The BFC Computing Weblog

A note I wrote when asked about the future of ZFS and current best-practices for storage:

"My current line of thinking is that ZFS has the required reliability, OpenSolaris is where it actually works now.

FreeBSD 9 should have a good version of it (they can't get the zpool up to v23 in FreeBSD 8 based on FreeBSD's major-version compatibility requirements), and Linux is also going to get it. Either of those two are good destinations. Both are currently flakey though, and OpenSolaris is solid.

The ZFS storage layer has been ported to linux by one of the National Labs - they're still working on the POSIX layer. I suspect that'll be ready in a year or so.

I suspect Nexenta will wind up switching kernels itself and still calling itself Nexenta in a year or two. ZFS is endian- and platform agnostic, so moving a pool from one OS to another is a 'zpool export storage' on the source OS, re-install the base OS, and 'zpool import storage' and you're good to go.

Linux's btrfs might even be a decent in 2-3 years, but it's really really early still.

There's also the Illumos project which is making an Oracle-free OpenSolaris which stands a chance. Nexenta is funding those guys - at least they'll finally be able to do a complete Open Source build. That's probably transitional, though - why compete with FreeBSD on drivers? "Because OpenSolaris is much faster on disk access" is a fair answer, so they could also wind up supporting a more narrow set of hardware on an ongoing basis, until FreeBSD is that fast (they can figure out how OpenSolaris beats them pretty easily, especially with lots of people wanting it to be where they wind up.)

FreeBSD is license-compatible with CDDL, otherwise Linux would be the presumptive destination. Oracle could still chose to dual-license and settle the matter that quickly, but that's seeming less and less likely. Bill Moore, co-lead on ZFS has already left Oracle and joined the Nexenta board, so I suspect that's where ZFS will evolve, not at Oracle. If Jeff Bonwick does the same, it's pretty much settled."

I've got Jolicloud on the wife's netbook, and it's a nice easy-to-use distro.

Trouble is, it's based on Jaunty, which has old mythtv packages. These won't connect to our MythTV 0.23 backend in the TV room.

There is hope, though, the Avendard repo has newer packages compiled for Jaunty, but they're a bit tricky to install.

The process roughly:

Create a file:

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/avenard.list
          

with the lines:

deb http://www.avenard.org/files/ubuntu-repos jaunty release
          deb http://www.avenard.org/files/ubuntu-repos jaunty testing
          

and run the commands:

wget http://www.avenard.org/files/ubuntu-repos/ubuntu-repos.key && sudo apt-key add ubuntu-repos.key && rm ubuntu-repos.key
          apt-get update
          

to pull in the new repo. Now, remember this is dpkg/apt, so we can't just go installing mythtv first as the dependency resolution needs a bit of help.

First do:

sudo apt-get update
          sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-185 nvidia-185-libvdpau nvidia-185-kernel-source
          sudo apt-get install libvdpau1
          

Now do:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade mythtv-frontend mythvideo
          

and whichever other modules you need.

Then run:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure mythtv-common
          

to set your backend password.

Finally, install nfs and autofs to be able to mount your storage directory:

sudo apt-get install autofs nfs-common
          

and then edit:

/etc/auto.master
          

uncomment the /net entry, save, and run:

/etc/init.d/autofs restart
          

Then symlink to however you have your backend storage configured, e.g.:

ln -s /net/192.168.1.10/storage/ /storage
          

Now, launch mythfrontend from the Jolicloud Sound & Video group, where it will ask you for sudo access to add your user to the mythtv group and logout. Do it.

Log back in again, launch MythTV again, and go into 'Setup' and configure the storage directories for your media and/or recordings. Set parental controls as needed, they're front-end specific. Change the theme if needed, and set your painter to OpenGL if appropriate.

Those being done, you should be good to go to exit and start MythFrontend from the menu and just use it normally. SD MPEG-2 DVD video streams over 802.11g seems to work fine here in an ASUS 1000HE netbook. And now you have the world's most complex second(third,fourth) television.

Update: Jolicloud support writes via Twitter: "Adding third-party repositories could compromise your configuration. We won't be able to provide you support. ^CD" I suspect if you're reading this you can handle your own support, but be forewarned if you count on Jolicloud support. Personally, I'd rather see them engaging and supporting their community, but I understand about resource constraints.

There's a problem when running two X-displays with MythTV - some events on the non-Myth screen will steal focus and then the MythTV controls will no longer respond. This thread describes the problem well, but is now closed for comments.

Since then, mouse-switchscreen has been written, and solves the problem correctly. It's possible to bind the program to a hotkey.

In the end, I found it better to just run one display at a time since I couldn't prevent the focus stealing.

