Bus error: Jake Billo’s weblog

Over the past few days this site has had a ridiculous number of hits outside its ordinary audience. This seems to be due to two particular referrals at the same time, both referencing my post on Leopard showing networked PC’s with blue screens of death:

Unfortunately, the StumbleUpon community seems to be somewhere around the Digg level of maturity when it comes to reviews:

We have a Warren-esque remark about how the site content is “OLD” (let alone the fact that it was written in June, and was a spur-of-the-moment type thing based on a preview copy of Leopard). Strike one.

We also have a superior-than-thou comment about how the poster has never seen a BSOD on XP, and is now going to play some “award-winning games” on his machine. I can hear the Comic Book Guy’s snickering now.

I’ve had kernel panics on OS X. I’ve had random “bus error” messages appear while using Disk Utility on the Mac - hence the title of this freaking weblog. (I’ve never had that horrible of an error message occur personally on any other operating system.) And I’ve had blue screens on 2000, XP, 2003 Server, and Microsoft’s latest pride and joy, Vista - and in Vista, they’ve been incredibly perplexing to troubleshoot.

Operating systems of all kinds can and will die unexpectedly. I don’t play the game of platform superiority anymore. I find Windows does better for certain tasks, such as a seamless 1.8TB storage pool for all my media and personal files. (I’ll have a post on Windows Home Server and its ass-kickery soon enough.)

I find the Mac does better for other tasks, such as managing my 60GB+ music library with iTunes. I don’t have the time or patience to determine why a Core 2 Duo E6750 can’t organize folders locally in half the time my MacBook can over the LAN. After years of tweaking Windows settings, I’m content to let the Mac manage things and find out solutions to idiotic problems when it’s convenient, not when I want to listen to Mims.

In any event, users probably wouldn’t notice XP bluescreening anyways, as its default settings are to dump memory contents to disk and reboot immediately. I’ve fixed many a system with dodgy motherboards that needed this option disabled, to confirm that the chipset drivers were acting up. A split second is not enough time to ascertain the driver file name or the STOP message.

So, commenters of StumbleUpon, I salute you for your wonderful sense of timing and self-satisfied gaming. Any other takers?

I’ve had several articles and references to my computer setup and preferred applications written before. I figure the list is due for an update with the latest hotness in technology.

CD/DVD Burning

• Mac OS X: Disk Utility for ISOs, iTunes, Disco
• Windows: Nero Burning ROM 7

DVD Video Burning

• RipIt4Me with DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink

Virtual DVD Drive

• Daemon Tools 3.47 (don’t use version 4.x)

Instant Messaging

• Mac OS X: Adium X
• Windows: Windows Live Messenger, Pidgin (formerly gAIM)

BitTorrent

• uTorrent with ScrapeTorrent

Newsgroups

• SABnzbd with NOVA theme
• NewsLeecher

Graphics Editing

• Fireworks

Audio/Video Players

• iTunes
• VLC
• CCCP codec pack
• Media Player Classic

File Transfer Clients

• FileZilla
• WinSCP
• FlashFXP

Programming and Development

• Eclipse
• Eclipse PHP Development Tools
• Subclipse (SVN client for Eclipse)
• Visual Studio 2005 Express

Apple’s huge WWDC was today, and the Steve Jobs speech, while devoid of any new hardware, was fairly interesting in that it heralded the announcements of two huge features for OS X 10.5.

A new Desktop was nice to see, considering Apple’s effectively had the same Desktop UI since OS X 10.0. The improvements to the Dock look pretty interesting, although I’m unsure if I like the “curved” Stacks feature so far.

The new Finder, though, is a welcome item. There are a few minor performance problems with the current iteration browsing network drives and navigating folders. Ideally this will be fixed with the new sidebar implementation.

I also had the chance to try out the Safari 3 beta on my PC today. The download size was decently small, and it seems to use a similar amount of RAM to Firefox. The page rendering speed, though, is like Apple claimed - blisteringly fast. Memory usage always seems to be a problem with several of the “OS X on Windows” applications, but as long as the program doesn’t persistently chew up more over time, I’d rather have snappy performance when the browser is the active window at the expense of some system resources.

Speaking of RAM, I’ve already hit the hardware limit for my MacBook of 2GB, and I’m eyeing the new Santa Rosa-based MacBook Pro systems because they can go up to 4GB. I’ve also hit the 2GB sweet spot for my main PC workstation, and while I’d love to go to 4GB and see what happens for performance, Windows is only going to allocate 3.5GB of that at most. My typical usage is generally under 1GB, but I haven’t been firing up Eclipse on my home system lately.

