Blog Archives

Come here to find an archive of "old content" from my blog. Content older than around 6 months will be added here as it accumulates. Over time, it will also be split into 6-month intervals, to save on bandwidth. For the time being, however, it will all remain on this single page.

This page was last edited on 12th January, 2016 21st of February, 2015. Check back in July for further updates, if you're curious.
12 August, 2015: Things are Looking Up
"The Great Hard Disk Saga of 2015" drew to a close quickly and reasonably painlessly.
What I wasn't so pleased with was Western Digital's seeming incompetence in sending the correct product back to me. I sent them exactly 1 WD20EARX (WD Green, 2TB, SATA) hard disk. In return, they sent me a WD External Hard Drive, with a refurbished WD20EARX inside. I don't quite understand the logic in this, and WD did offer to replace it "correctly," if I coughed up for the FedEx and waited around for a few more weeks.

I am also pleased to report that the Server's uptime has reached nearly 53 days since the last reboot!

Other than this, not much has been happening. I have made provisions for several articles to be written, if I ever actually feel like it. I still haven't not completely finished with the HP DC5100 article, Asus RT-N16U pages or even the Windows 2000 Un-Official Updates page. All of this is "in the pipeline," but exactly where is anyone's guess.


June 9th, 2015: Further Unplanned Disasters
 It would seem that my bad luck just can't run out.

People will remember how the DC5100 server runs two 2TB WD Green drives in a RAID1? Well, the second drive of the array, which is known as the parity volume, had fallen over dead. SATA-RAID Manager (for the Silicon Image card installed to the system) reported the drive as "orphaned." Attempting to rebuild the RAID resulted in this happening again.

What followed was incredibly frustrating, and suggests that even reasonably adept computer users have their low points, but that you should also backup your backup...
When I removed the remaining drive from the array, which to date has about 500,000 load-cycles, and about 2 years worth of uptime (so it should've failed, but didn't), Windows reported the volume as uninitialised. Of course, attempting to initialise the drive resulted in it being partioned, and most of the data on the drive being lost. Oops. Thankfully, all the data I care about is already stored on about 3 computers, and the server is used as a means on synchronising all this data, and backing up "archived" stuff, to save storage on some of the smaller machines. It also stored a lot of software I tend to use across computers running here on the home network. Thankfully, some of it was stored on another computer, so I have managed to recover that.

The failed drive has been sent back to Western Digital, as it is still within the 3 year limited warranty period. I'm thoroughly unimpressed (though) that the drive didn't even manage to survive 2 years before failing, especially considering it didn't see any read operations in that time. The drive appears to have lost its firmware, and really upset the HP machine when it was trying to POST, displaying itself as a 'BzBzBzBzBzBzBzBz.' I was surprised the system was fitted with 'BEES Technology.'

My final words on this, I probably won't be going back to Western Digital in the near future for hard drives. Not with the technology they are deploying across the entire range (the head-parking feature, to save about 0.01w of electricity, in all).
I will also be using my Silicon Image card precisely and ONLY as a means of storage expansion, beyond the system's own two SATA ports, and will probably use the RAID system *built-into* Windows Server instead of relying on cruddy 3-rd party software to do the dirty software work, resulting in "unrecognised drives" if either are pulled from the array.

Angry? No. I'm just annoyed with how this all turned out.
Hopefully WD honors the warranty on the drive, as what happened was completely out of my control, especially on a drive that really only saw 24/7 operation for the last year and three quarters.

May 7th, 2015: Unplanned Outages
Apparently this is what happens when you go away on a vacation and there is inclement weather in your residency. This resulted in a (unknown number of) blackouts.
I don't know when the resource went down, but I know that it did, and it hadn't happened at least until about a week ago.

The system is supposed to "Return to Previous State" when power is restored after a blackout. Well, the system did this. It then proceeded to hang with two errors (with codes, too) at the BIOS POST screen:
- RTC battery has died, and the clock/all your settings have been lost.
- Memory Check error

I will fix the battery in time. The server rarely looses power, so its easy enough to reset the date/time settings through remote desktop, and have a keyboard handy for when things go awry each boot, which they inevitably do in this situation...

