Computers - What have you tweaked today?

Sounds like your work is the easy mode stuff...
 
Wouldn't mind upgrading my cooling, RAM and computer desk but can't afford it. #nojobnomoney
 
Just doubled the amount of RAM in my i7 based PC, from 6Gb to 12Gb, which has speeded things up nicely. :)

I do a bit of HD video editing, so the extra RAM will be helpful.

Dave
 
I put my Onkyo and KEF setup on the computer the other day if that counts? I cleared down my windows update old files..

Also put a samsung 850 pro and 16gb in the work laptop too.
 
Cleaned the space where the full size tower used to sit to make way for the laptop i have bought - all part of freeing up space!
 
Ordered some drives to make a RAID 5 array for some network storage in the server, and the dual NIC I wanted for pfsense. SATA drives as the 15K SAS drives I've got at the moment can be bleedin' noisy (and their capacity is small).

My Synology might go on sale as a consequence, since I don't really use it and I'll have a load more storage on the new array.
 
I'm building a new WHS2011 server. I'm using a Silverstone DS380 case that packs in eight 3.5" and four 2.5" drives despite its small size. Mobo, PSU and boot drive are in place. Only problem is that the case fans are all running at full speed so I need to investigate the PWM splitter cable. Picked up a used 8-port RAID card on eBay which should arrive today so I can finish the assembly and load WHS before putting the drives in.
 
I am running matx setup with i7 4770K and 32Gb 2400mhz c10 ram. Very nice and fast atm but limited by the cooling I can provide to the CPU. So think of buying a water cooling capable matx case and stick corsair h90 onto the CPU and clock the cpu beyond the 4.2gHz I can achieve on air. Maybe 4.5 or 4.6 :). Would speed up my noise reduction a lot. Also may allow me rub the ram a little higher too due to better air flow. Current sweet spot for the ram is 2600mhz c11. My project for the Xmas break.
 
Not today, but in the last couple of weeks I managed to get the home built pfSense firewall installed. The two networks in the house are now bridged into one network with a wi-fi link between them and the server upstairs is taking care of DNS/DHCP. I'm surprised it all hangs together, but thus far it's been absolutely bulletproof. I'm looking forward to replacing the wi-fi link with some trusty cat 6 early next year and getting much more reasonable file transfer speeds between the server and boxes down stairs.
 
afasoas said:
Not today, but in the last couple of weeks I managed to get the home built pfSense firewall installed. The two networks in the house are now bridged into one network with a wi-fi link between them and the server upstairs is taking care of DNS/DHCP. I'm surprised it all hangs together, but thus far it's been absolutely bulletproof. I'm looking forward to replacing the wi-fi link with some trusty cat 6 early next year and getting much more reasonable file transfer speeds between the server and boxes down stairs.
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pfSense in a VM is on the list of jobs, I've got an extra dual port NIC on the way to go in the ESXi host for that very reason. and have started running the extra cables. If it can do PPPoE (I haven't checked yet) I could use it to replace the router as well and plug straight into the back of the VDSL modem.
 
i thought id go crazy and move the taskbar to the top the the screen... its like a whole new OS!!!
 
onomatopoeia said:
pfSense in a VM is on the list of jobs, I've got an extra dual port NIC on the way to go in the ESXi host for that very reason. and have started running the extra cables. If it can do PPPoE (I haven't checked yet) I could use it to replace the router as well and plug straight into the back of the VDSL modem.
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You can't lose the modem all together unfortunately. But you can run the modem in bridged mode and then handle the PPPoE configuration in pfSense.
 
jus_tin said:
i thought id go crazy and move the taskbar to the top the the screen... its like a whole new OS!!!
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I went really wild and changed the desktop background,
its like a whole new monitor (y)

Oh wait, it is a whole new monitor,
I just upgraded from a 19in 1280 x 1024 to a 27in 1920 x 1080.
I'm impressed :)
 
DaveS2 said:
Just doubled the amount of RAM in my i7 based PC, from 6Gb to 12Gb, which has speeded things up nicely. :)

I do a bit of HD video editing, so the extra RAM will be helpful.

Dave
Click to expand...

Having seen the advantage from doing the above, I have decided to take it a step further, and have ordered a SSD to replace the existing HDD.

Unlike even just a couple of years ago, when the cost of high capacity SSDs outweighed the advantages, the prices have now come down to sensible levels.

