Intel's 48 core megachip

From www.theregister.co.uk . Intel's research team has unveiled a 48-core processor that it claims will usher in a new era of "immersive, social, and perceptive" computing by putting datacenter-style integration on a single chip.

Google Patent Reveals New Data Center Innovations

miller60 writes (from slashdot) "'Google is seeking to patent a system that provides
[0]precision cooling inside racks of servers, automatically adjusting to
temperature changes while reducing the energy required to run chillers.'
The cooling design uses an adjustable piping system featuring 'air wands'
that provide small amounts of cold air to components within a server
tray. The cooling design, which could help Google reduce the power bill
for its servers, reinforces Google's focus on data center innovation as a
competitive advantage

read more

Chromium OS

Building Google Chromium OS, I think it is going to take a long time to complete the build. Please let me know if any one is interested in trying out (I hope google won't sue me).

Internet Explorer - the worst browser one should have.

Today I realized that Internet Explorer is the worst internet browser that one should have. It gave me pain in xxx while trying to figure out an issue with  the compression. Here is what schroepl.net says

Internet Explorer version 4.0 and up

This browser uses either HTTP/1.0 or HTTP/1.1, depending upon the settings in the internet options. It is sending the header Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate - but only if using HTTP/1.1.

Processing compressed content works if the browser has requested compressed content; otherwise it ignores the HTTP header Content-Encoding: gzip although it would be able to decompress the content.

Which is really stupid. Internet Explorer or those who programmed it just presumed that with HTTP/1.0 will not use compression. I hate internet explorer.. please any one still using internet explorer please please switch to Firefox.

OAuth

OAuth: An open protocol to allow secure API authorization  in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications. For cross website authentication.. for example you may use Google OAuth API to authenticate your users. It is not OpedID.

Review of HTC Hero

Excerpt from review of HTC Hero from engadget.com

The Hero represents a valiant effort from HTC -- though unfortunately, the company appears to have bitten off more than its last-generation hardware can chew. If this build of Android were to be loaded atop the guts of a 3GS or Pre, the performance would likely be astounding, but fused with the two-year old architecture of previous devices, it's mostly disappointing. We're not saying this isn't the best build of Android on the market -- we think it is. What we are saying is that this build is a bit too much for a device like the Hero to handle, and that makes for an uneven, sometimes frustrating experience. Going into the review, we desperately wanted to love this phone, but given the combination of a few poor hardware choices and an OS which outclasses the device it runs on, we can only recommend that you enter at your own risk. HTC has an explosive entry in the smartphone category with what its done on the software side... now it just needs the hardware to match.

After reading this I think I should wait for at least 6 months before getting a real android device.

Google Chrome OS

At last it happened. Read the story from the google's official blog. I hope this will not harm the Linux movement.

Vmware Orphaned VMs

Today I noticed that two VM templates in my ESX cluster is showing up as orphaned. You may re-enable the VM using the command

vmware-cmd -s <GhostVMPath>

Thanks to Vmware Communities and Sria.

Free iPhone publicity

iPhone is getting free publicity even from their rivals, by calling their product "iPhone killer". Even this blog entry is an AD for iPhone.

Frankly speaking. I love iPhone for its user friendliness and UI, but hate the dependencies coming with it. For this reason I am looking for a phone which is both user friendly and good looking. I am sure most of you agree with it.

HTC Magic and Hero are promising. Especially the HTC Hero, which is released in Europe with the Sense TM interface. You may have a look at it in the Europe site of HTC. Pre-release review also gives good impression about the mobile. Sadly it will not be released in UAE until late summer or may be it will be delayed till end of the year.

You are ineligible to register for YouTube.com.

Today I was astonished to find that I was unable to register on
YouTube.com. It was giving out an error like the one below, even after
giving all the required information.

"Sorry. Based on the information you have submitted to us, you are
ineligible to register for YouTube.com."

Googleing the error message returned some forums and blogs
recommending to clear the cookies and temporary files of the browser.
And they were right, it is working.

