Rebooting Life for Fun and for Funner

November 29, 2010 in Life by lyz | 2 comments

Six months since the last post to this blog.  What a half-year it has been.   After getting a few emails from friends about how life is going, I thought it best to summaries the top   Here’s the top 5 things I’ve been up to that have nothing to do with technology.

Running

My best 5k time this year was in the low 21 minute range.  My first 5k time was in the upper 24 minute range.

Running has been a great way to provide relaxation and competition at the same time.  Everyone is in the same boat when you are running.   The road provides the opposition and everyone has to overcome it.

Thanks to the amount of running I’ve been doing, I’m as healthy as ever.  Running has been good to me,  I’m optimistic that this will be something that will stay part of my life for a while.

Moving

The amount of fun in moving is inversely proportional to the amount of things you have.   Thankfully, we run things lean and try to keep as few non-essentials around as possible.

The new house is twice as big as any place any other place I’ve owned or rented.   The neighbors are further than a wall away, and it’s great to see families working around on the sidewalk.  We estimated 250 trick-or-treaters this year.

Mowing My Lawn

Home ownership and buying comes with some additional cost.  This is especially true when the rooms in the house comes in shades of pink and red and have words written in the paint.  We are two recarpeted rooms away from getting rid of some unpleasant odor.

Of course, Cat 6 cable has been run throughout the house, and we are still working on some various odds and ends to make this place the way we like it.

Motorcycling

It runs in the genes.  Riding in the country is great.  Getting lost and attempting to avoid gravel roads is great weekend fun.   This was the first time I got to ride with my Dad and Brother.  This leads me to…

Spending Time With Family

Lots of time to make up in this regard.  It’s going to take a while to catch up.   :)

The Case For Giving Up Hosting At Home

June 19, 2010 in Life, Tech by lyz | No comments

This blog has moved.  The URL is the same, but its location in the world has changed.  It’s now hosted at a 3rd party site instead of being at my residence.   Here’s why.

I am not a business:

Carries argue that you are a business if you require a static IP address.   In fact, static IP addresses are not available in most carriers’ standard plans.  They assume that people who subscribe to their service are content consumers and not content containers.  Businesses, on the other hand, are assumed to be content containers and are permitted to have a static IP address.

This wouldn’t be an issue if there wasn’t such a dramatic price differential.   Plans that contain static IP addresses are two times as much as their counterparts.  Why?  In my case, this makes no sense.  There is no profit motive behind what I would do with the IP.  Why am I considered a business?

A good solution, from a consumer standpoint, would be to separate users into different classes.  There are plenty of customers who do need the firewalling and don’t mind the dynamic IP that basic plans provide.  However, these features are just a nuisance to advanced users.  I would gladly pay $10 a month for a static IP.  Make it an option to add to the  plan.

Internet companies are potentially loosing money because they are not providing the services people want.  A $40 basic plan vs a $80 business plan is a no-brainier, but if there was a $60 option in there…..

I am not a hosting company:

There are things that I can do better than the hosting company and things that I do poorly.  Daily SQL backups, running in a dedicated Xen VM, chrooting the Apache server, as much processor as I can use, and the availability of any piece of _free_ software I want to install, are all benefits of having a server at home.  The technical word for it is a playground.  I can do anything I want or am able to do (which is ~anything).

The hosted world provides better uptime, better speed, and manages the system and network administration.  The best part about hosting is the cost.  It’s $7 a month for me to host this and as many other sites that I’d like to build.

I am not average:

Giving up the network administration and the system administration was a tough decision for me.  It has been fun.  Everyone running DD-WRT using VLANS, custom firewall rules, and OpenVPN understands.  Likewise, everyone running XEN on a VLANed host, with more customer firewall rules, and mod_security understands.

But why:

It was fun to host, but did it amount to anything?  The skills I picked up aren’t ones that I use on a daily basis anymore.  I haven’t risen to celebrity status, or really had that many visits (this is more of a content issue).  It was a good amount of fun while it lasted, now I’ve been there, done that, and I could do it again.  But why?

