Posted on

26-Dec-2010

Backup
I tried to do a backup of the current state of Gudrun – the company laptop – started it yesterday evening, but this morning – eight hours later – it was at just 30%, for a backup of the same size of the previous full backup, though a bit larger. But where Vista used just over 30 minutes for 40 Gb, I don’t understand why the 64-bit Win-7 backup will do just about 20 Gb – in 8 hours! So I had to stop the backup.
Restoring files (needed once more since something removed edited and newly created files???) works like it should: files are restored in the blink of an eye. So I doubt its the disk causing problems. Unless writing takes ages…
I asked in the Windows forum – no answer (yet).

I’ve tried changed the settings and limited the number of directories to be backed up, but Backup grinds to an almost stop after 5% or so has been completed.

I guess I’ll be better off by simply zip what I want to save and write the resulting file to external storage. It might well be quicker.

Posted on

25-Dec-2010

Windows 7, professional, 64-bit
I don’t understand what’s the fuzz about 64-bit computing. I’ve been runing systems that do so since the early 1990’s….And far more stable ones!
Well, that’s another story.
The company laptop – running Windows Vista Business Edition – prooved to be too slow to be practicle. It’s Ok once booted and you’re logged in, but when started from scratch that could take abou 20 minutes. That’s the big reason why I used Hibernate quite often – only to find that the machine crashed on a blue screen after about a minute or two of virtulally no action; caused, as it says, by some piece of software regaurding Power Management. And once again, it would take that 20 minutes…
Second, the 32-bit versions on Windows will address up to about 3.5 Gb, so if you would have 4 Gb in your machine, half a gig would be unavailable (but yet paid for). the 64-bit versin can handle all – and more.
I got tired of it all.
I had discussed the matter with system management, and they too were amazed by the slowness of booting, so their recommendation was to upgrade to Windows 7. And for the sake of efficiency, use the 64-bit version. the Boss agreed and so I collected my Windows Vista-to-Win7 upgrade last Friday. With two days “off duty” it would be possible to upgrade – the BIG route. And the upgrade package holds both the 32- and 64-bit versions: a DVD for each.
Today I did.
First of all, The is not a plain upgrade. It’s a clean install. You first have to save your data – and, for Vista, it meant I needed to download a bit of software first, and then run it to store my files on an external disk. After that, in order to install teh 64-bit version, reboot the system after having placed the right DVD in the drive. Then do the upgrade, re-install your Virus scanner, restore the saved files, re-install all your software and update your drivers.
It took two days, after which I found out I had to renew two heavily used packages (Winzip and WS-FTP) so I got the newest of these installed.
It took a day and a half, but now I have a ssystem that boots like a charm – within 5 minutes I’m up and running.

Posted on

24-Dec-2010

Switched Timezone
Just set the local timezone to UTC, no DST. Reason: DST is a menace, and UTC is ‘global’. Getting ready for the new year.

Posted on

18-Dec-2010

Reorganization
The last two days I’ve been busy reorganzing the data center. Where I had the Alpha and storage in separate rooms (to limit the noise level) I have no placed Diana and all storage in one cabinet. Noise levels are less high anyway, the DS10 is more silent than the PWS; the only point is when I startup all BA350 cabinets, the noise level goes up significantly. But I can take additional work to keep it low.
This reorganization required the systems to be shut down temporarily – storage had to be powered down to move it. Once re-attached to the DS10, starting first didn’t locate the HSZ50 nor any disk. The reason was simple: I connected to the wrong SCSI outlet first, and after that, when starting the DS10 it found a lot of errors on the second controller – it couldn’t locate DKB100…Checked the HSZ50, used LOCATE D100 and found out that the first and second cabinet were swapped when re-connecting. After the right connection was established, Diana booted – but not complete: WASD started halfway and stopped. I couldn’t connect to any other node on the network – and the switch also showed no connection; which was also signaled in the boot sequence. A bit troublesome to make the connection work – since there is little room to move the box. But once that was settled, all came up nicely. and all was running fine.
Until I accidentally hit the switch on the power block.
Well, it was intended to switch down the storage unit anyway, the power cord needed to be rerouted. So that was the moment where all work that could now be done, was actually done – and after that, power was restored and it all came up like before – without any trouble.
The only thing yet to do in this environment is adding an extension to the keyboard cable. I don;t have one at hand and the shops are closed now. But it can wait a few days.

Posted on

16-Dec-2010

Again
Another power failure, that took over four hours to be restored. This time, I could handle the situation myself – but not before 20:00. This time, because syslog did run, I could pinpoint the time of failure to 11:27. On boot, I could now locate the cause of syslog’s failure to start: I simply had a typo in the startup procedure. Now that is settled – and I found it make take a few minutes before lines are actually written to disk. It may be a RMS buffer that is flushed when full, SYSLOGD may buffer itself. This means that the last message before power failure may be written a few minutes before the actual event.
Not that this matters a lot. But in case something is terribly wrong, a direct write might be useful.