosis, that enabling pasv mode in some cases fixes this problem (ftp_pasv).

So, I have been struggling the past few weeks with Textmate and it being stupid slow on certain projects that contain a ton of files. Apparently every time Textmate gets focus, it re-scans the entire project folder for changed files – which really sucks if you’re alt-tabbing back and forth a bit to see changes you’re making to a project.

I finally did a bit of searching around and discovered this gem:

il maestro ignoto » Blog Archive » slow projects loading in textmate

To save some typing, you can just copy and paste this into your preferences:

!(/\.(?!htaccess)[^/]*|\.(jpeg|jpg|png|gif|mp3|pdf|swf)|\.(tmproj|o|pyc)|/Icon\r|/svn-commit(\.[2-9])?\.tmp)$

This will tell Textmate to ignore graphics and whatnot when it regains focus and greatly speed up the loading of your projects.

So, I just added OpenID support to my blog, which I hope will encourage more people to comment.

I fixed the stupid problem I was having with tank by re-installing Ubuntu.  Since I no longer have any optical bays, I had to actually set up Ubuntu over a netboot install, which was kind of cool.  If I have some time, I’ll post some instructions on how to do it in case anyone’s interested.

Been a little while since I’ve posted I realize – been quite busy lately.  So, I picked up a new toy today for my fileserver / it just arrived today, I ordered it quite a while ago.  I had one more hard drive than I had bays, and I wasn’t using any of my optical bays – so I decided to buy a 3-4 drive bay converter.  Specifically I got one of these: http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=22889&vpn=CFP51%2DB&manufacture=Silverstone%20Technology

Really nice piece of hardware – very well packaged and organized.  Anyway, I proceeded to shut down the fileserver to install the drive, got it all set back up – drive detected, go to boot ubuntu, and guess what it won’t boot.  I end up at a busybox prompt.  Really not cool.

It would appear there’s some kind of bug in the ubuntu kernel or one of the recent ubuntu updates that is giving me grief – I know its not the new drive because I unplugged it and continued to have the same problem.  Specifically if I try to boot up, it gives me an error saying it can’t mount /root – Device or resource busy.  Well, I mean, really, how can the drive be busy, there’s nothing open on it.

So far I can almost get it to boot up but I think I’m going to leave it for the night and see if I can come up with a solution.  Currently to boot it up I have to do this:

mount -o ro /dev/hda1 /root

ctrl-d

That will at least bring me to a prompt, but for some reason I can’t access any of my drives – they’re all saying device or resource busy.

Again – Really not cool.

Well just a few video clips for all you System Administrators out there, Happy System Administrator Day!

Hate to say it Nintendo, but just about everyone “told you so”…

Gizmodo UK : Wii Storage Problem ‘Urgent’ Admits Nintendo

At least now you’re admitting there’s a problem, instead of the year of plugging your ears and saying “la-la-la we can’t hear you… no there is no storage problem… no we won’t add a hard drive accessory to the Wii”.

“We have said publicly that we’re looking hard at the storage
situation, that we’re working on a range of solutions. We have nothing
to announce now. But certainly it’s an issue we are aware of and we’re
working to find a solution and we will. We have a consumer base who
loves virtual console. We have a user base who really is enjoying
WiiWare content.

So for us really our challenge really is how do we satisfy all
these consumers who are loving all of the product we make available on
a download basis? As we continue to have things, as you point out, like
‘Mario Kart’ that has its own channel when you’re playing from an
Internet perspective, we’re just making this challenge tougher and
tougher. So in our view this is becoming much more of a mainstream
problem, which is why we have a sense of urgency to solve it.”

So, if its such an urgent thing to fix the storage problem now, why wasn’t it a year ago when everyone was saying that it really is a problem? That and if they aren’t going to add a hard drive, what else could they do? Maybe make use of the SD-Card slot and finally allow people to play games off their SD cards?

So, I happened across this article today, written by a Scott Wallace, I’ve copied the text here in case his site goes down for whatever reason. Note, I haven’t tried this as of yet, but in the future when I fill up my drives, I’ll likely be able to just buy another 500 gig drive and convert my raid-1 array to a raid-5 array instead of having to buy another 3 whole drives.