Tags: ,

The Sprint, Samsung Moment, BestBuy, and Android Experience

December 23, 2009 in Life by lyz | No comments

I am finally a cell phone owner.  It took about 9 months before something that could justify the exceptional expense that cell phones cost.

The experience of buying and owning a cell phone involves several parties.  The parties involved are the reseller, the service provider, and the phone itself.  I’m going to break these 3 part out for this review.

The provider:

This was the easiest decision for me.  Sprint has the cheapest plans right now.  Plus, I get a 15% discount through an employer perk.   The coverage isn’t that great, but it is good enough.  My overall rating of Sprint is a 6/10.

The reseller:

Best Buy was first on my list of places to buy the phone because they handle the rebates for you, instantly.  No waiting 6-8 weeks, no mailing out 17 pieces of information, they just handle it.  Plus, I will never go to a Sprint store again due to the awful customer service I’ve had with them.

I would have no problem buying a cell phone from Best Buy again.  They seem to care more than the Sprint store does about customer satisfaction.   There were two problems I had with the phone that they helped to clear up with me.  I think that these stories sum up my experience well.

The first issue I had was the phone went on sale three weeks after I bought it.  I was still looking in the fliers after purchase to see if the phone would go on sale.  It did.  The phone went from $179.99 to $99.99.   I was still in the first month of my plan, so I could cancel the phone and buy a new one for the reduced price.  This option would’ve involved quite a bit of hassle, so I was relieved when Best Buy credited my credit card with the difference without issue.  After the horrible experience I had at the Sprint store with the Palm Pre, this was _really_ a nice change.

The second issue I had was a phone issue.  The battery life on the phone wasn’t up to my standards.  I took it to Best Buy and they replaced the battery for me.  No prying questions, no acting like I was the problem; they just took a battery from another phone and gave it to me.

The phone:

I’m going to cover Android here to.  The phone and the software that run it are, warranty wise, inseparable.

The draw to the phone was two-fold.  I wanted a Android phone.  I wanted a keyboard.  The Samsung Moment was the only phone that meets these requirements that Sprint carries.

Android has been good but not great.  The Moment runs version 1.5 of Android.  I’ve found it buggy at times.  The default setup is odd.  For some reason, the GPS is on by default.  This will cause poor battery life out of the box.

Android has a great app store.  The app store is the main reason that the phone and platform are a buy.  I can download a million or so ringtones and wallpapers for free.  There are fun games to play as well to burn all of that spare time we have.  There are apps for Facebook, sports scores, alcoholic beverage creation, and for reading the US Constitution.  The amount of apps is staggering.  The quality of the apps is always iffy.  I’m only installing the top rated and downloaded apps.  Don’t be surprised if your phone crashes when using an unpopular or unsanctioned app.

Google is evil.  Anyone who says differently is selling something Google.  The phone comes with demo applications that cannot be uninstalled.   Google makes money off of your personal information.  This comes through in their phones as well.  There is no option to not sync contacts.  If you don’t want Google to know about your friends, don’t buy one of their phones.  One of the best examples of Google trickery is the GPS setting.  There are two ways to do GPS, wireless networks, and GPS satellites.  The description under wireless networks reads: “See location in application (such as Maps) using wireless networks”.  The description under the GPS satellites reads: “Locate to street-level (requires more battery plus view of sky)”.  The descriptions are true, but biased.  Clicking on the Use wireless networks setting reveals why.  A consent form appears stating: ” Allow Google’s location service to collect anonymous and aggregate location data.  Collection will occur regardless of whether any applications are active.”  This means if this setting is on, you become a data provider for Google.  No, they don’t pay you for it.

