Bus error: Jake Billo’s weblog

Here’s the tech scenario: I now have seven active Seagate Barracuda SATA2 500GB drives in a RAID5 array, using a Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 card. This setup gives a total capacity of 3TB and can survive one drive completely dying.

Under Windows, drives are formatted with a Master Boot Record partition map. This format imposes a 2TB limitation on allocatable space within a volume. I was unaware of this limit when I set up the RAID card, and am now paying the price.

The problem is that now, I have 750GB of unallocatable space on my RAID volume. I can’t extend the existing partition or even create a new one, with a wonderfully incomprehensible error message leading the way.

Supposedly, this problem can be fixed by using a GUID Partition Table (GPT) setup. Unfortunately, GPT conversion requires an empty volume - and I have 2TB of data that can’t really be moved anywhere else.

Anyone know of a utility (open source, freeware, paid) to convert MBR to GPT? I’ve actually read the GPT specification and it doesn’t seem too difficult to implement, but I really don’t want to get into hex editing the raw disk for various reasons.

In an effort towards achieving additional data security and fault tolerance, I recently purchased a Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 PCI Express card for my media server. The card supports up to 8 Serial ATA drives in various RAID levels. It’s an x4 card electrically, but fits into a PCI Express x4, x8 or x16 slot.

While Intel’s onboard RAID is commonplace on most new motherboards, it does not support online capacity expansion: the original size of the array is its maximum possible size. Any additional hard drives installed in the future would have to be split into a second disk set. One of the reasons I chose the RocketRAID was its expansion and migration features. Not only can you add disks at a later date, you can also change RAID levels and move the array to larger drives. As 1TB+ drives become cheaper in the future, the entire disk set can be replaced and expanded without losing its contents.

The card comes with 8 large Serial ATA cables, which fit all the way to the top of a standard server tower case without stretching. Installation was reasonably simple, and the built-in management software allows all operations to be performed from within inside the operating system.

Initial results with the card have been very positive. I created a RAID-5 array of three 500GB Seagate drives, which took slightly over two and a half hours to initialize. File copy speed from a standalone 500GB drive to the newly created array was 34MB/s, which I expect will increase as more disks are added. Windows shows the capacity as 931GB when formatted. CPU usage was under 10% during this operation, as well.

Two extra features that I’m really impressed with include the web-based management interface as well as the email alert capability. The system can be managed with a username and password from any networked computer, and the management utility sends out an email if a problem occurs with the array.

I’d highly suggest one of these cards if you’re interested in a more advanced level of data storage. Already, things have just worked as expected and it’s living up to the excellent reviews online.

I’ve made a few statements in the past - both in real life and online - about how certain Web sites seem to attract certain types of users and commenters. There’s a very clear relationship between the audience a site attracts and the comments contributed by users. One can clearly go from quality, interesting comments to spambots and txt-speak in a few clicks.

I may update this list as necessary, as new sites appear every day, but here’s my definitive Hierarchy of Internet Commenting. Rankings go from quality at the top to “I am dumber for having tried to read this” at the bottom.

1. Popular Web standards or technical discussion sites, such as A List Apart or flagship sites in the 9rules network. Sometimes the comments can definitely stray into pretentious quibbling, but for the most part they’re insightful and offer decent advice to Web designers and developers:
2. Something Awful Forums: The content of discussion at SA may be highly ridiculous, but it’ll be written well and intelligently. There’s a reason that several industry insiders post there. A $10 registration fee acts as an initial gatekeeper, and a few ban-hammer wielding administrators take care of anyone foolish enough to use ‘lulz’ in a post or reply.
3. Newsgroups: general discussion. Most newsgroups take a bad reputation because of the inherent community of trolls, but even the troll posts are generally well-written. People may be fairly snippy, as per below, but you’ll generally get the correct answer if you’re thick skinned.
4. Slashdot. Posts without merit are taken care of by the moderation system, and the standard of written English is very high even though there’s no specific enforcement of it. There are some Internet memes present in most discussions, but these posts are likely lead to genuinely funny responses. Posters on Slashdot also have a significantly higher degree of technical knowledge than the average bear (or Internet user), so responses to questions are likely to receive a correct response in a shorter timespan.Comical or humorous posts - even the first one in a discussion - have likely already analyzed the situation and provided commentary on it:

   

5. General-interest blogs. Sites like Gizmodo, Engadget, Kotaku, Joystiq and all others owned by Gawker Media and Weblogs, Inc. have dedicated staff policing their comment fields. Unfortunately, there’s not much enforcement of post quality - simply that there’s no trolling and people tend to stay on topic. Additionally, it’s clear that certain topics attract people without the technical knowledge to respond properly. These people respond anyways, forking the discussion and causing needless debate, when a snappy “You’re an idiot and here’s why, with proof” response would curtail the issue. A certain amount of sarcasm is necessary, in my opinion, to separate the idiots from people who actually do know something.
6. Facebook popular applications walls: This is where we start devolving into really horrible discussions of who is popular and who is clearly not. The picture alone should be sufficient to tell you that the quality of discussion definitely has gone down a bar:
7. Digg: I thought the site’s newly introduced ranking system would keep discussions a bit more technically involved.I thought wrong - apparently that damn “cheezburger” meme is still worth displaying:

   

8. YouTube comments are filled with the most ignorant, racist invective I’ve ever seen online. I found these attached to a “most popular” video on the front page of the site:
9. And last but not least, any MySpace comments - simply because they’re 90% ads for “free” ringtones or profile tracking scripts. I’ll leave the image off this site here, but you know where to look for examples.

