C ä n n e ' s N o t e b o o k

Laptop as VGA console – second generation got it right!

Cänne — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:14:02 +0000

Epiphan KVM2USB is a USB device that connects between your (portable) Linux or Windows PC and a headless VGA/XVGA enabled computer, turning the PC as Keyboard, Video Mouse (KVM) of the headless system. The following two pictures illustrates a typical usage:

Epiphan KVM2USB - second generation

Epihan KVM2USB second generation - typical usage

You can use your portable PC to connect both to your company’s Intranet using Wi-Fi and on the headless industrial computer that you are working with. You do not need to carry a keyboard, screen and mouse with you anymore.

In my earlier Epiphan KVM2USB evaluation I found the first generation KVM2USB’s processor a bit sluggish. It could not follow up the different boot phases fast enough (BIOS, splash-screen, boot-loader, login-screen, GUI). It was spending too much time in synchronizing so that you missed important milestones in the boot process and you could not (easily) enter into the BIOS settings.

The second generation KVM2USB device got it right with its much more powerful processor. The synchronization to ever changing video modes is now much more faster and reliable and you can enter into the BIOS settings without too much difficulties. The price to pay is increased power consumption and it is recommended that you plug in either the PC’s power supply or KVM2USB’s power supply. KVM2USB can work without its own power supply, however by drawing its power from the portable PC.

The installation works out of the box – nearly. I modified some settings. For example, there is no reason to use CPU resources to capture more than 25 frames per second. This can be set in Options:

Epiphan KVM2USB second generation - set frame rate to 25fps

With Trenton and IPO industrial computers, the VGA2USB-utility starts to flickr quite badly with the default settings.

Epiphan KVM2USB second generation - flickering in BIOS settings

Epiphan’s technical support suggested to change the offset to 31 from default, and to set gain to 135 from default. This was done in Device Configuration:

Epiphan KVM2USB second generation - Offset and Gain settings

The proposed values resolved the problem:

Epiphan KVM2USB second generation - Offset=31, Gain=135 corrects BIOS display problem

The conclusion is that the second generation Epiphan KVM2USB is a tool that I can recommend to power users who are constantly carrying around a keyboard, screen, mouse and maybe a portable computer (or who are constantly looking for a free computer screen to be able to log on IBM/Tivoli on a PXE server or other similar service). The price tag of the new Epiphan KVM2USB is quite high and you better check their web site before start thinking that this is a solution for all your problems!

PCI Express over fiber / cable is an architectural oppurtunity

Cänne — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:15:10 +0000

It is now few years that my mind has been fascinated about the opportunities that the PCI Express specification provides at the system architecture level. My recent tests with a simple, one lane PCI Express extension kit using a 50 meter fiber confirmed that my vision is quickly coming reality.

First, two very simple rules about the COTS systems:

All industrial COTS cards that got a CPU on them get insufficient to turn a commercial Operating System (OS) within a three years time span
Industrial I/O cards can live much longer: ten year is not an exception!

Today, the bus has dematerialized and it has become a software protocol that we transfer encapsulated in a transmission protocol on a serialized media, which can be cable, fiber or wireless. So why not finally make a modular system where the slow and fast I/O problems are each separated in to their own entities and the ever changing CPU/OS in its own? Presented with a block diagram, we would get something like this:

The high end solution (fast disks, PCI-Express detector cards, and so on) would look equally modular:

There are some industrial grade 1U height rackable servers around. The following link is not the only one that I found, but the product comes with PCI Express x8 riser card:
http://www.stealthcomputer.com/industrial_rackmounts_sr1501datasheet.htm.
An example of a bus extension system could be the following product:
http://www.amplicon.co.uk/IPC/product/PCI-Rackmount-MAGMA-2906.cfm.

Where’s the beef ?

Wouldn’t the proposed system be more expensive? Sure, for a single purchase. But seeing the annoying fact that the CPUs and Operating Systems are aging much more rapidly than the I/O systems the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) would be equal or less in the timespan of ten to fifteen years. Only the unit containing the CPU and the operating system needs to be changed while the PCI/PCIe extension unit will not be touched. The immediate saving in money is not substantial but what a relief for the maintenance and software upgrades!

Quick testing Adnaco S2 remote PCI / PCI Express fiber kit

Cänne — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 08:54:21 +0000

Hardware contents in Adnaco S2 PCI/PCIe fiber kit

Recently I have been testing Adnaco S2 remote PCI/PCIe (PCI Express) over fiber kit.