The phone is mechanically great.  The non-slide backing feels really good in my hands.  The overall build quality is quite good.  I would rather have tactile buttons rather than the touch sensitive buttons at the bottom of the screen.  The screen is nice and bright.  It looks like a bigger screen would’ve fit in the same form factor.   I would’ve preferred the screen to fill out all the space instead of having a border.  The keyboard is good and has nice raised keys, keys for numbers, and a directional pad.  I’ve read some criticisms about the touchpad button.  I actually like it as a concept, but the implementation is poor.  The OS is slow to recognize movement on the touchpad, which makes it difficult to use.

Now for the Achilles’s heel, battery life.  The battery life of this phone is just aweful.  This phone should be thought of as more of a laptop in terms of battery life.  It is that bad.  I’ve followed all of the tips in the forums and still only get about 13 hours of standby time.  It’s bad enough where you have to plan a day around it.  If you stay at work late, or have a long drive home, the phone might die before you get there.  Connecting a personal phone to a charger at work is an annoyance and not the message I want to give to my employer.  Even using the GPS in the car makes me worry about when the next charge will have to come.  Its bad enough where it puts a shroud over all of the good features the phone actually has.  This phone has roughly half of what I would consider decent batter life.

Like I mentioned before, I’m keeping the phone.  It does what I want it to do, and I can cost-justify it.  However; i am, getting three phone chargers for Christmas and await a higher capacity battery with great anticipation.

Tags: , , , ,

Take 4

December 12, 2009 in Life, Tech by lyz | No comments

I post way too infrequently.   It seems like every 4th post is about how I had some sort of elaborate hardware failure.  So let me tell you about my most recent one.

Roughly a month ago, my NFS requests started failing.  This was odd.  The server was still happily running along, but, after further investigation, totally unresponsive.   I’m thinking this is bad, but I didn’t know exactly how bad.

After resetting the system, nothing happened.  Now I’m a lot worried.  Several resets later, I sat back and pondered the results.  About half the time, the system would get half way through posting.  Once, the system nearly booted, but have a disk error and locked.  Sporatic results like these point to a motherboard, CPU, or, most likely, a power supply.

I took the power supply out of my main desktop box and plugged it in.  The system would boot to a certain point every time, but still throw disk errors and refuse to fully boot.  This was a huge advancement.  Any issue that is reproduceable is explainable and solvable.

It was time to buy a new power supply.  It seems as though every time a component fails, I am able to buy something better and more advanced.  There is nothing that spawns learning quite like failure.  The power supply that I purchased was a Enermax Revolution 85+ ( Eight hundred and fifty watts!!!!!! ).  Enermax is my favorite power supply maker at this point.   This power supply had a few bonuses too.  It is exceptionally efficient, it is fully modular, it can power two dozen or so hard disks, and it had a $70 rebate.  I am totally pleased with the purchase.

The next step was to figure out the disk issue.  With hard disk issues, ears are an efficient trouble shooting tool.  Really?  Really.   If you hear a hard disk making sounds it doesn’t normally make, back up your data instantly.  This tip would’ve saved my bacon on many occasions.  I noticed the server making odd noises days before the failure and should have acted then.  After the new power supply was installed, it was totally apparent.  I had two failed disks.  The easiest way to see that a drive is failed is that it doesn’t show up when a system is booting.  During the power cycle, a system will check the disks that it has attached to it and, most of the time, display the specifications of the disk.   I could see that two disks that were properly plugged in and they were not detected; therefore, they were bad.  That, and I could hear that they weren’t spinning up properly.

Disk failure shouldn’t be an issue in servers.  I had RAID implemented on the disks.  RAID typically allows for a disk failure, that is, unless you use a type of RAID that doesn’t.  Because of space concerns I had when building out the box, I decided to use RAID level 0 on the disks.  RAID 0 will allow many disks to appear as one disk while combining the storage capacity of all of the disks.  Unfortunately, when one disk fails, all data is lost.  Only data that is ok to be lost should be put on an array where the disks are configured in this manner.

