Computers

Gentoo Linux HPPA on HP 9000 RP3440 with PA8800 Notes

doogie
Notes on Rp3440 Installation: The port console=stty1 needs to be specified because the serial is handed off from the main console to the passed through serial port. The disk partition layout needs to have the parisc boot partition in the beginning of the disk; type f0. This is where PALO is installed to. There then needs to be a separate ext2 formatted partition, also near the beginning of the disk,
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Zoneminder Linux / mdraid Optimizations

doogie
I was looking at things on the new server that I had just setup today and I noticed that the SSD was being written to at a continuous 35MB/s. This was as a result of the zoneminder /var/tmp/zm being located on the primary disk. The solution was to add a line to /etc/fstab and dedicated an 8GB RAM disk to resolve my issue. The running occupied size for my setup
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Debian 9 Stretch SSH logging to file with rsyslog

doogie
This is just a quick note, and this does apply to other systems that use rsyslog. Following these steps will help you setup your SSHD service so that all events are logged to a specific file of your choosing. Choose an unused local facility. For example local3 is not used for any logging in your system. So first edit /etc/sshd_config configuration file. #SyslogFacility AUTH SyslogFacility local3 Now configure rsyslog to log local3
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Getting PCRE to compile on Solaris 9 SPARC

doogie
So there are some folks who are still trying to run modern things on old SPARC machines still. I pulled out my old Solaris server that I used to host a backup of my website back in 2013, dusted it off and booted it up.The web services came up flawlessly, just as they had worked then. However since a whole host of security vulnerabilities and code fixes had created a
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Make lto-cm compile

doogie
lto-cm doesn't compile, here are some tips! Those of you who are looking to check out the lto-cm utility located here https://github.com/scangeo/lto-cm may find that the damn thing doesn't compile. Here are some quick notes that allowed me to get it up and running. Many thanks to my friend Kevin for discovering this. I have decided to post it up here as a reference for the other folks who want to try
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E2900 / V1280 Enable GUI

doogie
I have a XVR-100 and a USB card installed in my E2900. To enable the graphical console login in Solaris 10 I have done the following post installation: #/usr/dt/bin/dtconfig -e # svcadm enable # ln -s /dev/fbs/pfb0 /dev/fb # fbconfig -xserver Xorg # reboot I did repeat these steps after another install, and had some trouble. There may be a step missing but it might provide a clue to someone
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Time for a new workstation, well… old new

doogie
It has been a really long time since I've had a new desktop. Actually, because of the mobile nature of my life, being on the road and all; I have to use a laptop much of the time anyways. After being in North Carolina for an extended 2.5 year hiatus I returned to a workstation that wouldn't boot until after the third or fifth attempt. Eventually after it got used
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News and info for August 2017

doogie
Howdy!   Alright, I must admit that it has been quite a while since I really have posted anything. There has been a lot going on, but finding time to sit down and write things isn't always easy. First off, the site has been moved off of Fookushima, the G5 Quad has been removed from service. Why did this end up being the case? Storage. With the limited wattage I
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April Update 2016

doogie
The G5 quad is doing great. The system has been up for more than 175 days now after traditionally it crashing out after 30. I am currently running the stock cooling system until issues are resolved with the other one. Though, I'm out of town, so hopefully the factory one holds out well. I feel that it will since I am actually running the cooling system more aggressively than it
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Things that I’ve been working on…

doogie
Here is a random post with several things I've been working on over the last month that I figure you might enjoy..   This is a 1996 Bluebird Wanderlodge, I've been doing various things to it. I enjoy the drivers area as it kind of reminds me of a space shuttle with all the instrumentation around. There are a couple of overhead panels as well that take care of various
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Zoneminder is back! More security cameras woooo! DIY CCTV

doogie
For those of you long time DoogieLabs site visitors you might remember this post from long ago when I had my old house and was using zoneminder to monitor the security cameras: http://doogielabs.com/2010/11/news-for-thursday-september-25th-2010/ It has been years since I've used it, though I have been longing to use it again because I had great success with it. This time was a little bit different, because I could finally use the
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Apple G5 Quad “Fookushima”

doogie
Realtime system status can be found here. There no need for me to write out a lengthy introduction for this machine as my intent was very clear with this project, and outlined here in the below video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF7xIHKx6As This machine, as of May 5th 2015 now hosts the DoogieLabs.com website and all other associated websites and services related to my ventures.This system is fast, it really flies with Linux and
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“Military Rack”: Deployable servers and full network with wireless in a flight case.