Installation

Adnaco has done careful job and there is practically no hick-ups in the installation. At least there is no drivers to install and from the remote host’s point of view the entire operation is really transparent (Trenton MCXT PICMG1.3, motherboard BPX6719). I experienced some problems initially, after the installation when the test system refused to fire up. The problem was obviously related to the fact the remote PCI/PCIe extension chassis was not turned on. Here is a point of improvement, the remote chassis should turn automatically on, when the remote host fires up.

Test Arrangement

To test the performances, I moved the LSI SAS3041 RAID controller of the remote host into the Adnaco S2 extension chassis and replaced its slot with Adnaco’s H1 PCIe/Fiber interface. Between the two chassis I put 50 meters of multi-mode cable. The SFP transceivers are SR (for Short Range) type. As you can see from the below picture, I did not moved the actual SAS disks into the other chassis, there is no scientific reason to do so.. The LSI SAS3041 card is connected with three 15 krpm SAS disks. The embedded LSI controller is not used for RAID operations but the three disks create a software RAID-0 array as /dev/md0 device in Red Hat Linux 5.2 64-bit system. The below picture illustrates the test arrangement.

Performance

We are interested especially in the write performance of the RAID-0 array. We are using basically two tests, each writing big chunks of data of 4 GB into the RAID-0 array. We are not interested of the short cycle read-write operations and that is why I have no measurement data other than block write. The first tests consist of a test program written in C. It creates a memory block and using write() system call moves the 4 GB memory block into the RAID-0 array using Linux /dev/md0 mounted EXT2 file system:

Local performance: 264 MB/s
Same test with the LSI controller on remote Adnaco R1BP1: 160 MB/s

That’s great, since it is but 38 percent drop in performance and not 75 percent that could have followed from the fact that we have to switch from four PCI Express lanes into a single lane in the fiber. This means that the performance bottleneck in this particular application is rather in the SAS disk array, the LSI SAS controller and Linux file system and Linux RAID system.

Another test allows us to limit take out the Linux file system performance from the test. It is called “dd test“, from the GNU/Linux dd(1) utility. The test allows to write directly from the memory into the raw device, served by the Linux RAID system. The commands within the (test) script are:

Fill Random

dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/md0 bs=1G count=4

Fill Zero

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/md0 bs=1G count=4

Please note that the random filling is used between each /dev/zero test to make it less probable that the LSI device and/or SAS disk can cache the zero stream.

Local performance: 324 MB/s
Adnaco R1BP1: 175 MB/s

This is truly a great result from Adnaco! Let me remind you that theoretical maximum speed of one lane PCI Express (first generation) is 2.5 Gbit/s. With 10-bit payload, that makes theoretical transfer speed of 250 MB/s. With Adnaco we get up to 70 percent bandwidth occupation.

Conclusion

I am very satisfied with the above results. I have learned that the oversimplification in performance calculations is bad. You cannot just divide the local performance with the number of lanes when you move from eight lane PCI Express operation to one lane operation. You need to try what actually will happen in your specific problem. There is always so much software and firmware overhead that you have to make a test before you can tell. Adnaco S2 sorts out from the test as a stable product. I would like to see more slots, both PCI and PCI Express on the remote motherboard. The proposed enclosure should not be a “mini-tower” but a 19 inch, rackable, 4U height unit.

Simple Flash-like photo-album with CSS and JavaScript

Cänne — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:34:43 +0000

I needed to make a single page “house-for-sale” announcement on the web. I did not want to take the use of the commercial reap-estate sites where all that is automatized but make a simple, but elegant page with modern web standards. My web design information was dating from the days where elements were actually table cells. I decided that there was a need for a modern, CSS Layer based design. I wanted also to take the use of layered techniques to propose a small photo-album that would look a little bit like it would have been created with Flash. Below I will explain how the photo-album was created. Should you want to take a look at the final output already, check the French and English versions of my sales leaflet.

In the final design, we have a left column that contains the photo-album. I have created two sets photos. Only five photos were selected to make the thumbnails to fit using a reasonable size. Another reason is to maintain a reasonable downloading time. The CSS method used below make all the photos be downloaded automatically so that the thumbnail photo clicking makes the actual photo and its caption to change without any delay. The user experience is very Flash-like.