All data was not lost, however.  I did follow my own rule and only put data that could be lost on disk arrays that could not withstand failure.  The problem was that I considered my main OS to be something that was expendable.  The virtual machines, like the one that runs this site, were protected and recovered.  The problem with this setup is obvious.  When the main OS is down, the virtual machines will no longer be able to run because of their dependency on the main OS.  This was a classic mistake on my part, I should’ve put the OS in a safer place.  That won’t happen again.

The disks that I purchased to comprise the new storage core of the server are from the Western Digital Black family.  I really like these drive because they are built for performance and because they are cheap.  I purchased 3 of the 750GB model for $60 a piece.  I don’t know how reliable they will be until one of them fails.  The drives get good reviews so I’m not too worried about it.

Two disks and a power supply at the same time?  How on earth could that happen?  My current theory is that the power supply didn’t fail.  It degraded to the point where it couldn’t muster the power to get the entire system running from a cold start.  The system had to cold start when I received a disk failure on my main system array.  The second disk was part of my backup array that could survive a disk failure.  It is possible that the disk had been in a failed state for some time.

I have to give props to Zalman and Seagate.  Both companies stood by their product’s warranty and replaced the faulty products.  There was only 3 months left in a 3 year warranty on the Zalman power supply that failed.  The disk was an enterprise quality disk (but it failed so….), it had roughly 2 years left on the warranty.

Props also go to volume management and filesystem resizing utilities.  I used the CentOS 5.4 live CD as a recovery disk to transfer data from the disks after the operating system had failed.

Another year, another hardware failure.  This is why only professionals (like me) should host their own equipment.  Typically, people are better off letting a hosting company handle problems like this for them.

Tags: ,

The Real Madden Curse is the Game

October 3, 2009 in Uncategorized by lyz | No comments

Every three years for the past decade and a half, I have purchased and played the latest installment of the Madden football franchise.

The game is one of the most popular games released every single year.  It is the only game that you can buy that features real NFL football and players.  This is due to an exclusive license.  For the time being, no competing products are allowed.  I mention this early because I believe this is one of its greatest pitfalls.  There is no competition, no benchmark (other than itself), and, for football fans, no other option.

This year, I purchased the Wii version of Madden 2010.  This marks the 4th console and 6th time I have purchased the game.

The gameplay is really fun.  No, really, it is  a fun game to play.  If this was the only mark of a game, this one succeeds.

I am not that easy to please.  Perhaps, that has do with my profession as a software engineer.  If I was a developer who worked on this series, the shame would be building.  Bugs that have been in the game for over a decade still exist.  The major issues I have are broken out and explained below.  All of these issues have existed for at least 10 years.

1.  The game cheats

There was a game that I played in Madden 2000 where my receivers dropped 25 passes.  The problem wasn’t that they were bad receivers, they were close to the best in the league, the problem was that I was winning the game.

Madden 2010 has the same quirky system.  The players don’t play according to their capabilities.  The players play as well as the game dictates they play.

Examples of this show up in Game of the Week games.  All of the sudden, blockers will just quit blocking, receivers will drop the ball on easy catches, players will fumble the ball more frequently, and the defense won’t drop an interception.

To make this flaw even more annoying.  There is actually a configuration setting to tweak these attributes.  You can modify how much your team fumbles the ball.  The players should play depending on their abilities, not a cheat-based system.

2. The commentating

No, my quarterback did not catch that pass, but that’s not how the commentators see it.  About 1/2 of the comments  the commentators say are incorrect.  It is possible to get booed by the commentators when after making a play on 3rd down to get into field goal range.  I play the game with this feature turned off.  I’m glad they included that feature.

3. The AI

The AI is miserable.  It doesn’t seem to grasp basic football concepts such as clock management and play calling.   The AI will always call a time out and kick a field goal with 9 seconds remaining.  Why 9 seconds?  The other team will get the ball back with a few seconds left.  Why not take a shot at the end zone?

I like the Ask Madden feature, but it doesn’t understand how much time is on the clock either.  When the player is 10 yards out of field goal range, he will suggest to run the clock down.

