Venus Transit

I managed to duck out of the office for a few seconds yesterday with Dev Ben to have a look at the transit. We just made it at 1:50pm, and could clearly see Venus in the bottom left corner. Amazing to have that kind of view of another planet. Ended up viewing through a welding mask and a pair of dark safety glasses underneath (welding mask long was good, but you just needed that little bit more). Very cool. Glad I had the chance.

 

Raspbmc (xbmc for Raspberry Pi)

Nothing crazy to report, just having fun with it.

Getting really nice playback performance of 1080  mkv files. Looks very promising.

Raspberry Pi

Well this is a little exciting, I wasn't expecting to get my hands on a Raspberry Pi for another month or so. Apparently it's one of 54 in Australia so I'm feeling pretty lucky at the moment.

Time smash some quake bots...

Easily Secure Erase an SSD (alternate to HDDerase.exe)

EDIT: OCZ have their own secure erasing and firmware updating Linux distro now, and have a great 'how too' on their forums. Check it out here. 

I was recently looking for a way to run a Secure Erase command on my SSD to ensure its performance wasn't being hampered. I tried a ton of different ways (including HDDerase.exe and hdparm) but all failed due to the security on my mother board (and laptop) that stops certain harmful commands like Secure Erase being issued to a hard drive.

If you don't know what performance issues I'm referring too then you should stop and do a little reading. AnandTech has a great article on it here, and just to be clear this post has nothing to do with data security on SSD's, its only about performance.

If you're like me and have had trouble finding an easy solution to issuing a secure erase command to your SSD's controller then this might be a solution for you.

You will need Parted Magic for this (free and opensource), and obviously ability to boot to it. I used 6.6 from a CDRom but I'm positive it will work just as well from any other version and any other medium (USB, network).

Warning, this will completely erase your drive, be careful! If you have important data on other drives in the same system then it you should probably unplug them, just in case :)

1. When booted, hit the menu button in the bottom left, head to System Tools and then Erase Disk 

2. A menu will be displayed like the picture below. You want to choose Internal:Secure Erase command writes zeroes to entire data area (Parted Magic is using hdparm to perform this)

3. Choose your disk

4. Here is the tricky that Parted Magic handles much better than the rest of the utilities out there. You need to tell the computer to Sleep so that, when it wakes, the drives security will be unfrozen.

5. Wake the computer up, go through 1, 2 and 3 and you should have a different menu instead of what was displayed in 4. If you don't, then run through the process again. If that doesn't work then your system may be e a little more secure then most and this probably wont work. Don't change the password, just leave it as NULL (unless you know what you are doing of course)

6. Confirm the erase

7. And your done, and yes, it is normal for it to only take a couple of seconds. On a normal platter hard drive it would take longer, but this is normal for an SSD. Its faster because basically SECURE ERASE command just resets the SSD's controller instead of erasing each sector, like it would on a platter based drive. If it take longer than 30 seconds you have an problem or you have chosen a platter drive.

8. Jump into GParted to confirm your that the erase has worked, your should have an entirely blank SSD. If it still has a partition then the Secure Erase command hasn't worked or you have erase the wrong drive. 

This is a really easy, GUI way to use hdparm utility to issue Secure Erase command, and the 'sleep' trick seems to work on everything I've tried (ASUS P5KC, MacBook Pro 6.2). 

Sorry for the bad photos, I did this in a rush. 

Is HP really killing the Touchpad, or is it all a massive ruse?

Back story here and here

I managed to get my hands on two HP Touchpads earlier this week, both at the crazy prices of $98AU for a 16GB and $148AU for a 32GB (finally, Australia has cheaper tech than the US). It was a mad rush. If a work mate and I weren't watching twitter for rumors we would have been none the wiser. 

We got to the local Harvey Norman store around 15 minutes after their staff got the call from the head office instructing them to go ahead with the reduced pricing. Five others were already waiting for the stock to be brought out and more steadily came walking (fast) in behind us. They had 70 in store and they were all gone within the hour.

Was it worth it? Completely. WebOS does lack a lot of polish and some really important features, but it's really not as bad as what some are making it out to be, and it's certainly not bad enough to kill the entire product line so soon. It had only spent four days on the shop shelves in Australia before the big axing. 

You can easily see that a lot of hard work has gone into the OS over its short life. Some of the WebOS aspects actually thrash the rivals, like multitasking. It's absolutely a ton better at multitasking than its rivals. I think that if it was given the same time that Android and IOS have had to mature I think WebOS would have been (and possible still will be) a very strong player in the ARM operating system game. 

The hardware is great. Again its missing a few features but its one of the fastest tablets (CPU and GPU) in the current market. It feels strong, looks strong, was packaged well, has a good screen and was released along side some high quality accessories. I quickly grabbed covers for both and a touchstone charger in fear they would be hard to get after a few days, which another work mate is unfortunately confirming right now. 

It all seems crazy to the point where I'm starting to question HP's motive. Six days after they had internationally killed the entire line they released/updated a HP branded application which is specifically designed for the Touchpad. Then today they have switch on paid app support for Australia. Not bad for a "completely unsupported software" platform. Why would they bother? To make it even more confusing HP have just rewarded Touchpad owners with a free "6-Pack" of paid apps in the U.S. 

If HP are trying to show possible buyers of their consumer line that they still have confidence in the Touchpad/WebOS product its a very extremely weak attempt, especially after their drastic and sudden actions to wipe their hands of it all. 