OpenSUSE vs Kubuntu

Today me and my colleague (we call him "professor") were discussing about the KDE 4 desktop environment on OpenSUSE 11.1 and Kubuntu. It seems that the KDE 4.2 on kubuntu 9.04 is giving superior experience than on OpenSUSE 11.1. I am using Kubuntu on my workstation and laptop. I tried to install the OpenSUSE 11.1 on my laptop first, but it was failing to correctly install and configure the drivers. On the other hand Kubuntu installed and configured every thing (except for the proprietary Nvidia driver) with out any hassle . So we (my and "professor") think that Kubuntu is best choice for an inexperienced user.

As per the "professor" on OpenSUSE

• Adding widgets to the panel is buggy.
• 3D effects doen't work.
• Drivers not installed properly.
• Preview in dolphin doesn't work.
• Eclipse IDE doesn't show up properly.

Get your live CD from here

Flock 2.5 - Browser for Social Networking.

Flocks, I have found a new browser dedicated for social networking, Flock 2.5, powered by the reliable and secure Mozilla Application Framework. Right now I am posting this blog from the Flock interface. Its the best browser for hardcore networking flocks.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Network Usage from console Max / Cur / Avg.

Here is a small shell script which I have used to monitor the Maximum, Current and average usage of a network interface.

#!/bin/bash

IFACE=bond0

oldbyt=(0 0);

cnt=1;

ORXB=0

OTXB=0

MAXRXB=0

MAXTXB=0

while : ; do

byte=($(/sbin/ifconfig $IFACE | \

sed -e 's/:/ /g'|awk '$2 ~ /bytes/ {print $3,$8}'));

if [ ${oldbyt[0]} -ne 0 ] && [ ${oldbyt[1]} -ne 0 ]; then

RXB="$(((${byte[0]}-${oldbyt[0]})/1024))"

TXB="$(((${byte[1]}-${oldbyt[1]})/1024))"

ORXB=$(($RXB+$ORXB))

OTXB=$((TXB+$OTXB))

[ $MAXRXB -lt $RXB ] && MAXRXB=$RXB

[ $MAXTXB -lt $TXB ] && MAXTXB=$TXB

echo -e "\fCUR RX : $RXB\tTX : $TXB\nAVG RX : $(($ORXB/$cnt))\tTX : $(($OTXB/$cnt))\nMAX RX : $MAXRXB \tTX : $MAXTXB"

cnt=$(($cnt+1))

fi

oldbyt=(${byte[@]});

sleep 1

done

I know I can do the same thing using some stock utilities like ntop or iftop, but this was a production environment and I don't want to install any thing unless it is absolute necessity.

Mozilla Prism

Good news from Mozilla, they have released the beta version of Prism - formerly webrunner. I have always thought of a browser like that, and I think I have tested webrunner before.

Using Prism you can directly run you favourite web application from your desktop. As Mozilla folks says "a distraction free browser", free from all the clutter that a browser has.

Currently I am doing some test on my Kubuntu laptop. Will post results as the test progress. You can also get the latest version from this link.

SAMBA + Tortoise SVN Issue

Today we found a weird issue with our development environment. The SVN repository is built using FSFS and is served using svnserv. The developers are using samba share to keep their working copy on windows systems.

The issue started appearing after upgrading the tortoise SVN to a new version. Each time the working copy is updated, we got an error saying that "Access denied on Y:/xxx/.svn/tmp/entries".

We definetly knew that it is not an SVN issue, but could be SAMBA.

After some research on Google it turned out to neither SVN nor SAMBA, but a special case where UNIX file ownership prevents changing file permissions, and DOS semantics prevent deletion of a read only file.

Luckly we found the following work around from tortoisesvn.tigris.org

After upgrading to TortoiseSVN 1.5.x or later, you get a lot of "Access denied" errors for most of the Subversion commands if your working copy is stored on a SAMBA share.