The AI seems to be really poor on 1st and 2nd down, but is a beast on 3rd down.  This has something to do with point 1 in this list.  It’s annoying and not representative of a real football game.

In conclusion: Madden 2010 possess the same curse that all of the other Madden games I’ve played have had.  The development process produces a buggy game with poorly implemented features, but if you want football, it’s the only way to go.

Tags:

Jamaica Vacation Pictures

August 19, 2009 in Life by lyz | No comments

For friends and family, our vacation photos have been posted.  Check them out here.

Tags:

My Television is a Glorified Computer Monitor

July 18, 2009 in Tech by lyz | No comments

Its been about 4 years since I first had a computer that was dedicated to running media on my television.  At the time, it was a rare thing to do.  The resolution on TVs wasn’t that good, streaming video wasn’t as mature as it is today, and storage was more expensive and less available then now.

The biggest inhibitor to switching to the computer as the primary input on the television has been the audience.  My wife is the primary customer when it comes to the television and if she doesn’t agree to what’s going on, it ain’t happening.

There are a lot of applications and considerations that made this finally a workable (and nearly ideal) solution.  Here’s the list of things that needed to happen.

1.  The media needed to be there

A computer can be used to get media from locations that a TV just can’t match.  Internet-based media is great because it is on demand by nature; which means that it can be watched when it is convenient.  With all major networks streaming their shows and Hulu emerging, Internet media is almost good enough to replace traditional TV viewing by itself.

To make it easy enough to replace a standard television, applications that put all of this media in one place, while using a consitant interface, is a must.  I use Boxee to fill this role.  Boxee is a gets rid of the need for having a keyboard and a mouse to control the computer with.  Also, it has an app to utilize Netflix’s streaming service.  With Boxee, I can watch Onion News with just a couple of clicks, and then switch over to listing to a Shoutcast radio station.  Internet media is a check.

Even with all of the Internet media out there.  HDTV is still a must.  This is the last form of media I that I got running through the computer.  The reason being is that it requires special equipment to get going.  I didn’t want to spend the $100 to buy a HDTV tuner card.   Until March of this year, I didn’t have a machine capable of running a HDTV tuner card anyway.  I finally caved and purchased the Elgato EyeTV Hybrid tuner.  It fills the role very well.  I can now watch HDTV on the computer.  As an added benefit, the included software (Eye TV) works as a PVR; meaning that live TV can be paused, rewound, and recorded.  I can set it to record shows that I would like to watch.  HDTV is a check.

I have a collection of pictures and videos that I keep on my home server.  These need to be able to  stream to the television.  I accomplished this with Boxee and a NFS share from my home server.  Boxee can connect to media across a network and display it.  My media is a check.

2. The hardware has to be there

Here’s a money making opportunity for someone.   Make a Mac Mini-sized machine with a HDTV tuner, N wireless in it, an OS that requires almost no maintenance, but can play anything thrown at it (Linux?), ability to display HD video without a glitch, and make it quiet.   There are a couple of possible options here.  For my own solution, I have a Mac Mini with components replaced in it to add a faster processor and N wireless.   There is a company that appears to be trying to solve this problem.  Visit http://www.neurostechnology.com/ and see if there is something that may work for you (it wouldn’t for my situation).   The EEE Box 206 may be a good solution for this.  There is no working solution that I know that comes right out of the box and works for this solution.

Game console manufactures are trying to get into this market.  The XBox360 does Netflix streaming now.  It may be a possible solution for some.  But again, not me.

N-wireless is a must for HD content.  I am running a WNHDE111.  It is a good solution because it runs over the less-crowded 5Ghz range.  In a place with a lot of other houses around, avoiding interference is key to smooth video playback.

