Monday, November 30, 2009

Finally: Qube 2 NAS!!!!!

Tonight I managed to get running Samba passwords. After all it was no so difficult: I just needed to read the Samba documentation to find that I have to set my own password. I have 'Unix password Sync' parameter but I also neded to set password with smbpasswd from a SSH terminal session.
When I typed # smbpasswd from the command line, it asked for new password. After set it I was able to log from Windows Vista a save files. I'll test the write speed of the Qube 2 but I think it will be enough good to use it as a NAS. well, I need a bigger hard disk but this is the easy job!!!!

Friday, November 27, 2009

Confirmed: No more black screens.

In this post I was speaking about my problems of black screens in my SGI 1600SW TFT monitor with a nVidia Quadro NVS 285 graphics card. I did small test with a new Quadro FX 570 and seemed good but I didn't have enough time to do extensive tests. Now, with more than one week running in this configuration I can say that: The problem has gone!!! No problems in more than a week and a speed performance increased more than I was thinking!!!

You can see the differences between both cards:





SATA in a Cobalt Qube 2?

I have a SIL SATA card what I was bought to use with my main server with Strongbolt 2 but the idea was to boot from it and... this is not possible. This week I was playing with my RaQ's and I decided to test this card with the Qube 2. I know the Qube 2 ROM can't detect it or boot from it (normal) but I was thinking that maybe the Debian kernel can do.

This is the Qube 2 with the Silicon Image SATA card and a Seagate 7200.10 160 GB attached:


The kernel detected the card and the hard disk as you can see here:

Now it's time to learn how Debian works and mount the disk. Maybe tomorrow...

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Cobalt RaQ: Main partition almost full!!

I'm preparing a RaQ 4r with the original Cobalt OS with all the updates (including Zeffie's ones). Everything worked good except the update called Security-Update-4.4.8. The web installer returned "4015 Problem verifying package component". A manual installation said the same...

Then I unpacked all the rpms and tried to check using the same command than the installer script but without redirecting the console outut to /dev/null. The log shown what I have space problems in the main partition: 178 MB were not enough!!!

The solution is easy to understand: I have to clean as much as posible but What Can I trash?. /tmp and the logs were not so much... Finally the solution was to move something to the big /home partition and make a sym link. After a fast search, only the /usr/doc folder is easy to move without problems:

[root] # mkdir /home/usr/
[root] # mv /usr/doc /home/usr/doc
[root] # ln -s /home/usr/doc /usr/doc


Now to follow with the updates...

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Black screen on Nvidia Quadro NVS and SGI 1600SW

From some time ago I have my SGI 1600SW monitor with its Multilink Adapter attached to my Dell workstation. I was pleased with the image quality, although its slow refresh. But sometimes when rebooting or when the monitor turns on after an sleep I had a black screen. I was thinking that the problem could come from the monitor or the adapter but I have tried with my second 1600SW and the results were the same. Then I plugged my Fuel and the problem dissapeared. Now i have some problems with the V10 gfx card of the Fuel but this is another problem.Obviously my small Nvidia Quadro NVS 285 was the problem. It has some problems with rare resolutions.

After some days thinking which card I have to buy, ATI-AMD FirePro or a bigger Nvidia Quadro, I had good luck: A new Dell workstation arrived to my office with a Nvidia Quadro FX570. I decided to try at home and the result was fantastic: no more black screens. Now I'm waiting for a new Quadro 570 that I bought last thrusday.