To put it in Prof. Hill’s words, the mainframe market is this big. *holds hands about 3 feet apart* The portion of the market controlled by IBM is this big. *brings hands closer to each other by about an inch* Big Blue controls about 98% of the mainframe market. There are other companies that make mainframes too; HP comes to mind. But for the most part, when people think of mainframes, they think of IBM.

Mainframes are important because of a concept IBM calls RAS: Reliability, Availability and Scalability. Reliability means that failures happen rarely. Availability means that when they do happen, the customer-facing service faces very few or no issues. Scalability means that the machine can grow to fit the needs of your business. IBM emphasizes all three of these with their mainframe products. They pretty much nail all these points with their marketing and then make sure they back it up by manufacturing the entire machine in-house, from the silicon, to the boards, to the chassis, to all the microcode, firmware and software.

Once you buy a mainframe, your company pretty much has it staffed 24/7 with people that know z/OS on a pretty thorough level. Very few people understand every aspect of it, and they all work for IBM, but you also pretty much have a direct line to them, and them to you.

Now we’re getting into the potential for problems.

First off, mainframes have been around for a long time. And so have their operators. Since they’re an entirely different computing platform, something that a person who has only ever used good ole x86 boxes probably won’t understand is that they are different from the very core. It took us ten weeks to learn the most basic bits about how they work – and everybody pretty much flat out bombed the final. But at least we have an understanding of the platform.

Unfortunately, that is lightyears ahead of what your typical CS, SE or networking major knows about mainframes. And that’s when we get to the dangerous waters. Mainframes were much more distinguished and well-known in the 1960s through 1980s, when the personal computer hadn’t quite been refined yet. When the PC took off in the late 80s and early 90s, everyone (including universities) pretty much forgot about IBM’s “other” product as young programmers rushed to learn the newfangled PC and left mainframes to rot. But behind the scenes, mainframe admins in their 30s and 40s were still keeping these puppies up. Nobody realized the longevity of equipment like this. IBM recently threw a party with a client celebrating 15 years of *zero* service interruptions. That’s nothing short of fricking insane, and it does say a bit about what IBM thinks of their customers and their needs.

But here’s where things are getting just plain sticky. You’ll notice that I haven’t shut up about IBM, IBM, IBM here. That’s the problem with the market. Everything is controlled by IBM. If, God forbid, Poughkeepsie or Fishkill gets hit by a nuke, the entire industry would go up in smoke. The platform is extremely closed, proprietary, and well-guarded. Perhaps that has indeed kept it reliable, but it does make IBM itself the single point of failure.

That’s why I don’t think mainframes are going to last. IBM is the only company that’s really into them. They are by nature a great computing platform, and certainly more energy-efficient and secure, but nobody really understands them fully. And so few colleges/universities have classes (much less entire programs) teaching young people about them, that the people who know them thoroughly seem to just be dying off and/or retiring. What happens when they’re gone? I think IBM is neglecting to train young people on them. They have contests such as “Master the Mainframe”, but they just don’t do enough to spark interest.

I think that for now, because most of the market belongs to IBM, IBM should be the one handling the education effort. It should not be the responsibility of universities to teach about a closed, proprietary platform that depends on a single company. What happens when the company on which a substantial portion of the business world depends fails?

Speaking of which, hey Microsoft, how about that Windows thing….

Such is the namesake for my brand new desktop computer. Well, with a few adjustments. My new desktop is undoubtedly a she, and her DNS name is simply “charlie.”

Before I jump into my usual round of essay scribbling on why this computer is so awesome and why I need it, here are the specs you’re dying to see:

• AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition – 4 cores, 3.0GHz
• Gigabyte GA-M790X-UD4P motherboard – Sockets AM2, AM2+, AM3 supported, max. RAM 16GB @ 1333MHz
• 4GB OCZ Gold PC2 6400 DDR2 SDRAM (upgrade to 8GB planned)
• XFX NVidia GeForce GTX 260, 896MB
• PC Power & Cooling Silencer S61EPS 610 power supply
• Western Digital 320GB SATA 3Gb/s hard disk – OEM
• Lian Li PC-K7B case
• DVD burner from Nighthawk

I’m really just getting my feet wet in terms of the stuff I can do with this thing. I didn’t realize for a long time how much I was missing by not having SSE2, AMD-V, and multiple cores. It’s certainly a blessing to have all this and more in such a quiet (albeit relatively large) box.

The benefits of having a computer this powerful are already becoming apparent. When it does crash and X resets (due to this bug), I’m back at my desktop in 10 seconds instead of 30. I can also use Windows 7 and Mac OS X when I have to – both as minimally as possible, Windows for reprogramming Yubikeys (more on those in a minute) and OS X for managing my iPod because iTunes on Windows sucks, and because certain Enano things tend to break under Apple’s OS.

