The one thing that worries me about this system is that it doesn’t boot consistently. Actually, it is consistent, but only in its lack of booting. If it is on and running for longer than a few minutes and I reboot it won’t come back up. It goes through the Grub selection screen, then after a kernel is selected I get a screen with information on my CPU then it reboots. I can’t find that it’s logging anything at this point, so I’m not sure exactly what’s going on. I suspect it’s heat-related. I’m able to get it to boot if I let it sit powered off for a few minutes then power it back on. I’ve been hoping it was something I’ve done, but it does the same thing with the stock 2.6.19 kernel the Gentoo install put on the system as it does with the 2.6.22 one I’m using. Calling Dell about a computer that uses Linux scares the crap out of me.

[tags]dell, gentoo, home server[/tags]

The old server is running Gentoo Linux, and I’m planning on running Gentoo on the new one as well. My first problem with the system was the Intel gigabit network card. It’s the e1000 driver in Linux, and although the Gentoo LiveCD detected it, the module wouldn’t load. I booted to a Ubuntu CD with the same results, and found a thread that mentioned downloading a more current driver from Intel and loading that. I put it on a USB drive, and it worked in Ubuntu. However, when I tried it in the Gentoo LiveCD it didn’t work. Apparently the Ubuntu disc has the Linux kernel headers available, but the Gentoo CD doesn’t. I was eventually able to get Gentoo installed by using the LiveCD’s networkless install then chrooting into the install from within the Ubuntu CD where I had network support. After getting a base system up, I was able to load the new network driver in Gentoo, and after 24 hours I had a working system.

I am currently doing an "emerge -e world," which will recompile the entire system. Because I had done a networkless install, I had a bunch of applications that needed updating. Remembering back to the many times I have been through this process on the P4, it’s nice to have a dual-core system. It’s taking hours instead of days to get things done. Tomorrow when the emerge is finished I will install Apache, Samba, and all the other apps I need before I move the data over.

[tags]dell, linux, gentoo, ubuntu, server, inspiron, 530s, inspiron 530s, freedos[/tags]

Right now the songs are only from EMI’s catalog. If you go to the iTunes Plus section in iTunes, you can see how many songs in your library can be converted. It can then download and replace the songs in your library, giving you the nice option to delete the replaced files or place them in a folder on your desktop. I don’t think the original songs even have to be on your computer either. I am on a new computer and most of my songs are on my iPod and not on my computer and it’s getting songs I know I hadn’t copied over. The store seems to be getting hit hard, so it will take some patience. I’m getting “error 504″ a lot, but the songs are coming down slowly.

Maybe now I can get that streaming server going for my home that I wanted to set up a while back. I abandoned it because most of my music was DRMed.

[tags]iTunes, DRM, AAC, EMI, music, iPod[/tags]

[tags]mac, windows, move[/tags]

To at least make this tech related, I’d like to post a link to Rob Dunn’s site, VBSHF.com. It’s got a lot of useful scripts for windows administration. I use an older script of his that installs windows updates (either from a WSUS server or from MS) whenever I have a new PC to set up. It saves so much time not having to go to Windows Update after every reboot.

[tags]site update[/tags]

In doing all this I also started using Second Copy. I’ve been looking for something easy and out of the way to keep my VP’s laptop in sync with our server. His primary PC is a laptop, and he docks it when he’s in the office. He complained when I had XP’s offline folders setup. It doesn’t work as well as I’d like it to. Vista’s got better offline support, but I don’t plan on going there for a while. Second Copy does the job nicely. I’ve got it setup on my laptop to sync my local documents folder with one on our file server every two hours. I’ve also set up our VPN connection so it’ll dial that before syncing and hang up when it’s done, so it works regardless of where I am. It’s stayed out of the way and I think it’ll give me peace of mind once I get it installed on the VP’s laptop.

[tags]vista, XP, laptop, sync[/tags]

This week I got a Pinnacle HD Pro Stick, a USB HDTV over-the-air tuner. It’s pretty nifty, even though Vista support is (of course) still beta. I installed the drivers that make it work with Vista’s Media Center from Pinnacle’s site, and went through the setup process (adding lineups and stuff). The quality of over the air HD is great, but my Core Duo laptop is choking on it. I don’t know yet if it’s the processor or lack of disk space. Reinstalling Vista on this laptop is going to happen soon so I’ll find out.