Have any other sites with good or horrible comments? Disagree with my ordering? Feel free to comment here, but please keep it at a Kotaku-or-above level.

Dave and I came up with this creative public shaming today at lunch. Full credit to Dave for the actual work.

This is what happens when you don’t pay your hosting bill for several months. I’m sick of your excuses.

Chris Fitzpatrick Owned 2 (NSFW text)

I don’t really have much in the way of new or interesting music to recommend to people. Phil’s Thursday posts of random greatness pretty much have that covered, and my iTunes library contains quite a number of bands that are distinctly on the side of “emo“, “screamo” or “god why do you have that.” Sure, there’s the occasional excellent band like Ill Scarlett, and a reasonable selection of popular music (Top 40 radio promo albums), but frankly I’m more on the consumer end of things rather than the trendsetter.

In lieu of providing MP3 filezzzz, then, I figured I’d provide some interesting links that have shown up in my browser history this week.

• Ars Technica: NVIDIA exec to PC makers: Pimping overpriced gaming PCs hurts. Game developers don’t want to write DirectX 10 games because of a common stereotype that DX10-class machines cost over $3000. In truth, you can build a very capable DX10 box for $1500 - but most people don’t even want to pay that. People buying the low-end Dell systems these days are getting an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator that will just squeeze out Aero Glass capabilities.
• CBC News: Massive cuts, fare hike coming to Toronto transit. Subway fares are already $2.75, and it’s pretty much an essential service in the GTA. Not good news by any means.
• Checkers has been solved. It’s now been mathematically proven that the game of checkers, played against a perfect opponent, can only result in a draw.
• The vi guide provides a cheatsheet for using the UNIX-y editor vi. I’ve personally used it for some CS assembly projects to avoid nonsense with Windows/UNIX line endings, and it’s a worthwhile editor to at least be aware of if you’re going to be working with a terminal.
• [H]ardOCP: TFT Technology Breakdown. This forum thread discusses the different types of LCD panels that can be found in flat-screen monitors. I was always quite impressed with my VX2025WM’s capabilities and display: now I know that it’s got a P-MVA panel, I know I’d be disappointed if I dropped down to a TN unit. Another good link is TFT Central, which indicates that a 24″ monitor upgrade to consider would be the BenQ FP241W.
• Yahoo News: Former Spammer: ‘I Know I’m Going to Hell’. Not only are those spam messages annoying and insidious, but they can be targeted to specific users. Don’t buy any cheap prescription drugs online unless you want to be bombarded with spam for them later.
• AlterNet: Neocons on a Cruise: What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren’t Listening. It’s like a good old melange of racism, ignorance and stupidity all rolled into one on this ship!
• Gmail Skins: Tweak your Gmail account with this Firefox extension. Still has some bugs, so make sure the first time you save your configuration you know what you want.

Any links you’ve run into this week that are interesting, useful or amusing?

My good friend Phil has joined the ranks of the whiny bloggers union and installed WordPress. He will likely complain about things even more vocally than I, perhaps in a more emo-tastic way. Go visit him and convince him to keep things online, since he gives things up quickly if not encouraged.

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.

Update: Sold.

Details follow. If I don’t get a response from here or the Facebook crowd, this is going on uw.forsale and perhaps Craigslist in Kitchener.

Model: RCA F27650, 27″ CRT TV
Details: TV has been in use for approximately 4 years. Has component, S-Video, and three composite inputs. Also has a 1/8″ stereo headphone jack for personal listening use. Works perfectly (I’m only selling because I have a new TV coming soon) and ideal for student use. A special feature is the “VPORT” capability: it’s a native component video and stereo audio connection to your Xbox, with an optional digital 5.1 output - basically, you can hook up an Xbox using the VPORT and another component device. It’s absolutely perfect for Xbox Media Center, which I’d be glad to help you set up if you’re interested. The purchase price includes the M/M VPORT cable, which you can’t find in retail anymore.

Another nice addition is the “Guide Plus” TV information system - it’s a virtual program guide that tells you what’s coming up next on TV, as well as additional information about the show. This is free and works perfectly with standard Rogers analog cable.
Included: TV, original universal remote, manual, VPORT cable (direct Xbox to TV).
Terms: Local pickup only, near University/Bridge St. intersection. $100 or best offer.