Something witty about computers and being a grownup
Optimum Boost advertises 30 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up. Here’s a speed test I just ran at Ookla’s SpeedTest.net:
(My desktop is plugged into the router, the router is plugged into the Arris cablemodem.)
Here’s one of the last speed tests I did with Verizon, on 2/15. I had the 25/15 internet package:
(Desktop was plugged into 8-port Linksys 100 Mbit switch, the switch was plugged into the FiOS/ActionTec router.)
Continue reading “Speed comparison: Optimum Boost vs Verizon FiOS”
I got my Wii in late 2006 and around 2009 I noticed it was starting to sound like a circular saw when the disc drive was spinning. This was annoying but it didn’t affect the games so I never thought much about it.
About two weeks ago, however, New Super Mario Bros. Wii stopped working:
The Wii basically worked except for the disc drive. As soon as I put a disc in, I’d get the error above – even if I didn’t start start the game. I tried blowing in the disc slot (the only thing I could think of… worked for my old NES!) but the problem continued. I figured I had two choices: buy another Wii or attempt to fix mine. Since mine was already essentially useless I figured it couldn’t hurt anything to try fixing it.
After some searching I quickly learned that to do any work inside a Wii requires a Tri-Wing screwdriver just to open the case. I went to the hardware store and got a Tri-Wing bit but it was too big to be of any use on the Wii. I found this Silverwing Tri-Wing screwdriver on Amazon for under $5 that did the trick.
With trusty screwdriver in hand, I opened the Wii thusly:
With it now open I followed this guy’s advice:
Bending these small triangles down created a gap that stopped the vibration & the noise and made the Wii playable again.
It has some new weird sounds when the disc first spins up and when it spins it down (I assume the braking mechanism) but it’s practically silent during gameplay. Yay!
I got my Wii in late 2006 and around 2009 I noticed it was starting to sound like a circular saw when the disc drive was spinning. This was annoying but it didn’t affect the games so I never thought much about it.
About two weeks ago, however, New Super Mario Bros. Wii stopped working:
The Wii basically worked except for the disc drive. As soon as I put a disc in, I’d get the error above – even if I didn’t start start the game. I tried blowing in the disc slot (the only thing I could think of… worked for my old NES!) but the problem continued. I figured I had two choices: buy another Wii or attempt to fix mine. Since mine was already essentially useless I figured it couldn’t hurt anything to try fixing it.
After some searching I quickly learned that to do any work inside a Wii requires a Tri-Wing screwdriver just to open the case. I went to the hardware store and got a Tri-Wing bit but it was too big to be of any use on the Wii. I found this Silverwing Tri-Wing screwdriver on Amazon for under $5 that did the trick.
With trusty screwdriver in hand, I opened the Wii thusly:
With it now open I followed this guy’s advice:
Bending these small triangles down created a gap that stopped the vibration & the noise and made the Wii playable again.
It has some new weird sounds when the disc first spins up and when it spins it down (I assume the braking mechanism) but it’s practically silent during gameplay. Yay!
So we switched back to Cablevision and it went pretty well, but apparently Verizon users can’t call our house number (ported from Verizon to Cablevision). Verizon users have to call from their mobiles in order to complete the call. I’m guessing that Verizon hasn’t updated their systems to indicate that they no longer “own” our number and is trying to route the call inside their network. Sucks because I can’t imagine Verizon jumping to help fix this since I’m not their customer anymore.
So we switched back to Cablevision and it went pretty well, but apparently Verizon users can’t call our house number (ported from Verizon to Cablevision). Verizon users have to call from their mobiles in order to complete the call. I’m guessing that Verizon hasn’t updated their systems to indicate that they no longer “own” our number and is trying to route the call inside their network. Sucks because I can’t imagine Verizon jumping to help fix this since I’m not their customer anymore.
After my recent wipe of my laptop, I reinstalled VMware Workstation and my Win XP VM was working fine. The one wrinkle I faced was that the subnet for the vmnet8 (NAT) vnic had changed from 192.168.250.0/24 to 173.16.132.0/24. The host machine had been 192.168.250.1 so rather than reconfiguring everything on the guest to point to a new IP for the host I figured it would be easier to change the subnet for vmnet8. I went into the Virtual Network Editor and just changed the subnet. Seemed to work correctly, but after doing a release/renew in Win XP I couldn’t get an IP.