The memory check error had to be fixed promptly. So, my reasoning dictated that I remove MMX1 first, seeing as the error occurs at 240mb, and each module is a GB from memory. *BZZZZZZZZZZ!* *WRONG!*
Now the error is occurring at 120mb. Okay - so the machine uses interleaved memory (That isn't the correct term. The right one evades me as of now). So I reinstall the other, and have to shift the PSU to get to this one, and subsequently remove it.

The system begins to boot, then carries on about the RTC battery. My assumption was it may have gone flat with the system unpowered, so I'm hoping uptime will fix that...
The system then proceeds to winge about a changed system configuration:
- The memory has been changed (Well, DUH! Do you think I'm stupid?)
- Apparently the system hard drive has been changed. Nope, it hasn't been touched. I think this thing might be going bonkers.

So I clear through this. The system reboots. Now its complaining that I haven't set the memory modules up in the "optimal configuration."
Honestly, does it really think I care? I *just want the server to work... NOW*

Anyway, the point of the story is that bad things happen when you go away for a while... If the Webserver is done at all in the coming days, it can be attributed to the following:
- The server was down for a while, and the system hadn't been updated for about a month beforehand. So it may be rebooted several times to allow for this - which, unfortunately, means diddling with a keyboard for when it looses its marbles during POST
- I have to fix the RTC battery. If/When this happens, there will be more downtime
- If the power goes out again. Not likely in the near future.


February 21st, 2015: Further Site Works
I've been a little more busy recently with LimestoneFormation. Some of the work facilitates me working on the site itself (i.e. directly sharing the web directly over my LAN, internally). Other work includes some re-organisation of stuff on the site, and even the generation of some 403, 404 and 500 error pages.

January 27th 2015: Servers at Work!
No, not the servers at my place of employment. Wouldn't that be silly to post?! (Although, I must admit, the one we've got for the Grocery Management software is "bitchin' the shiznits," in all honesty. Its a HP ProLiant, of some type).

The server works have been completed, successfully, not without (of course) some swearing, cursing and other grumbling.
Unfortunately, it turns out that the NAT network adapter provided under VirtualBox are completely useless for webservers, because (for reasons beyond my understanding, and that even of VirtualBox, who only close support tickets on this matter) the upload speed is restricted to something like 0.25mbps. Not good when you have image content!

So, Windows 2000 Server was thrown out the Window, and back came a lovely copy of Small Business Server 2003, which now runs Active Directory on this machine, but in actual reality, not the virtuality this web-server runs in for security reasons.

Again, I'm hoping to open the "Obnoxious Opinions" blog with some rants about... Stuff. That's all I'll say for now. Intruiged users may try prodding around to find it in the server, since I'm pretty sure its around here *somewhere*.

I'll leave it there for now.

January 9th 2014 2015: Server Works
Its clearly been a while since there was an update to the blog... There was, as I like to put it, a rather large "gap in coverage," since I last posted back in April!

As is visible, the site has progressed significantly since its inception nearly a year ago, now.

During the next few days, the server is running off another computer I have, which is standing in as Webserver. YES - I am using a real computer for this task, for the first time since this site's opening.
It is a Pentium-4 "Northwood" roomheater, running at 2.8GHz. The machine runs with a 150GB WD Blue hard drive, and Windows XP SP4, and Apache, of course.

April 6th 2014: Minor Stuff

This blog postage merely aims to fill in any "gaps in coverage" we've had over the last couple of days. At the end of March, there was an outage one evening due to the server being switched off for a short while to faciliate with electrical meddling, and again this week as I setup the Client-Bridge on my new Asus RT-N16 router.

The latter of which resulted in me completely re-configuring the way IP addresses are handed out on the network - causing several headaches here and there as the ISP supplied (Bigpond, in case you were wondering) 'Thomson" modem/router losts its configuration with the changes made. So it was a slightly epic effort. At least it all turned out well.