Some users reported that the problem went away after they upgraded SAMBA to the latest version. If that does not help or you can't upgrade, allow readonly files to be deleted in the SAMBA config file:

[global]
delete readonly = yes

For older versions, try:

[global]
create mask = 0644
force create mode = 0600
security mask = 0555
force security mode = 0600

Setting up YUM Repository

Click here to read a very good tutorial on how to setup your own YUM Repository. Thanks to Sabarish

March of the terminators: Robot warriors (www.dailymail.co.uk)

A few minutes before nine in the morning, and the young soldiers have no idea of the horror that is about to strike them. They are taking part in a massive military training exercise, involving 5,000 troops, and are about to showcase the latest in robotic weapons technology. The MK5 anti-aircraft system, with two huge 35mm cannons, is essentially a vast robotic weapon, controlled by a computer.

But while it's one thing when your laptop freezes up, it's quite another when it is controlling an auto-loading magazine containing 500 high-explosive rounds.

As the display begins, the South African troops sense quickly that something is terribly wrong. The system appears to jam - but what happens next is truly chilling. Read more...

Five-Dimensional Data Storage (www.technologyreview.com)

A new light-responsive material could lead to discs the size of today's DVDs that store four orders of magnitude more data. Traditional DVDs and CDs store data on their surface in two dimensions, and holographic discs can store it in three. Now researchers have for the first time demonstrated what they call a five-dimensional optical material. It can record data in three spatial dimensions and in response to different wavelengths and polarizations of laser light. more...

VMware vSphere

Today the guys from GBM gave us a good introduction about the VMware vSphere and the new IBM blade server HS22.

VMware vSphere seems to be a very good mash up of the existing technology, which has brought the cloud computing to the enterprise. It can better utilize the existing hardware in the data center and dramatically reduce the IT hardware spending. more on this can be found here

OCFS2 Setup.

Hardware Requirement.

• Shared Storage, accessible over SAN between cluster nodes.
• HBA for Fiber SAN on each node.
  
• Network Connectivity for hearbeat between servers.
  

OS Installation.

Regular installation of RHEL 5.x. 64 bit with the following configuration.

1. SELinux must be disabled.
2. Time Zone - Saudi Time. (GMT +3)

Packages

1. Gnome for Graphics desktop.
2. Development libraries
3. Internet tools - GUI and text based
4. Editors - GUI and text based

Partitioning the HDD

1. 200 MB for /boot partition
2. 5 GB for /var partition
3. 5 GB for /tmp partition
4. Rest of the space to / partition.
   

The server should be up to date with the latest patches from RedHat Network.

Installation of OCFS2 Kernel Module and Tools

OCFS2 Kernel modules and tools can be downloaded from the Oracle web sites.

OCFS2 Kernel Module:

http://oss.oracle.com/projects/ocfs2/files/RedHat/RHEL5/x86_64/1.4.1-1/2.6.18-128.1.1.el5

Note that 2.6.18-128.1.1.el5 should match the current running kernel on the server. A new OCFS2 Kernel package should be downloaded and installed each time the kernel is updated to a new version.

OCFS2 Tools:

http://oss.oracle.com/projects/ocfs2-tools/dist/files/RedHat/RHEL5/x86_64/1.4.1-1/ocfs2-tools-1.4.1-1.el5.x86_64.rpm

OCFS2 Console:

http://oss.oracle.com/projects/ocfs2-tools/dist/files/RedHat/RHEL5/x86_64/1.4.1-1/ocfs2console-1.4.1-1.el5.x86_64.rpm

OCFS2 Tools and Console depends on several other packages which are normally available on a default RedHat Linux installation, except for VTE (A terminal emulator) package.

So in order to satisfy the dependencies of OCFS2 you have to install the vte package using

yum install vte

After completing the VTE installation start the OCFS2 installation using regular RPM installation procedure.

rpm -ivh ocfs2-2.6.18-92.128.1.1.el5-1.4.1-1.el5.x86_64.rpm \
ocfs2console-1.4.1-1.el5.x86_64.rpm \
ocfs2-tools-1.4.1-1.el5.x86_64.rpm

This will copy the necessary files to its corresponding locations.

Following are the important tools and files that are used frequently

/etc/init.d/o2cb
/sbin/mkfs.ext2
/etc/ocfs2/cluster.conf (Need to create this Folder and file manually)

OCFS2 Configuration.

