Category: Geek (page 35 of 36)

December 4, 2006

XPS 700 BIOS update

Version 1.1.6 of the Flash BIOS is out and can be downloaded here. This version supports 64 bit operating systems.

The prior 1.1.3 release would not boot up an x64 Ubuntu live disk. Nice to have a 64 bit Core 2 Duo (what a lousy marketing name) and not be able to play with a 64 bit operating system. After I applied the update I loaded up my Ubuntu 6.06 x64 CD and booted into the live desktop. Cool, previously it would hang on just after unpacking the kernel.

This is probably done to support 64 bit Vista, but now I have the possibility of running a 64 bit Linux on my box just for fun.

October 4, 2006

OpenSuSE 10.1 quirks and postgrey RPM

Update November 13, 2006:

Fixed the rpm’s. I was putting the –daemonize in with the other options. That does not work, putting it in first works.

So now I read the /etc/sysconfig/postgrey with

test -s /etc/sysconfig/postgrey && . /etc/sysconfig/postgrey

And execute

$POSTGREY_BIN –daemonize $OPTIONS

And all is right in the world.

Here are the links for the rpm and source rpm that I use on my SuSE 10.1 server.

Original October 4th post starts here.

————

I run OpenSuSE 10.1 on my server. For a few weeks yast’s online update was acting up. It would list things for update and not seem to fully get that the update was already.

Saturday I checked and got a boat load of new updates. One reboot later and yast online update is working perfectly each time.

I like packaging the software I use. It’s one way to keep my technical skills fresh and make my server more manageable. I use Postgrey with my postfix installation and have had problems wrapping the software. The software and RPM build fine, and I can run it by hand but when I try to read the /etc/sysconfig/postgrey in the init script, junk gets added to the command line.

I hacked the postfix init script and created a new script for postgrey.

I run postgrey like so:

/usr/sbin/postgrey
–unix=/var/spool/postfix/postgrey/socket
–daemonize –user=postgrey –pidfile=/var/run/postgrey.pid

In /etc/sysconfig/postgrey I have

OPTIONS=”–unix=/var/spool/postfix/postgrey/socket –daemonize –user=postgrey –pidfile=/var/run/postgrey.pid”

So in my init script I should be able to just do

. /etc/sysconfig/postgrey

And set OPTIONS that way. Once that’s done I should be able to just run

POSTGREY_BIN=/usr/sbin/postgrey
$POSTGREY_BIN $OPTIONS

The options piece seems to be adding on junk. The OPTIONS variable is set correctly but when I execute the perl script junk gets added and the postgrey script exits.

I’ve replaced $OPTIONS with explicit command line arguments for now but it’ll bug me till I figure it out.

September 10, 2006

Swapped out the system board

Earlier this week I received the replacement system board from Dell for my XPS 700.

The old system board was not always starting up. Sometimes it would take 4 false starts to get it to boot up; it it was more than 3 I usually just gave up and went to bed.

The new board came in an anti-static bag with one cleaning pad and conductive paste.

XPS replacement system board

The system board is attached to a plate that is held in by two screws. Once you get the cables put aside it’s straight forward to remove or install the system. Alek used the cleaning pad to make the top of the CPU spotless. The heat sink shined.

After the system was plugged in and running the fun began. The system would start and stop all without a hitch. That problem was completely solved. But the BIOS was not keeping the raid configuration, so the system could not boot.

I called the direct number I was given last week. I put in the extension and found out that my contacts voice mail was full. I could not even leave a message so I tried the general support line. While waiting I noticed that the BIOS was version 0.1.2 dated 5/5/06.

That did not fill me with confidence since the old system board was 1.1.3. After going around in circles, I unplugged the power, looked in the case at the connectors, and poof it started booting. I flashed the BIOS with the support person on the phone and all seems well now.

I’m going to call up the shipper and have the old system board picked up. In the meanwhile I’ll be pounding on the XPS 700 to make sure that it’s all good.

September 2, 2006

Dell still can’t get it’s act together (updated)

Update: 12:30PM 9/2/2006

After calling their 800 number, I got a gentleman who really knew what he was doing. It’s the system board. They are sending me a replacement system board.

The support technician actually restored my faith in Humanity!

That may be overstating it, but he really did his job well. I’ll see how long my replacement part takes to get here and if that solves the issue. Ought to; the error we were getting was the same each time.

Original blog entry here:

Sigh. Don’t buy computers from Dell. Give some other company a chance to screw up like Dell does.

I am really beginning to think that Dell’s only concern is to take orders and move boxes only. Their once really good support model is not really working.

Dell shipped me my XPS 700 and it works well. I am playing F.E.A.R. at 1920×1200 with all the options turned onto the max. I average about 112 FPS at that resolution.

It’s a great system. When it powers on that is.

Last night around midnight I tried to show Lily my new kick butt workstation. After 10 minutes of trying, the system would not turn on. The fans would switch on to max rpm and stay there. No BIOS messages on the screen, no sound from typing on the keyboard, nothing.

That’s bad on a new machine but that is not why I am complaining. When you buy something you expect it to work. But us “grown ups” know that sometimes this happens.

What really ticks me off is that Dell’s support system does not know my machine exists. I cannot get support because the service tag for my workstation is not recognized by their support system. I tried to call the support line and got the “Approximate wait time is 10 minutes” message. Having done that before, I figured I would try the online chat system.

