CPU and RAM upgrade in ProLiant MicroServer Gen8

Inspired by the two links listed below I've upgraded CPU and RAM in my ProLiant MicroServer Gen8.

1) "ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 Links" - http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/topic/5639-proliant-microserver-gen8-links/

2) "Installed Xeon E3-1230V2 in Gen8 HP Microserver" - https://b3n.org/installed-xeon-e3-1230v2-in-gen8-hp-microserver/

[root@os ~]# grep "i3-3220" /proc/cpuinfo
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz
[root@os ~]#
[root@os ~]# free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          15844        1186       14150          22         507       14399
Swap:          3055           0        3055
[root@os ~]#
[root@os ~]# sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:         +8.3°C  (crit = +31.3°C)

power_meter-acpi-0
Adapter: ACPI interface
power1:        0.00 W  (interval = 300.00 s)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0:  +37.0°C  (high = +85.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 0:         +36.0°C  (high = +85.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:         +37.0°C  (high = +85.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

[root@os ~]#


I've run repeatedly the following test and CPU temperature never went above 70 celsius.

# sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=1000000 --num-threads=4   run

MacBook Pro Retina SSD vs Transcend JetDrive Lite 350 128GB vs USB 2.0 HDD speed test

As I needed more storage for my Mac I went for Transcend JetDrive Lite 350 128GB card. Sounds like a good occasion to perform quick speed test with "dd" and Blackmagick "Disk Speed Test".

Mac info.

"dd" test output:

# internal ssd
# 318348122 bytes = 318.35 MB

blob:~ marcin$ dd if=/dev/zero  of=~/Documents/data1.dat bs=1000 count=1500000
1500000+0 records in
1500000+0 records out
1500000000 bytes transferred in 4.711823 secs (318348122 bytes/sec)
blob:~ marcin$

# sd card
# 52060250 bytes = 52.06 MB

blob:~ marcin$ dd if=/dev/zero  of=/Volumes/Transcend/data2.dat bs=1000 count=1500000
1500000+0 records in
1500000+0 records out
1500000000 bytes transferred in 28.812770 secs (52060250 bytes/sec)
blob:~ marcin$

# usb 2.0 hdd
# 44119985 bytes = 44.11 MB

blob:~ marcin$ dd if=/dev/zero  of=/Volumes/backup/data3.dat bs=1000 count=1500000
1500000+0 records in
1500000+0 records out
1500000000 bytes transferred in 33.998198 secs (44119985 bytes/sec)
blob:~ marcin$

Blackmagic "Disk Speed Test" screen-shots:

Internal SSD.

Transcend JetDrive.

USB 2.0 HDD.

Doing IT Stallman's style

Inspired by - https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
Thanks to - http://www.tekmote.nl/

ebuyer, myyodel and invisible call cards

When I think I'm alone:

amazon's "offical yodel complaints forum" - http://goo.gl/aBjMOR
"YODEL the home delivery network - any more disgruntled customers?" - http://goo.gl/ceVTal
"Why You Shouldn’t Use Yodel For Parcel Delivery" - http://goo.gl/h91p7S

I've ordered parts on 12/11/2013 for my home lab from Ebuyer and requested a Saturday delivery. I could have gone for a free delivery during the week but I'm at work Mon-Fri so I've paid £14(VAT incl) to have all the parts delivered on Saturday. At that time I was not aware I can order to work as I've only changed my employer few weeks ago.

On Saturday 16/11/2013 nothing has turned up and MyYodel claims on the status page that they've attempted a delivery at 08:36AM but for some reason the driver left no card behind. Obviously I was all day at home awaiting for the parcel to arrive. After some time on the phone with MyYodel 's automated system I was told to call the person who send the parcel as there is a problem. Ebuyer's line is open only Mon-Fri. Some lady on twitter from MyYodel was trying to chase the parcel for me but failed minutes before 1PM when MyYodel goes offline and she gave me another number to the same automated system.

On Monday 18/11/2013 I've called Ebuyer from work at 9:20AM and asked for delivery to work address on Tuesday, I was told that this will cost me extra £10 but I could have parcel delivered on Monday after 6PM to home address.

