Category: Geek

I got a virus alert when I went to start a game tonight, which led me to do a quick Google search. It seemed to be a false positive, but I wanted to be sure, which led to burning a Linux rescue disk so I could do an offline scan with a different program. The rescue disk was having trouble detecting the hard drive, which led me to wonder why I had put it on the non-standard tertiary IDE port on the motherboard, which led to me cracking open the case. Looking at the wiring mess led me to an “Oh yeah, that was why…” realization, which led me to wonder if I could do any better, and after finding new batteries for my maglite, moving the drive around, and some recabling, it’s now back on the primary IDE interface. Which led to problems with the boot order when it was powered back up, but that was easily fixed and I can boot off the rescue disk and do the virus scan now.

Which led me to wonder why I didn’t just buy the 360 version of the game…

What’s the one thing I forgot to do with my newly-upgraded server that handles multiple time-sensitive scheduled tasks? Go into the BIOS options and adjust the power behaviour, so that it automatically restarts after a power outage. Like the one we apparently had the day after I left on vacation…

I just received the replacement drive from the RMA of the dying one, and they kindly sent me a 750GB drive instead of the same 500GB model. Thanks, Seagate!

Too bad it’ll be part of a RAID-1 array and limited by the smaller drive’s size… I can probably take the extra space and ‘join’ it to the scratch drive for even more MythTV recording space, though. I’ll just have to read up on all this fancy new LVM stuff…

Maybe things aren’t so bleak after all…

I went ahead and upgraded to Kubuntu 7 (Feisty), and it seems the new version of the X server no longer hangs with the version of the nVidia module I need for working TV-out support. And the crash when MythTV stopped playing was related to the GLX module not working. The GLX and Composite extensions can’t both be enabled at the same time, and Composite is enabled by default with the latest servers. But the Composite extension doesn’t work with this ‘legacy’ nVidia driver anyway, so disabling it allowed GLX to be enabled again, and then MythTV could use OpenGL properly and no longer crashes.

Next up was the sound card ordering problem. I have two sound cards in the system, an SBLive for regular system sounds, and the built-in motherboard audio, used to drive the TV. Kubuntu was detecting them in random order though, so sometimes the SBLive would be considered card 0 and the motherboard card 1, and sometimes vice versa. Every time I rebooted and started MythTV, I wasn’t sure whether the show’s audio was going to come out of the TV or the computer speakers, and if it was the wrong one, I’d have to go back into the config screens and reassign the audio device.

Fortunately, I found a page which describes how to permanently assign the sound card order, among other sound problems. Now the SBLive is always /dev/dsp and the motherboard is always /dev/dsp1.

And with that, all of the major remaining migration problems are now solved. Now I can get around to catching up on the seven weeks of recorded Lost episodes I still haven’t watched yet…

Update: Nope, the X server continued to freeze on me, it just took a little longer this time. It looks like disabling AGP entirely works, but then X takes up a lot more CPU time. Oh well, as long as it works…

Okay, maybe swapping to the nVidia card isn’t going to make things any easier…

I had a working configuration with it on the old Slackware box, but that was with a specific version of the nVidia driver. The ‘official’ packaged driver for Kubuntu is a newer one, and TV-out doesn’t work at all with the newer drivers for some reason. I can uninstall the packaged drivers and then manually install the old drivers and TV-out starts working again, but then the X server hangs on a regular basis. And even when it works for a while, MythTV itself crashes after you finish viewing a show on the TV-out screen, but not on the monitor. I can either have a working TV-out, or stability, but not both.

I could try upgrading to the just-released Ubuntu 7 and see if that fixes the X server hangs, but major version upgrades can be tricky and I just got everything configured the way I need.

I used to love fiddling with Linux as a hobbyist, with the fun being in the learning as I went along, but sometimes you just want something to just work with as little fuss as possible. Maybe I’ll just get a Mac Mini and use it as a dedicated MythTV frontend…

The Great Hardware Upgrade Of 2007 is still underway, but the end is getting closer. The new gaming box is fully set up and works wonderfully and…has been sitting in the corner, completely disconnected, for a few days now. Network, KVM connections, and desk space are limited and currently all in use, but I’ve pretty much finished moving data from the old Linux server to the new one, so I should be able to pull the old one out and move the new gaming box back in tonight.

I’ll still be waiting for a replacement for the broken drive for a week or two, but it was the second drive in the RAID-1 array in the new Linux server, so it can make do with one drive until the replacement arrives. The web and email services moved over easily enough, and MythTV was a lot easier to set up since there are prebuilt packages available for Kubuntu.

The major problem right now is that the TV-out doesn’t work so well on the new server. ATI cards just aren’t very well supported under Linux, and it took quite a while just to get it set up and working properly. The default configuration would crash the system until I disabled the GLX driver; the TV-out wouldn’t work at all with the default drivers; using the official drivers got TV-out working, but wouldn’t let me set it up as a separate screen at a different resolution; manually mucking with the configuration finally solved that, but then there were errors about DRI and Xv not being available; and I had to reinstall the drivers with special instructions to finally solve that.

Except that the TV-out is rather blurry, and doesn’t seem to scale properly when playing video via Xv. I’ll probably wind up just swapping video cards with the old system as well, since the old card has a much sharper TV-out picture, and the nVidia drivers are much more stable and I have a known working configuration for them.

