The BFC Computing Weblog

I recently had the power supply fail on my SOHO server, which was a mongrel of old parts, far too many USB cables, and was pretty darn slow. It was also very expensive to run, having a Pentium IV in it, the worst of Intel's line.

My goals for a new server were:

• quiet
• energy efficient
• virtualization support
• lots of storage
• easy to take backups offsite
• rackmount
• budget-friendly.

After poking around NewEgg for a while (I think I enjoy shopping there a bit too much) I came up with a list of parts (after reading many of the helpful reviews), and I have to say I couldn't be happier with the system.

It's almost inaudible, runs at about 105W under normal load, has seven hard drives in it, of various capacities, fits in my rack, has a hot-swap drive for off-site backups, and runs Fedora 10 like a charm. The case is especially nice to work inside, and is of higher quality than you'd expect for the price.

I'm acually using the 2.66GHz version of the Core2Duo, but they don't seem to make that anymore - 3.0GHz seems to be the low-end. It's worth noting here that most of the commercial server builders try to force you into the Xeon line with a rackmount server and those are both more expensive and more power hungry than the Core2Duo and Core2Quad lines. Get what you really need, keeping in mind that virtualizing multiple systems onto one is a huge energy win.

Additionally, I got a cooler from BestBuy (surprisingly their in-stock cooler is the nicest I've found) and used Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound to bond the CPU. Plus a bunch of SATA cables I have in a box (they seem to spontaneously generate in there). The whole package comes in under $1200 even if you have to buy every part. Compare at fifty percent more to purchase pre-assembled.

Here's the parts list:

• 1 x ARK 4U-500-CA Black 4U Rackmount Case - Retail
• 4 x Athena Power 6" SATA II Y cable Model CABLE-YSATA290 - Retail
• 1 x ASUS P5N7A-VM LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 9300/nForce 730i HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
• 1 x Rosewill RG430-2 430W 80Plus Certified,ATX12V v2.3/EPS12V v2.91, Active-PFC Power Supply, UL,FCC,CE,TUV,ROHS - Retail
• 1 x ICY DOCK MB671SK-BB Tray-less 3.5" SATA I & II Mobile Rack Removable Hard Drive Kit - Retail
• 1 x  Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - Retail
• 2 x Kingston 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KVR800D2N5K2/4G - Retail
• 4 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive (bare drive) - OEM
• 2 x MASSCOOL FD08025B1M3/4 80mm Case Fan - Retail
• 1 x Antec 761345-75120-9 120mm Case Fan - Retail
• 1 x Rosewill RCR-IC001 40-in-1 USB 2.0 3.5" Internal Card Reader w/ USB port / Extra silver face plate - Retail
• 1 x LG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model GH22LS30 - OEM
• 1 x SYBA SD-SA2PEX-2IR PCI Express SATA II Controller Card - Retail

The secondary SATA controller is only needed if you're going over the number of drives the motherboard supports, and likewise the power splitters. If you were buying all new 1.5TB drives you'd likely not need this. Obviously the memory card reader is only if you need it. But who wants a floppy drive anymore?

Happy building!

It used to be you could get a floppy disk for about a dollar. If you needed to give a colleague a document it was easy to do so with a floppy disk, and there was no point in returning it.

Today, it's easy to get a 1GB flash drive/card for $8 or so, but that's a bit beyond the point of just handing them out like candy and far too much capacity for simple document exchange.

Moore's Law says we ought to expect 512MB flash cards these days for about a dollar. Something like an SD card would be a perfect replacement for these cases where e-mail isn't the best solution, and surely manufacturing costs are such that a 3.5" floppy disk had a higher materials cost than a SD card, just in terms of plastic and metal.

Here's to finding a $10 10-pack of 512MB SD Cards at Staples sometime soon. Next up: very tiny pens to label them.

Apple's Snow Leopard (10.6) operating system is due out in the next quarter according to slides shown recently at the LISA conference. It adds a small handful of features but it's mainly an architecture, performance, and bugfix release. Leopard (10.5) is pretty buggy and Apple readily admits it's not what an OS should be. So they're coming out with an update less than a year and a half since the last one, which is by most counts what Leopard should have been. This isn't really disputed, even Apple's name isn't for a new cat, this is the one with all the 'marks cleaned off'.

OK, so it's great that Apple's getting everything squared away so quickly, right? Yeah, it is if you've got recent hardware.

But what if you have a computer that was purchased in, say, the first half of 2006? It's going to have a PowerPC processor in it, and Snow Leopard doesn't support PowerPC. OK, so then you can run Leopard, which does support PowerPC. But, wait, Leopard is buggy, that's why they're fixing it.