I tried disconnecting the vnic and reconnecting it; the guest recognized that the “cable was unplugged,” but still couldn’t get an IP. I rebooted the guest – same thing. Restarted the vmware service and saw this:
[root@ehoffman ~]# /etc/init.d/vmware restart Stopping VMware services: VMware USB Arbitrator [ OK ] VM communication interface socket family [ OK ] Virtual machine communication interface [ OK ] Virtual machine monitor [ OK ] Blocking file system [ OK ] Starting VMware services: VMware USB Arbitrator [ OK ] Virtual machine monitor [ OK ] Virtual machine communication interface [ OK ] VM communication interface socket family [ OK ] Blocking file system [ OK ] Virtual ethernet [FAILED] [root@ehoffman ~]#
That’s weird. The vnic is up with the specified IP:
[root@ehoffman vmnet8]# ifconfig
vmnet1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:56:C0:00:01
inet addr:172.16.3.1 Bcast:172.16.3.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::250:56ff:fec0:1/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:38 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
vmnet8 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:56:C0:00:08
inet addr:192.168.250.1 Bcast:192.168.250.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::250:56ff:fec0:8/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:36 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Checked the /var/log/vnetlib logfile and it appears to be some problem starting DHCP on vmnet8:
Internet Software Consortium DHCP Server 2.0 Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 The Internet Software Consortium. All rights reserved. Please contribute if you find this software useful. For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/dhcp-contrib.html Configured subnet: 172.16.3.0 Setting vmnet-dhcp IP address: 172.16.3.254 Opened: /dev/vmnet1 Recving on VNet/vmnet1/172.16.3.0 Sending on VNet/vmnet1/172.16.3.0 Internet Software Consortium DHCP Server 2.0 Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 The Internet Software Consortium. All rights reserved. Please contribute if you find this software useful. For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/dhcp-contrib.html Address range 192.168.250.128 to 192.168.250.254 not on net 192.168.250.1/255.255.255.0! exiting. Failed to start DHCP service on vmnet8 Failed to start some/all services Feb 23 09:28:46 VNL_Load - LOG_ERR logged Feb 23 09:28:46 VNL_Load - LOG_WRN logged Feb 23 09:28:46 VNL_Load - LOG_OK logged Feb 23 09:28:46 VNL_Load - Successfully initialized Vnetlib Feb 23 09:28:46 VNL_StartService - Started "Bridge" service for vnet: vmnet0 Feb 23 09:28:47 VNL_CheckSubnetAvailability - Subnet: 172.16.3.0 on vnet: vmnet1 is available Feb 23 09:28:47 VNL_CheckSubnetAvailability - Subnet: 192.168.250.0 on vnet: vmnet8 is available Feb 23 09:28:47 VNL_StartService - Started "DHCP" service for vnet: vmnet1 Feb 23 09:28:47 VNL_EnableNetworkAdapter - Successfully enabled hostonly adapter on vnet: vmnet1 Feb 23 09:28:47 VNLServiceStart - Daemon process did not report status, returning failure Feb 23 09:28:47 VNL_StartService - Failure in starting "DHCP" service for vnet: vmnet8 Feb 23 09:28:47 VNL_StartService - Started "NAT" service for vnet: vmnet8 Feb 23 09:28:47 VNL_EnableNetworkAdapter - Successfully enabled hostonly adapter on vnet: vmnet8 Feb 23 09:28:47 VNLServiceStatus - pid: 13512 for Netdetect service daemon on vnet: 0 is stale Feb 23 09:28:47 VNL_StartService - Started "Netdetect" service for vnet: vmnet0 Feb 23 09:28:47 VNL_Unload - Vnetlib unloaded. Started Bridge networking on vmnet0 Started DHCP service on vmnet1 Enabled hostonly virtual adapter on vmnet1 Started NAT service on vmnet8 Enabled hostonly virtual adapter on vmnet8 Started Network detection service
The important line there is Address range 192.168.250.128 to 192.168.250.254 not on net 192.168.250.1/255.255.255.0! Apparently DHCP is misconfigured. The config file for dhcpd for vmnet8 is /etc/vmware/vmnet8/dhcpd/dhcpd.conf . Here’s what it looked like:
subnet 192.168.250.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
range 192.168.250.128 192.168.250.250;
option broadcast-address 192.168.250.255;
option domain-name-servers 192.168.250.1;
option domain-name localdomain;
default-lease-time 1800; # default is 30 minutes
max-lease-time 7200; # default is 2 hours
option routers 192.168.250.2;
}
I changed the range to 192.168.250.2 to 192.168.250.127, thinking that was the problem, but it turned out to be the “subnet” line – the subnet should be “192.168.250.0 netmask 255.255.255.0” rather than “192.168.250.1 …” After changing that, everything Worked As Intended.
