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Archive for category technology-and-computing

My current Home server (explained)

Aug 2

Posted by ianforrester in technology-and-computing | View Comments

So I finally bought a 2 terabyte (TB) western digital hard drive for my home server. I have about 7 TB’s over 6 hard drives. I’ve already explained what makes a home server and my frustrations over home server software. But never really gone into my setup.

I have 7 hard drives of varies sizes from 200gig to 1.5tb. Most of them are Western digital drives but I do have others such as Maxtor and Samsung hard drives. I tend to buy the slowest drives because realistically I’m only storing stuff on them and accessing them over samba (smb) or universal plug and play (upnp) on my lovely XBMC setup. So speed isn’t a major thing, in actually fact the faster the drive spins the hotter it gets and heat is a enemy when you got 6 drives all spinning together.

The weird thing is I’ve never had a hard drive fail on me yet.

I’m using a combination of old 133m/s udma/eide and the new 150m/s sata. I have 2 ide drives attached to the onboard Ide ports, 2 on board sata ports and a PCI to SATA adapter with 2 extra SATA ports and a ide port. The motherboard is a elitegroup 761-gx with a old 2.8ghz mobile Amd athlon which I got from the states quite a while ago (maybe 4 years ago). I’ve thought about changing it but I really don’t need the power for a home server. In actual fact 2.8ghz is well over power for what its doing.

I think one of the reasons why nothing has failed on me is because I use spinrite 6 every few months to check if the drives are running ok or in need of some TLC. I also don’t use any Raid solutions or even Lvm solutions, I was tempted to try Lvm but gave up on it a long time ago. If Raid supported odd size drives I might have considered it a long time ago but its not practical when you have so many different drives across different local buses.

I had considered getting drobo but there quite costly even the simplest version and they certainly hold there prices well. Even the ebay prices are close to the retail price.

Right now its much more efficient for me to build a home server because I have all the parts.

I expect I’ll consider going for a NAS because its a lot quieter and it just works, which means I won’t need to do much to it. However running a machine means you can do a lot more. I’m running Ubuntu 10.4 desktop edition on top of my server right now. I had considered switching to Ubuntu Server but I quite like having a gui. I also use Webmin to control the box remotely. Webmin is good but its not as powerful as I would like it to be. For example I’m considering moving my torrent app to the server but controlling it would be a issue.

Right now I’m moving most of the stuff to a couple of drives so I can shift over to Windows Home Server. I tried freenas and others but I think Microsoft have come up trumps with Windows Home Server. My only problem is the fact it prefers to be installed on a blank system so that means shifting all my data around on to a couple of drives then moving them away while I install windows. Shame I deleted all my photos in the conversion. Oh well, wish I still had upto date dvd backups.

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Microsoft’s forward vision

Jul 3

Posted by ianforrester in technology-and-computing | View Comments

I don’t get it.

Ubuntu can be a server or a user system but its certainly not a home server. I have no idea what happened to the ubuntu homeserver project but Microsoft have got the upper hand when it comes to servers in the home.

There is a large enough difference between a server in a home and server in a data centre. Microsoft understood this when they launched Windows Home Sever. They could have just re-bundled Windows Server but no they brought out a different cut of Windows Server focused on the home market. Its also different enough from a NAS (network attached storage device) due to its great range of Apps or Add-ons.

I’m not the only one to say this either.

“95% of the would-be “nixers” are completely stunned, at that point when the Ubuntu Server installation states that it has finished and all that’s offered to the user is a black screen and a prompt line. Users … basically scrap the whole thing, install Windows and use … solutions which lack raw power but come with an comprehensive interface”

Like all the others I’m pleased to see that you decided to continue this project. I’m a new NAS end user: i first bought a Synology DS410j, but i realized quickly that the processor was far too limited for me. So I made a 4 bay NAS by myself, counting on freenas. My problem is that i use linux a lot (I have a Mythtv server), but i don’t know FreeBSD at all. So the promise of a linux based NAS is a very good news. You can’t blame people to defend their chapel. Don’t listen to them, walk and see ! I assure you that i’ll be among the first switchers and the first donators because your work is useful, there’s no doubt about that.

The closes thing to Windows Home server on Ubuntu is maybe Freenas (which requires you to format all your drives into UFS for the best use, oh and its BSd based. Theres also Amahi which takes over too much of your system (it likes to control the dns, which is a pain if you got a good router).

So what makes a home server?

  • Low Minimum System Requirements
  • Simple Storage Space Management
  • Scalable Architecture
  • Cross-Platform Client Support
  • File/Data Server.
  • Backup/Restore
  • Printer Server
  • Network Functions
  • Remote Access from the Internet

Windows home server does all this really well, Ubuntu Server edition falls very short.

What else is out there? Because to be honest I’m very close to installing Windows Hone server on my home server.

