Category: Techspeak

1. Backed up /etc/X11/xorg.conf to xorg.conf.bak
2. Copied the section entitled
   Section “Device”
   Identifier “nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x]”
   Driver “nv”
   BusID “PCI:1:0:0”
   EndSection
   
   and pasted in then modified so that I had a second section as follows:Section “Device”
   Identifier “nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 5200 AGP 8x]”
   Driver “nv”
   BusID “PCI:2:0:0”
   EndSection
   Note, the Identifier doesn’t need to actually be the name of the card, as it’s just used for your reference. I don’t even know for certain that I have an MX 5200, and I know it’s not AGP, but I was in a hurry, so I left it as is. The important part is the BusID section. Since I knew my working, default monitor was in PCI slot 1, and the second card I had was in the next slot, and that both cards were using the DVI ports, I simply changed BusID “PCI:1:0:0” to read BusID “PCI:2:0:0” in the second “Device” section.
3. Copied the “Monitor” section so that I started with
   Section “Monitor”
   Identifier “UltraSharp 1800 1”
   Option “DPMS”
   HorizSync 28-51
   VertRefresh 43-60
   EndSection
   
   and then had, in addition,Section “Monitor”
   Identifier “UltraSharp 1800 2”
   Option “DPMS”
   HorizSync 28-51
   VertRefresh 43-60
   EndSection
4. Copied the “Screen” section so I started with
   Section “Screen”
   Identifier “Default Screen”
   Device “nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x]”
   Monitor “UltraSharp 1800 1”
   DefaultDepth 24
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 1
   Modes “1024×768” “800×600” “640×480”
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 4
   Modes “1024×768” “800×600” “640×480”
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 8
   Modes “1024×768” “800×600” “640×480”
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 15
   Modes “1024×768” “800×600” “640×480”
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 16
   Modes “1024×768” “800×600” “640×480”
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 24
   Modes “1024×768” “800×600” “640×480”
   EndSubSection
   EndSectionthen had, in addition,
   Section “Screen”
   Identifier “Default Screen”
   Device “nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 5200 AGP 8x]”
   Monitor “UltraSharp 1800 2”
   DefaultDepth 24
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 1
   Modes “1024×768” “800×600” “640×480”
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 4
   Modes “1024×768” “800×600” “640×480”
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 8
   Modes “1024×768” “800×600” “640×480”
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 15
   Modes “1024×768” “800×600” “640×480”
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 16
   Modes “1024×768” “800×600” “640×480”
   EndSubSection
   SubSection “Display”
   Depth 24
   Modes “1024×768” “800×600” “640×480”
   EndSubSection
   EndSection
5. Finally, I added the italicized line to my “ServerLayout” section
   Section “ServerLayout”
   Identifier “Default Layout”
   Screen “Default Screen”
   Screen “Second Screen” RightOf “Default Screen”
   InputDevice “Generic Keyboard”
   InputDevice “Configured Mouse”
   InputDevice “stylus” “SendCoreEvents”
   InputDevice “cursor” “SendCoreEvents”
   InputDevice “eraser” “SendCoreEvents”
   EndSectionto add my new, second screen to the right of the default screen.
6. I rebooted, and then BAM! It worked. Took about five minutes.

I am astounded as to the lengths that Spencer, the tech who is handling my case where we are working to address extremely slow network performance, will go. The service we are getting is incredible, and this is all included just because we purchased ProCurve equipment. Combine this with their lifetime warranty, and this is an “I will never purchase another manufacturer’s switch again” situation.
Seriously, I’ve never met a vendor who would provide such service and support for free. I still cannot believe it. No contracts to purchase, no nothing. Just because we have all HP equipment on the LAN, we’re getting phenomenal service. Other vendors would do well to follow ProCurve’s example.

I spent an entire day troubleshooting odd network problems at a local client last Friday. The symptoms were:

• Users could not
• get their email
• access files on the server
• log on successfully
• Internet access was sluggish, for some users, but fine for others.
• Software deployments from across the networks (content filtering software, Ghost images, GPO-deployed packages) would not deploy.
• Ping times from a workstation to a server (across 5 switches) ranged anywhere from <1ms to several thousand ms, or just plain timeouts.
• Ping times from a workstation to another workstation, connected on the same switch, were only marginally better, resulting in anything from 1ms to frequent timeouts and dropped packets.
• Ping times to the local switch, to which the servers were plugged in, ranged from 1ms to several hundred ms.