So I was complaining the other day about losing support for the Radeon X1600 when I upgraded my work laptop from FC12 to FC14. I was on the verge of ordering a new laptop (ThinkPad W510 with quadcore i7 and 1GB Quadro looks niiiice…) when I figured it was worth at least giving a true clean install a shot. I backed up all my stuff to an external USB drive, repartitioned my drive (finally done in a sane way), did a fresh FC14 install, and miraculously everything seemed to work. rsynced all my stuff back over and it was almost perfect. I still have a weird issue when trying to unlock my screen after it goes into screensaver – basically I can’t, it just stays locked and I’ve resorted to doing “init 3” and then “init 5” to make it work again. That’s a minor annoyance though at this point. So, yay again for Fedora! I wouldn’t go with ATi for a Linux machine again though.
As I expected/feared, Cablevision still blocks port 80 so I had to move my site to external hosting. I signed up with JustHost.com, which has (supposedly) unlimited storage and bandwidth transfer for ~$5/month. Not happy about their DNS handling, and that my 404 pages are apparently filled with ads & popups now, but with the discount code I found it came to about $42 for a year of hosting. Not bad.
Still cleaning up, hopefully all the existing links will work. WordPress’s import function is pretty good but I wasn’t able to pull the attachments off the old server (due to the port 80 block).
At least this seems way faster than my old Athlon box.
Edit: Ping times have gotten much better since the move:
So the credits are finally wearing off my FiOS bill. I was paying $49/month for about 8 straight months for all 3 services plus HBO & Cinemax (a ridiculous price) with great phone & internet, plus HMDVR and 2 boxes. My most recent bill was $127 which includes a $40 credit that ends this month, so next month’s bill will be $170 or so.
Cablevision’s been beating down my door for weeks to come back, but they couldn’t come close to the deal Verizon had given me so it was easy to fend them off. But after this recent bill I gave them a call and signed up for the Optimum Triple Play. They have a special deal for people coming back from FiOS: $69/month for all 3 services plus Boost (30/5 Mbps) and a DVR. I added another box and HBO and it came to $100.30. So as of Friday I’ll be on Cablevision and this website will probably be down until I find a new home for it – maybe WordPress.com.
I’d been running FC12 for quite a while and I noticed the past few weeks have been devoid of yum updates (except for Google Chrome). I figured FC15 is on the horizon; now’s a good time to upgrade to FC14.
I followed the basic procedure laid out here and went 12 -> 13 no problem. 13 -> 14: problem. The upgrade appeared to go well (loooong time to complete, downloading/installing 1+ gigs of packages, even over my 25 mbps home line) but X would not start no matter what. At this point I learned that system-config-display has been deprecated in FC14 and isn’t even there! I tried “Xorg –configure” but that configuration still didn’t work. I then tried doing a yum downgrade to FC13… let me save you the trouble: never try this.
I ended up downloading the FC14 DVD ISO and burning it, and doing a fresh install (repair, of course, just drops you to a shell – the equivalent of throwing you a life preserver in the middle of the ocean and leaving you there) without touching any of my existing partitions. This ended up being pretty painless and after it was complete everything worked. Or so it seemed…
I did the FC14 fresh install on Saturday (after having borked the laptop on Friday). At work on Monday I plugged in my secondary monitor and immediately noticed weirdness. Lines all over both displays, the Gnome panel unusable, any window that was created wasn’t drawing properly. And the topper was rebooting didn’t work – it would go to this colorful jumbley screen and just sit there until I did a hard poweroff. If I unplugged the external monitor and turned the computer on, it worked fine.