I also installed it on a Dell Optiplex 740, with a dual core AMD Athlon64 processor running Vista Ultimate. It worked like a charm on this system with the computer able to keep up with the HD stream with no problems. The Media Center interface is much better than my Comcast DVR at home, and close to Tivo in usability. I was able to easily schedule a NCAA tournament game to record, and the quality was amazing. A 2:45 HD recording was 19.1GB, so you do pay for that quality in disk space.

The major problem I’ve had with this device is that randomly I’ll start up Media Center and find there’s no tuner, when it’s installed and nothing had changed from the last time I ran it. I’m blaming the beta Vista drivers on right now, as uninstalling them and reinstalling them (a repair doesn’t work) fixes the problem. The only other issue is the processing power needed for HD is fairly large. I’ve been able to play some 720p streams fine on my laptop, but our CBS affiliate here streams in 1080i, and it’s usually choppy. I’ll see if a clean Vista install fixes that this week.

All-in-all, if you want a cheap HDTV solution, this is a good one.

On my system with a Vista Ultimate clean install that’s about a month old, here’s what a search for Java finds:

C:\Users\jtdennis>dir c:\ /s /b | find “\java.exe”
c:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_11\bin\java.exe
c:\Program Files\Java\jre1.6.0\bin\java.exe
c:\Windows\System32\java.exe

That’s for a relatively clean system Since I’m responsible for multiple computers, it’s easy to see how much trouble it can be to install the update on every version of Java installed on Windows installs that are older. I have come up with a couple scripts that will find every copy of Java on a system and run Sun’s updater program against each one. Add it to a login script and the updating is much, much easier. I’m sure the scripts could be combined into a single one, but I have limited VBScripting abilities and not a lot of time available to work on it.

The script needs to be run as an Administrator, and in Vista it needs to run elevated.

Here are the scripts:

dstjava.cmd

@echo off
::if c:\javadst.txt exists, don’t try and upgrade again.
if exist c:\javadst.txt goto javaend
::find all java locations and save to a text file
dir c:\ /s /b | find “\java.exe”>%temp%\java.txt
::run the upgrade with the text file as input
cscript \\server\scriptdir\dstjava.vbs %temp%\java.txt
::save text file to prevent future upgrades.
echo “java updated for DST changes.”>c:\javadst.txt
:javaend

dstjava.vbs:

Set objArgs = WScript.Arguments
Const ForReading = 1
Set objDictionary = CreateObject(”Scripting.Dictionary”)
Set objFSO = CreateObject(”Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
Set objTextFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(objArgs(0), ForReading)

i = 0
Do While objTextFile.AtEndOfStream <> True
strNextLine = objTextFile.Readline
objDictionary.Add i, strNextLine
i = i + 1
Loop
For Each objItem in objDictionary
strExe = objDictionary.Item(objItem)
Set wshShell = WScript.CreateObject (”WSCript.shell”)
wshShell.run “”"” & strExe & “”"” & ” -jar ” & “\\server\scriptdir\tz\tzupdater.jar” & ” -u”
wshShell.run “”"” & strExe & “”"” & ” -jar ” & “\\server\scriptdir\tz\tzupdater131.jar” & ” -u”
set wshshell = nothing
‘test to make sure executed command is correct
‘Wscript.Echo “”"” & strExe & “”"” & ” -jar ” & “\\server\scriptdir\tz\tzupdater.jar” & ” -u”
Next

[tags]java, dst, daylight savings time, scripts, windows[/tags]

89.5%.

He only has 60GB free on his desktop, so moving there is not an option. I’m going to tell him to get an external drive and we’re going to move his pictures there.

I’ve also learned my lesson. The new server will have quotas.

[tags]quotas, file server, users, work[/tags]

In my previous attempt to do this blog I posted about searching in Vista. I didn’t realize how similar it was to OS X. I’d heard it was a lot like Spotlight, but the other day I noticed the search box in the System Preferences window on my Mac at work (I’m a guy, being observant is not something I excel at). Searching in that box brings up a list of options and highlights (like a spotlight, now I get it!) the appropriate preference option.

I like some features of each OS’s take on searching preferences. In OS X you get a drop down list of relevant links as you search. The links take you directly to that particular item. I’m not as big of a fan of the “spotlight” on the icons as you search. I prefer Vista’s approach of only showing you what it is that matches the query.

[tags]os x,vista,search[/tags]