Nostalgia time. While reading a few Wikipedia articles, just remembered that my first computer was a Timex 2068, which in fact was a clone of the ZX Spectrum 48k. I got it in 1987 but I was used to play with other computers (friends, school, etc) like the Commodore 64, Atari ST, Phillips MSX, etc. The Timex 2068 had a cartridge system but with limited support. I had a few ones (a word processor and a Spectrum 48k emulator cartridge to load games using the cassette player). My first language was of course, BASIC. Those were the days. I remember the exact day when I have used a computer. I was a kid in 1984 and at the time I was living in Brazil. I went to an exhibition where there was a TK 82C (a brazilian clone of the ZX81) connected to a big and ugly green monitor playing the Game of Life (very popular at that time as a demo BASIC program). I immediatly fell in love with computers.
OpenDedup just released a greatly enhanced Virtual Appliance based on SDFS. The OpenDedup Virtual NAS Appliance is designed for simple setup and management SDFS volumes for virtual environments. The Appliance includes capabilities to create, mount,delete, and export SDFS volumes via NFS from a Web Based interface. It also includes VMWare storage api integration that allow the quick Data Store creation and cloning of Virtual machines located on SDFS Volumes.
Just found out that my Time Machine SparseBundle is corrupt. I thought that it would be cool to save some money and hack Time Machine to enable backups to a Network Share on my home NAS instead of buying Time Capsule. It worked perfectly for a month or so, but I’ve done some changes on my home network and a couple of abrupt disconnects caused major havoc on it and eventually that was the cause of the corruption. Just found this info on this thread:
The technical reason why Apple limits Time Machine to 10.5 AFP volumes appears to be to prevent disk image corruption. There were additional features added to AFP in 10.5 to support Time Machine. These presumably allow the disk image engine to force disk image journal data to write out all the way to the disk. Without such features, a network interruption can result in a corrupted filesystem on the disk image despite journaling. Remember, journaling relies on the journal being written all the way to disk before the changes take place. If you can’t guarantee that (e.g., because of network/NAS buffering) then the journal is useless. Time Machine appears to rely heavily on disk journaling to deal with network drop-outs, interrupted backups, and the like. Take this away and your data is at risk.
If the NAS you are using supports these features it should report them to the OS and you should natively be able to choose that volume. If you have to trick the OS to use the volume it means the NAS does not support it.
To summarize: if you care about your backup data you should avoid using non-natively supported AFP servers.
I would be interested to know if somebody got it right with non-AFP 10.5 NAS (ie, Samba or NFS hack). I am now using a local attached USB disk.
Android is an “open” operating system in name only. Sure, you can get the source code and mess around with it, but there are no mainstream generic Android phones that work on any carrier, and no carrier-sold phones are simple to crack open and do what you will.
“Open” refers to a carrier’s ability to modify the phone’s software to its will, not the consumer or developers’. In fact, many Android phones come with garbageware installed on the phones’ home screen, with no way to remove it.
After much speculation, Steve Jobs finally announced the Apple iPad. I love it, but there is one thing missing: no built-in camera. I was expecting to use Skype on the sofa with this nifty device. Should I wait for 2nd generation? Good coverage of the announcement here (Gizmodo).
I’ve been working as a Technical Support Engineer for VMware since July 2009 and my work life is virtualization, storage and solving stuff everyday. I felt the need to document information and new things that I’m learning, so instead of using a notepad, why not put it on a blog? Let’s get virtual with All Things Virtual. Cheers.
I’m a big fan of WordPress but I still use MovableType for some blogs. Recently I had to upgrade an old MT 3.25 to the newest 4.25 and decided to that cleanly. Created a new blog on 4.25 with all the required configurations. Then I’ve tried to export all the entries on 3.25 and imported everything back on 4.25. Everything went well except for the minor glitch of MT 3.25 doesn’t export the BASENAME information for each entry (that’s useful if you want to preserve the old links). So, here’s what I did. On your old MT 3.25 edit your lib/MT/ImportExport.pm and just add the BASENAME for the template text on the export sub, just before the DATE:
I always wanted to know more about the customized Google servers. The cool part is that they have implemented a distributed UPS (each server has his own battery and charge controller):
Instead of having a centralized UPS, Google integrated a battery into every server with a charge controller and test circuit. The battery is sealed lead-acid. Basically, it is a car battery. The goal is to keep the server running for “about a minute” until the generator turns on or the A/C power source is switched.
The power supply ONLY provides 12VDC (notice the yellow 12V wires coming out of the power supply), and the power only goes to the motherboard. The motherboard then directly supplies power to the disks (at 5VDC) and no other voltage conversions occur (with the exception of 1.2-1.8V for the processor). As such, the AC feed of either 208VAC or 230VAC flow directly to the server with no UPS in the middle. The battery backup directly supplies 12VDC during power outages, so no more inverters.
The power supply is about 92% efficient according to Google.
The “distributed UPS” solution is estimated by Google to be “99.9%” efficient since there’s no power distribution losses by operating directly at the DC voltage of the server.
Pictures and more info here. A great video (and pics) describing a Google Datacenter (servers, cooling, etc).
Ah pois é Tózé. Não sou nenhum anti-DRM zealot mas desde que ouvi esta alma na Antena3 a dizer que o download “ilegal” de mp3 servia para financiar o crescimento do terrorismo mundial (presumo que para comprar AK-47′s para gajos barbudos no Afeganistão) começo a ter pena de cromos como este que vêm o tapete a ser-lhes puxado e daqui a uns anos ninguém se vai lembrar deles. Não foi por falta de aviso.
Hi, I'm Frederico Marques and this is my life notebook and personal blog. It is written in English and Portuguese (my mother tongue). Thanks for passing by. Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my company. Feel free to contact me.