Accompanying this transition is the decommissioning of two computers, Xombie and Capsaicin. Neither was used for very much: Xombie did a poor job at managing torrents and my webcam, and Capsaicin did a somewhat reliable job at running IRC (I’m regularly on 4 networks). Nighthawk has taken over the duties of both, and she continues to be Enano’s Mercurial master as well as the home of all my music (which I can’t stand to not have access to from multiple OSes). Basically Nighthawk is acquiring more duties as she transitions from being the constantly-experimented-with computer to more of a server. I really don’t need Xombie or Capsaicin anymore with the power Nighthawk has and the easy virtualization available to me on Charlie.

We’re looking at some eventual serious overclocking potential on Charlie. Once I’m able to afford a good cooler, I want to try and push her up to 3.7 or even 4GHz. There’ve been some suspicious results with Linpack though – it indicates possible instability under the High load test, 4 threads, and all my settings at stock. Oh yeah, and the CPU peaked at 62C. I’m debating whether it’s necessary to RMA some parts and try a different CPU of the same model, or blame it on the motherboard and RMA that. Either way I’d be without a solid computer for a week or so, which would suck.

Still I am very excited at the potential this thing has. She serves Enano pages in 0.03s and I have Compiz on CRAZY high settings with no signs of stuttering or lag whatsoever. Pretty much everything real-world that I’ve thrown at her, she’s handled with no sweat whatsoever. Hopefully I’ll be at least up with the times for a couple years, eh?

Oh yeah, the Yubikeys. (Published the post without this section, forgot I planned to add it.) Yubico sent me five Yubikey IIs as a thank-you for supporting their device in Enano. The new version, which has a little bit of a learning curve compared to the old, is very useful to me as I see this high degree of security (a 32 character password) now being available to things that don’t support Yubikey (or only support it commercially), like Windows, OS X, and a number of websites I visit. At the same time I retain the OTP functionality for things that support it, like most of my servers and Enano websites. The keys are more solid too – I could run over one of these things with a semi truck if I wanted to. They say they’re also designed to survive a dunk in the swimming pool but I don’t think I’ll try that one. Wonder if that also means they’re tamper-resistant like the IronKey, too. Either way, I’ll be looking into figuring out if there’s anything special that can be added to the Enano Yubikey plugin to make it more friendly to version 2.0 of this very economical, very innovative security device.

The 22-year-old receiver and amplifier had a lonely and traumatic history that began almost as soon as its original owner purchased it. It expressed lament for a lonely childhood where it was not put to use and accumulated a considerable amount of dust.

The county examiner said that the most likely cause of death was a short circuit. No traces of ozone were found in the surrounding atmosphere.

The amp did not leave a suicide note and its original owner was not available for comment.

“Resuscitation efforts are underway,” said the current owner, Dan Fuhry, “but at this point things are looking very grim. We’re going to try the good old slap on the side, but that is currently our last remaining hope for the amplifier.”

Known for its loud output but warm capacitors, the Pioneer receiver enjoyed music with considerable bass. It loved video processing and equalizer functions, and had a talented FM receiver. “It’s such a shame to see this piece of history leave us,” Fuhry said in an interview. “It was just a great multi-purpose device. We’re going to miss it.”

The Pioneer VSX-5000 is survived by Logitech X-540 III and its host computer, Nighthawk, who told us only that she will miss not having to push ALSA to the limits. The receiver specified in its will that it did not wish for a memorial service. If resuscitation efforts are not successful, it will be recycled.

The amplifier was playing Empty Walls by Serj Tankian at the time of its death Wednesday evening. “Suppose it wasn’t into alternative metal,” mentioned Fuhry.

There’s only one problem: I’m now stuck with the crappy AC ’97 audio built into my motherboard and I lack a MIDI port, something that I use extensively. So I’m gonna be looking around for a half-decent sound card and probably a job to pay for it (and possibly *more* new speakers). Looks like fate has finally caught up with me.

Basically what happened is I got two dead babies. One of ‘em was shipped from geeks.com and the other straight from Logitech. Both were completely dead on arrival. That’s the short version.

The long version is this: I ordered a new set of Logitech X-540 speakers from geeks.com for $115 including shipping. They were all that fit in my budget, and I figured they would be okay for the price. They came in and I got them all installed and they were working OK for an hour or two. I was adjusting some cables on my amp when it accidentally got switched to FM mode and started sending static to them – moderately loud static.