OK, so you can run Tiger (10.4). Well, no, if you're going to be connected to a network you'd be foolish to do that; Apple only issues security updates for the current and previous versions of its OS, and with 10.6, 10.4 will go by the wayside. Within months there will be public exploits for your 10.4 machine available and the time to your machine being compromised is just a roll of the dice.

"Wait," you may be saying, "my machine is less than three years old and it's now unsupported?" "It's still under AppleCare warranty and I can't even get security updates?"

Yep, and there we see the tactical brilliance behind splitting the Leopard and Snow Leopard releases - Apple gets to book its revenue early on a not-ready OS, beat Microsoft to the market, and save a ton of money really only supporting one majoor version of its operating system. So, this doesn't really work out well for you? Just buy a new Mac, they're probably not going to do this again in three more years. Right?

This may be a dangerous gamble for Apple in a recessionary economic period, so perhaps they'll do the right thing and simultaneously keep their customer base. If not, Ubuntu 8/PPC isn't eligible for a commercial support contract but it'll run on your Mac and its security updates will be current for another two years. At that point your machine will be five years old and you can keep it around with debian or netbsd or if we're coming out of the downturn get yourself a brand new machine. By then you'll be so used to Ubuntu you'll have broad purchase options.

From today’s new Macbook announcement:

11:01AM Q: Concern about the glossy screens. Are you going to offer another option?
          A: Steve: We're going all glass -- we won't offer another version. 
          Phil: You offset the reflection by the brightness, and consumers love it. One of the great things about a notebook is you can turn it however you want!

I’ve used a Mac laptop since 1992 as my primary machine and often find myself using it in situations where I can’t actually rearrange the furniture or move the windows (Phil apparently lives in an opaque bubble). So I’ve always ordered a Macbook Pro with a matte screen, because my brain simply can’t see through the glare. Some people can, my eyes don’t work that way.

Yeah, their marketing images actually
show the reflected keyboard

So, today marks the end of availability of new Macs I can use. Since OSX doesn’t run on other hardware (securely) this means I can’t plan on using OSX into the future. I’ll keep a machine around for media work in the short term, but it’s obvious I need to get as much of my work moved over to Linux as possible if I’m going to have hardware that’s current technology.

With Apple’s primary focus on the iPod/Phone market, its draconian tactics there, and its inability to deliver a stable next OS release this is merely the last straw (if it were the only problem I’d consider investing in custom coatings, etc.) Thanks, Apple, it’s been a fun 16 years.

Update: Not just me.

I noticed today that quality CD-R media has crossed the price line with quality DVD-R media, and is now more expensive than DVD-R*. This means for daily data archiving purposes CD-R is dead. I'm ordering one last hundred pack for specialty use in machines that cannot handle DVD-R (very old computers, CD players, and my wife's crummy Pontiac). At 700MB vs. 4.7GB the bit per dollar line was crossed quite a while ago, but CD-R still held the crown for lowest-cost for small jobs.

It's only been a dozen years since I got my first usable CD-R device (I'm not counting the 1X Kodak job; that was more industrial) and it's now functionally obsolete. I waited on DVD-R until the dual-format (-R, +R) devices were readily available, c. 2005, so that's only three years in (I'm considering the merging of competing standards the point at which the format was actually ready for use). BluRay-R is now available but due to parts shortages is still priced outside the mainstream, but given current trends those discs should be 'cheap' within three years, likely marking DVD-R as obsolete within eight years of its launch. If one can apply Moore's Law-type logic to the trend, then BluRay's successor ought to have the crown by 2017. At some point it's not worth the manufacturers' effort to build new factories for a disc format that will be obsolete, say, in four years. However, by 2017, flash memory should be as cheap as spinning optical media, so this probably won't be a practical consideration, the disc will be obsolete.

Since the spinning disc as a commercial playback medium only began in 1892, though they seem so commonplace to us, the mechanism appears likely be seen as only a 150-year blip in human technological history. I'm skeptical there will be any working BluRay players in 2042, and given the digital origin of all BluRay data, the need for such machines among archivists ought likely be low as well. Rip 'em while you got 'em.

* Plus or minus shipping costs, it's approximately a wash.

I just ordered a new hard drive from PC Connection and when I went to check out I got quite a surprise.

I realize that for a while companies have been charging more for shipping to residential addresses than business, but PC Connection has taken this to a whole new level. My home address was first on the account as the account pre-dates my office, so when I went to buy the drive it was pre-selected and shipping was charged thusly:

Whoa. I switched it to my business address and:

got free shipping instead. Much better.

