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Well, I got a lot done today. Unfortunately it wasn’t a lot of my stuff that needed to be done. I did however assist Izzie and a friend in a domain migration that went pretty well. I must say though, I was rather appauled when I learned the company had an “IT” guy, but decided to hire out the network administration because their in house guy didn’t really know anything. It scares me to think about the number of corporations out there that are stuck with some IT person that has no idea what they’re doing. The CEO is in a position of not understanding what is being done wrong and the real problems with the method in which things are being carried out in their business. The problem here is that most CEOs are sales and marketing people, which is fine. The problem is they, by their background and ability, are rather impressed with flashy displays and large words. To get a job in such a place, one just needs to throw around a few low level tech terms and you’re in. Whereas the guy who actually understands the terms won’t throw them around in an interview because they would seem out of context and are. There is nothing worse than watching someone throw around a term that they don’t really understand and mis-use it to mean various other things. IT is an interesting field in that there is a term for everything, and there are some terms that mean nearly identical things, but the devil is in the details. Perhaps one term supports 10 users, and the other support 10k. That’s a very important distinction to make.

So, I ran into an interesting problem last night while recording a 2hr long TV show, in case you’re wondering it was American Idol. So, as I began watching the recording all was well, when suddenly just around 1hr in the recording stopped and closed. Naturally I assumed something had crashed and tried once more, with the same result. Frustrated I checked the MythWeb, along with the clocks on my VM and frontend. Both were fine, then I turned my attention to the filesize of the recording. I noticed that the file system reported the file as being 2GB, and yet MythWeb thought it was 4.3GB. So, after doing a little research I discovered that the problem stemmed from my using an NFS share to store my recordings on my backend over the network. As it turns out, up to NFS version 2, there was a 2GB maximum filesize like FAT32. It appears based on my research that NFS should default to version 3 which supports larger file sizes, but after running the command: nfsstat -m, which will display your NFS info I was indeed using version 2. Upon further reading I discovered that I should have been using nfs-kernel-server and not nfs-user-server as my backend NFS server. So I swapped out one package for the other. Now with my newly installed nfs-kernel-server package installed I checked nfsstat -m again. The same result, still using version 2. Then I came across a small post online that outlined the same problem I was having it turns out you can force the NFS server to only accept certain versions of connections so the magic command for me was:

sudo nano /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server

Look for the RPCMOUNTDOPTS variable and add -N 1 -N 2 so it looks like: RPCMOUNTDOPTS=”-N 1 -N 2″

sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

Remount your shares on the remote client using “sudo mount -a” and double check nfsstat -m, you should now be using version 3 or 4 depending on how you setup your /etc/exports file on the NFS server. I’m presently using version 3 which has basically an identical entry line as to my earlier post for creating a share. Hope this helps somebody experiencing the same issue. Everything is recording beautifully tonight.

I noticed this morning on Steam that Left4Dead was discounted by 50% for the weekend. Having heard so many great reviews about the game, I had to give in at that price. I wasn’t quite willing to part with $50 for a game I didn’t know a ton about. I can safely say that I have a new favorite game. If you’re hesitant about buying it one comparison that comes to mind for me is, back on Counter Strike 1.6. At LAN parties a bunch of buddies and I would use the PodBot server to load up our LAN game and we’d stack the teams humans on one team and the rest of the spots all bots on the opposing team. We’d give the bots only knives but bump their skill to the max. This is pretty much identical to what Left4Dead is. Short of the fact that these bots actually have serious skills and numbers you never could do on the original CS. If you’re a gunfire junky who loves surprises this is definitely a game for you.

Also today, I tagged along with Izzie and a few local members of the Engineers Without Borders crew to test out a long range wifi setup. It was pretty amazing, we were able to transmit 1Mbit+ speeds over 2 miles using a basic WRT54G and some aftermarket antennae. Surprisingly I was able to connect to the AP with nothing but my eeePC without an external antennae. I could only get a few pings through, but that was all I needed to be impressed by the little netbook. Ping times for my eeePC were ~15ms. The entire signal was all noise, but it managed to get out a ping. Pretty great day, got some homework to finish up tonight, and then tomorrow I can get a head start on the week thanks to our 3 day weekend.

So, where to start. I guess I’ll get the sour stuff out of the way. Today I had 2 of my 4 finals, and lets just say it didn’t go super well. I only have myself to be angry at because I should have put more time into studying. That’s all I have to say about that. On a much higher note, after speaking with a guidance counselor at the college I have discovered that I only have 4 classes remaining after my current quarter before being eligible for graduation. So, presuming I can make a 180 turn from my midterms I should be officially done with school in June. This has definitely motivated me to want to get everything turned in and to start focusing harder than ever on school.