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED!
Drive failure expected in less than 24 hours. SAVE ALL DATA.

So much for one of the new drives… I was suspicious of it from the start since it made really odd squealing noises while seeking, but that clinches it.

Oh well, my MythTV box will have to soldier on as-is for a little bit longer.

Edit: And upon going to the manufacturer’s site to see about RMA procedures, I’m greeted with an “Internal Server Error”. Yeah, that’s instilling a lot of confidence…

Most of my parts are here now, but of course, things never go as smoothly as you’d like…
Continue reading “Murphy Be With You”

The rest of my parts should be here soon, so what all do I need to do when they arrive…

• Install the new parts into the new case (N).
• Install any drivers I might need for the new hardware onto my current XP box (E).
• Run Sysprep on E to prepare it for the hardware change, as I really don’t want to have to reinstall a ton of stuff.
• Move the hard drive and sound card from E to N.
• Swap the DVD drive in E with a new one and put the old one in N. This is just for aesthetics so that the colours all match again — right now I’ve got a drive with a black faceplate in a beige case.
• Rearrange the KVM connections so that N is on the LCD’s DVI port, and E and the Xbox 360 are sharing the VGA port.
• Make sure the new system works properly, install any new drivers needed or repair any problems caused by the Sysprep stage, etc.

That takes care of the new system, but there’s still the old ones…

• Install the three new drives (two PATA, one SATA) into E.
• Boot from a Linux rescue disk and set up swap partitions and a RAID-1 array on the PATA drives and a single large partition on the SATA drive.
• Install Kubuntu onto the RAID-1 set and get it set up properly, making sure that the TV-out works.
• Copy all of my data from my current Linux server and MythTV box (D) to E.
• Shut them both down and move the TV tuner and sound cards from D to E, and remove the /dev/hdb drive from D since it’s been acting flaky.
• Get the tuner card and MythTV working on E, including the new remote that’s supposed to come with the new motherboard.
• Set up all the other services that D was taking care of on E now.
• Move D and the CRT monitor out of the desk area entirely.

Plus recabling of the network and audio connections as needed. That should keep me busy for a while.

I’ll probably throw Win98 on D and keep it around as a ‘retro’ gaming box for the handful of games that don’t run properly on modern systems. If I can find the room for it…

Since I’ll be shuffling around my hardware soon, my MythTV box will be more powerful and might be capable of handling HD recordings. So, would it be worthwhile for me to jump on the HDTV bandwagon?

Not really, it turns out. In order to record HD broadcasts, I’d need an HD tuner card. There are plenty available and supported in Linux, but they have restrictions: they can only record over-the-air and unencrypted cable signals.

Problem 1: There are no over-the-air HD signals in the Calgary area. Maybe the local stations will eventually get around to it, but for now there just aren’t any at all.

Problem 2: Almost all of the digital cable channels are encrypted. These can’t be recorded because, well, that’s what the encryption is there to prevent. There’s no solution for this on the horizon either, as Canadian cable companies aren’t adopting the CableCard standard.

So for now, in order to record HD shows, the only option is to go with one of the cable company’s hideously-expensive DVRs, which are widely criticized for having a poor interface and limited capacity, and I wouldn’t be able to get at the raw recordings for long-term archival.

Oh well, I probably watch too much TV anyways…

Woo, I just received my order of an nVidia 8800 GTS video card, the second-fastest card you can get right now (the 8800 GTX is faster, but it’s a hell of a lot more expensive). New cards are due out soon, but nVidia’s new ones will mostly be cheaper mid-range ones that won’t be as fast, and ATI’s is delayed and reportedly quite hot and power-hungry.

Now I just need a system to put it in…

Continue reading “Parts”

I haven’t been a big fan of RSS in the past, but I find myself using it more and more nowadays, due to exactly one new development: Google Reader.

It solves the two major problems I had before: 1) missing articles because of feeds with a small history, since Google does the aggregation frequently and keeps a longer list of articles, and 2) it remains synchronized when used from multiple locations, not tying it to a particular program install on a specific machine, so I can use it from home, work, and while traveling without any redundancy.

Edit: Though to be fair, Google probably wasn’t really the first, as there have been other web-based aggregators. Google’s interface and integration into the rest of your account certainly makes it a lot easier to use, though.

Well, it’s about time to upgrade. My PC has served me a lot longer than it normally would have; its major parts are now over four years old, and I’ve tended to upgrade every two or three years. The video card is also becoming unstable, and I have to underclock it by a fair bit just to avoid crashes in the middle of games, but it’s not worth replacing it alone when the rest of the system would be underpowered in comparison. My poor, overworked Linux/HTPC box is also hungrily awaiting the hand-me-down upgrades it will inevitably get.

So, what shall I replace it with? The Mac Pro is a nice machine…
Continue reading “Ssssshh…”

All I wanted to do was listen to some music.
Continue reading “*sob*”

So the Zune is finally out…and not doing so hot.

I’m considering getting a new MP3 player, and I kind of liked the retro look of the brown Zune, but I’ll pass on it for now after these initial reports. I need something a bit more flexible, so I might have to start looking at the iRivers and Zens again.