The support rep I chatted with yesterday basically said “try back later”. 18 hours later the support system still does not know about my workstation. I tried the support chat again but since I did not have a valid service tag, the system would not even start a chat with the right person.

Instead I chatted with someone else who sent me to the correct queue. Which of course did not even start because I had did not have a valid tag number. One good thing about chat, as opposed to actually speaking with someone, is that I get a transcript of the chat, with me saying “it won’t work”. Doesn’t help me but I feel like I can at least track this nonsense.

I resorted to using the web page mailer to send a I’m-mad-as-hell message. I have no expectation that this will actually accomplish anything.

Sigh. Wonder if HP has decent workstations?

September 1, 2006

Dell XPS-700 arrived

The PC I ordered from Dell June 18th arrived today. No complaints about the time it took, I knew that was going to be the case for a long time now. And the projected arrival was October 17th, so August 31st really is not bad.

It’s a monster. The UPS sticker says the box weighs over 70 pounds and they weren’t kidding. I spent most of the evening installing ~~GAMES~~ CPU and graphic intensive applications.

The only potential problem is that sometimes when I power it up it does not get past turning on the fans. It gets stuck and I need to push the power button down till it goes off. Also standby does not work for me. Not too surprised since it usually only works for me on laptops. But I eventually got it working for my old PC so I’ll likely need to keep tweaking till it works.

August 27, 2006

Videotags this easy ought to be illegal

I frequent the WordPress support page to a) see if I can help someone and b) see if anything new is going on that might interest me.

Viper’s Video Quicktags is beyond interesting. It makes it ridiculously easy to add video to your post as so:

[ youtube width=”425″ height=”350″]wMwoexR1evo[ /youtube]

and

[ googlevideo width=”425″ height=”350″]4437565772125007816[ /googlevideo]

A space was added right after each [ so the plugin would ignore it. Without the spaces, this cheerfully produces

and

All into the posting. You can use the WYSIWYG editor that WordPress provides since Viper007Bond supplies you with easy buttons to produce a dialog box for inserting the codes.

This particular posting was made using BlogJet and not the built in editor. I used YouTube and Google Video but the plugin supports many more.

It’s well written, simple to use and works. Get it at Viper’s web page here.

August 15, 2006

More speed test fun

Just saw this on digg.com http://www.speedtest.net/. It’s a slick method for checking your speed to various servers.

My cable speed clocks at

I get less going to Washington DC or San Francisco. It’s a cool toy to play with.

August 9, 2006

VPS Servers

My domain is managed by me on my own name servers. When I moved to Long Island I lost my static IP addresses from my DSL line. So I moved both my DNS servers to Stefan’s house via his DSL line.

Not a good idea for availability. Since both DNS servers were there, any connectivity issues meant my domain disappeared. I had setup my basement server to queue up mail, but if the name servers became unreachable then no one could figure out to send mail to the other box.

Yesterday I went to http://www.tektonic.net/ and ordered a virtual private server from them. I picked the UM1 which is 10GB of disk space, 256MB RAM, on a Dual AMD Opteron 246. I selected SUSE 10.0 paid online and I’m good to go.

It’s a little different. I selected SUSE because that is what I use. Once I setup the yast repository I added bind, apache, php5, etc. and ran the online update. It’s very easy to forget that this is all virtual and on a shared box. The responsiveness is very good. I contacted my domain registrar, updated the record and poof all done.

Just for kicks I moved this blog onto this new server. I’ll see how it goes, but so far there have been no surprises.

August 1, 2006

Dell took care of my order

Good things do happen sometimes. Dell really did the right thing.

Last night at 7 pm the Dell rep left a voice mail on my work number. I called back this morning, some phone tag and spoke with the rep today.

The rep was really helpful and professional. In order to make it up to the customer (that’s me) they are offering me one of two options:

A Dell $200 gift card which will arrive 4 to 6 weeks after my workstation arrives.
An upgrade from my system’s Pentium D 960 to a Core 2 Duo E6700 with the understanding that the date will get pushed out into October.

I went for option number 2. My new ship date is October 17th.

The video card I ordered originally is not available so we swapped out the 1GB NVIDIA 7950 GX2 with a pair of SLI’ed 512MB 7900 cards. The old card was that in a single slot, so no real sacrifice there and performance ought to be about the same.

I received an e-mail from the rep with the new parts list. Pricing out the exact same system online is way more expensive than what I am paying. My discount comes out ~19% if I ordered the same system today.

That’s not bad and I can wait. If I get my system on or before October 17th I will be a really happy Dell customer.

August 1, 2006

Dell XPS 700 still no useful ETA

This morning checked my Dell XPS 700 status page. Originally it was supposed to ship last Tuesday July 25th but on that day it got bumped to today August 1st.

This morning I checked and the status now says August 8th. Any bets what it will say next week?

Still no call from Dell regarding the offer of a free upgrade to a Core 2 Duo.

Here’s the time line:

Ordered the XPS 700 on June 18th.
ETA was originally July 25th shipping.
Updated July 25th to new ETA for shipping August 1st
Update August 1st to August 8th

What’s really funny is that there is that the new status requires me to click on a “I agree to this delay” link for FTC reasons. The link does not work; it gets a nice error page of 404 – File not found.