Tag: computing

General computing topics covering everything I deal with or am interested in.

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My eyes have been opened to yet another case of foul play by a megacorp.

As if their package management isn’t disgusting enough
(www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/23/enormouse/), /their BIOS
configuration on laptops of the recent few years leaves MUCH to be desired.

On the bottom of my HP Compaq 6715b laptop is a removable panel which
covers a memory slot and a Mini-PCI-E connector. “Great”, I thought,
having a non-functioning Broadcom card in there, “I’m going to install
an Intel 4925 AGN wireless card here because it’s supported by the
firmware/kernel I use (CentOS 5.3) – and I’m loath to building a new
kernel when I can just plug in a new card ;-)”.

My card, £15 off Ebay, arrived this morning and I carefully fitted it.
Booted the machine, went into the BIOS settings to ensure it was
enabled, and…. wait a minute, it isn’t listed. Perhaps it’s broken…
or …perhaps HP have imposed a blacklist of vendors/subsystems which
THEY don’t allow to be recognised in MY computer. Not listed in lspci,
nor dmesg… basically nowhere.

Is this legal? Did I ever see any restriction declared ANYWHERE before
buying this machine that stated “HP retains sole right to how this
machine is used and with what”..?

What point is there putting this restriction in?! Someone buying a
budget laptop isn’t going to source their over-priced parts from the
OEM! Why, darn it, why?!

If you have – or rather, are thinking of buying an HP, Dell or IBM
laptop, I’d suggest reading these first:
– http://www.engadget.com/2005/02/22/the-hp-bios-that-locks-non-whitelisted-mini-pci-cards-out/
– http://www.aigarius.com/blog/2008/02/07/sneaky-blacklisting-of-wifi-in-hp-laptops/
–
– http://www.richud.com/HP-Pavilion-104-Bios-Fix/
– http://www.paul.sladen.org/thinkpad-r31/wifi-card-pci-ids.html

I’ve thought about actually re-flashing my BIOS with modified code,
partly out of sheer bloody-mindedness towards HP (oh, and I would
publish, intricately, the solution), and partly just out of the
practical need for wireless networking. But now, I’m just baffled by
the whole thing.

Hilariously, as a final insult, the latest BIOS update from HP for my
machine, “updates the Computrace OPTION ROM to version 866”. So…
you’re telling me I have this “Computrace OPTION ROM” installed, huh?

HP – http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=321957&prodSeriesId=3368540&swItem=ob-67085-1&prodNameId=3356624&swEnvOID=2094&swLang=8&taskId=135&mode=4&idx=3

BlackHat (deactivate the rootkit) – http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-09/ORTEGA/BHUSA09-Ortega-DeactivateRootkit-PAPER.pdf

Is there no goodness left in the world? Can old ladies not be helped
across the road any more? MUST we buy battery hen eggs instead of free
range?! Like, where’s the love, man..?

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Yes, it seems too good to be true.

Well, guess what?! It IS!!

That’s right. Your old tat (or, you could say, my old tat) is just about as worthless to everyone else as it is to me. I’ve spent ages on ebay and sold almost nothing. And what I have sold, I sold for 99p.

Give to charity instead, that’s what I should have done! Pah!

🙂

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So… sometimes I wonder, what’s the point? I add a bookmark, and the Firefox plug-in asks me if I want to add it to delicious, so generally I say yes as I think it’s probably useful to others. But, syncing with delicious doesn’t seem to retain the organisation I give to my bookmarks (they are my bookmarks, after all).

I have installed xMarks to Firefox, which is great. Delicious, on the other hand… it’s not Digg… what is it?

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No doubt open-source proponents will rejoice over this news: The British government has decided to increase its use of open-source software in the public services field. It will be adopted over Windows whenever it delivers the best value for the money. Schools, govenment offices and public agencies will all give open source a new look.

read more | digg story

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It’s worry-time on the server:

# tail -20 /var/log/messages
Feb 25 10:09:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 3 Offline uncorrectable sectors
Feb 25 10:39:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 9 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors
Feb 25 10:39:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 3 Offline uncorrectable sectors
Feb 25 11:09:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 9 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors
Feb 25 11:09:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 3 Offline uncorrectable sectors
Feb 25 11:39:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 9 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors
Feb 25 11:39:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 3 Offline uncorrectable sectors
Feb 25 12:09:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 9 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors
Feb 25 12:09:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 3 Offline uncorrectable sectors
Feb 25 12:39:31 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 9 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors
Feb 25 12:39:31 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 3 Offline uncorrectable sectors
Feb 25 13:09:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 9 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors
Feb 25 13:09:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 3 Offline uncorrectable sectors
Feb 25 13:39:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 9 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors
Feb 25 13:39:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 3 Offline uncorrectable sectors
Feb 25 14:09:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 9 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors
Feb 25 14:09:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 3 Offline uncorrectable sectors
Feb 25 14:39:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 9 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors
Feb 25 14:39:32 myserver smartd[2785]: Device: /dev/sdc, 3 Offline uncorrectable sectors

.. and so it goes on. So, I’ll check it out by performing a SMART self-test on the drive:

# smartctl -a -d ata /dev/sdc
smartctl version 5.36 [x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: Hitachi HDP725040GLA360
Serial Number: GEB430RE15UEVF
Firmware Version: GMDOA52A
User Capacity: 400,088,457,216 bytes
Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is: 8
ATA Standard is: Not recognized. Minor revision code: 0x29
Local Time is: Wed Feb 25 14:55:30 2009 GMT
SMART support is: Available – device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x82) Offline data collection activity
was completed without error.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: (7840) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
No Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 130) minutes.

[snip]

I’m not sure what to make of a disk that reports it’s broken to the kernel but reports its “PASSED” to a userspace tool.

One thing’s for certain – it’s being replaced!

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I have recently spent a considerable amount of time updating my blogs. This is my personal, “daily diary” style blog and I contribute to another blog for work (One Cool).

Why, you may ask, did I decide to use two different systems? Well, not knowing the strengths or weaknesses of one in comparison to the other means I cannot exploit them. One strength of Blogger, for example, is how quick the non-WYSISYG editor is. The speed of it means it’s a joy to type into as opposed to WordPress‘s more advanced, touchy-feely editor.

But it’s all relative – there’s still the need to complete commercial work and get dinner on the table. And apart from that, there’s an outstanding Fedora 9 blog article or two that I still need to sort out.. 😉

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I’ve decided to catalogue my experience with Fedora 9. The reasons for this are:

  • It is a Linux distro aimed at being totally “free” (as in speech, not as in beer).
  • Fedora is the distribution I am most familiar with.
  • I believe Red Hat is actually a pretty cool company and they are serious about the user community.
  • Fedora always aims to be cutting-edge. I like that.

 

So, what first?

 

I plan to record my experience of installing Fedora 9 on my blog so that people who are considering switching to Linux, or switching from another distribution to Fedora, can decide what the benefits might be. It’s also going to serve as a reference for myself, so I can see why it’s such a good/bad idea to do it again!

 

Finally, I have gained so much by simply being interested in Open Source software, that I felt it was about time to give something back. As an English graduate, documentation is probably the best thing I can start with. I hope it’s of help to someone!