All images were GIMP’ed (and not Photoshopped because I am against piracy) to a fixed size. Again, we are looking for a reasonable download speed and GIMP is a good tool to make small, interlace-enabled PNG-pictures. A fixed size is good to avoid hassle with the image transparency and/or background showing in a wrong place when we switch between pictures. Of course, this process is entirely manual, as everything else in this project.

Let’s do some coding: First we will create picture, caption and thumbnail placeholders.












				Pellentesque eu lacus at dui mattis tincidunt.

				Vivamus ! ullamcorper, ante eget vulputate auctor,
				mi pede volutpat velit, sit amet ultricies nibh diam non libero.

				Nulla facilisi. Morbi quam tortor, laoreet in, bibendum nec, tincidunt quis, nulla.

				Curabitur ut libero ac justo varius facilisis. Nulla facilisi. Sed id justo.

				Donec placerat sodales libero. Mauris sollicitudin felis vitae enim semper mattis.

Still with me? Great! If you look at the layers carefully, you would notice that there are caption and picture layers that are numbered as “zero“. They are used during the initial opening of the page, to give the annoying Flash-like impression of “loading..” – pictures! Probably because of the slow server of my ISP, the initial loading of some ten pictures can take something like five to ten seconds. A long time to keep a potential customer waiting. At least I can give the client a message that I am working hard to show the pictures, while the actual body text is visible quite quickly on most browsers.

This is done by selecting the picture0 and caption0 layers visible when the page loads. In picture0 layer we will show the infamous ever-rotating bars to keep the potential client hypnotized with what is only an animated GIF, nothing to do with Flash.

All the pictures and thumbnails are defined as background images of other layers. They will be loaded automatically on the background when the page loads. We need to switch from the picture0/caption0 pair to picture1/caption1 layer pair once pictures have been all loaded.

Can we get information when they are loaded? No, at least not easily. You may want to try to experiment with each browser’s Document Object Model (DOM), but luckily IE7, Firefox 3 and Chrome all seem to work in predicable manner with the delayed JavaScript execution method that I will present next:

The init() function fires a one-second delay timed call-back function, which has the job to turn the picture1/caption1 layer pair visible. The delay is not important, in practice the loadWait() function will not get in execution before the browser has parsed all the

layers (and their background images). Therefore this is a great method – although not at all determistic – to show the images in a synchronized manner, once they have been all downloaded. User experience is very satisfying ! (And if you think otherwise, please give me some feedback by commenting this post).

Nokia N95 Firmware Upgrade 31.0.014 – then 31.0.017

Cänne — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:27:38 +0000

In my ongoing saga on my excellent, unbranded Nokia N95 smartphone : Now the PC Suite’s Nokia Software Updater (NSU) announced that firmware version 31.0.014 is available. I have been thinking to switch to N96 but after the announcement of N97 I guess that it is really not worth of it. Therefore I thought that since I need to keep the Good Old Faithful alive still for awhile, I would give the latest upgrade a go.

Of course, I took a full backup with Content Copier before making the upgrade. Because I am still using the Best Safe application (there is still now built-in Wallet application), I took again the time to export all its card data into a CVS file on the memory card before upgrade. Otherwise there is no way to restore your secret cards after the re-installation.

After the reboot of the system, *#0000# gives now

v31.0.014
06-11-08
RM-159
©Nokia N95(01.01)

Sincerely, I could not tell the difference. Time that I am writing this, most of the threads out there talk about a security update. After using the phone for a while, here’s the list of changes and/or problems that I spotted:

The “Live” Menu buttons are, errh, much more live
Nokia Maps is version v2.0 wk30 b04 and is capable to make approximate location without satellites, using the GSM stations for calculation. This feature was already present in 30.0.015, though. Something has broken, since I cannot share My Favorite Locations with Google Maps anymore:I use Google Maps’ Search feature which is much more powerful than the crap Search of Nokia Maps. With Nokia you need to know how the street address exactly and still it sometimes finds the street in the neighboring city! With Google you can use a wild search term, like “dentist” and you will spot what you need straigth away. But the maps in Nokia Maps are better and so are its routing and other navigation capabilities. Therefore I save the location in Google Maps in Favourites. In Nokia Maps, you can use Favourites -> My Places to find the same place very quickly.Helas, the My Places selection does not open anymore in Nokia Maps. You can only Search it (sigh!) or open it in Phone’s Menu->Tools->Landmarks, which allows you to open the place in Nokia Maps. This, of course is a brain damage alternative.You need to download the latest Nokia Maps from
http://europe.nokia.com/A4984204
I got v2.0 wk45 b03, which got the Nokia Maps Favourites’ My Places to work again. Quite strange this version did not get its way into the 31.0.014, since the problem appeared already in 30.0.015.
The Photo Gallery Zoom function is now super fast.
Wow! But how come it took three years to find the good algorithm since obviously the hardware has always been capable enough. Earlier, as we can remember N95’s zoom function was all but useless and if you ever made the mistake to use it when you showed your photos to your friends, you lost all the glory that your fancy gadget phone might have gave you.
Accelerator sensor based automatic screen orientation is now somewhat faster and more predictable. Now you can even leave it on..