Redhat recently released a set of virtualized I/O devices for KVM, the kernel virtual machine. This short post will outline a method of converting a Windows Vista install (on KVM) to the new drivers using Virt-Manager. It has been tested on Fedora 11.

1. Make sure Vista VM is up to date on patches and the disk is error free.

2. Download drivers from Redhat network or here.

3. Mount the .iso file as a CD-ROM device.

Now you might think you can use the ‘Add Hardware Wizard’ here and add the drivers, add the hardware, and be good. I did. I wound up with an unbootable disk. Apparently Vista’s autodetection is required in this process. So…

1. Add a new network device of type ‘virtio’. Vista will do its “you’ve got hardware” routine and run you through all of its wizards. When it asks you for drivers, point it at the i386/2008 directory on the driver disc image. Yes, Yes, OK, Yes, Really, Continue, etc.

2. Shutdown the VM and remove the old ethernet controller. Boot up Vista and make sure the network works. You can conceivably skip this step for now if you want to make troubleshooting harder.

3. Add a new Storage controller. Leave the existing one as-is for now. You’ll have to pick a disk image you’re not using right now, or make a new one. Anything is fine, we’re not going to ever use it inside Vista. Do the driver dance again.

4. Shutdown Windows. Remove the storage controllers, and add a new one, type ‘virtio’, with your normal hard drive image. Take care of the old ethernet controller here too, if you ignored my previous advice.

5. Boot Windows normally. It should now be coming up on VirtIO disk and network drivers. If you get a bluescreen or a plea to use the RepairCD, something went wrong. Use the repair CD to restore to a previous restore-point and try again.

If anybody knows where to find a sound driver, please leave a comment!

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!

Here's a technology idea: combine a solid-state flash drive, a synchronization engine, advanced virtual memory techniques, and a portable hardware abstraction layer to create a portable computer state device.

The idea would be like this: you have a small hardware device that you bring with your anywhere. When you plug it into one of your computers, it would synchronize the filesystem states, restore memory images, and resume your computing environment the way you left it at the last location.

It's roughly equivalent to the idea of network computers, except you don't need the ubiquitous ultra-high-speed Internet that doesn't really exist (when wireless gigabit is pervasive, this would become passe).

Current reasons this can't work, using linux as the obvious OS to start with, include the lack of an abstract HAL (root drive, home drive, etc) and the lack of virtual-memory restore on a per-process basis. Lots of the other parts exist already.

Initial limitations would probably be a restriction to the same hardware architecture (x86, AMD64, ARM, etc), inability to deal with filesystem changes greater than the capacity of the SSD, and an inability to restore stateful network connections (an IP proxy might work around the last one).

One company has made an approach at this experience by running the environment directly on the portable device, but this forfeits local resources and demands power draws unachievable on an external bus (for simple connectivity). That approach may gain viability over time, though, but not yet.

Would you, gentle reader, use such a device?

Intel thoughtfully has some ISO images of their BIOS flash upgrades, so you don't need to worry about finding the right flash software for your operating system and then timidly hoping that all works OK. You burn the image to a CD and reboot, then it flashes for you (using a FreeDOS/ISOLINUX system).

However, if you have a SATA CD-ROM drive, the device driver in FreeDOS doesn't support that. There is a SATA-compatible FreeDOS driver, but rather than rebuild Intel's ISO, there's an easier solution - make the BIOS emulate an IDE drive.

Go into BIOS Setup (F2 at boot), then Advanced ... Drive Configuration, and set 'Configure SATA as' to 'IDE' (mine was AHCI) and ATA/IDE Mode to 'Legacy'.

Reboot, allow the flash to succeed, then switch your BIOS settings back.

There's nothing wrong with this method, but Intel should highlight it on their download page.

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.

This blog is on a shiny (ok, flat black, really) new server, with much faster everything, and it’s a half-U low-power para-virtualized beta product I’m working on (more on that to come, now that I have room for pictures!). Just typing this it’s immediately apparent that there’s way more snappy (live preview with round-trips to the server) but there’s bound to be a bug or two somewhere. Please let me know if you see anything amiss.

As mentioned before, all BFC Computing servers are named for real-life heroes, and this one is no exception. stevens.bfccomputing.com is named for Brenda Stevens, a grandmother from Deerfield, N.H., who was killed when a tornado struck her home on July 24th and the building collapsed onto her. As the tornado destroyed her home she held onto her stepson’s baby boy, whom she was babysitting, long enough to keep him from sustaining any more than minor injuries. Mrs. Stevens didn’t survive, but her grandson lives due to her ultimate sacrifice.