Late Christmas present

So while messing around with the VGA cable wiring, the O2 I ordered arrived at my doorstep :-)

So after unpacking it, I hooked it up.  Yes! It boots and displays on my DELL..... but wait a minute, the color seems to bit greenish and the image is not centered, #@&§ again display problems.

I'm getting a bit fed up with this.  In a few days I'll fetch an old CRT screen from my parents and see if I can get a different result using that one.

If anybody can help me out, don't hesitate :-)

SGI Octane trouble: part 2

After reading up some more on the internet, I spent most part of the day trying to sort out the display problems I have with my Octane.

As described in my previous post, I cut a VGA cable in half to be able to rewire the connections using a breadboard.  As the leads in the VGA cable are a bit flimsy I soldered them to some sturdier wire attached on a test PCB that I cut to size.

So after a lot of soldering and fiddling around I had a breadboard setup ready to test out possible solutions.

The image above is as the wires would be in a regular VGA cable.  As this does not work I tried out a first possible solution, as described here.

But to no avail.  So I disconnected everything but the RGB channels.

Again, didn't solve the problem. So I tried out two other possible wire ups trying to match the pinouts found googling around:

VGA	13W3
1	A1
2	A2
3	A3
5	10
6	A1 return
7	A2 return
8	A3 return
12	2
13	4
14	5

VGA	13W3
1	A1
2	A2
3	A3
6	A1 return
7	A2 return
8	A3 return
11	2
12	6
13	4
14	5

Again, this did not provide any output on my DELL.

So, conceding defeat (for now) I just ordered an adapter that is 'guaranteed' to work with SGI machines, I'll see if it provides a solution.  For the moment I'm out of inspiration on how to solve this problem. I'll let you know if the new adapter was a solution or if I try out something new to get this working.

Some SGI Octane trouble

I hooked up my SGI Octane to my DELL monitor (DELL E228WFP), hooked up an old PS/2 keyboard and mouse and the power cable.  I switched on the Octane, it starts booting, the light in the front bezel goes white, then red and eventually ends up white.  But unfortunately, nothing is showing on my DELL monitor. #@!*

So after going through the troubleshooting section of the Octane workstation owner's guide I am inclined to think something is wrong with the DB13W3M to HD15F (VGA) adapter that I bought from ebay. This adapter would allow me to hookup the octane to my DELL monitor (at least, that was what I thought). Some communication with my Octane seller, some googling and some multimeter tests on the adapter, it indeed seems to be the cause of my problem.

So I went through my junk to find an additional VGA cable to cut it in half and do some rewiring.  This would allow me to see if I can make the Octane display something on my monitor.  Trouble is, the only VGA cables I had laying around were with 2 male connectors and none with both a female and male connector.   #@!*

So, I went out to a local computer store to fetch some VGA gender changes (which set me back 4 €).

Plan of action: In the coming days, I'll cut the VGA cable in half, connect the leads of both halves to a breadboard, do some rewiring and test out the rewiring job on my monitor (hopefully without it going dead on me :-) )

I'll keep you posted.

Early Christmas

Just received 2 early Christmas presents :-D.

The first being 2 Texas Instruments Launchpads. Still thinking of some projects I can realize with these.

The second being an SGI Octane :-).  I love the design of these machines.  I still need to check what the state of this machine is and play around with it.

Software RAID setup

I recently got burnt by a hard drive failure.  Although most of my data was safely backed up, I still lost some data.  Therefore I wanted to setup a software RAID solution, hoping this will provide me enough room in the future to backup any additional data that needs backup before replacing the failed drive. This software RAID setup is based on an Ubuntu 10.10 fresh install.

The disks:
1 x 500GB drive (Western Digital Caviar Green GP WD5000AADS) for system software.
2 x 2TB drives (Western Digital Caviar Green GP WD20EARS) that will become one 2TB data storage as I am going to be using an RAID1 setup (meaning the 2TB drives will be mirrored/identical to one-another).

Hardware setup:
I started by installing the 500GB drive in my machine, replacing the failed hard drive.  I rebooted and installed Ubuntu 10.10.  After installation and setup I shutdown the PC to allow installing the two  data drives.

After installing the two data drives I fired up the machine and ........ NOTHING.......PANIC
After some fiddling I noticed in the BIOS settings that apparently the boot drive was automatically assumed to be one of the new data drives.  So after setting this back to the 500GB drive containing the fresh install and saving my BIOS setting, my PC was back up and running.  Time for setting up the software RAID.

