Tim Groeneveld

Today was 32°C. I decided to go to McDonald’s and buy a nice cold frozen Fanta.

A few days after I moved to Sydney I found this very awesome book store near Central Station called Basement Books. Seriously, WOW.

Basement Books, conveniently located in central Sydney, offers 8kms and over 10,000 titles of discounted books with savings of up to 90% of recommended retail prices.

Even though the book I was specifically looking for was not there in the shop, in true Tim style I did walk out with about 1.5KGs worth of books. I suppose the only bad part of that was it was only two books.

I was looking for a book on C, because my skills have deteriorated greatly after not really writing much C code for at least 24 months.

• MySQL Developer’s Library, by Paul DuBois; and
• ANSI C++, The Complete Language by Ivor Horton.

I have started reading the book by DuBois, and it is a very well written; easy to understand, and it does include a very huge section about writing C applications; so it’s a win situation anyways, because I imagine that if I did write a complete C application, it would use MySQL in some way.

If your ever in Sydney, I would highly suggest going to the Basement Books store. It has amazing books… at amazing prices. Also, if you want to learn everything there is to know about MySQL, get this book. I only discovered partitioning for MySQL databases a few months ago when reading an article at work, and have loved the idea ever since. To have a nice section inside this book with practical examples for using partitioning has started to get my mind ticking.

written by Tim Groeneveld

If you have never used NoMachine before, it is a fantastic technology that allows you to have a Terminal Server for X on Linux, similar to XenApp for Windows. It is a very powerful application. I used to install FreeNX back in the day when it was released, but I have since learnt that it is just much easier to install the free version of NoMachine, especially for my own personal use.

It only took me about one minute, but I thought I might just write down the quick and dirty hack that I just did to get NoMachine’s free terminal server package (which allows two clients to connect at a time…) on Linux.

# sudo su -
# cd /tmp/nx
# wget http://64.34.161.181/download/3.4.0/Linux/FE/nxserver-3.4.0-8.x86_64.tar.gz http://64.34.161.181/download/3.4.0/Linux/nxclient-3.4.0-5.x86_64.tar.gz wget http://64.34.161.181/download/3.4.0/Linux/nxnode-3.4.0-6.x86_64.tar.gz
# echo the above URL’s may no longer be correct at the time of you reading this, please check http://www.nomachine.com/download-package.php?Prod_Id=1351
# cd /usr
# tar -xvf nxclient-3.4.0-5.i386.tar.gz
# tar -xvf nxnode-3.4.0-6.i386.tar.gz
# tar -xvf nxserver-3.4.0-8.i386.tar.gz
# ln -s /etc/rc.d /etc/init.d
# sudo /usr/NX/scripts/setup/nxnode –install redhat
# sudo /usr/NX/scripts/setup/nxserver –install redhat
# rm /etc/init.d

All the errors that the installer comes up with can be safely ignored.

written by Tim Groeneveld

I was just booting up my Mac to take some nice pretty screenshots of my cluster install process, and I realised that NoMachine’s client for OS X does not even properly support Intel CPU’s -.-”

Anyways, unlike Adobe porting Creative Suite to Linux, at least NoMachine are actually working on it.

written by Tim Groeneveld \\ tags: Apple, Intel, NoMachine, NX, OS X

I would like to introduce you tonight to a x-part series (I don’t know how many parts there are at the moment, we will see as time progresses) entitled “How to build a www cluster in x days“.

written by Tim Groeneveld \\ tags: build, cluster, diy, hosting, web, www

I will admit that usually, I do not really discuss anything that is political, however, I think that this is worth a posting. A college at work was going through the process of installing Dell IT Assistant, and the US Government wanted immediate answers to a few questions. Here is the screenshot:

Please click to enlarge the image.

written by Tim Groeneveld

What does a computer nerd do when he is at work and trying to use one keyboard and mouse for two machines and it just does not work? Well, he fixes it of course!
For the last few weeks, since switching my KDE desktop at work to Gnome, I have had this seriously pressing issue that every now and then when I moved my mouse to the Linux machine, synergy would crash on that screen, with a nice assertion error.

INFO: CScreen.cpp,99: entering screen synergyc: ../../src/xcb_io.c:243: process_responses: Assertion `(((long) (dpy->last_request_read) - (long) (dpy->request)) <= 0)' failed.

Well,I looked through the code for a few hours and I finally tracked down the issue. The synergyc application was actually trying to do calls to the X server using multiple threads, when X did not know that it was being used from a multi-threaded application.

