PC

Around mid-May I have upgraded punknix.com server which is a P1-AH2 barebone with the new AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e. Not only this CPU has a low 45W TDP (review can be find here: [newegg] and [tomshardware]), but also clocked at 2.6GHz. Hence, I expected this CPU can run faster and with cooler temperature than the replaced Athlon 64 X2 4400 2.3GHz. This CPU is the most best suited for my tiny punknix.com server with also runs 3 Xen DomU guests.

the 'cat /proc/cpuinfo' gives me this information:

processor       : 1
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 15
model           : 107
model name      : AMD Processor model unknown
stepping        : 2
cpu MHz         : 2612.100
cache size      : 512 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu de tsc msr pae cx8 apic mtrr cmov pat clflush mmx fxsr sse
 sse2 ht nx mmxext fxsr_opt 3dnowext 3dnow pni cmp_legacy extapic cr8_legacy 
 3dnowprefetch
bogomips        : 5225.80
clflush size    : 64
power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps

The most disappointed thing after the upgrade is that I cannot find any update of the BIOS of P1-AH2 (M2N8L motherboard ) to recognize the newest CPUs. So /proc/cpuinfo reports "AMD Processor model unknown". Indeed, the CPU flags returns no "svm" flag. I doubted that would 5050e support hardware virtualization as I thought that all latest AMD CPUs after Pacifica should support SVM. This may be due to "unknown AMD processor" gives wrong report in cpu flags. But when I run a voyage kernel compilation test on DomU guest, it reports:

real	12m24.383s
user	17m2.576s
sys	1m56.547s

which is similar to my expectation. Or, may be SVM does not affect Xen paravirtualzation at all, but only affects kvm.

The sensors programs proved the new chip is COOLER!

k8temp-pci-00c3
Adapter: PCI adapter
Core0 Temp:  +25.0 C
Core0 Temp:  +22.0 C
Core1 Temp:  +27.0 C
Core1 Temp:  +29.0 C

dme1737-i2c-0-2e
Adapter: SMBus nForce2 adapter at 4c00
V5stby:      +0.00 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +6.64 V)   ALARM
Vccp:        +1.18 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +2.99 V)
V3.3:        +3.29 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +4.38 V)
V5:          +4.99 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +6.64 V)
V12:        +11.83 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max = +15.94 V)
V3.3stby:    +3.27 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +4.38 V)
Vbat:        +3.00 V  (min =  +0.00 V, max =  +4.38 V)
CPU_Fan:    2020 RPM  (min =    0 RPM)
Fan2:          0 RPM  (min =    0 RPM)
Fan4:          0 RPM  (min =    0 RPM)
RD1 Temp:      FAULT  (low  = -127.0 C, high = +127.0 C)  ALARM
Int Temp:    +50.7 C  (low  = -127.0 C, high = +127.0 C)
CPU Temp:    +45.0 C  (low  = -127.0 C, high = +127.0 C)
cpu0_vid:   +1.550 V

The fan is running steady 2,000 RPMs at idle and 3,000 RPMs at load. When compare to 3000/5000 RPMs I saw with the old 4400, I am much satisfied. Temperature figures also showed 5050e is 5-10 C degress cooler.

Next thing I would like to monitor the temperature reading on my new barebone server. So the easiest way to do is to install lm-sensors:

apt-get install lm-sensors

and run sensors-detect. After all, it is prompted to install the following modules in /etc/modules and I did:

# Generated by sensors-detect on Wed May  2 12:27:18 2007
# I2C adapter drivers
i2c-nforce2
# Chip drivers
eeprom
# Warning: the required module k8temp is not currently installed
# on your system. For status of 2.6 kernel ports check
# http://www.lm-sensors.org/wiki/Devices. If driver is built
# into the kernel, or unavailable, comment out the following line.
k8temp

However, if I follow the wiki link to www.lm-sensors.org. k8temp is only supported for 2.6.19 or later kernel, but not 2.6.18 shipped with etch. Searching from google I found the link[1] that I will need to compile and install the module manually.

Recently I access all my linux machines using ssh from cygwin on the Windows XP desktop. This is inconvenience as I will need to open 5-6 terminal/bash windows for my development work on these machines. I have been investigating the VNC solution that is available for both Windows and Linux.