Now, for the more entertaining stuff. I received my USB to Serial adapter on Tuesday. I passed it through to my home automation VM and I’m back in business. I was very impressed, Ubuntu recognized the device immediately, the only thing to note on these types of devices is that they appear as /dev/ttyUSB0. Once I figured that out, I updated my scripts and I can now have the lights turn on when I walk in my room again. Just in time too, I was starting to trip and fall as I was trying to make my way to my lamp.

I have been doing some reading on various topics trying to get some other things going for myself. I picked up a Home Buying for Dummies book and have read about 25% through so far. I decided a while back that after graduating that I’d continue living at home for about another year while working full time to save up a down payment for a condo/home. The timing appears to be perfect, the market is still going down and rent prices are starting to fall in response. So, right around the time I will be ready to buy the market should be apexing and about to swing up making my purchase a great investment. I also have been reading up on how music effects your mood. I’m not usually all into psychology, but I have been picking up some interesting information. My reason for delving into the subject is that I’m playing with the idea of making an intelligent music selector. Ideally when I enter my room, my room should figure out my mood, and play either supportive or correcting music depending on how its setup. I’m definitely overwhelmed by the amount of data I’d have to collect and process, but I’m excited at the prospect of creating such an algorithm. I haven’t made any moves in terms of code or design, so I’m not sure if anything will materialize, but I liked the idea so I thought I should put it up here.

With regard to the new server, I have run into what appears to be a known Linux bug with VMware. After migrating my Linux VMs, my clocks all started to drift wildly on my VMs. Now normally this is no big deal for me, because I don’t need to use those clocks, but what it is having a terrible effect on is my Mythbuntu Backend. The clock on the master backend decides when the slave frontends all start recording, so I’ve been missing my shows. I attempted several fixes, but upon checking up on it again today I discovered I was 1hr behind again. I think I will just have to delete the VM and start fresh. The good news is that I did get my first recording to transcode on my Master Backend and using only one core on the i7 I can achieve 175FPS trancodes.

I’m a full time student, working as a consultant on a part time basis around my school schedule. This is how I have been doing things for as long as I can remember. This year for some reason it bothers me more than ever as I gather up my information for tax season to see how high the tax rate is for someone like me. This past year I made around $14,000. I live at home so no major living expenses, but I do commute every day to school, pay for my school supplies and books as well as eat lunch out each day while at school. This year I will be paying nearly 20% of my income to taxes, because I work on a 1099 basis. One out of every five dollars I make, I will never see. My question is, how is someone in that position ever supposed to be able to sustain themself in the real world? And why am I the little guy who’s making next to nothing being hung out to dry by the government?

Teenagers and students in their early 20’s make up the base level of the work industry, we do that jobs that are boring and repetitive. We make next to nothing, work lots of hours and try to cram in social lives or free time to do what we like. How is the government taking 20% of $14k going to help anyone? Taking 20% from say Bill Gates, or 20% from a CEO, now that would help the country. From the beginning we should have had a flat tax policy. No loop holes, no excuses, no write offs, you give the government 10% of what you make no matter how much or how little. Not only would the government make more money in the end, but the little guy like myself would have a shot at actually creating a life for myself down the road. I hope that President Obama can see this and will bring change to this situation. I applaud him for his efforts on freezing and setting max pay for these Wall Street jerks, but now it’s time for the government to take back some of that money we threw away on the first bail out by taxing those that received it on a flat rate basis. Imagine, CEO gets $500k the maximum allowed at the moment, chances are since the companies are all broke right now, that came straight out of bailout funds. Now, if the government instituted a flat tax rate then $50k would be going straight back to them to start recouping what they dished out. In 10 years time, any debt incurred by the government from the stimulus package would be repaid and we would be back on track to a healthier and more equal democracy. Basically we would be giving out interest free loans over 10 year periods. Now that is democracy functioning at a higher IQ.

I ran into the problem of having recordings taking place on my MythTV frontend not recording to my backend server. So, I was told I should mount an NFS share and place my recordings there. Never having done an NFS mount I wasn’t too sure how difficult it was going to be, and it turned out to be way easier than I expected.

We’ll start on the server machine, the machine that has the files or space that you want access too.

1. Install NFS Server

sudo apt-get install nfs-user-server

2. Edit the exports file which outlines which folders are shared in NFS

sudo nano /etc/exports

Add a line with the following information:

(folder to share) (IP Address of machine with access to the share)

/var/lib/mythtv/recordings 192.168.1.5

3. Restart the NFS server to forcing it to re-read our new exports entry

sudo /etc/init.d/nfs-user-server restart

Now for the client machine:

1. Install the NFS client

sudo apt-get install nfs-common

2. Edit fstab to mount the nfs share

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add a line as follows:

(IP Address of the Server):(Share Name) (Where to mount the Share) nfs

192.168.1.3:/var/lib/mythtv/recordings /mnt/recordings nfs

3. Remount fstab shares

sudo mount -a

That’s it, you now now have read and write access to the given share on the remote machine. Good luck.