3.  There must be a way to control it with one remote

A programmable remote is a must.  This is the part that most people will be turned off by.  I have 4 remotes: one for the TV, one for the home theater, one for the Mac Mini, and one for the Eye TV.  In a stroke of luck, I had purchased a programmable remote a couple of years back that works great for this.  It is the One for All  URC-9910B01.   All 4 devices are now programed in to the one controller.  This was a pain, if you decide to make the ultimate computer-to-connect-to-a-TV setup a good, programmable remote is a must.

I also have a wireless keyboard and a gyro mouse.  These sit under the couch for the most part.  If you want to browse the web on the TV-connected computer, they are a must.  I can’t expect most people would want to have a full-sized keyboard and a mouse under their couch.  The Logitech diNovo mini is an interesting move in the right direction, but it is horribly expensive and doesn’t to IR.  A perfect remote would have IR over RF to increase the range of the signal as well and not put line-of-sight restrictions on the user.  This is probably the most sub-optimal part of this configuration.

A good application launcher is needed because multiple applications are used in my setup.  Mira is the application I am using to accomplish this task.  With it, it is easy to launch applications if for some reason you’re stuck at the desktop without mouse.

4.  It must be cheap

Overall, I have spent somewhere around $600 in hardware costs.   I am notoriously thrifty though.   All of the purchases were done in a way where I didn’t have to pay retail price.  My monthly costs are just what I spend on Netflix, $8 a month.

Compare this to what you would pay and the features you would get from cable or dish services.  I see it as a compelling option.   Good luck with your setups.

Tags:

Making a Slide Show That Looks Good in a Time Crunch

July 11, 2009 in Tech by lyz | No comments

For those who just want to grab the applications and go try out PictoMio and Picasa, and make sure you are running on a Microsoft platform.  Linux users are in the cold on this project.  Sure, there ways of doing this on Linux, but nothing as quick as the apps listed above.

The requirments for this project were as follows:

  1. Build a slideshow in less than an hour
  2. Incorporate the Ken Burns transition to keep the audience’s attention
  3. Incorporate video clips in between some of the slides
  4. Play audio during the presentation

When in this situation last year, I used PictoMio and found it a great application to use.   Transitions could be changed midstream, and timings could be altered on a per-picture basis.  The application was unstable at the time and it left a sour taste.  Slideshow applications cannot have instability.  When you’re the tech guy running the projector, the last thing you want is 100 people looking at you after a application crash.

When I was in this situation yesterday, I turned to Picasa.  The biggest reason for this is that I knew it would display slides without crashing.  Picasa packs a lot of features that I didn’t expect and ended up using often.

The two tools that helped the most where the automatic red-eye correction and contrast/color correction.  A lot of the photos benefited from these tools.  It added immensely to the overall quality of the show.

The slideshow aspect of Picasa is horribly limited.  The trick to getting the Ken Burns effect in Picasa is to use the movie maker.

There are a couple of limitations to the movie maker;  only one transition effect can be chosen and only one slide duration can be chosen, and songs will not loop for the duration of the photos.   To more than compensate for this, Picasa offers a few features that will enhance the slide show.

Text slides can be added in-between picture to convey information to the audience.  There’s nothing like a good setup for a funny picture.   Picasa does well with integrating video.  Putting video in the middle of a slideshow is simple to do and works pretty well.   There is, unfortunately, a 2 second delay after the video where the screen is black.  This appears to be the point where a transition would’ve been occuring.

I had to do the video in preview mode.  There wasn’t enough time to encode and run it as a video file.   In preview mode, the videos were choppy.  It probably ran at a 20 fps rate.  This didn’t ruin the show, but it dropped my perfection goal a touch.

It is the day after the show.  I wanted to replicate the work on my Linux workstation and create the DVD.  However, the Linux version of Picasa is disappionting with regards to video.  Making this a non-starter.  I have to hop on my soapbox and again proclaim that catch 22 that Linux is in;  user won’t use Linux due to lack of applications and funcationality, applications and functionality won’t come to Linux due to lack of users.  Of course, that is improving, but it’s sure is slow goings.