doogie
One thing is for sure, we love our data. In modern society people use / need their data for various reasons. I have always been an advocate for personally keeping all my data and working from local copies versus storing stuff online. I have no problem with interacting online and sharing that information here, but if for some reason I were to no longer have an internet connection for any
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Converting a non raid root filesystem to a RAID 0 or 1, and SPARC

doogie
This isn't a how to post, so much as a reminder for myself on how I was able to accomplish this. I have Debian wheezy installed on one of my SunFire V240 servers, and I didn't setup the RAID root initially when I was tinkering around with the server. After some research and fidgeting I was able to get things working swell. Debian dropping support for SPARC is saddening, especially
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How to Install IRIX from a Hard Drive

doogie
After getting more involved with SGI stuff as of lately I must admit it is a real bear to get IRIX loaded onto these puppies. This is for several reasons, one of which being I don't have an external SCSI CD-Rom drive always laying around. Maybe I do now,  but changing CDs and hoping that they'll be continually reliable is a farce. People in the past have suggested and discussed
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December what?

doogie
Welcome and for those are read the site, thankyou! It's really all of you that keep me going. I could pack all this in and go to work at a regular place and do the bare minimum for only self benefit but where does the rest of the world benefit from that? It doesn't! My learning, sharing and creating an environment to learn and share together is the drive that
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November 2013 Update

doogie
Chinese made Laptop Battery Review: I got a new battery for my IBM ThinkPad, I took a gamble on one of those cheap Chinese batteries from eBay, as seen here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/190800977853 This battery was not the greatest in my opinion and great care should be taken when purchasing such batteries from eBay. This is the second one of these batteries I have purchased, the first one didn't work correctly at
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On my way back to Colorado

doogie
Well, I must say I've had an awesome couple of weeks at The Geek Group in Grand Rapids MI. I went and worked on a bunch of cars and not only got to see the lab for the first time, but was given the opportunity to have a permanent place there as the Director of Vehicular Sciences. I spent most of the couple of weeks working on car projects that
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ffmpeg on Solaris Sparc, is very useful!

doogie
SO I had a video that I took while filming the stuff for the Talon, it was a camstudio encoded video that I filmed of the data logging software so I could sync the logs with the video. Since my video editing PC balked at opening the format, I decided to break out the Ultrasparc processors to have them stretch their legs on a little video exercise. I fire up
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Vintage Collection- SGI Fuel

doogie
Silicon Graphics Fuel The fuel by many was regarded as a later replacement for the O2. I think that it was definitely a more flexible and expandable workstation versus the O2, albeit still only a uni-processor system. The Fuel was also one of the SGI systems that more closely resembled a PC form factor. The tower is nothing more than a higher quality mid-tower ATX Chassis,  but the motherboard shares
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Random Update

doogie
Sales, sales, sales. I have been working hard on getting my SGI Inventory out the door and into the hands of those who can use them. That's mostly what I've been upto this month. Check the eBay and store sections for the latest parts postings. The SGI Fuel's have been flying off the shelves, I can barely list them fast enough. Some other SGI stuff has been hanging around a
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SGI Stuff March!

doogie
I picked up a large lot of SGI stuff that was about to be trashed, and have been working to restore everything back to fully functional condition and then listing it up online. If anyone is interested in an SGI Fuel or Octane and wants it personalized just let me know and we can work something out. I expect to have everything setup and listed by Wednesday on eBay with
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It’s going to be a busy month!

doogie
New Online Shopping Cart has been setup! I have been working hard at getting a real online store front end setup on this site. To a point it is for testing and self education, if someone needs a site with a good online shopping cart and doesn't want to pay a pretty penny, I have figured out just the solution that will work. With that being said, the online store
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Late January update!

doogie
SGI Fuels are now in stock! Well things have been kind of slow in the way of progress of personal projects because I have been busy trying to get my stuff together and listed on eBay. I recently made the next round of purchases of computer equipment and a bunch of it will be listed up very soon. If you are looking for a laptop or an SGI Computer this
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Doogie, what the shibobbies are you doing to your site?

