Home Infrastructure Gone Virtual
Finally I've got time to write a little about my last summer project.
My old home servers a.k.a. discarded desktop pc's had to make room for something new. The point was, I just didn't feel save anymore concerning fire danger because of old flammable mainboard components. Beside that, those old devices had been really power-hungry.
So, I got myself a demo pool device again… a Lenovo ThinkServer TD230 with an Intel Xeon E5503 dual core CPU. Though I upgraded the CPU to an E5504 quad core model… four cores are just more fun. To get the most out of it I filled the memory slots to the max one 64-bit-CPU is able to handle which is 16 GB. The TD230 is 100% vmware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 5) compatible so.. that's what it's running now. So far, the hypervisor is hosting 3 virtual machines based on Ubuntu Server 64 bit (since Debian was a pain in the a$$ on ESXi).
Did I mention this little beast rocks? Some really cool facts (beside the impressive specs on the datasheet) are…
- Low energy consumption: around 80 watts. So, 3 virtual servers need less than half the energy my two old physical machines had wasted.
- Silence: My wife complains about (my) eating sounds instead of computer fan noise ^^.
- Bad ass network performance: 103 MB/s via NFS!!
- ESXi: Oh man… it's something else! Though I have to start a VirtualBox Windows machine to administer it. ;) It's worth that kind of overhead though.
One thing remains unsolved so far. To make ESXi interact with an UPS some mumbo jumbo has to be done which is a little too time-consuming for me at the moment.
Anyway… virtualization ftw!
LMDE 64bit: Flash Player Audio Distortion
On Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE, 64bit) I lately experienced disturbing audio distortion when Adobe's flash player was rendering stuff. Nearly any flash application was affected except of a few like the youtube and vimeo video player.
Not sure about what to search for I finally found a workaround in the German Linux Mint community.
Simply create a start script for your browser containing the following lines:
#!/bin/sh LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc/memcpy-preload.so firefox
Replace firefox with the binary of your browser.
Seems like some things changed in eglibc (2.13-3) concerning the memcpy() function for the 64bit architecture so you need set the LD_PRELOAD environment variable with that wrapper mentioned above.
This affects all 64bit debian testing/unstable based systems, of course.
Firefox on Linux: How to fix the application font issue
On newly installed/upgraded Linux distros our much-loved mozilla browser often looks horrible. I'm not talking of poorly rendered websites here. I mean the font of the actual application like the menu bar, tool bar, bookmarks bar etc. It looks way too large and kinda blurry (bad sub pixel hinting / anti-aliasing).
A quick & dirty but simple & effective workaround is to delete all symlinks located in /etc/fonts/conf.d/ starting with 10- such as
10-antialias.conf 10-autohint.conf ...
or whatever you may find there.
Once they're deleted Firefox looks pretty again.
Exotische (neue) Märkte
…scheinen womöglich in naher Zukunft zu expandieren bzw. neu erschlossen zu werden. Nämlich für
- Rollator(ersatz)reifen und
- Sicherheitslösungen für selbige.
Für noch recht amüsant hielt ich folgende Szenerie, welche ich vor etwa 4 Wochen in Karlsruhe vorfand:
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Doch nun lese ich bei Udo Vetter, dass ein schlechter Scherz mit System dahinter stecken könnte. Gut, dass Omma im Karlsruher Fall den Rest mit zwei anständigen Schlössern gesichert hatte. So konnte wenigstens dem Rahmen keine „Gewalt angetan“ werden. Die Bremskabel scheinen auch noch in Ordnung gewesen zu sein.
Blog Upgrade
Finally I'm able to write the first post from the scratch into my new blog. It's been a busy month… oh well.. a busy year. And it's not gonna change alot in the near future. Which is also a reason I left the self-made/self-enhanced Python stuff behind and switched over to DokuWiki. Kukkaisvoima was fun… lightning fast and minimalistic. Though writing posts wasn't that elegant. There was always the need for a ftp or ssh session to upload the textfile. No way to spontaneously write a post from a public computer or a device I don't own.
So, can you expect more frequent blogging action from now on? Yes!
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Seriously! ;)
Frühlingserwachen
Einfach so…
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Desktop Upgrade
Finally my desktop pc upgrade is complete. For the first time in my life I bought a used computer. Yes you got that right. I got myself a used Lenovo ThinkCentre out of a demo pool. Demo pool machines have been tested by customers (mainly large companies) for a few weeks or months already. Usually they are in excellent condition what I can tell about my little ThinkCentre as well. Looks like a brand new one.
So, even though it's not the latest model it is way more powerful than an up-to-date pc within that price range.
Okay, you're waiting for the specs so.. here we go:
- Lenovo ThinkCentre M58p SFF
- Intel Core 2 Duo CPU (E8400) running at 3 GHz
- 2GB RAM
- 250 GB S-ATA HDD
- stuff
In the beginning an integrated intel graphics adapter with vga/'display port' output made things ugly. Luckily I could replace that kindergarden toy with a low profile nvidia GT220 PCIe graphics card which now accelerates KDE SC's Kwin window manager faster by the factor 12.5. Sorry, those intel drivers for Linux still really suck!
Talking of KDE SC 4.5… of course I instantly killed the pre-installed Windows Vista Business Edition and replaced it with Kubuntu Maverick Meerkat. Nerd life is good again. :) ### By the way - did I mention KDE SC 4.5 is simply beautiful? You should check it out! :)
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