Software setup:
Before starting this setup I began reading up on software RAID on linux (see 'Sources used' section at the end).  Next I'll list the steps used to reach my software RAID setup.

installing the mdadm tool

I started by installing  the mdadm tool via Ubuntu's Synaptic Package Manager. Once installed I rebooted the machine to see if after reboot the necessary kernel modules related to software RAID would have been loaded automatically.

check install mdadm

To see if the RAID modules were correctly started I issued the following command.

someuser@linuxbox:~$ cat /proc/mdstat

Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10] 

unused devices: <none>

list the drives

Before creating the RAID device I needed to know what were the device names of the disks I was going to use.

someuser@linuxbox:~$ sudo fdisk -l

[sudo] password for someuser: 

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x00072e62

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/sda1   *           1       59416   477254656   83  Linux

/dev/sda2           59416       60802    11128833    5  Extended

/dev/sda5           59416       60802    11128832   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/sdc: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdc doesn't contain a valid partition table

setting partition types

Before you can create your RAID device you also need to set the appropriate partition types for the disks you are going to use. In fdisk you can always enter 'm' as command for help and 'l' to see what are the possible partition types.

someuser@linuxbox:~$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdb

Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel

Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x08c32e4e.

Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.

After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to

         switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to

         sectors (command 'u').

Command (m for help): n

Command action

   e   extended

   p   primary partition (1-4)

p

Partition number (1-4): 1

First cylinder (1-243201, default 1): 

Using default value 1

Last cylinder, +cylinders or +size{K,M,G} (1-243201, default 243201): 

Using default value 243201

Command (m for help): t

Selected partition 1

Hex code (type L to list codes): da

Changed system type of partition 1 to da (Non-FS data)

Command (m for help): w

The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

Syncing disks.

someuser@linuxbox:~$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdc

Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel

Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x1fde476b.

Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.

After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to

         switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to

         sectors (command 'u').

Command (m for help): n

Command action

   e   extended

   p   primary partition (1-4)

p

Partition number (1-4): 1

First cylinder (1-243201, default 1): 

Using default value 1

Last cylinder, +cylinders or +size{K,M,G} (1-243201, default 243201): 

Using default value 243201

Command (m for help): t

Selected partition 1

Hex code (type L to list codes): da

Changed system type of partition 1 to da (Non-FS data)

Command (m for help): w

The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

Syncing disks.

create raid device

Now we are ready to create the RAID device.

someuser@linuxbox:~$ sudo mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=mirror --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1

mdadm: size set to 1953511936K

mdadm: array /dev/md0 started.

Now the two drives will start synching, you can monitor the synch process like this:

someuser@linuxbox:~$ cat /proc/mdstat

Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10] 

md0 : active raid1 sdc1[1] sdb1[0]

      1953511936 blocks [2/2] [UU]

      [>....................]  resync =  0.5% (10869696/1953511936) finish=401.4min speed=80648K/sec

set the mdadm.conf file

To make sure your system remembers your RAID setup's configuration you need to write it to the mdadm configuration file.

someuser@linuxbox:~$ sudo mdadm --detail --scan --verbose >> /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

bash: /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf: Permission denied

someuser@linuxbox:~$ ls -al /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 626 2010-11-28 20:46 /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

someuser@linuxbox:~$ sudo chmod a+w /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

someuser@linuxbox:~$ sudo mdadm --detail --scan --verbose >> /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

someuser@linuxbox:~$ sudo chmod a-w,u+w /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

someuser@linuxbox:~$ ls -al /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 723 2010-12-04 11:57 /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

someuser@linuxbox:~$ cat /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

# mdadm.conf

#

# Please refer to mdadm.conf(5) for information about this file.

#

# by default, scan all partitions (/proc/partitions) for MD superblocks.

# alternatively, specify devices to scan, using wildcards if desired.

DEVICE partitions

# auto-create devices with Debian standard permissions

CREATE owner=root group=disk mode=0660 auto=yes

# automatically tag new arrays as belonging to the local system

HOMEHOST <system>

# instruct the monitoring daemon where to send mail alerts

MAILADDR root

# definitions of existing MD arrays

# This file was auto-generated on Sun, 28 Nov 2010 20:46:56 +0100

# by mkconf $Id$

ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid1 num-devices=2 metadata=00.90 UUID=f41ede30:06fdbe6a:d1cf655b:887f7986

   devices=/dev/sdb1,/dev/sdc1

prepare the file system


Once the RAID device is created you can prepare the file system.

someuser@linuxbox:~$ sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/md0

prepare mount point


To become useful I needed to mount the RAID device to a mount point accessible to my everyday user.

mkdir /home/someuser/data

edit the /etc/fstab and add following line:

/dev/md0 /home/someuser/data ext3 user,rw 1 2

sudo mount /home/someuser/data

sudo chown -R someuser.someuser /home/someuser/data

sudo umount /home/someuser/data

mount /home/someuser/data

Now my software RAID setup is ready for usage.  Currently it gets mounted in my local home directory.  I'll do some basic tests first. After those tests I will move the complete contents of the home directory onto this RAID device.

Sources used:

https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RAID_setup
http://linuxconfig.org/Linux_Software_Raid_1_Setup
http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/wiki/index.php/Quick_HOWTO_:_Ch26_:_Linux_Software_RAID