I also installed the newest iteration of the WRT54G (revision 8.0) since my existing WRT54GS v1.1 decided to drop a port. When Linksys routers lose a LAN port, generally it means that their time routing packets is over with. The new model has less onboard memory and apparently is less tolerant of third-party firmware, but the official stuff seems to do 90% of what I want. The LED blink rate is also slightly faster. I’ll have to run a few further tests with BitTorrent and some other network intensive applications and compare performance.

As a result of the new router, I’m going to try and get my FTP and HTTP servers up and running again. It’s useful to point people to e98.homeip.net/files in case there’s an image, MP3 file or ZIP archive needing to be transferred without incurring the wrath of MSN/Windows Live Messenger’s god-awful file transfer system.

I also intend to write a post sometime this week about my new consulting venture with Dave and Warren called EdgeLink Consulting. We’re just in the initial stages of setting things up, but basically it’ll give any computer repairs I do more of an official standing.

In any event, rebooting for Safari 3 on the Mac… why is this needed on the Mac and not on the PC?

I’ve decided to take a look at my Webalizer statistics for the months of April and May to figure out what people are searching for. It also helps me tailor the content on this ugly green and beige page to what people might be interested in.

If you’ve got a question about something I’ve written, or want to know more details about a particular subject, leave a comment! I’ll get back to you as soon as I check my email, which, now that I have a Blackberry, is more frequent than ever.

ml-2010 errors: Sorry, can’t help you there. My Samsung ML-2010 has been working really well, even from a Windows box networked to OS X. You also may want to specify the error message that you’re receiving.

svchost cpu usage 99%: Sadly, there haven’t been many updates to this situation since I last updated the post on the matter. My solution is still to disable Microsoft Update from the Windows Update / Change settings / Disable Microsoft Update software page, since I haven’t seen much of a tangible benefit from systems using MU versus standard WU.

It’s more likely to cause problems than it solves, especially with respect to drivers. I wonder if they’ve fixed that issue with Dell boxes and GeForce2 cards that causes WU to deliver a 640×480-limited resolution… (the solution is to tell Windows Update to never install the faulty driver, and get the official nVidia one.)

because nothing can fly with this broken wing music lyrics: This one’s easy to recall - the post was about OMGLOLEMO music, and the specific artist is Story of the Year. The relevant song was Burning Years off the Page Avenue album - which I actually own a legal copy of (but somehow have misplaced it!)

Speaking of emo bands, here are just some of the top artists on my playlist of angst, which is also coincidentally called “4+ Stars”:

• A Day to Remember (pretty much screamo, but the non-screaming parts have fairly good vocals, or at least pretty good Pro Tools work)
• The Academy Is
• Anberlin
• Boys Like Girls (more mellowed sound)
• Chiodos
• Linkin Park (the new album is super power pop angst IMO)
• Saosin
• The Used (specifically the new promo track The Bird And The Worm)

I do indeed listen to other music, by the way. My latest artist of hilarity is Mims, whose concert posters a few friends and myself spotted in Toronto the other week. He’s clearly an absolute genius with “This Is Why I’m Hot” and continues his vocal prowess with “Like This.”

bus error: Yes, that’s the title of this weblog. It stems from several cryptic OS X error messages. What else do you want from me?

As an aside, “bus error php” and MySQL bus errors mean that you’ve seriously ruined something with your configuration, or your hardware is toasted. I’ve never seen these apps throw the standard POSIX error messages, and frankly, you should rethink your purpose if you’re getting that kind of nonsense out of those tools.

custom resolutions nvidia not available vista: Run XP. Vista is indeed pretty, but XP has not exhibited one of the many symptoms I experienced with Vista’s installation. Like I’ve said, it’s fairly standard hardware for a new system: Asus P5B Deluxe board, eVGA GeForce 7800GT, Core 2 Duo E6600, 2GB of OCZ RAM… you’d think there’d be few issues with this sort of thing.

download convection font: Sure, you can find the Convection font right here.

driver for samsung ml2010 printer for windows: Oh, honestly. Learn to search and type in addresses: Samsung Product Downloads, type in the model number, and you’re golden.

driver vista viewsonic vx2025wm: Again! No Vista! Ruins lives!

is it safe to update a modified xbox 360: Safe? Depends how modified it is. Check Xbox-Scene for all your 360 modding needs, you filthy pirates.

kf42e200a: Good TV, I got it for $999 at Future Shop. Don’t pay any more if you can help it.

msdnaa vista number of installs: 2, then activation hell.

phpmyadmin futurepoint: Ooh, an interesting one! Look up the IP address of your server by running an “nslookup” command to your domain. Then, go to http:///MyAdmin/ and sign in with your MySQL credentials. You can also use the “nsxx-y.futurepoint.com” URL instead of the IP address, depending which nameserver you’re connected on.