Overall, using Picasa to do the show exceeded my expectations.  Compliments from the audience abounded.  I am currently creating the video file to burn to a DVD to meet all of the requests I recieved for an encore.

Tags:

The Sprint Palm Pre Experience

June 17, 2009 in Tech by lyz | No comments

The Palm Pre came out recently, and I had to get one.  Or two, depending on if you count the returned ones.

It took 5 hours and 8 visits to 3 different Sprint stores to come up with nothing.

The Pre has a lot of things going for it.  WebOS is excellent.  I never had an issue with the OS.  The problems that I had were to do with the hardware.  In particular, the screen.  Watching NFL Network on the phone was awesome.  The GPS and youtube apps were good too.

The first Pre had the discoloration issue that is discusses in length in other places on the internet.  Do a search for Palm Pre Discoloration and you will see what I mean.  The second Pre had a black spec in the middle of the screen.

The picture below shows it.  It is above the ‘C’ in the text “Premium Channels”.  Also, the lower screen discoloration issue is clearly visable.

img_0376-small

Two tries, and two defective phones.  The rep at Sprint would not replace the second one, as they have a one return policy.

Speaking of Sprint.  I don’t think I’ve ever had representatives mislead me so much about anything like this before.  I was told various things such as:  “You have to have a repair center declare the phone defective before you can return the phone.”  “You can’t return the phone except at the store you purchased it from.”  “You can’t exchange the phone at this Sprint store.”  “We can’t put you on our list of people who want a Pre.”  “We won’t have another Pre in stock for 2 to 3 months.”

I may have well have been handing them radioactive material for the responses they were giving me.  The way that Sprint is handling this realease is unkind at best.  Please be aware of that if you decide to purchase this phone.

Tags: ,

Adventures in Motherboard Failure

May 28, 2009 in Tech by lyz | No comments

The last piece of hardware that I expect a failure from is the motherboard.  There are no moving pieces, not much wear and tear.  Plus, I spent $250 on the last board.  It was an AW9D-MAX; top of the line when it was purchased.  I would expect it to last more than 2 1/2 years of off and on use.   Now that you already know what went wrong, I’ll lay out the troubleshooting that finally lead me to this conclusion.  Motherboard issues are extremely hard to diagnose.

My computer began power cycling itself for seemingly no reason about a month ago.   The times it would occur were inconsistent.  I could narrow it down to times when the system was under a lot of stress.   Kernel compilation combined with watching a flash video would take the system down within 2 minutes.  I also noticed that the crashes weren’t always the same; sometimes I would catch a glimpse of a kernel panic when on the console.

Instability is an awful thing.  It prompted me into action quickly.  The first things that were changed out were the processor and the video card.  They were recent purchases, changes I was going to do anyway.  The issue still persisted.

At this point, I went off the path.  Every kernel or BIOS feature that could cause instability was checked.  I went though 10 different kernel setups, flashing the BIOS, and resetting the BIOS to factory defaults.  In a final attempt to convice myself that this was not an OS issue, I reproduced the problem on a live CD.

Memory can go bad at times.  I proved this was not the case by two methods, switching out DIMMs and running memtest86+.  The problem wasn’t the memory modules.

There were only two options left.  The power supply and the motherboard.  At this point, all hope of a painless fix were lost.  It was time to spend some hard earned money.

I started by replacing the power supply.  I have had power supply issues before that had caused flakiness.  When a system is under load, a poor power supply (or one with insufficient wattage) will no longer be able to power the components of the system.  I decided that getting a modular, 80+ efficiency power supply would be worth it even if it wasn’t the issue.   I am now the proud owner of an Enermax EMD625AWT power supply.

The Enermax power supply is great.  The fan doesn’t spin up unless the power usage is high, so it stays nice and quiet.  After reading a bunch of reviews on it, I am totally convinced that I made the right call on purchasing it.  However, it was not the problem.

The problem was the motherboard.  It had to be, there was nothing else.  That story is for another blog post.

Tags: ,

« Older entries § Newer entries »