Conclusion is that it is probably not worth of the hassle to upgrade from 30.0.015, but if you are coming from 20.0.015 or earlier, you should definetely make the upgrade.

Installation of lm_sensors 3.x package for Intel Xeon temperature monitoring on RedHat 5

Cänne — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:36:57 +0000

This modification is required because RedHat 5.1 (x86_64) has lm_sensors 2.x package(s) installed with no Xeon temperature monitoring device driver. You can verify this by running the sensors-detect progam and answer (YES – default) to all questions. The process will create a file /etc/sysconfig/lm_sensors.conf that determines which I2C device drivers are needed at startup:

/usr/local/sbin/sensors-detect

Get the coretemp (Xeon/Core2Duo temperature monitoring device driver’s source code (ex. Fedora project)

coretemp-kmod-1.0-4.92.1.6.el5.src.rpm

Install the source code

rpm  -ivh coretemp-kmod-1.0-4.92.1.6.el5.src.rpm

Verify that there is a kernel development package installed:

rpm  -qa | grep kernel-devel

If there is no package such as kernel-devel-2.6.18-53.el5 present in the system’s configuration please install it. Target systems should be able to recompile new device drivers.

Build the device driver from the scratch, compiled for the kernels that are present in the system.

cd  /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
rpmbuild -ba -v coretemp-kmod.spec
cd  ../RPMS/x86_64
rpm -ivh --nodeps  kmod-coretemp-xen-1.0-4.53.el5.x86_64.rpm

Modify the sensors-detect generated device driver list and replace all the specific chip drivers with the coretemp device driver module.

cd  /etc/sysconfig
vi lm_sensors

Remove all the MODULE_0=, MODULE_1, … lines at the end of the file and insert and leave but one device driver module line

MODULE_0=coretemp

Save the file. Check that the lm_sensors package is installed to start by default.

chkconfig --list lm_sensors

Multi-Ethernet RHEL4 or RHEL5 installation stucked – how to get out

Cänne — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:20:20 +0000

You should always use /usr/sbin/system-config-network to modify the entire configurtion of all interfaces at once. But it sometimes fails, if you forget to define something: for example sometimes the outcome will be that the /etc/sysconfig/network contains hostname localhost.localdomain.. In any case, the system does not boot anymore, but remains stucked on cups printer services startup, or something similar happens. Two ways out: 1) you can use Grub to append the single user mode to the kernel parameters: Go to append menu, press space and then “1″. The number actually defines the required run level. 2) at the kernel boot, press (repeatedly) capital “I” (like Icarus) just after the kernel startup, when udev (for example) is starting. Later on at the boot, you have opportunity to say “yes” or “no” for all service startups. For example you say “No” to “eth3″ startup but allow everything else. This way you can have the full system working again for the modifications. To get the system back to its feet again, use the /usr/sbin/system-config-network, it’s your friend! (not very logical, I must admit). Remember that you can export the text format configuration with the command

/usr/sbin/system-config-network-cmd >/tmp/netconf.txt

After modifying the /tmp/netconf.txt (disabling interfaces at the boot time), you can load it back with command

/usr/sbin/system-config-network-cmd ---import --clear --file=/tmp/netconf.txt

Then you would just reboot, and try again with /usr/sbin/system-config-network.

keywords: chelsio 10gbit/s nfs problem hostname address resolution break-in break boot interrupt

Sigma 70-300m APO zoom – problems with Canon EOS 450D

Cänne — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:14:09 +0000

I am the model...

I recently purchased a new Canon EOS 450D (a.k.a. Digital Rebel XSi) as a digital alternative to my faithful companion, Canon EOS 10. I did my homework around my existing lenses but missed the point that several people have already experienced problems with my faithful 300 mm zoom lens, Sigma 70-300mm 1:4-5.6 APO Macro (ca.1996!), when used with digital EOS series. Apparently there is an upgrade available for certain Sigma lenses but I wrote to Sigma only after having purchased the 450D. Of course, my Sigma lens was not upgradeable.