Open Media Vault looks pretty good but its not quite mature enough yet.

Canonical really need to get moving with this stuff… Microsoft had the vision to kick this off, now its time for Linux to lead this area. Just like how Android is now stiring up the mobile world.

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Refreshing my laptop

Apr 24

Posted by ianforrester in technology-and-computing | View Comments

Ubuntu 10.04 is only a few days away and I’ve decided to do a complete new install of my laptop. First thing I want t do is replace the 120gig Hard drive with a nice new 320gig Hard drive. 2.5 inch notebook drives have really come down in price and to be honest I tend to low on space all the time. Usually I just shift stuff around but what I noticed was that I didn’t make full use of virtual machines because of the space.

I however wonder if I should make the switch to the 64bit version of Ubuntu but I’m worries about apps like Skype, Hamachi, Java and maybe XBMC/Boxee. I’ve had 4gig of memory for ages and been restricted to 3267meg for ages. There must be more advantages to 64bit processing that just more memory allocation I’m sure. I was thinking if worst came to worst, I could just run Ubuntu 64bit an 32bit side by side, I mean I’ll have the space to do it plus I could maybe even share the home directory to ensure consistency between the platforms?

My ISP’s Response to the Digital Economy Act

Apr 22

Posted by ianforrester in technology-and-computing | View Comments

My ISP is UKFSN and there the small kind of ISP which you use to get years ago. They don’t like restricting there customers and they hate things like Phorm and other content interception. So what do they make of the DBill?

Recently the UK government pushed through new legislation aimed to address many aspect of the “digital economy”.

Much of the Act is reasonable and needed to ensure that things like the rollout of digital television and radio services can be accomplished properly. The Act also included various measures to do with the Internet that were not well considered and were certainly not properly debated by Parliament and which have attracted much comment from many different parts of society. As an ISP our position on the Act is limited to the parts that relate to the Internet and the operation of Internet Service Providers, including UKFSN.

The Act seeks to implement measures to protect the rights of copyright holders from unauthorised copying and distribution of the works on which they hold copyright. This is a worthwhile aim however the Act has failed to accomplish what is set out to do for a number of reasons. Firstly the Act is clearly written by people who simply do not understand the Internet and how it is used. This shows in a number of ways but primarily in the manner in which the Act seeks to make ISPs and other network operators responsible to prevent copyright infringement and to act as enforcers for the civil rights of others completely bypassing the courts. This is a serious abuse and is, I believe, a prima facie breach of the Human Rights Act in that it removes the protection of the courts from those accused of unlawful activity.

All ISPs and network operators are bound to operate within and to obey the law. This applies to all laws including the Digital Rights Act. This means that we are obliged to act in response to a valid copyright infringement notice or a valid requirement to block access to a site and we will comply with any such valid requirement. Note that I have emphasised valid. The Act states a number of things that will be necessary for such a report or request to be valid. The most important one of these for copyright infringement notices is that we must act in response to a valid notice from the copyright holder or their authorised agent. In order to comply with this requirement we will need anyone who sends such a report to have registered their copyright in a recognised database to which we have free access and to have registered details of any and all agents who are authorised to make such notice reports to us. Further we will need a means of assuring that any notice or report we receive is really from the registered copyright holder or agent – this means they will need to implement a recognised and reliable digital signature system which we can verify. We simply cannot comply with the Act without this.

The Act specifies that copyright holders and ISPs must share the cost of any systems needed to implement the Act. I strongly believe that, as the only beneficiaries of the Act are copyright holders, they should be the ones to bear the cost. I propose that ISPs implement a system such as I have outlined above and charge copyright holders a very smallannual fee to register each copyright and each agency. This will help to prevent the Act’s requirement on ISPs to act in response to infringement notices from becoming a means for anyone to implement a massive denial of service attack.

I have already had some discussion with other ISPs about this and these ideas are being actively pursued. As things become clearer I will make further statements.

If your ISP isn’t standing against the Digital Rights Act, you really should consider moving to another one and support them.

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DBill provisions for ISPs, a series of loopholes

Apr 14

Posted by ianforrester in technology-and-computing | View Comments

I’ve said very little about the Dbill (Digital Ecomony Act), I’ve actually got a massive post saved up venting why the bill is a joke and how the UK just went back to the stone ages. But I also find it interesting how theres lots of loopholes to be found in the bill, even from a ISP point of view. Actually thats one of the most annoying parts of the bill, the fact that all UK ISPs have to follow these stupid rules even if there doing fine with what they already have.

Here’s some of the concerns

That we have to pass on copyright notices to subscribers and may have to suspend or restrict access to subscribers. This is actually relatively easy for us to do, but has implications for us and the subscribers. For a start, if we do not do things that help our customers then we will lose them. OFCOM have made it easy and cheap for people to change ISP. If they change ISP all of the history of notices disappears and the copyright owner has to start again.