Otherwise, nothing else interesting has been happening.
I expect to get my act together sometime *soon* and write the articles about the Server and my new router, as well as some Windows-related stuff.
In the meantime, I've done a little more cleaning up on the website, mostly layout/apperance things and making sure my wording "works."

Oh wait... I just remembered that I've had an Iranian visitor to this website in the last few days. It wasn't really worth mentioning, BUT, it kinda amused me someone from over there found this site, and seemingly took an interest in the content hosted herein.

March 22nd 2014: Futher Site Updates

After some perculiar issues with the web-server, we are finally "back on the web," as it were. I have absolutely no idea what actually happened to the server, but it seemed to follow this series of events:
~ I was alerted by a friend to the fact that the site was refusing to respond one afternoon
~ The site would not respond to requests via the domain name "limestoneformation.mooo.com," but it worked perfectly fine from the IP Address. So I messed around with the router, which included a reboot and altering some settings. Neither worked!
~ I tried rebooting the virtual machine the web-server runs in... Curiously, the desktop was misbehaving and acting strangely. After failing to install some software, I realised I could not launch the "service.msc" application nor any installer.
So it seems to me the procedures I took before launching the site ulimately lead to this hiatus. Not that anyone outside of my group of friend's would have known, anyway... But I thought it was prudent to "log" this curiosity, so everyone is well aware that locking down Windows for Web-Serving purposes can ultimately end in disaster. No, you didn't hear that from a Linux (*etc*), Mac or "Significant Other" buff, you heard it from a Windows fan :-)

It also came to me that I should make some sort of effort to continue building this site.
And yes, I am well aware it isn't visually appealing, and I prefer substance over style... Since it "just works," (to quote the Macintosh or "Mac" camp) and requires no significant effort on my behalf to maintain. Its the lazy way, I suppose. And I don't really give a hoot about what others think about that. Thats it, for now.

Some Networking Plans:
I also had the grand idea of "fixing" some of the downfalls of the home network I have in place, and probably breaking the rule about "security by obscurity" suggestion many people have for their networks. I won't tease the hackers, since I'm sure they'll try to break in anyway.

Anyway, one of the rooms here in the home have about 4 computers, and all of them connect wirelessly to my "server setup"*... Even though the poor, lowly Thomson router, crippled by our ISP's draconian firmware does the driving, it still manages to provide a switched connection to what comprises the wired network. Each computer actually runs at a different wireless speed, and the entire network isn't fluctuating with the slowest machine - of course, the speed of transfers is limited by the slowest system, but the overall speed of the network isn't limited because of one station, thankfully.
In ANY case, it just doesn't right to be pushing so much data through the router's wireless interface, especially when it is dealing with another 2-3 devices on top of my computers.

To rectify this, I came up with the "Grande Idea" (That's pronounced Grrrr-orrrr-end, the French way!) of using a router with the DD-WRT firmware to provide a Client-Bridge to the Thomson router, alleviating the 4 different data streams and conflicting signals that are produced. The router I plan on purchasing is an Asus RT-N16U - with three omni-directional antennae, and Wireless N capability (Even though I still use "G...").
I don't really care for the Gigabit Ethernet capability, since the Wireless network severely limits the speed of transfer anyway...

*I laugh when I call it that... Since it really isn't anything special, and certainly doens't involve any rack-mounted systems!

February 27th 2014: Site Updates and New Content

I've finally gotten my act together and starting to seriously construct and develop this site. You know what, even though no-one is probably watching, I'm really quite happy (and impressed) with the progress I've made.
The biggest thing I had to "overcome" was the huge mess that made up my site's home directory. Yeah, that was probably the hardest thing to fix, in all seriousness. Now its all neatly arranged.