Using VNC, I run vncserver on my Linux server, and run VNC client on Windows. That sound logical to solve my problem... but not really. I will need to login to Gnome desktop or to enable automatic login in Gnome before I can get the VNC client on Windows able to connect to it. Later on, I found a new solution : NX

I just build a new barebone machine for playing with a lot of virtualization technologies on Linux, preferablely on a fresh install Debian r4.0 Etch. In the coming weeks and months, I will document my experience on the following virtualization technologies that I am going to playing around:

• UML - User-mode-Linux
• KVM - Kernel-based Virtual Machine for Linux
• Xen
• VServer
• qemu for ARM

I have been using UML for years. It has been providing complete isolated environments for building Voyage Linux and kernel on daily basis. However, UML is rather slow. These years, we have been seeing VServer, Xen as well as virtual machine support in kernel (KVM). In addition, I would like to explore the ARM emulation under QEMU. My final goal is to setup a guest ARM emulation system for porting Voyage Linux on ARM platforms.

My colleague has suggested Google Brower Sync for sync'ing bookmarks on different computers. By installing this Firefox extension, it manages the bookmarks, history, passwords using my Google account for central storage. That sounds good to me, as I have over 100 bookmarks accumulated over 8 years, and I had problem in keeping them in sync with my Office and Home PC (and my iBook as well). Recently, I has been using import/export bookmark function to keep them in-sync, but it is very time consuming in managing those bookmarks as I need to reorganize them in a better order for each import.

I can manage to install it on the Firefox of my Office PC, but my Home PC doesn't. After downloading the extension. Firefox complains about "Signing could not be verified" and stopped the installation. I have reviewed the options/preferences in Firefox, test with diferent certification setting and get no idea. Searching on google and following some troubleshooting instructions and I am still getting nowhere. Now, Google Browser Sync is of no use to me, as I only get one PC working... I will try it on my iBook later.

My Desktop PC has dual boot to SuSE 9.3 and XP. Since I am now switching to use VM Server, the old SuSE no longer needs. To get more disk space, I need to uninstall SuSE. The problem is, I have to uninstall grub first and restore the original XP bootloader.

The old way is to use the famous "fdisk /mbr" tricks. However, the modern XP no longer ships with fdisk anymore. Surfing the net I found that I need XP CD to boot in recovery mode and run "fixmbr" command. I don't have the XP CD on hand as this is an office desktop that our support team owns the CDs. Searching further I finally discovered that SuSE will backup the original MBR when installation and I can use YaST to restore the MBR.

Firefox 1.5 is out. Although the new features are not appeared to be very much appealing, I like the drag-n-drop browser tab re-ording very much and it is the feature I really want when I was using 1.0.

After the upgrade, I found that Plastik Crystal SVG theme is incompatible to 1.5. I know the author has now been working on it, but it won't be out shortly. My decision is to to 1.5 on my Office PC (because for experience it), but hold it for my home PC and my iBook until Plastik support 1.5.

But anyway, it is a nice upgrade experience. No problem on my profiles and bookmarks after upgrade. At least, I feel that the new firefox appears to be faster on startup.

Once I have upgraded punknix from PIII-700 to Athlon XP 2500, I quickly noticed that my pretty server became more noisy. I once tracked the source of the noise, it was from a great SUNON CPU fan, which runs at 5,000 rpm. Together with the thermalright heat sink, the BIOS shows the CPU temperature at around 37C.

As I had to patch and rebuild the kernel for PPTP support and security fix, I needed to reboot the machine. It was the right time for me to replace the CPU fan - back with the original one come with Athlon. This fan runs slower, at around 4,000 rpm, as is probably more quiet. After it was replaced, I restarted the machine and enter into the BIOS to check the temperature. After running a few minutes, it was stayed at 39-40C. 2-3 degrees higher, not so bad and it was still acceptable. I think it is the heat sink and the Arctic Silver thermal compound that work great.

My harddisk resides in PC near to its end. It can be powered up sometimes, but in some occasion the harddisk stop running after idle it for a while. The problem existed a monthe ago. May be this is caused by running e2k and BT heavily. Some of my friends said those p2p applications overload the disk too much.

Last week the problem occured more frequent. Before it totally die I decided to replace it with a new harddisk. So I bought Western Digital 40GB 7200rpm, 2MB cache, it is cheapest among the same and have proven good record. However, it is the beginning of my nightmare. I plugged in the new disk and power up the PC, a noise of very high frequency was heard. I guess it was the noise from the motor driving the disk, not the disk head. Next day, I went to the shop that I bought the disk for replacement, but the salesman pointed me to the distributor. Fine, the day after I went to the distributor (it is quite near to my home), and they were very helpful to replace a new one for me. I went home and carried out partition reallocation work.