Converting RAID1 to RAID5 with no data loss | scott.wallace.sh

(continue reading…)

Further to my previous postings about Ubuntu and VNC, which seems to have been the most popular page on my blog for a while, I happened across this post from Sam Lesher this morning on how to enable Ubuntu’s built-in remote desktop from the command line. The built-in remote desktop uses VNC, and so kind of eliminates the need for any form of VNC Server setup.

Sam Lesher » Ubuntu 7.04 – Enable/Disable Remote Desktop from the Command Line

To enable remote desktop from the command line, issue this command:

$ gconftool-2 -s -t bool /desktop/gnome/remote_access/enabled true

To disable remote desktop from the command line, issue this command:

$ gconftool-2 -s -t bool /desktop/gnome/remote_access/enabled false

Unfortunately, this only works if you have previously configured remote desktop with a password, which would in theory require physical access to the machine.  That being said though, I want to set it up remotely, and so to add to Sam’s guide, I’d like to add that you can X-Forward a gnome session through SSH which will allow you to change this option.  I’m working on a how-to which I will post shortly.

Well, I’ve seen a few new comments come in to my blog about Rogers’ craptastic billing department, so I figured I’d follow that one up with another small rant about Rogers’ services. So, on July 4th, I got a letter in the mail from Rogers, seems they love sending out mail, aside from their bills I tend to get 4-5 letters a month from them. Guess I know where they’re spending all the money they’re gouging from consumers. Anyway, I digress… I got this letter in the mail: “Important notice regarding your home phone service”. Great, they’re going to increase the price of their service.

To my surprise, its a notice saying they’re going to be upgrading my analog service to their new amazing “digital” service, because they can no longer maintain the analog phone lines. What a load of crock, I was actually a Sprint customer back in the day when Rogers bought them out, and I’m fairly certain that as a result of the buyout, Rogers had to maintain the analog phone lines. That being said, Ma Bell happens to own the lines and leases them out to Rogers, which I would guess cuts into their ever so precious profit margins. So, it would make sense, from a business perspective (aside from the whole giving Bell back their monopoly), for Rogers to try and stop paying the expensive leasing fees and give everyone VoIP, which costs them essentially nothing.

Anyway, the whole point of the argument, monopolies aside, is that I got the letter on July 4th. They are making the change to my line on August 1st according to the letter. Now, the real problem is that I rely on my analog phone line for my DSL, which I get through Sentex. Would seem Rogers can’t even get their act together to give their customers even 1 months notice of changes to their services. Unfortunately, you can’t cancel any contract without a month’s notice, GREAT GOING ROGERS! So, now, I’m forced to cancel my service with Rogers, get Bell to take over my phone line, and look, Rogers has lost another customer.

Really, wake up people, why can’t you get your act together and be a decent service provider like you used to be? Rising prices, crappy service, for what, a few “value adds” here and there? No thanks.

Well, its been a long time coming, but tank has finally died. For those of you who no not its saga and history, you are sorely missing out. Though, as with any computer system, especially one containing my whole television collection as well as all my backups, it will rise again. Not after some serious modification though.

As it would appear, the motherboard finally died, the system simply refused to boot if any SATA drive was plugged into it – obviously a problem. I went out to the local computer shop and picked up a new motherboard, processor and ram. Specially, I got myself an ASUS M3N78-EMH HDMI motherboard, and I know, I have absolutely no use for an HDMI motherboard, but it fullfilled my main requirements of being under $100 and having more than 4 sata ports (specifically it has 6), bringing my total available sata connections up to 8 (I have a PCI card).

So, I get it all home, rip apart tank – dust off as much as I possibly can, and I go to town unpacking, reconfiguring the case and generally getting everything set up. So, I’m sitting there going through the checklist, processor mounted… check, processor fan mounted… check, ram mounted… check, hard drives plugged in… check, *CRAP*… well, it would appear my 4 year old Thermaltake power-supply is only a 20-pin, and this new motherboard is a 24-pin. Now this is at 9:30pm on a Sunday night… no computer supply shops are open.

So, just a quick note to anyone looking to upgrade, check your freaking PSU before you buy a new motherboard!