I figured I had lived in the world of yesteryear for far too long - it was time to retire the CRT monitor that had served me faithfully for so long. It was an LG Flatron T910B (19″ flat screen CRT) which cost around $380 brand new. A fine monitor indeed. I think I finally decided to upgrade because my sister recently got a LG Flatron L194WT (19″ widescreen LCD) which almost had be drooling. Plus 22″ LCD widescreen monitors are roughly the same price now as my CRT so it seemed a good time to buy.
Archive for June, 2007
I think my RAIDing days are over. I tried and tried … and tried, and failed. Perhaps Ubuntu is not yet ready for RAID. Perhaps I am not worthy. Regardless, I packed in the towel on having an ultra-cool and very geeky RAID1 system set up and started setting up a boring rsync backup system. At least with Linux I can rsync most of the system files as well so, should the dreading day come, recovering from a catastrophic hard drive failure will be fairly quick and painless.
Let’s hope that day never comes!
I did get the chance to install Ubuntu again as a simple desktop system. I used the alternate install CD again since I like the X setup in that … and I was trying to recover some geek points. I now have to write up the scripts to do the regular backups. I’m currently trying to work out what a decent interval between syncs is. I think every hour might be too often and a day’s interval seems like too long. Anyone have any suggestions?
HTML5 is the long-needed update to the core HTML specification/standard, which has been stuck on version 4.01 for quite a while. The W3C has been most visible in promoting and developing the XHTML standard but that’s not really taking off in a significant way and is almost always used incorrectly. For an excellent overview of the updates that will come with HTML5, read the article HTML5 differences from HTML4.
I was just browsing the catalogue for MSY and discovered something interesting: the AMD Athlon64 X2 6000+ is going for $227. This is interesting because the closest Intel processor to this price is the Core 2 Duo E6320, at $217. All the buzz on the internet says that the Core 2 Duos are superior processors but with a price differential like that, I wanted to big a little deeper as see what provides the best bang for buck.
If you’re looking for a snazzy Ubuntu-flavoured replacement for the “powered by Windows” nonsense you currently have then look no further: “powered by Ubuntu” stickers.
The details for Australia are to send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to:
Sticker Offer
P.O Box 1412
Lavington, NSW 2641
Quick and to the point: the software RAID, despite booting properly and having everything appear to work, is useless. I disconnected the second disk in the RAID1 array and the OS refused to boot. I have no idea why. I think this has gone far beyond frustrating at this point. If I’m left with a RAID1 system that can’t even boot if a disk is missing then there’s no point having it the first place and I want my 250GB back.
My next step will be, having convinced the owner of the system to try out a proper hardware RAID card, to see if a hardware RAID1 will overcome these problems. I’ll have to look into it some more first of course and I’ll see if I can work out what is going wrong with the software implementation.
I also promise that not every post in the future will be about RAID!
UPDATE: A new plan has been formulated! I’m going to attempt separating out the /boot partition from mdadm’s clutches and then using rsync to make sure that both /boot partitions on each disk are kept in sync. Let’s see if that works.