All for now. Going to crash and think about proper normalized form database design, since it’s actually practical in my job.

Setting up a Windows networked printer to function correctly in OS X is a process that I’d rather not deal with again. Here’s the way I eventually managed to accomplish it, with some information from Scott Hurring’s website.

The printer model in particular is the Samsung ML-2010, which can be had for about $70 after mail-in rebate at NCIX. Once you get the printer installed and sharing working in Windows XP, follow these steps:

1. Install Print Services for UNIX from Control Panel / Add/Remove Programs / Windows Components / check “Other Network File and Print Services”. Contrary to Scott’s site, I was indeed prompted for my XP disc, since it’s not a default component included in CD-based installations. Make sure you have it handy.
2. Download and install the latest drivers from Samsung’s site for OS X.
3. Open Disk Utility and click New Image. Create a new image file on the desktop with read/write capabilities and 40MB of space.
4. Install the Samsung printer drivers to the new disk image. This is so that you can actually locate the installation path.
5. Open System Preferences / Print & Fax and click the Add button. Hold down Option (Alt) while clicking the More Printers button.
6. In the Device box, select “Windows Printer via SAMBA.” Provide a device name of your choice.
7. The Device URI should be a SAMBA path in the form smb://user:pass@Workgroup/Machine/Printer.
8. In the Printer Model box, select “Other…”, browse to the disk image where you installed the Samsung drivers, and open Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/Samsung ML-2010 Series.gz.
9. Try printing something - great success.

I am either about to become one of the hardcore neckbeard-wielding Linux supporters, or do something drastic to Microsoft’s programmers. Why is it that an operating system like Vista, put together after five years of effort, is actually WORSE than its predecessor?

Just this week I’ve experienced the following issues with my legitimate, genuine MSDNAA Vista Business installation:

• Random nVidia kernel driver crashes. I don’t actually see the crashes themselves, only the tray tooltips that follow them indicating that “nvkdtm” or some similarly-named file has caused my display device to stop working. I could theoretically pin this on nVidia, but the drivers I’m using are WHQL certified.
• My user profile refuses to log in with my preferences. My desktop wallpaper, Start menu customizations, etc… are all gone, and I’m told to check the Event Log to find out what’s wrong. There is nothing useful in the Event Log.
• SMB file sharing just randomly crashed, interrupting a download and halting my music. I go to investigate this and Windows indicates that everything is fine. Except it’s not.
• Remote Desktop can take up to two minutes to log in, where XP would accomplish the same task in two seconds.
• Windows Explorer duplicates folders on the root of the drive. I have two entries of the same “Users” folder present when I look at the C drive.

This has all been just this week.

What am I doing then? I’m reinstalling XP Pro from the latest newsgroup build - the pirates build an ISO every month with the latest Windows Update fixes, giving a better installation source than my pre-SP1 media.

I’m also refusing to touch the OS with a ten foot pole until I can verify that all this crap has been fixed. It’s not like I’m running exotic hardware (Asus board, Intel Core 2 Duo chip, OCZ RAM, nVidia graphics) and I haven’t actually touched the box since two weeks ago - all it’s been used for is web browsing and SMB serving.

When the final release Ubuntu 7.04 comes out in a few more days, I will seriously consider it for regular use.

When I get a bit more cash, I will seriously consider a Mac Pro instead.

The Good:

• When you go to rename a file with the Hide filename extensions for known files option enabled, the extension is not selected by default. This makes renaming a folder to the same name as a file much easier.
• The Screen Clipping tool replaces HyperSnap for all my screen capturing needs.
• Search support is comparable to OS X, which means that it’s actually pretty decent.
• Driver recognition for Ethernet cards out of the box is much improved.

The bad, so far: When right-clicking in a folder details view, it seems completely random whether you’re going to hit the “do something with this file/folder” menu, or the “actions for the current folder” menu. This is due to the “selection bars” that reach across all columns. Maybe I’ll find a better method of creating new folders/files that doesn’t require this step?