That brings me to my next point, as part of the cleanup, I decided to add a text document that would help me find directories and understand what on earth I was thinking when I named them. In case you weren't aware, I'm human too - and I'll easily forget a lot of things, unless I repeat them and try to make sense of the mess. Even though there are no prizes, readers are more than welcome to try and locate this mysterious text file. If you do manage to do so, please contact me to claim your congratulations.

As part of the ongoing work, I've updated some minor mistakes here on the blog, re-structured the homepage and actually added the TC1100 feature (and accompanying photos). Readers paying attention to my thoughts will also note that I'm considering some input as to whether I should host device-drivers for the TC1100, and even the TC1000. My reasoning is this: HP won't offer support of their device forever, and the more sources of drivers for the community there are, the better off we are for the future.
In time, I'll probably add some sort of colour-scheme to the site, Favicon's (Those cute little site icons you'll see in your browser tabs) and perhaps an RSS feed to keep readers updated about the site - whether I'd keep it updated when there is a functioning "Site News" table on the top of the Index is a question I would like to answer. Again, thoughts and comments are appreciated.

I'm also surprised already at the sort of attacks that have hit the site in the limited uptime. It seems *someone* had enough time on there hands to launch the "Woot-Woot" (Formed known as "Knock-Knock") attack on my server.
From the quick bit of research I did, this attack is used to try and detect vulnerabilities in any PHP "stuff" you might have installed and running on the server. Apparently, site designers take some sort of perverse joy in setting up huge security holes for their clients, and have no clue on how to secure thier sites.

For now, that's all the useful information I have to give to you. If you have any thoughts or comments, please send them into me by clicking one of the two hyperlinks in the paragraphs above this one. I can't be bothered linking another set of words.

February 23rd 2014: "LimestoneFormation" Goes Online

For many months I've contemplated running a web-server. In that time, I've considered what exactly I'd host, and whether anyone would be looking. I finally made my decisiont to go ahead with the project recently, and with the additional hardware I've got these days, in would be more fun that I expected.
Why are you seeing two different site names?
Well, the computer is Plastic, and its a box... There's the site name addressed, and it won't last long, provided I can rectify the issue.
As for the domain name, well, I was reading wacky server names, and many have used rocks in reference to their server. So I thougth I'd go one better: A rock formation.

I won't try to waste your time just yet. Please be aware this is still a work-in-progress and may not function entirely as planned.
As you can see, I have already made some headway into partitioning the site into a halfway-decent manner. I've also made some (crude) attempts at sub-index directories.

Once I get my act together, I will start posting to the blog as much as I feel necessary. For those of you wondering, it won't be deeply personal, mushy garbage, even though many appreciate seeing how others tackle problems to gain some "experience" themselves... I'll try to restrict posts to "meaningful" and "necessary," which are perhaps not unlike the old rule "T.H.I.N.K"
And a quick note: NO, what I post might not be inspiring. It may very well encourage death at the computer... Sorry about that!
You should also follow a similar ruling if/when you do anything in the electronic realm. It might well save you a lot of trouble with friends, family or the world later on :-)

Other 'Good to Know' Stuff: The homepage will (hopefully) alert visitors to new content posted on the site. Particularly, updates to the blog and new "featured content." I will include an "Update Counter," to inform visitors of the currency of this site. If I'm behaved, I may also post regarding any site downtime. Like I said, it is affected by electricity, the modem and the server's desire to operate in a behaved fashion. I can't ignore Windows Update on the operating system hosting the virtual computer, so the site will drop out from time to time. People concerned about their sanity, those who "need" their daily fix of this site can probably find a cached version on Google. I'll try to hyperlink* a search result so you can all save it for a rainy day.

A Note for Early-Birds: It seems that "mooo.com" hasn't bounced the subdomain yet from "afraid.org." Hopefully the DNS should bounce along (propogate?) to all the right servers. In time, we should have a working address, and users will be able to access the site via: http://LimestoneFormation.mooo.com

*Yes, Yes, I used that archaic old term outside of a HTML coding program. Spare me the senseless blabber about it, will ya?