It is assumed that the shared SAN storage is connected to the cluster nodes and is available as /dev/sdb. This document will cover installation of only two node (node1 and node2) ocfs2 cluster.

Following are the steps required to configure the cluster nodes.

Create the folder /etc/ocfs2

mkdir /etc/ocfs2

Create the cluster configuration file /etc/ocfs2/cluster.conf and add the following condents.

node:
ip_port = 7777
ip_address = 10.10.163.65
number = 1
name = node1
cluster = ocfs2

node:
ip_port = 7777
ip_address = 10.10.163.66
number = 2
name = node2
cluster = ocfs2

cluster:
node_count = 2
name = ocfs2

Note that the:

• Node name should match the "hostname" of corresponding server.
  
• Node number should be unique for each member.
  
• Cluster name for each node should match the "name" field in "cluster:" section.
  
• "node_count" field in "cluster:" section should match the number of nodes.

O2CB cluster service configuration.

The o2cb cluster service can be configured using:

/etc/init.d/o2cb configure (This command will show the following dialogs)

Configuring the O2CB driver.

This will configure the on-boot properties of the O2CB driver.
The following questions will determine whether the driver is loaded onboot.
The current values will be shown in brackets ('[]').
Hitting without typing an answer will keep that current value.
Ctrl-C will abort.

Load O2CB driver on boot (y/n) [n]: y

Cluster stack backing O2CB [o2cb]:

Cluster to start on boot (Enter "none" to clear) [ocfs2]: ocfs2

Specify heartbeat dead threshold (>=7) [31]:

Specify network idle timeout in ms (>=5000) [30000]:

Specify network keepalive delay in ms (>=1000) [2000]:

Specify network reconnect delay in ms (>=2000) [2000]:

Writing O2CB configuration: OK

Loading filesystem "ocfs2_dlmfs": OK

Mounting ocfs2_dlmfs filesystem at /dlm: OK

Starting O2CB cluster ocfs2: OK

Note that the driver should be loaded while booting and the "Cluster to start" should match the cluster name, in our case "ocfs2".

As a best practice it is adviced to reboot the server after successfully completing the above configuration.

Formating and Mounting the shared file system.

Before we can start using the shared filesystem, we have to format the shared device using OCFS2 filesystem. Following command will format the filesystem with ocfs2 and will set some additional features.

mkfs.ocfs2 -T mail -L ocfs-mnt --fs-features=backup-super,sparse,unwritten -M cluster /dev/sdb

Where :

-T mail

Specify how the filesystem is going to be used, so that mkfs.ocfs2 can chose optimal filesystem parameters for that use.

"mail" option is a ppropriate for file systems which will have many meta data updates. Creates a larger journal.

-L ocfs-mnt

Sets the volume label for the filesystem. It will used instead of device named to identify the block device in /etc/fstab

--fs-features=backup-super,sparse,unwritten

Turn specific file system features on or off.
backup-super

Create backup super blocks for this volume

sparse

Enable support for sparse files. With this, OCFS2 can avoid allocating (and zeroing) data to fill holes

unwritten

Enable unwritten extents support. With this turned on, an application can request that a range of clusters be pre-allo-cated within a file.

-M cluster

Defines if the filesystem is local or clustered. Cluster is used by default.

/dev/sdb

Block device that need to be formated.

Note: The default mkfs.ocfs2 option covers only 4 node cluster. In case if you have more nodes you have to specify number of node slots using -N number-of-node-slots.

We are ready to mount the new filesystem once the format operation is completed successfully.

You may mount the new filesystem using the following command. It is assumed that the mount point (/mnt) exists already.

mount /dev/sdb /mnt

If the mount operation was successfully completed you can add the following entry to /etc/fstab for automatic mounting during the bootup process.

LABEL=ocfs-mnt /mnt ocfs2 rw,_netdev,heartbeat=local 0 0

Test the newly added fstab entry by rebooting the server. The server should mount /dev/sdb automatically to /mnt. You can verify this using " df " command after reboot.

My First Blog

Even though late, I am starting my first blog. I hope I can fill this space with useful information for others, just like I find others blogs useful to me.