That we could have an order to block locations on the internet. Now, we would hope that as such an order can apply to transit providers or BT wholesale, etc, that anyone making such an order would not go to the bother of making an order against every small ISP. So such an order would not affect us, hopefully. If it did there are allowances for paying our costs. If BT wholesale did DPI based blocking we can work on ways around that by simple obfuscation at the PPP level. If transit provides block a location we can set up tunnels to links outside the UK. We can find ways around blocks if we have to, and so can our customers.

And here’s some of the loopholes,

OK, several ideas come to mind…

  • In the event of a copyright notice, making our customer not a subscriber by allowing them quickly and easily to change who the subscriber is but continue service unchanged.
  • In the event of a copyright notice, making our customer not a subscriber by making them a communications provider. We’re prepared to peer with our customer buying access to our customers IP blocks via their ADSL line for 1p/month. This makes them a communications provide and so not a subscriber. But as their customer is us, a communications provider so not a subscriber, they do not become a service provider and so not themselves subject to most of the regulations.
  • In the event of a copyright notice, making our customer not a subscriber giving them a choice of IP addresses (change of IP). However, by offering a choice and allowing them to pick an IP they have not been allocated an IP address by us. That means their service is not an internet service and so they are not a subscriber.
  • Recording where our customer is a communications provider – which applies if they provide communications to anyone. I suspect many businesses and even homes could buy our service as a communications provider.
  • Operating more than one retail arm selling to customers and allowing customers to migrate freely with no change to service between those retail arms, thus bypassing copyright notice counting and any blocking orders.
  • Making us not a service provider by making all customers not subscribers using either the communications provider or not allocated IPs as above. Hence making us not subject to most of the Act.
  • Not co-operating with copyright holders – if they send a notice which we consider invalid, just delete it.

I know my ISP USFSN will certainly be looking at this list, most of the subscribers to there service pay well over the odds for non-logged non-bothersome unlimited Internet access.

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Phone7, What the ipad needed

Feb 21

Posted by ianforrester in technology-and-computing | View Comments

An ipad using the Windows phone 7 interface

One of the things I never quite understood about Apple’s idea of a massive ipod touch as a ipad, is the interface. Steve Jobs may point the finger at Adobe for being lazy with Flash, but to be honest the ipad interface isn’t exactly cleverly thought out or exciting in anyway. I have already said lovely things about Microsoft’s Phone 7 and even with all the other things it doesn’t do I’m still very impressed. So take the form factor of the ipad (although I prefer the 6 inch screen of my ebook reader) dump out all the Apple crap and load it up with Windows phone7 and you got something much more interesting and the dawn of slate computing. I’m not saying its a perfect match but if it was to happen, I’d much more likely to buy a ipad. Dell and HTC get on it….

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Hakiu the open operating system with a bright future

Jan 28

Posted by ianforrester in technology-and-computing | View Comments

Hakiu

When I was young, when I was deciding what type of system I should use next after my ST. I had the choice of either the PC running Windows, Apple Macintosh running System 7 or a Sun Spark with some Unix system. I choose the PC with Windows in the end mainly due to cost and the ability to build my own. Linux at the time seemed too complex but there was another which I got very interested in at the time. BeOS.

Well BeOS has had quite a rollercoaster time and has been rebuilt from the ground up by developers applying the same ethics as Linux and BSD to BeOS. Now called Haiku, the alpha looks and feels usable enough to try in a virtual machine or play with on a spare machine. There’s also a live cd for that true test it and see experience.

I’ll be keeping an eye on Haiku because I think it could be come something worth using in the future, not that I’m saying anything bad about Linux. But options are always good and having another open source operating system is certainly good for the world.

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Before Apple launch what ever…

Jan 27

Posted by ianforrester in technology-and-computing | View Comments

I wanted to quickly get my thoughts down before the Apple announcement later today.

I can’t see myself buying what ever Apple launches. But we all know that was the case anyway.

If Apple do launch a Tablet device, I will only be interested if it has a colour e-ink screen and costs less that 400 pounds. If its LCD screen then the battery life is going to be a killer, unless it holds 3x more charge per hour that your laptop. Why carry around a tablet which holds the same battery life as you laptop? If its not cheap, it will be eaten up by the small netbook industry or the whole host of smartphones coming on to the market. If its OLED then cool but its not going to be anywhere near cheap. And thats another problem. If its 500 pounds plus, why not just get a laptop? Or even add a nice top of the range netbook like the Nokia netbook or Dell Mini10′s? So could Apple do a crunchpad and get a LCD tablet down to the price of a Netbook? Maybe but the appeal is low. Would it have 3/4g? unlikely, specially after the AT&T burning Apple’s received.