I’ve tried several things – installing the akmod-catalyst stuff and x11-catalyst-drv stuff via yum, but none of that seems to make much of a difference. livna-display-config throws an error that I don’t have the radeon drivers installed. I’ve tried the official ATI radeon driver for X1600, which complains that it can’t find XFree86. I tried to get around this by symlinking /usr/bin/Xorg to /usr/bin/XFree86, which got me past that hurdle, but then it complained that I have no adapter. I tried the other Linux radeon driver, which didn’t complain about XFree86 at least, but also said it didn’t find any AMD/ATI adapters.
At this point it seems these are my options:
None of these options is very good. For now I’m just sticking with 1 monitor. Not the end of the world, but it’s annoying to run a WinXP VM and do my regular tasks inside a single screen.
dmesg below showing stupid errors:
[root@ehoffman ~]# aticonfig aticonfig: No supported adapters detected [root@ehoffman ~]# uname -a Linux ehoffman 2.6.35.10-74.fc14.x86_64 #1 SMP Thu Dec 23 16:04:50 UTC 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux [root@ehoffman ~]# lspci | grep -i radeon 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M56P [Radeon Mobility X1600] [root@ehoffman ~]# dmesg | grep -i radeon [ 14.717757] [drm] radeon defaulting to kernel modesetting. [ 14.717761] [drm] radeon kernel modesetting enabled. [ 14.717827] radeon 0000:01:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 14.723052] radeon 0000:01:00.0: VRAM: 256M 0x00000000 - 0x0FFFFFFF (256M used) [ 14.723056] radeon 0000:01:00.0: GTT: 512M 0x10000000 - 0x2FFFFFFF [ 14.723167] radeon 0000:01:00.0: irq 48 for MSI/MSI-X [ 14.723174] radeon 0000:01:00.0: radeon: using MSI. [ 14.723211] [drm] radeon: irq initialized. [ 14.723322] [drm] radeon: 256M of VRAM memory ready [ 14.723325] [drm] radeon: 512M of GTT memory ready. [ 14.725519] [drm] radeon: 1 quad pipes, 2 z pipes initialized. [ 14.733804] [drm] radeon: ring at 0x0000000010000000 [ 14.734017] [drm] radeon: ib pool ready. [ 14.734446] [drm] Radeon Display Connectors [ 14.844393] [drm] radeon: power management initialized [ 15.295827] fbcon: radeondrmfb (fb0) is primary device [ 15.296451] fb0: radeondrmfb frame buffer device [ 15.296546] [drm] Initialized radeon 2.5.0 20080528 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 0 [root@ehoffman ~]#
Edit: I should probably mention that as soon as I install the xorg-x11-drv-catalyst stuff, X won’t start. If I remove it, it boots up fine (though the 2nd monitor screws causes it to freak out). This is pretty strange; I’ve done it several times to confirm:
Feb 08 11:35:09 Erased: fglrx64_6_9_0 Feb 08 11:36:53 Updated: libuuid-2.18-4.8.fc14.i686 Feb 08 11:36:54 Updated: postgresql-libs-8.4.7-1.fc14.x86_64 Feb 08 11:36:54 Updated: libuuid-devel-2.18-4.8.fc14.x86_64 Feb 08 11:41:52 Updated: google-chrome-stable-9.0.597.94-73967.x86_64 Feb 08 11:44:11 Installed: fglrx64_7_5_0-8.812-1.x86_64 Feb 08 11:48:21 Erased: fglrx64_7_5_0 Feb 08 12:25:01 Installed: xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-libs-10.12-2.fc14.x86_64 Feb 08 12:25:07 Installed: xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-10.12-2.fc14.x86_64 Feb 08 12:25:08 Installed: akmod-catalyst-10.12-1.fc14.x86_64 Feb 08 12:39:16 Erased: kmod-catalyst-2.6.35.10-74.fc14.x86_64 Feb 08 12:39:20 Erased: xorg-x11-drv-catalyst-libs Feb 08 12:39:21 Erased: xorg-x11-drv-catalyst Feb 08 12:39:21 Erased: akmod-catalyst
Evan Hoffman's Blog 