Thanks to Dave for this pointer:

The default VNC application on OS X really bites, so if you want to access your Mac remotely, get a copy of Vine Server.

For viewing the result on a PC, install UltraVNC and use the following connection settings for best results. (This assumes you’re on a local area network - both wireless and wired worked fine for me.)

My new MacBook arrived yesterday, so I’ve been playing around with it since last night. It’s unbelievably snappy, likely due to the Core 2 Duo chip inside it. I also bumped the configuration up to 2GB of RAM when I ordered it, which is a good idea for pretty much any modern system.

I might have even gone to more, but the Intel chipset inside this system only supports 2GB. The MacBook Pro’s chipset will address 3GB, but to get that configuration you’d have to do 2×2GB sticks and lose 1GB. Anything over 3GB isn’t going to be accessible under a 32-bit operating system, and nobody I know wants to run a 64-bit OS on the desktop full time. OS X 10.5 will change this, because things will pretty much be transparent.

What’s more, the GMA950 card that I’ve previously panned for being slow and nearly worthless actually performs pretty well. I had both my 1680×1050 LCD monitor and the 1280×800 display on the MacBook running last night, and there was less GUI “lag” than my iMac had. (OS X, by nature of its accelerated graphics, tends to have a slower “immediate redraw” rate than WinXP when resizing windows.)

I’ve yet to try any games on it, but that’s not really what this system’s for. Primarily, I wanted something small and light, and the fact that it runs OS X natively is pretty damn cool.

Looking at the title I may have unfortunately chosen for this site, it reads similar to a “directive not found” inclusion common to SSI and ASP pages. “Bus error” is one of the POSIX generic error messages, and I’ve seen it twice. From my perspective as a developer, it’s possibly one of the worst error messages around for comprehensibility.

The first time I saw this message was while working on an OS X installation. I booted the system with the DVD and attempted to repartition the drive. However, the Disk Utility application refused to let me do so - simply crashing without any error message. When I launched the program from a Terminal window and replicated the crash… Bus error.

I later invoked the same message myself while testing a C/C++ application for my CS 241 class. The C and C++ languages were a new concept to me at the time, and I believe the specific error I made was trying to access unaligned memory. In this case, it was enough to let me know to verify my malloc() and free() calls before going ahead.

When I write informational, warning or error messages for my own applications, I try and follow this pattern:

• What is the immediate thing that’s wrong or needs to be addressed?
  Bad: “Database error”
  Good: “Could not connect to the database”
  Better: “An invalid user name or password is preventing a connection to the database.”

  (I also keep in mind that these error messages may need to be tailored for specific user roles. For example, a site administrator should see the last message, where Web visitors should see generic/cached content with a “This site is not fully up to date, contact the site administrator” message.)

• Describe the error in more detail, providing additional information.
• If the error is based on user-provided settings, give additional help as to how to fix it.

Many situations that seem like they warrant an “error” message do not demand it at all. In an ideal application, the user shouldn’t have to see any harsh, STOP, don’t go there dialogs. One of the most common errors I see online is the “Connection to MySQL server failed” or “Too many connections to database server” message. Why is this message being shown?

• If there’s a legitimate load error, fall back to cached content with an informational message. Depending on traffic - such as to a specific article - you may be able to get away with replacing the content with a static HTML page. You do have cached content, correct? If not - why not? If your site is entirely database driven, there should be backups of the database.
• If there’s a configuration error - again, fall back to what content is available. Another design decision should be based on installation flags. Yes, the database server isn’t available because the username/password is incorrect: this is a given on the out-of-the-box installation of any Web application. Instead of completely giving up the towel, add a nice dialog that says “hey, you need to provide this information before your site starts working.”
• Don’t echo raw errors to the screen! They may reveal sensitive information or details about your site’s configuration. A way to do this with your own web apps: (these instructions assume you’re working with PHP)
• Create a function called d_echo that checks for a conditional $debug_enabled boolean variable. When debugging, have all potential error output displayed using this function.
• If $debug_enabled is true, have a BIG GLARING WARNING at the top of EVERY page noting that debugging mode is on and you should really turn it off, with a link available to do so.
• Allow debugging to be turned off from within the Web app itself, but don’t allow it to be turned back on without editing a configuration file. Debugging is for developers and testers - not a production environment.