Ok lets say its a Ebook device with E-ink. Well that market is becoming flooded and I can’t really see what more Apple could do in the space. I’m also sure E-ink would frustrate Steve Jobs. So were back at LCD/OLED again.

I had another thought that Apple could do something like a slate which is pretty underpowered when in its default state but when you plug in your ipod touch/iphone it binds the two together for something more powerful. So yeah all your games from the apps store can be played at its full rez instead of the iphone screen rez.  I was thinking they  could do the same using a bluetooth pan (personal area network) but we know Steve doesn’t like Bluetooth. So we’re left with either Wifi or some other new radio technology. Having the ipod/iphone part of the sum seems to cut the costs down quite a bit, plus when your at home it could piggy back off your laptop or other apple hardware.

I do also wonder if this big announcement be the next AppleTV, Apple Stereo or even Lisa? If so, we’d wasted so much time for a piece of crap. The chances are that its not because Apple have been working on this for years and it might be Steve Jobs last major product launch. So it could be something very different like a Apple branded LCD TV, a larger screen movie player or even finally the Apple Pippen (the games console which never came out). There is a thought that Steve Jobs must be surprised by the amount of casual games created on the appstore that the idea of a mobile gaming slate or device. Knowing Steve Jobs, he’ll be using that new standard for wireless digital hdmi system to interface with larger screens.

I guess we’ll find out soon…

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Interested in buying my Sony Ereader?

Jan 2

Posted by ianforrester in technology-and-computing | View Comments

Sony PRS505 vs Sony PRS600

After buying the Sony PRS 600, it made sense to sell the old one on Ebay. The new ereader is a better machine in everyway except contrast. As you can see in the photo above the one on the right (old one – PRS 505) is much better in its range of greyscale. The black is black and white very white. While the new one (PRS-600) isn’t so black and white. This means while reading the words are not as sharp. It would be picking up a nice modern hardback and comparing it to a used paperback. Both are perfectly readable but you can see the difference when put together. Obviously I’m not the only one to see this issue.

For me all the other features out way this issue, I’m still looking forward to writing the XSL to convert Tomboy Notes into Sony Notes and back. But if your interested in picking up my old one for cheap, head over to ebay soon.

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Experimental Compiz Fusion Plugins

Dec 26

Posted by admin in technology-and-computing | View Comments

Ubuntu has build in support for Compiz fusion now called just compiz since version 8.04 I believe. But the plugins included haven't really been increased in a while. So most of us are missing out on some of the creativity and downright oddness coming out of experiemental corners of the internet. Theres a whole page of how to get the plugins from GIT if you want to take a walk on the wild side.

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HP doesn’t care about black people

Dec 23

Posted by admin in technology-and-computing | View Comments

Amusing little video about the new HP webcams which don't track black faces, but will happily follow a white face. Racist no but Black Dezy did have me chuckling, specially since he bought one. Recognition software isn't always what it should be, for example some of those voice recongnition systems can't deal with the deepness in my voice and never catch any of the numbers or words I use. Very frustrating when you know your not the problem in the chain. I expect the camera just can't cope wit the lighting of the store/office and if you shine a light from the front it will work.

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Learning XQuery

Dec 22

Posted by admin in technology-and-computing | View Comments

I'm convinced that Xquery is somewhat the non-elegent child of the xml family of technologies. Every single technology from XSL to Xpointer, Schema to XMLencryption seem to pick part of the puzzle and do that bit very well. So you can forgive me for thinking Xquery would only be useful for querying data from a xml database, somewhat the SQL of the XML world right? Nope, in actual fact its not only SQL but also PHP and the XML doesn't even have to be in a database at all. The crossovers with XSL is quite shocking for such a elegent family. Fear not, Xpath forms a large part of Xquery meaning us XSL lovers can jump straight in and feel a little at home with its strangely non-xml syntax, I actually quite like writing xml to create/transform xml. And if things get a little too weird in Xquery land, you can run for the beach by telling Xquery to do a XSL transformation on a tree of data instead.

Although it doesn't quite fit, its actually darn powerful and beats messing with XSP or other templating languages. For example, in about 6 easy to understand lines of Xquery, I was able to pull down a XHTML document, rip off its head element and append the body inside a ATOM feed. I could do the same with XSL but it would be much more lines and the way Xquery is setup, it seems to make more sense. One of the big issues people have with XSL is that it doesn't know anything about its environment. So for example calling the present time would require looking up a webservice or some other external logic like PHP, XSP, JSP, etc. Well with Xquery, you get all that type of logic which you could even pump into a XSL transform.

I'm learning Xquery right now mainly through Exist DB and this nice wikibook, which I converted to PDF using the wikibook system for offline reading and reference on my Ebook reader.

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