Dave
 
onomatopoeia said:
pfSense in a VM is on the list of jobs, I've got an extra dual port NIC on the way to go in the ESXi host for that very reason. and have started running the extra cables. If it can do PPPoE (I haven't checked yet) I could use it to replace the router as well and plug straight into the back of the VDSL modem.
Click to expand...
Yes, pfSense can plug straight into the back of the modem and run PPPoE. It's how I use it on the two sites I have. pfSense is the dogs :)
 
arad85 said:
Yes, pfSense can plug straight into the back of the modem and run PPPoE. It's how I use it on the two sites I have. pfSense is the dogs :)
Click to expand...
Excellent! Just got to find the time to set it all up.
 
lalala installed 4x3TB drives, loaded up the RAID controller BIOS utility and realised it only supports up to 2TB. bah. So I'm going to have a 6TB array, not 9TB. Or buy an H700 card.

Today's lesson: Don't do things in a hurry.
 
Laptop has had the 2 x 2gb DDR3 sticks removed and replaced with 2 x 4gb DDR3 1600mhz instead.
The 1tb 5400rpm hard drive has been replaced with a 128gb Sandisk SSD.

My HP ultrabook is now rocking and rolling!!!
 
On a fairly old MacBook Pro (Early 2011). RAM up to 16Gb, manual states 8Gb max but 16 is recognised. Took out the optical drive and replaced it with a 1TB 7200rpm HD to supplement the existing 500Gb HD. As its on an i7 processor which is still fast enough for most modern work spending a couple of hundred on upgrades made sense and have spruced up the old girl quite nicely. Only thing I would like to have done would be to upgrade the graphics card but that did not seem to be much of an option and does stop the 3D from functioning but since I've no need for that I'm happy enough.
 
Lit a fire under a hosting company that had turned off our primary MX over the weekend because they failed to allocate the automatic payment made three weeks ago, same as we make every month, to our account. They sent us an email (wrongly) telling us we were "seriously overdue" at 6am on Saturday morning, then helpfully turned the server off an hour later.

I realised something was wrong on Sunday morning when I didn't have the dozen or so emails from overnight cron jobs that I normally get every morning, but was busy all day so couldn't get into work to log into the account pages (the SSH root login that I have at home to deal with weekend emergencies being of no value if the server is actually off!).

By about 2pm today the secondary MX had managed to flush its queue of a few thousand (mostly spam) emails through, it's configured as a direct passthrough to the primary in normal operation or writing everything to a spool for later delivery if the primary is down. I had to kick exim on the primary server a few times as it kept getting stuck.

I need less days like this!
 
neil_g said:
36tb (30tb usable) raid 5 finally finished parity checking this afternoon :D
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Yerst. I finally moved my 12TB (9TB useable) RAID to the new server this morning. Different model but same make and generation controller so didn't lose any data. :D
Then added fifth drive - estimated completion time of 48 hours! :eek:
 
Snapsh0t said:
Yerst. I finally moved my 12TB (9TB useable) RAID to the new server this morning. Different model but same make and generation controller so didn't lose any data. :D
Then added fifth drive - estimated completion time of 48 hours! :eek:
Click to expand...
:D

Although the most painful bit is transferring the legacy data off a cupboard full of old external drives that a certain department had been squirrelling away over the last 10 years. o_O
 
Ho yus. I could tell you tales about a certain district council where I spent three years some time ago. I'm so glad I'm (mostly) retired from doing this professionally now.
 
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Yesterday I installed a load of cat5e cables between the study and the patch panel in the boiler cupboard. Today I installed pfSense in a VM and used it to replace my router (the Technicolor supplied with FTTC connections) and my hardware firewall (an original Firebrick). Result is my download throughput is up from 7Mbps to 38Mbps. The Firebrick was the limiting factor as it has 10 base T ports on it.

Now to re-write all my firewall rules to allow access to all my server processes from the Internet again.
 
Flashed the newest BIOS for my X99S MSI Gaming motherboard, H.60 which addresses memory errors, something I have experienced a lot with this new build. Spent the next hour trying to actually boot as system repeatedley crashed with a fatal WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR. Re-flashed H.50 in the end...:thinking:
 
Finally turned my attention back to my server.
It's been concerning me for a while that my disks weren't going into stand-by mode. With all five disks spun up the power consumption of the server is nearly doubled - and as they are typically not accessed for 18 hours a day that's a lot of electrickery wasted.