I am a bit hesitating with the idea of buying the new Canon EF DO IS 70-300mm lens for the price three times more than my camera body! I will probably try to live with my Sigma lens, because the situation is not that bad. I get the dreaded Err 01 (communication error, clean the lens contacts, blah, blah, blah) mostly in cases that I don’t use often with the zoom, anyway:

Never the message with full focal length of 300mm, macro or not macro switch on
Always the message with focal lengths less than 250mm indoors, with following program selector modes (It does not matter if I use Auto Focus or Manual switch position on the lens):
- A-DEP
- M
- Av
- Landscape
Always the message with with focal lengths less than 250mm outdoors, no matter the program switch position

About for every other use the lens works fine with the 450D. I am planning to keep the Sigma zoom on my EOS 10 but, keeping the above limitations in my mind nothing prevents me to put it on the 450D when a need arise. Well, that will not be too often, seeing the number of limitations!

Microphone jack does not work on Dell Inspiron 1525

Cänne — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 08:34:57 +0000

I just bought identical Dell Inspiron 1525 laptops with Windows Vista 32-bit, EN-US. After the initial, Dell FAI (Fully Automated Installation) the front panel microphone jack of one of the computers did not work. After verifying that the headset microphone worked on another computer, I checked the recording level settings from the Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Sound -> Manage audio devices -> Recording Tab -> (You can stop here, talk into the microphone and actually see the volume meter moving) -> Microphone/Line In -> Properties -> Levels Tab (how user friendly).

To make sure that there is no hardware problem I rebooted the computer and started the Dell Diagnostics utility: At the BIOS startup splash screen, press F12. From the boot menu, select Diagnostics. A rather lengthy self test started which stops after about ten minutes asking if you want to continue for another 30 minutes or so ? I answered No and the usual Dell Diagnostics program starts. Selecting the Audio/Microphone test in the manual test sets I was able to record and repeat the sound through the (Intel) chipset no problem (remember you need to keep on talking all the time during the test). Therefore the hardware is not in cause but better make sure.

I restarted the system by closing all the diagnostics program windows. On Dell’s support site I spotted the device driver for SIGMATEL STAC 92XX C-Major HD Audio (the link may not be accurate in few months time, or in your country, sorry). It was actually the same version that was already installed in my system, but never mind.

I clicked the downloaded program which (re) installs the SigmaTel C-Major HD Audio device drivers. Notably it creates an entry in C:\Program Files\SigmaTel which means that it is not just a device driver but also an application and/or service.

I guessed right: at the end of the installation procedure, requiring a reboot a dialog window pops up, asking to allocate functions to the front panel jacks. It is notable that on this dialog the microphone jack on the right had a question mark on it. I told the dialog that the microphone jack is for – a microphone. Now back in the control panel (see above) the volume meter works and everything is back in order.

For the price of a MacBook I got two computers. But there is always a price to pay. Annoyances.

Iomega StorCenter 1TB (2×500GB) Setup

Cänne — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:52:05 +0000

: Iomega StorCenter 1TB
Netgear DG834PN

Surfing on the web before buying Iomega StorCenter 1TB was not very encouraging. There are quite a few people who consider the device noisy, overheating and difficult to connect. Because I have had good hardware experience in my work with Iomega’s 160 GB USB disk, I dediced to give them try.

It was clear before buying the product that the quality of Iomega software is not so great and their minimalist documentation suggest to customers a Mac-like, easy User Experience. This makes an impossible combination and I spent quite a while to prepare Windows Shares on the box. You can actually get it working somehow quite quickly but as soon as you try to make it work as you have planned, the trouble begins. It was actually so difficult that I wrote everything down to be able to repeat the operation on other machines later on. I put the document, named How To Setup Iomega StorCenter Shares online. If you have a mixed installations with Windows XP/Vista like I do, you may want to take a look.

Good

Robust casing
Not actually overheating (maybe under a heavy load) if you do leave some air around it
Based on Linux and Samba (some may consider this bad)
RAID-0 / RAID-1 configurable two disk array

Bad

Really noisy
There is a time-out setting for inactivity but in practice the system never spins down
Bad documentation with 16 languages but no pictures
Supporting discovery software has about ten years time lag

Despite all critics, I have my shares working and whopping 450 GB of mirrored, cleverly shared disk space on my network. I would give them 6 1/2 out of ten.