Fraser Speirs, former iPhone developer, had his application rejected by Apple on grounds that it might compete with iTunes. Unfortunately for Speirs and every other developer out there, you have no way of knowing if an app will be allowed by Apple until the last step in the development process, unless the app already exists in the Store. This raises the risk for investing in an iPhone app tremendously, meaning few businesses will make the investment, especially if their application is cutting edge. How would you like to invest $200K in an iPhone development project to have it turned back by a fickle screener?

But, I mean, who could have seen this coming in a completely closed and proprietary development environment?

Rule #3 of business - never have your business completely dependent on another business. A well-diversified, well-capitalized business might be able to take this risk, but the majority won’t. Android and Maemo are waiting.

DRED has published its ’Broadband Action Plan’ with recommendations on how to improve the penetration of high speed Internet service in NH. I attended a session in Plymouth last year to provide input on the plan.

Overall it’s a good report. I’m especially impressed with its recommendations to get State out of the way for access to land and towers, permitting, etc. Also, predictable, uniform, and competitive access to utility poles is a very important issue. They recommend the creation of a government office to oversee this work, but don’t set a recommendation for when that would would be finished. It may be necessary but this issue ought not be used to grow government in a permanent manner. This kind of communications infrastructure has the potential to really streamline government, so it’s probably a net-win to have the office. They’re asking for $100,000 for each of the next two years to fund the office, so it’s necessarily limited as currently proposed. A citizen of NH might expect to pay a dollar over the next few years to fund it.

I’ve noticed that Burlington Telecomm has been having revenue shortfalls and the ECFiberNet project, which I had high hopes for, has apparently abandoned the core attribute that made it exciting - that it would be self-funded, and has gone asking for bond money instead. That was always the uncreative option, but the private model made ECFiberNet free of coercion. That is to say, government-run models don’t appear to be very healthy, but where the government can act to get out of industry’s way or improve its monopoly grants we should welcome its action.

Have a read here and boggle in disbelief.

I used to run Trixbox on my PBX; I started when it wasn’t a commercial product, and Tim did a great prezo on it for SLUG. When they required registration to run the software I became very uncomfortable. When I couldn’t administer my PBX one day because their server was down, I switched to Elastix, and I couldn’t be happier - I should have done it sooner; it’s a superior product.

If you’re still sitting on the fence, this behavior from Fonality is likely to knock you square off it. That Fonality relies so heavily on FreePBX only makes it so much more inconceivable. Assuming this is true, only the dismissal of the individual involved could regain any trust the community once had in Fonality.

Oh, and BTW, a FreePBX backup and restore makes it fairly simple to switch from Trixbox to Elastix.

After reading about Barracuda moving to invalidate a bogus patent Trend Micro filed for on virus-scanning at an e-mail gateway (many of my clients depend on this technology) in January, I sent Barracuda the following note:

          -----Original Message-----
          From: Bill McGonigle [mailto:bill@bfccomputing.com] 
          Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 12:24 PM
          To: legal@barracuda.com
          Subject: possible SMTP prior art - TFS
          
          From:
          
          http://groups.google.com/group/comp.mail.sendmail/
          browse_frm/thread/3cee3dc93ea81690/a8cd75d669fbd6b7?lnk=st&q=smtp+virus+scan#a8cd75d669fbd6b7
          
          Its pretty functional - gateways between any/all MS/MAIL,
          WP-OFFICE, CC:MAIL, SMTP, UUCP, MCI-MAIL. It does uuencode
          and MIME attachments (configurable per address or domain
          wildcard) and international characters. It can also virus
          scan attachments on the way through the gateway, and access
          can be controlled on a user by user basis!
          
          (message dated July 25th, 1995).
          
          It looks like it's still around in some form from foxT:
             http://www.tfstech.com/
          
          Good luck,
          -Bill
          

I never heard back more than a quick “thanks!” from Dean Drako, CEO of Barracuda, but today, I read they’ve moved ahead with this strategy and Goran Fransson, developer on TFS, is a new open source ally.

Dean writes of Goran, “We greatly appreciate the time that Goran Fransson took in coming forward to share this very important piece of prior art,” Drako says. “We believe that his testimony is instrumental in our case against what we believe is an unjust patent claim by Trend Micro against Barracuda Networks and the open source ClamAV project. In our view, Goran is an open source hero.”

Full disclosure: I’ve sold completely open solutions, based on postfix/MailScanner/clamav/sqlgrey against Barracuda’a blackbox appliances, but I’m glad they’re fighting against Trend Micro’s abuse of the system.