doogie
If you read my last post (if you were even able to) you'll notice that things have been slated for a change here on the server. Before moving any other websites to the virtual host configuration scenario I must do some testing first. I figured in this case it would be easiest to just monkey around with it on my production site, and it has produced some rather, well, interesting
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Happy New Year! / Janurary Update

doogie
Happy new year! With 2013 now here and the fact that we're all still alive, we can focus on things other than holiday stuff. Back to the grind. What's up with me? It has been sometime since I've blabbered on about some sort of update. I thought about making a video one but at the same time I'm not sure that people would enjoy my YouTube being cluttered up with
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New DoogieLabs Solaris Tools!

doogie
DoogieLabs Solaris Tools v0.2 has been officially released! Solaris Tools now includes Solaris Backup Utilities version 0.93! After some more adjustments the program now sits just over 3,000 lines of code. most features are working and just needs further testing and ironing out of bugs. Actually short of the logging and a couple of minor things it's almost time for version 1.0! There are a couple of additional menu options,
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Vintage Collection: Sun Ultra Enterprise 3000

doogie
 Sun Ultra Enterprise 3000 [DoogieLabs Vintage Computer Collection] I picked up an Enterprise 3000 that had been sitting at the recycle for a few months. Every time I saw it I passed it up because I couldn't spend a great deal of money on something that's well, useless. However, this very last time it was made available to me for what basically amounts to scrap value so I finally accepted
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How your freezer fixes Hard Drives, and more!

doogie
Beware, this can cause damage to your drive just as much as you may find it helps: As outlined on page 2 of this article here. .. For those who want to lecture me about the condensation problem, see the very last tidbit. I have told many people over the years the successes I've had with getting data off of failing drives by putting them in the freezer. There are
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News and ramblings 11-27-2012

doogie
The site looks a little bit different? Indeed, I was actually able to take some time and get some material posted up which is very nice. I basically sat at home over the entire holiday weekend and messed around with computer stuff. I did some performance tweaking on the server, a little bit more programming, installed an OS on an old Alpha machine, and a few other things. It was
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Motorola MW800 Tour & Resources

doogie
Motorola MW800, Tour and Information Resources: Once in a while I am able to obtain a batch of these magnificent machines, and when I do I sell them. Here is some information I have to share: For those who cannot watch the above video; the Motorola MW series are mobile workstations commonly used in Police cars and City vehicles. They have other uses is many industries requiring rugged computers. For
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Vintage collection: Apple Powerbook 1400cs

doogie
The Apple Powerbook was a series of laptops made in the late 80's through the mid to late 90's. They all feature either an old Motorola 68030, 040.. Or a PowerPC CPU. Apple was known for a number of innovations resulting from the powerbooks over the years. Including power eject PC-Card slots, and CD-Drives. This PowerBook 1400cs is the world's first production laptop to include a CD-Rom drive. It was
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Solaris ZFS Fun!

doogie
I have been working to make some fundamental changes to the DoogieLabs site and server. It was recommended to be by a friend to check out ZFS, he said I had no idea what I was missing. He was very right indeed, and after some research I uncovered something additional. No standard RAID 5 is actually reliable, especially the metadb version that I was using with ufs. CLICK HERE for
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Powerball Lottery Software Coming Soon

doogie
Every inspiring programmer needs good projects to sharpen his or her skill set. I decided that a lottery program would be a great way to play around with some new functions, and learn about the random number generator in c++. One night I was poking around the Powerball website and found the past winning numbers. I then realized that the winning numbers text file download link never changed from the
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DoogieLabs Solaris Tools

doogie
DoogieLabs Solaris Tools & Utilities Current Release: Download Solaris Tools v0.2 / December 2012 Older Releases: Download Solaris Tools v0.1 I have been using some of these tools with my Solaris box ever since I got it initially, and now that I've worked hard on a backup program I figure I can release it and allow for people who want to use it on their Sparc Solaris box. How to
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HOWTO: Setting up the RSC Console

doogie
Setting up the RSC Console Some sun servers include what's called an RSC Card. RSC stands for "Remote System Control" and provides a way to "white switch" a server without actually having to be at the facility it's located at. The RSC Card is basically a self contained computer containing serial ports, ethernet, and a modem. One serial port is linked to the system directly, and allows access to the
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Upgrade for the V880!

doogie
I got the cable in that I have been wanting for a very long time. . I decided to make a video of the installation process, pretty neat! I ran a UnixBench routine at the end for a real world filecopy example. I have noticed that there is a slight performance hit when copying to the raid versus a  a single disk. I suspect that this is because it is
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