When I'm writing this it's 8:46PM  and still no parcel, MyYodel site claims they've tried delivery today (Monday 18/11/2013) at 10:08AM - "Delivery attempted, call card left".

I will keep you posted as I'm struggling to get this hardware....

Delivery Options:
1) Mon-Fri business hours - my work place
2) Mon-Fri after 6PM - home address
3) SAT - any time home address
4) I can pick up

Suggestions:
MyYodel - stop using invisible call cards
Ebuyer - stop using MyYodel

another (pyrax) way to upload local folder to Rackspace CloudFiles

Other possible ways (I'm sure there is more):

1) curl, httpie - http://docs.rackspace.com/files/api/v1/cf-devguide/content/Authentication-d1e639.html

2) bash script (not tested by me) - http://blog.chmouel.com/2010/06/09/upload-to-rackspace-cloud-files-in-a-shell-script/

3) sftp-cloudfs (not tested by me) - http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/rackspace-openstack-cloud-upload-files-using-sftp-cloudfs-proxy/    ||   https://github.com/Memset/sftpcloudfs

4) OpenStack swift client (not tested by me) - http://goodsquishy.com/2012/08/rackspace-cloud-files-from-the-command-line/

5) turbolift - https://github.com/cloudnull/turbolift

I'm going to use pyrax in this exercise which Rackspace's SDK for python - http://docs.rackspace.com/sdks/guide/content/python.html

Code for my script is available here (I'm not responsible for any data loss while using this script) - https://github.com/marcinrozanski/api/blob/master/upload_folder.py

It assumes you've got credentials file in the following format:

$ cat ~/.rackspace_cloud_credentials
[rackspace_cloud]
username = your_username
api_key = your_API_key
$

Let's say we've got a local folder called "upload_test" with three text files.

$ ls -altr upload_test/
total 24
-rw-r--r--  1 marcin  staff    9 14 May 21:19 file1.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 marcin  staff    9 14 May 21:20 file2.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 marcin  staff    9 14 May 21:20 file3.txt
drwxr-xr-x  5 marcin  staff  170 14 May 22:14 .
drwxr-xr-x  7 marcin  staff  238 14 May 23:12 ..
$

$ cat upload_test/file*.txt 

test 123

test 123

test 123

$ 

We want to upload that folder to CloudFiles as container called "cont_test1".

$ python upload_folder.py
Enter container name: cont_test1
Enter folder to upload: upload_test
Beginning Folder Uplaod
Total bytes to upload: 27
Progress: 0.00%
Progress: 33.33%
Progress: 100.00%

Upload Complete.
$

Plesk 9 installer fails while 11 works fine, Plesk 9 going EOL

So I wanted to test Plesk 9 to 10 to 11 upgrade, created new server and... failed to load Plesk 9.

Fresh Centos 5.9 Cloud Server, 1GB RAM, 40GB HDD

[root@plesk ~]# cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS release 5.9 (Final)
[root@plesk ~]# uname -a
Linux plesk 2.6.18-348.3.1.el5xen #1 SMP Mon Mar 11 20:28:48 EDT 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[root@plesk ~]# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1024        157        866          0          5         39
-/+ buffers/cache:        113        910
Swap:          976          0        976
[root@plesk ~]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/xvda1             39G  1.2G   36G   4% /
tmpfs                 512M     0  512M   0% /dev/shm
[root@plesk ~]#

Plesk 9 installer - http://www.parallels.com/uk/download/plesk9/ , pick CentOS, Download for CentOS 5.x 64bit version, direct link -  http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PPP9/CentOS5/parallels_installer_v3.6.0_build100407.15_os_CentOS_5_x86_64

On "Select the desired products and their versions" page I've tried 11.0.9, 10.4.4 and 9.5.4 all got stuck with the following error message.