Whats with this half/lingering interest HP? I know I'm not the only one who is thinking along these lines. Could HP turn around now and say "now we have hundreds of thousands of users on the platform we will continue with the line"? Sony and Microsoft sell their consoles at a loss at the start of their lives to get customers on the platform, is it that hard to imagine a company like HP could be doing the same? If I was a hardware manufacturer and I'd just bought a reasonably fresh OS I would certainly think about doing it. Maybe I'm just being over inquisitive/over speculative...?

Either way I think I have won. I'd put $100 on an Android build being publicly released before the end of the year. If that doesn't happen I'm happy to continue to use WebOS in its current state. 

BIOS Update for Sunix SATA4000 (Silicon Image 3114) PCI Raid Card

I've had one of these Sunix SATA4000 PCI Raid (fake raid) cards for a while now, and although they are pretty limited in terms of abilities and performance they are reasonably reliable (500+ days on mine without a problem) and very cheap (I paid $10 delivered on Ebay). They use a Silicon Image Sil3114 chip and BIOS so software is pretty easy to get for it as well link.

It's one major drawback is the card ships with a much older BIOS than what's available through Silicon Image, which cant recognise larger hard drives (1TB and up). You can upgrade the BIOS using the Silicon Image BIOS and tool but you need to know what flash chip the cards uses.

The original post here that I found (which has been removed for some time now) stated that it used an AMD 29LV010B 1MB compatible. Using that worked fine for me and now I'm running a 2TB drive on the card without any problem. I also noticed around 20-30MBps more in IO to the older drives on the card. I thought I'd make a quick post about this just in case someone else wanted to know, references to it seem to be disappearing quickly.

My tips for a happy Linux home server (for users new to the Linux scene).

I've recently moved from a FreeNAS 7 server to an Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS install. The move went well, but I thought I'd share my tips/thoughts that may help some of the newer Linux home server users.

• Why did I choose Ubuntu Server and not Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, FreeBSD? A very arguable point to start with, Ubuntu Server was really the only distribution that I could find that was a concentrated server-only distribution that had a well managed life cycle. Others like Fedora could easily be customised to be a server but I really liked that Ubuntu Server was specifically built for this use. I'm still very new to the linux server arena so that alone gave me a little more confidence. Ubuntu's life-cycle was also a big winner for me, explained here link. 
• You didn't pick Ubuntu, that's fine but know your distributions roots. Ubuntu is based on Debian so I know I can use a lot of Debian resources. Simile Fedora and CentOS are based on Redhat. You need to know this.  
• Use Webmin link. It's a fantastic webGUI that will ease you into the headless server lifestyle, saving you time and helping you monitor your new system easily. It plugs into a ton of different areas and services (like Samba) and is supported by all of the major distributions. Its very light on system resources and its installation (for Ubuntu) is a good introduction into adding sources and installing using apt.
• You need to know how to install and update software. For Ubuntu's it's apt, and here are the basics on how to use it link.
• Update software and the OS as soon as you install (for Ubuntu use the apt methods above). Get everything up-to-date before you start working on the server, just in case a major change is due to come down and potentially break your fresh sever. In my experience this is pretty unlikely for a basic server (file serving, basic webpage) but its also makes sure you have the best tools to set-up your server.
• Software raid is fine, don't be afraid to use it. I wont go too far into this point, as I think this page by Jeff Garzik sums everything up really well. 
• Mix your brands of hard drives/models (if possible). This opinion is very arguable as well, and again I wont go too far into the opinion. The idea is you will minimise the chance of more than one disk failure. Robin Harris explains it really well here link.
• Stay away from cheap raid cards. If you do decide do go with a hardware raid instead of software raid, or even if you just want more SATA ports make sure you get an real raid card, or at least a SATA card that has known support for your Linux distribution. Fake raid cards are painful to work with. For instance I wanted to create a software raid array over five ports, using all four on-board Intel ports and a single port from my Silicon Image 3114 based PCI card. Everything was ok until the system was rebooted. It appears that my 3114 card will read the mdadm software raid metadata on any drive attached to it and assumes it should be managing that array. So it created a failed array in itself, and as the single drive wasn't available to the OS the software raid failed that disk. Very annoying.
• Research hard drive support for your distribution. Some drives, in particular 4K sector drives, may need to be partitioned in a particular way to ensure full IO speed. Drives like 2TB western digital EARS model drives have this problem. This forum post describes it well. Just remember to a little pre-research and all should be ok.  
• If you want timely redundancy and diversity with your server stick with common gear. Unless you need your sever to be the size of a shoe box stick with a nice compact full ATX case and power supply. If my server motherboard dies tomorrow I have access to around 5 other motherboards that will plug straight in and get me back up and running. Or if I install a service tomorrow that really pushes my CPU I know I can get a more powerful 775 CPU very easily and cheaply. 
• Know your config files. Config file locations can get a little hard to remember. Write them down in a text file to help remind you. 
• Use Nano instead of VI for editing config files to begin with. I find its much easier for new comers. 
• Do you want to share a music folder with iTunes installs on the same network? mt-daapd, also know as Firefly media server, (included in the Ubuntu repositories) is light weight and easy to configure. Here is a great how to install for Ubuntu.
• Want to virtualise from within your server? You want your CPU to have the VT extension link. You can virtualise without it but you will take a massive hit on performance. 
• Learn how to compile and install source just in case link.
• Lastly, google google google google and then google. If you cant get something to work don't post your problem on a forum straight away, give it a decent search first. The chance you're problem hasn't been experienced before is extremely unlikely. 

I hope that helps a few people. If anyone has any questions about this or running an Ubuntu Server at home feel free to leave a comment or give me a shout on Twitter @iammacgyver.