Now, mind you, this has happened to my old speakers, in fact they took tons more abuse than even that. But the fact that Logitech makes their DSP boards *that* cheap is just insidious. The speakers immediately stopped working, with strange noises being produced when turning the volume control and several other weird problems. IMHO for $115 these things should be able to withstand that. If I remember correctly they weren’t even turned up all that loud, which means absorbing that signal should not have been a problem.

Since the item got shipped manufacturer-direct, I contacted Logitech and they said that I had a defective set. Understandable. They also told me to go back to the seller since I had the item for less than 30 days. The resulting e-mail conversation was quite a funny one:

Support rep: “Please reply back to this email if you have purchase the X-540 speaker system for more than 30 days. The replacement unit will come from us if you have purchased the speaker system for more than 30 days. I look forward to your reply.”

Me: “According to my records I placed the order on April 12, 2008. I’ll e-mail back and re-open the support case on May 12 or so if I don’t have any luck with geeks.com. Thank for getting back so fast last time, I really appreciate it!”

Support rep: “Thank you for taking the time to reply my email and elaborating further on your issue. Since 30 days has passed since you have purchased the X-540 speaker system, I would like to proceed with issuing a replacement unit for your defective X-540 speaker system. In order to proceed with this, please provide me with all the details below.”

Me: “Attached is a screenshot of the order history window showing the purchase in question. Again from my previous message, I placed the order on April 12, 2008. So a month has not in fact passed yet since my order. The retailer from which I purchased the set has not replied to my message that I sent a week ago as of today, so as far as I’m concerned Logitech is not obligated to send out a new set until approximately May 12 assuming the retailer chooses not to provide support. Thank you again for the support.”

Support rep’s boss two days later: “Your fulfillment has been shipped. The following products were included: 1 | X-540″

No tricks, no cheating, that’s what really happened. They said it would take 10 to 14 business days to process; it took 1. That was a good sign, +1 for Logitech’s customer support.

Now if only their products were half as good. The new set was dead on arrival – I got absolutely no sound out of it and saw that the power LED was dimmer than it should have been. What a mess. So I now have two completely unusable subwoofer units and 10 satellite speakers sitting in my basement waiting for me to learn their fate.

I hope Logitech takes this as a lesson. No doubt that they built good speakers – the construction is solid and setup is straightforward and simple. But there is a huge problem with the circuitry that drives those speakers, and that is that it’s just way too cheap. It can’t handle even a normal signal – one would have to turn the output volume on their PC down just to avoid overloading the circuitry. That’s a problem because most users will leave the software volume all the way up and control the audio volume with the physical knob on the control pod.

Either way, I’ve e-mailed both geeks.com and Logitech about this and am waiting for them to reply. Chances are that if one doesn’t do something then the other will, but the worst that could happen is me being out $115 and learning an important lesson: to avoid Logitech hardware at all costs.

I’ll try to get the connection up, even if it’s only dial-up, so that I can receive e-mails that go to my SMTP server. This is really starting to worry me because any e-mail that goes to enano.homelinux.org or fuhrykitchentable.no-ip.org disappears into thin air and will never get seen again. What’s worse is, I got my first ever support request for Enano this week, and I can do absolutely nothing to help the guy. :’(

Wish me luck guys.

–Dan

The good news is that I installed Linux on the laptop. The bad news is that I installed Ubuntu on the laptop, and configured it to dual-boot with Windows XP Professional.

So, why? Here’s the deal. Linux does not like my laptop. When I installed openSUSE on it a couple months ago, I had no ACPI, no modem, and no wireless, which pretty much renders a laptop with only half of a battery useless. I was forced to put XP Pro back on there, and further hope was seemingly ruined when I heard that I had to use Windows for some school stuff, and no WINE was not going to cut it.

Luckily my laptop didn’t have that much stuff on it, so yesterday I took the plunge and installed Ubuntu Linux on the laptop. But somehow I managed to keep Windows alive . Here’s what I did:

1. I should have backed up my data. Don’t ask me why I didn’t, I just didn’t. But if you decide to do this, back up your data first, or the results could be catastrophic, as I almost found out.
2. Rebooted into the Knoppix LiveDVD
3. Resized the NTFS filesystem my D: drive, which was 15 (out of 30) GB, down to 5GB. This was by far the hardest step! The first time I attempted this, my laptop froze. The second time, the thing powered down, probably because of yet another false thermal alarm. I haven’t found any corrupted data yet, but that’s probably because I made sure to boot Windows (and thus run CHKDSK) after each failure.
4. Resized the partition itself. The resizentfs command only shrinks the filesystem, it doesn’t shrink the partition it’s on. I did this with the QtParted utility.
5. Created a 9.25GB ext3 partition (which can be read from Windows thanks to the ext2 IFS driver)
6. Rebooted into Windows to verify that everything was safe
7. Booted into the Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft beta) CD, and installed Ubuntu on /dev/hda3. Make absolutely sure that if you do this, you change the GRUB target partition to (hd0,#) where # is the Linux partition number minus 1. Otherwise your Windows MBR will get corrupted, and you will be stuck using FDISK or equivalent to fix it.
8. Fussed with the boot menus. A lot. Currently my active partition is #1, so the Windows NTLDR boots by default. I have GRUB for Windows installed (it’s included with RiPLinuX) so what I do to boot Ubuntu is select GRUB from the NTLDR menu, then select the Ubuntu partition from the WinGRUB menu, then select Ubuntu from the GRUB menu on the Ubuntu partition. Why so many steps? Because when I update/upgrade Ubuntu, which will be quite a lot, the GRUB configuration will be seamlessly auto-upgraded. After I write this post I plan to set hda3 as my active partition, that way I can use a chainloader to boot XP Pro and I will only have to use one menu at startup.
9. Only for systems that use the Intel i845 chipset: Ubuntu has this thing with being able to magically support ACPI on almost every recent computer. Hibernation mode worked without any configuration on my part. To get suspend to work, I had to compile this utility called video_post and update my ACPI config. Here’s a tar archive of the video_post utility and the updated acpid resume script. Untar it in your root directory with “sudo tar xzCf / ./ubuntu-intel-video-post.tar.gz” and try suspending/hibernating

FYI: as of this writing BigMomma has been up for 4 days, 5 hours and 42 minutes. Our goal is to hit 2 months before she runs out of RAM and needs a reboot. And in that case all I have to do is switch a setting on my router so that the port is forwarded to Nighthawk, which will probably end up being a backup HTTP server or at least a MySQL server.

Ohyeah, nobody’s seen Pharaoh Atem (aka Linux Overlord?) for about 3 weeks now…pray for him…he starts choking when his connection bandwidth gets below 200KBps for more than about 4 hours straight He’s like the only guy I ever IM with for any considerable amount of time and I’m starting to wonder what’s going on.

Ok, I’m now officially a graphics designer.

Check out www.fusionnerd.com. See the logo at the top of the page? And the “link to us” section at the bottom? Yep. That’s my doing. Images were created with GIMP and animated with IconLover.

So here’s what the setup looks like:

Not bad, huh?

A couple of days ago I downloaded and installed Synergy, but I didn’t do most of the work until today. I instralled Synergy on lapdawg and nighthawk on Wednesday and was unsuccessful in getting it to work because it failed to properly look up the NetBIOS hostname “nighthawk” (it didn’t exist, really) and it refused to let me use Nighthawk’s IP address. So I left it alone and ignored it for a couple of days, but I remembered the “hosts” file today and figured that if I put Nighthawk’s IP in there then maybe Synergy would work. So I tried it, and…TADA! it worked. Unfortunately, due to a (apparently one-time) firewall bug, Lapdawg bluescreened and I had to reboot. 0xD1 and fwdrv.sys – a.k.a. Kerio Firewall – for those who are interested (ahem, Microsoft?).

So I got the laptop to work with Synergy. But what about BigMomma? So I transferred the Synergy tarball over via FTP and *cough* compiled it myself *cough*.

Now, there is something that you all must understand about NetBIOS. It’s a Windows thing. Linux hosts do not normally have NetBIOS hostnames, and even if the Samba service is running, the firewall often blocks out the NetBIOS ports. So that’s why my network is too cool for NetBIOS. Actually, I prefer to call it “too secure” for NetBIOS. (hint hint, nudge nudge, Mr. Gate$.)

The problem with FC4 is, it has this thing with multiple hostnames (one for each network interface). So I can’t make BigMomma part of the “fuhrykitchentable” domain and have my loopback interface be localhost at the same time. And anyone who’s at all experienced with Apache web server knows that the hostname assigned to lo (that’s LO, the Unix way to refer to the loopback iface) must be “localhost.localdomain” in order to start. No different on the highly-superior-to-other-distros Fedora Core 4. So, after a little help from Neal, I taught BigMomma that 192.168.2.40 is more commonly known as “nighthawk” and that 192.168.2.39 prefers to be called “lapdawg.” Unfortunately, BigMomma still thought of herself as “localhost”, so when I tried to connect to Nighthawk using Synergy, it failed because BigMomma called herself “localhost” instead of “bigmomma.” Thank God for the guy who wrote Synergy’s documentation – I was able to use aliases to teach Synergy that “localhost” was really “bigmomma”. So finally I got Synergy to remote-control BigMomma.

And then I remembered one thing: BigMomma spends 95% of her time in text mode (to save RAM). Why in the world would I need to control her using a KM program?