Select the desired products and their versions
===============================================================================

The following product versions are available:

1. [*] Parallels Plesk Panel
  2. (*) Parallels Plesk Panel 11.0.9 (stable)
  3. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 10.4.4 (stable)
  4. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 10.3.1
  5. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 10.3.0
  6. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 10.2.0
  7. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 10.1.1
  8. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 10.1.0
  9. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 10.0.1
  10. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 10.0.0
  11. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5.4
  12. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5.3
  13. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5.2
  14. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5.1
  15. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5.0
  16. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 9.3.0
  17. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 9.2.3
  18. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 9.2.2
  19. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 9.2.1
  20. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 9.2.0
  21. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 9.0.1
  22. ( ) Parallels Plesk Panel 9.0.0
  23. ( ) Plesk 8.6.0
  24. ( ) Plesk 8.4.1
  25. ( ) Plesk 8.4.0
  26. ( ) Plesk 8.3.0
  27. ( ) Plesk 8.2.1
  28. ( ) Plesk 8.2.0

29. [ ] Parallels Small Business Panel

30. [ ] Sitebuilder 4.5 and earlier versions (for Plesk 9 and earlier)

31. [ ] SSO

N) Go to the next page; P) Go to the previous page; Q) Cancel installing
To select a version, type the respective number;
Select an action [N]:
File downloading PSA_11.0.9/plesk-11.0.9-cos5-x86_64.inf3: 11%..22%..30%..44%..55%..60%..72%..85%..90%..100% was finished.
ERROR: The root element is named incorrectly in the file /root/parallels/PSA_11.0.9/plesk-11.0.9-cos5-x86_64.inf3
Not all packages were installed.
Please, contact product technical support.
[root@plesk ~]#

Plesk 11 installer - http://www.parallels.com/uk/download/plesk/installer/, pick CentOS, Download for CentOS 5.x 64bit version, direct link -  http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP11/11.0/CentOS5/parallels_installer_v3.12.0_build120601.16_os_CentOS_5_x86_64

Please note the date difference between both packages!

[root@plesk ~]# pwd
/root
[root@plesk ~]# ls -ltr
total 15852
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6592768 Dec 21  2010 parallels_installer_v3.6.0_build100407.15_os_CentOS_5_x86_64
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 9592224 Jun  1  2012 parallels_installer_v3.12.0_build120601.16_os_CentOS_5_x86_64
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root    4096 Apr  3 11:34 parallels
[root@plesk ~]#

No issues with the installation when installer for version 11 is used.

Select the desired products and their versions
===============================================================================

The following product versions are available:

1. [*] Parallels Plesk Panel
  2. (*) Parallels Plesk Panel 11.0.9 (stable)

3. [ ] Parallels Small Business Panel

4. [ ] Sitebuilder 4.5 and earlier versions (for Plesk 9 and earlier)

5. [ ] SSO

N) Go to the next page; P) Go to the previous page; Q) Cancel installing
To select a version, type the respective number;
Select an action [N]:

AFTER SOME TIME

**** Package phpmyadmin scriptlet completed successfully.

Trying to unpack billing fixes from MU43-billing.zip... billing not installed. Skipping...

Patches were installed successfully.

The changes were applied successfully.

[root@plesk ~]# cat /usr/local/psa/version 

11.0.9 CentOS 5 110120608.16

[root@plesk ~]# 

Message is clear, Plesk 9 is so EOL! - http://www.parallels.com/uk/plesk/lifecycle/

How to get WiFi working on MacBook Pro 13" under Ubuntu

MacBook Pro 13" i5 Late 2011

WiFi controller:

root@mac:~# lspci | grep -i network
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4331 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 02)
root@mac:~#

Steps to install the firmware (use sudo or run as root):

# apt-get install b43-fwcutter
# wget http://www.lwfinger.com/b43-firmware/broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2

# tar xf broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2 

# b43-fwcutter -w "/lib/firmware" broadcom-wl-5.100.138/linux/wl_apsta.o 

# echo 'SUSPEND_MODULES="b43 bcma"' >> /etc/pm/config.d/default

# reboot

I assume it will work on Fedora just change the first command to:

yum install b43-fwcutter