Author: Tyrone

Repco has decided to no longer stock Motul oil

Posted on by Tyrone

A few weeks ago I went into my local Repco store in Albury to find they had moved all the Motul oil from the shelf. I asked a staff member at the enquires counter where the oil was moved to and he informed me that Motul was no longer going to be stocked at Repco and they had moved there existing stock behind the counter.

I went into the store yesterday and to find that all the Motul oils are on the sales table with 10% off. Not exactly a good deal because Repco give customers 10% already by providing a valid NTMA, RACQ or RACV card.

I think that Repco dropping the Motul range is a big blow to car lovers who use this oil like myself. From now on I might be forced into ordering my oil (Motul X-cess 5w40) in 20/25L drums to use in my Subaru WRX 2008.

Configuring Linux Ubuntu 10.04 LTS for APC UPS Network Shutdown

Posted on by Tyrone

First I tried installing APC PowerChute 3.0.0 by doing the following

  1. Download Linux installer from http://www.apc.com/products/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=SFPCNS300&tab=software
  2. Copy pcns300Linux.tar.gz to /home/<username>. I used WinSCP.
  3. #sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jre-headless
  4. #cd ~/
  5. #sudo tar -xvf pcns300Linux.tar.gz
  6. #cd Linux
  7. #vim install.sh
  8. search for $LINUX) and Change the next line down from /etc/SuSe-release to /etc/issue
  9. Safe file and exit vim
  10. #sudo sh ./install.sh
  11. Agree to licence agreement
  12. Leave installation path the default
  13. Enter Java path of /usr
  14. Bowser to https://<hostname>:6547/cfgwizard in your web browser and configure to your APC UPS.

But it didnt work very well at all. I had issues on my firewall server because APC PowerChute 3.0.0 uses a custom apache that runs on custom ports but on restart binded to port 80 where varnish is ment to be running! So it caused the public website to go down. I rememebered that I used to use apcupsd along time ago and gave that ago. It turns out it works!!!!

  1. #sudo apt-get install apcupsd
  2. #sudo vim /etc/apcupsd/apcupsd.conf
  3. Add these lines:
    UPSCABLE ether
    UPSTYPE pcnet
    DEVICE ipaddr:username:passphrase
  4. #sudo service apcupsd start
  5. #sudo service apcupsd status

After running the last command you should get some info from your UPS.

tyrone@corfw01:~$ sudo service apcupsd status
APC : 001,050,1266
DATE : Thu Mar 08 18:54:00 EST 2012
HOSTNAME : corfw01
VERSION : 3.14.6 (16 May 2009) debian
UPSNAME : corpus01
CABLE : Ethernet Link
MODEL : PCNET UPS Driver
UPSMODE : Stand Alone
STARTTIME: Thu Mar 08 18:53:29 EST 2012
STATUS : ONLINE
LINEV : 241.9 Volts
LOADPCT : 31.0 Percent Load Capacity
BCHARGE : 100.0 Percent
TIMELEFT : 23.0 Minutes
MBATTCHG : 5 Percent
MINTIMEL : 3 Minutes
MAXTIME : 0 Seconds
MAXLINEV : 241.9 Volts
MINLINEV : 233.2 Volts
OUTPUTV : 242.1 Volts
DWAKE : 000 Seconds
DSHUTD : 020 Seconds
DLOWBATT : 02 Minutes
LOTRANS : 168.0 Volts
HITRANS : 264.0 Volts
RETPCT : 000.0 Percent
ITEMP : 28.0 C Internal
ALARMDEL : 5 seconds
BATTV : 217.0 Volts
LINEFREQ : 50.0 Hz
LASTXFER : Unacceptable line voltage changes
NUMXFERS : 3
XONBATT : Sat Mar 10 08:12:26 EST 2012
TONBATT : 0 seconds
CUMONBATT: 20 seconds
XOFFBATT : Sat Mar 10 08:12:27 EST 2012
SELFTEST : NO
STESTI : 336
STATFLAG : 0x07000008 Status Flag
REG1 : 0x00 Register 1
REG2 : 0x00 Register 2
REG3 : 0x00 Register 3
MANDATE : 12/14/10
SERIALNO : IS123456789
BATTDATE : 12/14/10
NOMOUTV : 240 Volts
NOMBATTV : 192.0 Volts
EXTBATTS : 1
FIRMWARE : 452.18.W
APCMODEL : Smart-UPS RT 6000 RM-1
END APC : Sun Mar 11 01:28:26 EST 2012

Note that I had to change the APC network mangament 2 card’s passprase because the default passprase contains spaces.

New Server Missing 50% of RAM

Posted on by Tyrone

So today one of the schools I support received a new server from Dell we ordered. Its fearly well spec’d with 2x quad-core 2.2Ghz Xeons, 2x 300Gb 15,000RPM SAS 4x 600Gb 15,00 RPM SAS Hard Drives and 64Gb of RAM!

I did what I normally do with any new server I receave and wipe what ever manufacture  installed and start again. So I put the Windows Server 2008 R2 DVD in the disk drive and installed as per usual. After installing I loaded into Windows and opened to the resource manager. Then a student tech asks me a question “Why goes it say that only 32Gb of RAM can be used by Windows?” Well I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure why it said this. All our other servers are running no more than 24Gb and it all shows up.

I did some quick GOGGLING to find out that Server 2008 R2 Standard has a MAX memory of only 32GB! Well I was pissed off. I spent all this time installing windows to find out that during the first part of the installation I should have selected Enterprise edition not Standard like I normally would.  Oh well lesion learnt!

Adobe Announces Plans To Abandon Flash On Linux

Posted on by Tyrone

This announcement has come as a bit of a shock to me. Adobe only recently released their first stable Linux 64bit flash plugin months ago and now this announcement that the plugin is going to be discontinued. While I am pleased that Adobes partnership with Google has meant that a 64bit flash plugin will exist on Linux for Google Chrome users such as myself. This is news is very bad for the Firefox users and Linux Distributions like Ubuntu.

I hope that Adobe wakes and a smells the roses. The Flash plugin is a thing of the past with HTML5 video and JavaScript  its replacement. Pulling stunts like this gives web designers even less reasons to use flash content.

http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2012/02/adobe-and-google-partnering-for-flash-player-on-linux.html