Ok today I went to Newcastle local computerbank despite the name this group is unrelated to most computer banks around. it’s mainly a windows shop but that has more to do with the volunteers knowledge is limited more than any theological differences of why windows is better than linux.
I went there to pick up some cheap computers to act as workstation for work.
What I got.
Hardware:
Dell case
40gb hdd
2.4 Ghz P4
256 MB RAM
ATI graphics (glxgears 650 fps off live cd)
Intel Motherboard
1 Gbps on-board NIC
lntel audio
Software:
because there was a windows XP OEM sticker on the box they had windows XP installed. along with every anti-virus anti-spywear program… AVG ad-ware… so much crap i decided it needed a wipe.. i did get warned as i took them out if it’s going in a “secure” area i should reloaded as he couldn’t tell me what they have preloaded. As they didn’t have any QA or standard installs.
What i gave:
Since Computer bank is a subsection of Community Helping Hands Association and that charity pays for there power and adsl, also the CHHA does their paper work for them. I handed over a donation to CHHA for more than what the computers where worth on behalf of Sneddon & Partners Solicitors. Also because the guys there are nice they let me pick through the shelf until i found something good and they are slowly letting us educate them about linux.
For contact information see http://www.chha.org.au/
ok i know i rarely post about hockey
but tonight was the semi-final for the summer comp for 6th grade.
unfortunately we lost 4 1, we only managed to field 9 players and the opposition just had the speed and the numbers on us.
so after a hard season of just trying to find enough players we came 4th.
Anyway I need to send in my rego forms for winter comp i’ve convinced kym to play women’s so it should be a great season.
Back at uni again to my horror the IT guys changed the wireless. all the time spent on writing a really nice documentation on how to connect all wasted since they now used a completely different connection method , this time i decided to rewrite the doc but use a wiki so it can be edited by others.
So if you’ve come to this site going how do i do the dam thing see wiki.newcastlelug.org
Currently it still in development but it’s moving on quickly since it’s now Wednesday, the changes happened Monday and last time it took me 3 months to work it out this time 2-3 hours.
Biggest change to the uni wireless seems to be the access control program i can’t get my POP3 emails or my IMAP emails while at uni which is a big pain. that and the access control program requires java which isn’t always installed on our linux laptops is it !
Anyway i should be concentrating back on classes but you know how it is.
Gabriel
Setting up a new computer for Sneddon & Partners , We decided we wanted a RAID system since data these days is now always more expensive than the computers and we’ve just had a string of failures on our older systems.
The Motherboard is a giga-byte GA-P35-DS3P which contains a Intel
ICH9R RAID controller, i didn’t really know about software RAID when i
brought it and thought intel good they support linux and Phoronix
gave it 9/10 in a review it all must work
Ok i’ve discovered it’s a software raid… and what that means.
So now i had 2 choices:
1. I could try and use the Software RAID Intel chip, this would involve using dmraid which hard really hard install instructions https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto , through after reading the instructions and some advice from IRC i came to the conclusion i only needed to this this if i was dual booting with windows.
2. I could use Linux software RAID mdadm to create a software raid just turn my hard drives into 2 standard sata drives and go on my merry way.
obviously I choose 2, and since the Ubuntu Community Wiki didn’t have instructions so set about writing them https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SoftwareRAID
Waiting for some people to find the site for a bit of feedback but we’ll see how it goes.
Ok it’s Saturday morning so the conf is officially ended. But we still have the open day the Linux Australia AGM, and a couple other things to do while we are here.
The conference was great, it’s really all about meeting people and networking than anything technical, the talks presentations are all bonuses. But it’s really nice to sit down ask people what they are working on, how long they have been around, how they found linux nearly always has a good story to it.
I’ll have to back blog post to share some of my thoughts about the technical conference.
looking forward to going home and sleeping in my own bed.
but also to get started on so many ideas which i’ve rendering in my head while being here.
Life is boring if things "Just Work" !