Several hours of troubleshooting resulted in the following highlights:

• After two hours of capturing packets, 30% of all network traffic was ARP. This is with only a handful of desktop machines powered on. Not good.
• Rebooting one switch made a huge difference, and all of a sudden network traffic was working again. However, things were still slow on occasion.

So tomorrow I will be making some VLANs to cut down on the broadcast traffic across these eight or so switches. Fun!

I decided to just post this excerpt from a conversation I’m having with friends over on Pownce.
“I’m actually more partial to Facebook and Twitter now, for a couple of reasons. Both of them support a mobile interface, and although this is really minor, I hate the fact that I cannot login via the Pownce homepage – I need to hit pownce.com/login before my username and password ever work. Annoying. Facebook’s customization is also nice too. It seems to me that most of the social networking tools are trying to either kill Facebook, or to strike the right balance between Facebook and Twitter. That’s how Pownce feels to me now, only I’m not seeing the advantage of using it over Facebook, except that it’s nice enough to include messages in my email notifications.”
Facebook has appeal to me for several reasons right now:

• I can add lots of cool apps to it
• I have more friends on Facebook than any other social network except LinkedIn, but those aren’t all “friends,” they’re “contacts.”
• Facebook has a mobile interface. Pownce doesn’t.

Those are the big ones. I guess the place where my friends are is the biggest factor. What’s the use of a social network if there’s nobody in it?

Power on the (4 year-old) PowerBook.
Insert the Debian CD.
Hold down the C key to boot from CD.
Follow standard Debian installation.
Done. Wow. After all of those howtos I was reading on installing Debian (and other distros) on a PowerMac, that was really, really simple.

You know, if you tell someone that you’ll have their issue resolved in 24-72 hours, every time they call, sooner or later, (sooner, in my case), they’ll stop believing you.
Yes, as of this morning, our Business DSL is still not working. And they tell me they’ll have it fixed within 24-72 hours. Except, that’s what they’ve been saying for the last six days.

Today, around 12PM, our DSL service went out.
After they fixed it on Friday afternoon (back to our dynamic IP account), they turned it off again today. The rep today says “I’m still showing you as having a static IP – it should have never worked with a PPPoE account). And yet, it did, all weekend.
Curiously, it’s not working with the static IP they’ve assigned either. After 30 min on the phone with them, they’re “opening a ticket.”

Remember that phone line I had Verizon install at our house earlier this week?
It’s not working. According to VZ repair, it’s “an outside problem” and they’ll have somebody take care of it by 6PM on Monday.
Can they get ANYTHING right?

So, I’ve struck a deal with the Fresh Ubuntu podcast that will essentially be carrying my (as-yet-failed-to-launch) podcast, the Man Page Minute as one of their show’s regular segments. My plan for the podcast was to cover command line basics, specifically on Linux and related platforms so that beginners could learn the power of the command line. This stemmed from a segment that we briefly did on the MacNu podcast last year, but it never really went anywhere.
Here’s a (very) brief outline of the first segment which I’ll be recording shortly, and should appear sometime in an August episode:

• Why use the command line?
• failsafe administration (X won’t load, headless system)
• faster for many tasks (deleting multiple files)
• powerful (regexps, process manipulation)
• faster for remote administration (ssh)
• How to access the shell
• Applications | Accessories | Terminal
• ssh to your machine
• Command of the week: ls
  ?????? -a, –all??? do not ignore entries starting with .? In other words, show hidden “dot files.”
  -A, –almost-all – Doesn’t show . and .. (the parent and current directories)
  -l???? use a long listing format
  -h, –human-readable
  with -l, print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)
  -m???? fill width with a comma separated list of entries
  -r, –reverse
  reverse order while sorting
  -R, –recursive
  list subdirectories recursively
  -s, –size
  with -l, print size of each file, in blocks
  -S???? sort by file size
  -t???? sort by modification time
  -1???? list one file per line
  -x???? list entries by lines instead of by columns
  -X???? sort alphabetically by entry extension