I reduced the stand-by delay time to 60 seconds (hdparm -S 12 /dev/disk/by-id/some_disk_id) and experimented with various active power management values until I got them to actually spin-down. Then restore the stand-by delay back to sensible values and wrote the configuration into hdparm.conf. Set zfs atime property to false on each of the zfs file systems. Rebooted, stopped samba and dovecot, waited half an hour and the disks were in stand-by. Re-started samba. I've not checked since but hopefully they will still be in stand-by when I get home*. If not, I've some idea of where the next problem lies.

*Getting my VPN set-up is about third/fourth on the list
 
I had to compile some of my code on Ubuntu Dapper (6.06) today.

Old Skool.....
 
arad85 said:
I had to compile some of my code on Ubuntu Dapper (6.06) today.

Old Skool.....
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I'm having to build apache, php and their variuous dependencies from source on breezy at the moment (apt being completely broken on this particular server). I have so far managed to avoid installing a newer version of gcc and have got everything to build with gcc 2.95.4 and a bit of persuasion.

Package management systems are great until they break, or install a version of something that is too new for the things that are using it (see : php, which has a habit of deprecating and deleting bits of the language as it goes along, thereby breaking previously working source code on live servers)
 
(this was a couple of weeks ago but)...

Bought one of these: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007BD0MPM to install my 3 monitors (2 x 27", 1 x 24") on (they just fit) then...

...installed a DacMagic, Nait 3R and a pair of Dynaudio BM5 nearfield monitors underneath. Nice :D
 
Wiped the pc and started again with a fresh win7 install. Stripped all the rubbish off it and put my programs on it. Then backed it up so if i do it again i can start from 'my setup' rather then the manufacturers
 
think the highlight of my week was calling IBM support, waiting a couple of hours for an IBM engineer to turn up, waiting 20 mins for the IBM box to shutdown, waiting 30 mins for the IBM engineer to swap out 2 cache batteries and waiting another 20 mins for the IBM box to come back up.

Christmas wind down FTW.
 
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The Missus was complaining last week that her laptop was slow so I thought I'd take a look. My god was it slow.

To be fair it's about 5 years old and wasn't expensive then (HP DM1 1020ea) but it was unusable in my eyes (I'm used to extremely fast PC's as I work on them all day). I offered to buy her a new one but she said she likes the one she has - but faster (nothing is ever easy).

The machine had 3gb of ram installed, 1gb is built into the board with a second, removable, 2gb stick. It runs Win7 home 32bit so will only use 4gb max but I figured, as Windows uses about 1gb itself, knocking it up to 4gb would give it a 50% increase in ram. So I bought a 4gb stick to replace the 2gb, giving 5gb but only 4gb usable.

Next was the drive. It only had a 320gb standard 5400rpm drive so of course this was going. I considered putting a 1tb SSD in it but thought this would be a complete overkill. Then I looked at the WD combined SSD and hard drive but again I couldn't see the machine making good use of it. I settled on a Seagate 1tb SSHD (which is surprisingly good).

After installing the above it was time to optimise Windows and all the drivers. The amount of useless bloat ware on this laptop was amazing so of course that all went. Next all the drivers were updated and then I switched most of the services to manual. Then a good clean up of all the registry files etc.

I wasn't expecting much to be honest, it's still an old and slow laptop after all. It is actually now pretty fast though :)
Before I started I timed the boot time. It was 106 seconds. It's now under 30 seconds which is quite respectable I think. The real performance boost though has been for editing her photo's. Before it wouldn't even preview RAW files without hanging for a while - now it's instant and edits pretty fast as well.

Including a new battery, I spent about £150 on upgrades. Not bad really.
 
No one ever got fired for buying IBM.

I could never figure out why.....
 
Got a mate with an SDS drill and the appropriate bits to help me drill a couple of holes - which means I can finally run ethernet back and forth between the living room and garage.
That means firewall, switch and the home-built server can be relocated to the garage - making the spare room look like a bedroom again.

A dell server has arrived today which should make a fairly heavy duty virtualisation platform. I've also acquired a managed gigabit switch so I can v-lan it off from the rest of the network. Should be great for running some labs and testing migration from Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2012. I'm just looking for a second hand server rack to mount some of this gear in.
 
Ha.

I'm so old I once spent a day coding a simple UART echoing program and toggling it in off the front panel on one of these (yes, that's a full sized rack with a PDP 11/45 in):

1140.jpg


That was before ripping it to pieces. It used core memory (ferrite bead based). My boss kept a board. Really wish I had now too :(
 
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