Basically, after hunting down where the issue was, fixing the problem was as simple as adding a call to the XInitThreads() function on line 100 of lib/platform/CXWindowsScreen.cpp.

Rebuilt my package and boom, a perfect synergy.

written by Tim Groeneveld

ShareSource has a new look, and it’s getting released in seven days. ShareSource3. SS3. It looks good, it feels perfect, and it works excellent. There are not really any new features, and the database schema is mostly the same (except for ten new tables), but all the missing things that just were not always there are now there.

Now Administrators of the website will have even easier control over news features, and now project administrators can unlock files, and modify the contents. Files are now stored on two machine in two different locations, as well!

It does get better! ShareSource will have the ability to create Xen containers, so you can virtually choose almost any operating system on the planet (except for Apple OS X) and compile, run and test applications.

Developers and users alike will enjoy the new look ShareSource has been christened with.

written by Tim Groeneveld \\ tags: code, new look, ShareSource, sharesource3, template, xen

Between playing with my new computer and busily working away on two personal projects, I have not really updated my blog. Infact, my blog has been getting no loving at all. I thought I might just spend a few minutes at this terrible hour of the morning to update people on what is going on.

• ShareSource (Open source code forge)
  Yes, ShareSource is still being maintained. It has not died. I have almost finished writing the last dabs of the Xen software for ShareSource, as well as rewriting the template engine so it is all consistent. (Did you know that ShareSource has three ways of rendering pages?). Digital Pacific (the crew that I work for) have donated a Xen server for a compile farm for ShareSource, which is very neat.
• MyBanco (Open source banking software)
  I have sitting in the Mercurial repository a pile of code to do with managing loans for users who have an account with the bank. New loans can be requested by a user, and verified by the Administrator(s). The money is either a) made out of reserves (ie, pulled out of thin air… like real money) or b) pulled out of a reserve account (like a “perfect” monetary system).
• Galium (Open source top level domain management software)
  In a few days, I will be pushing code that fixes a medium issue with the adding of new records. In some cases, a user can enter particular inputs that crash BIND.

My new computer is going well. Running Compiz and Xen together allows me to have CentOS on one side of the cube, Arch Linux on the “main” side, and Windows on the other. Now there is love. My two new wide screen monitors are also pure joy.

My “top secret” project is coming along well, too. One part of the project is nearing release soon, which should give quite a good idea on the whole solution.

written by Tim Groeneveld

Well, I finally got all (but one…) of the parts of my new computer. My new case, the Cooler Master COSMOS “S” is in one word: absolutely awesome. I love the fact that all of the drives can be pushed in, and with one press of a button, the drive will lock in.

This comes with the terrible actuality that my hot swap device, the Chenbro five-in-three hot-swap device fails to just slide and lock in, because of the grooves in the case that allow the normal 5.25″ drives (like a CD drive) to just plug in with out any screws. So, it looks like I am going to need to get a file, and file away these damn things.

So yes, the one thing that is stopping me from putting this computer together, is (one again, mind you) the fact that I want so much storage. If I had only known that putting so much storage in a decent case would be so much hassle.

Other then that, everything else plugs in perfectly fine, which is pretty cool. I still really don’t know why there is a SATA connector on the top of the case, especially seeing as I have nothing that will plug into it, yet…

Can’t wait to file the things that are stopping me from putting the hot swap drive bay in.

written by Tim Groeneveld \\ tags: Chenbro, computer, Cooler Master, Linux

After ranting about Apple’s overpriced machines. which are nothing short of a bad joke, I am still over excited to get my new machine. My new AMD Phenom & Adaptec 3405-based machine is going to be used by me in the testing and development of two exciting products. ShareSource’s Xen compile farm, and another, top secret project that will keep me pre-occupied while I pay off my loan.

Anyways, a quick run down on the specs of the machine:

• Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P
• AMD Phenom II AM3 810 (2.6Ghz)
• 8GB of DDR3 RAM
• nVidia 9600GT 512MB (graphics are not my thing, but I love to watch a good quality movie)
• 32GB System drive [for Linux - has access to RAID storage], Solid State
• 500GB System drive [for Windows - might not have access to RAID]
• 4.5TB of disk space, thanks to Adaptec’s 3405 SATA RAID card
• C-Master COSMOS S case
• 2x 20″ BenQ LCD Screens
• Creative Audigy XFI sound card (which sadly does not have terribly good sound drivers for Linux… another thing on the TODO list)
• 7.1 Surround Sound
• DViCO HDTV tuner ( just for those times that I really don’t want to code )

Total price: $3,200

written by Tim Groeneveld \\ tags: computer, diy, new