Public timeline, page 3

Notices

1. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Friday, 30-Jun-2023 01:58:13 EDT Clarissa Walker
   Finally erased the Second Generation gaming HDDs, and... now the original WD Blue 1TB desktop drive may actually be showing some issues...
   
   It hanged around 15% of the zero-fill for ~3 minutes, and also there's some slow-down in a few areas. Yeah, I can see why Sis was having very obvious performance issues, even in Windows 7 in its later stages.
   • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Jul-2023 21:55:11 EDT Clarissa Walker

     in reply to
     WD Drive is fine; 13% hang issue does not show up on the desktop setup for scans. Also clumsy me managed to drop two HDDs during initial second NAS setup.
     
     Also... seems the ASUS P5N-E SLI board's chipset may be dying; while doing a data integrity run on MediaDrive, the onboard NIC cut out and never returned upon reboot. The network power light was on, however, but negotiation lights... nope.
     
     That actually may explain the stability issues beforehand. Simply transferring the entire setup to another board (ironically an older nVidia chipset... but PROFESSIONAL) made the network work again... on the nVidia onboard NIC. The board also has a Broadcom NIC, so I opted to use that instead.
     
     I'm back to doing data integrity checks on the MediaDrive again.
   • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Thursday, 06-Jul-2023 00:24:18 EDT Clarissa Walker

     in reply to
     Should've mentioned beforehand: the main NAS is now using the previous Second Generation gaming system setup; the ASUS P5N-E SLI board was from the main NAS.
2. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Monday, 26-Jun-2023 17:39:49 EDT Clarissa Walker
   Long-awaited site backup and HDD upgrade for the server: July 1, 2023.
   
   The site data is on a single 2TB drive, while the database is on a mirrored 80GB setup, though the 80GB one will have to be done as software RAID and not nvRAID this time.
   
   I also suspect nvRAID may have a terabyte bug on this old motherboard, so it's better to use software RAID in the long run anyway.
   • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Friday, 30-Jun-2023 01:38:21 EDT Clarissa Walker

     in reply to
     Okay, this is postponed. Still prepping for the home web server upgrade, however, since a recent file event has happened, there will be a sweep of the entire old set of data on all three 2TB disks first, then the data on some old storage disks later.
     
     References:
     http://cwcyrix.nsupdate.info/gnu-social/public/notice/110
     http://cwcyrix.nsupdate.info/gnu-social/public/notice/116
3. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Tuesday, 27-Jun-2023 22:21:43 EDT Clarissa Walker
   Going through the older 2TB storage drives and comparing some of the data with the current NAS data, it is safe to assume the data corruption event started around mid-March 2023 and ended around early April 2023, months after the September 2022 upgrade. May 2023 is when the bad sectors were reallocated.
   
   Seen this behavior on a suspect hard drive with pending bad sectors in August 2021: on a test Windows XP install using a suspect Seagate 320GB HDD, I copied a large archive to the NAS, then I copied that file to the test system. On the test system, the file was corrupt, even after a few retried copy attempts from the NAS. Of course, on the NAS, it was perfectly fine; hashes matched the one on the laptop but not on the test system. Final attempt was to copy that file to the test system using a USB stick, and that eventually worked.
   
   Of course, without file system integrity checks, this is the result. I'm just usually very good at catching these so far.
   • Show all 4 replies
   • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Wednesday, 28-Jun-2023 16:26:42 EDT Clarissa Walker

     in reply to
     Seems some of Sis's video collection have different file hashes between her old laptop and the file server.
     
     This happened before the NAS upgrade in September 2022, so I can rule out my RAID5 setup there. The original copies are still on the old laptop, so I am retrieving those now. But, something's up with the drive installed in the laptop.
     
     I have since changed the RAM somewhere around April 2023. I have also found out that I can use unbuffered ECC RAM on the ASUS P5N-E SLI board; however, it may not actually use ECC on the system.
   • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Wednesday, 28-Jun-2023 17:45:22 EDT Clarissa Walker

     in reply to
     Retrieved the data from the laptop drive and am now copying that data to the server as Unsorted.
     
     Will leave a note at that directory regarding the new directory and the existing three: that some of the files have different checksums during transfer in 2021 (what we know so far, anyway).
     
     I now suspect it was possibly RAM related somehow, as there were no known issues with these disks at that time.
   • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Wednesday, 28-Jun-2023 20:28:21 EDT Clarissa Walker

     in reply to
     I also remembered: I also changed the SATA cables as well, though that was before the RAM upgrade, and there were still file corruption issues (though lessened) after the SATA cable replacements.
     
     Probably a coincidence re: the cables. However, no more noticeable issues after the RAM upgrade. Seems the board has some odd memory quirks...
4. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Wednesday, 28-Jun-2023 13:21:41 EDT Clarissa Walker
   Database is migrated to the main webserver drive, the 2TB one... once again. I am going to destroy the nvRAID where the database once resided and create a new RAID1 instead.
   • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Wednesday, 28-Jun-2023 13:25:41 EDT Clarissa Walker

     in reply to
     Finally changing some main paths. Historically, USB drives had a /media directory on Ubuntu; for some reason, hard disks would use this as well. These are finally phased out on this server and will use /mnt as usual.
   • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Wednesday, 28-Jun-2023 14:10:52 EDT Clarissa Walker

     in reply to
     Um... that broke a LOT of shit.
     
     Most of it was hardcoded to GNUsocial.
     
     Database had to be edited, its config had to be edited, some redirects throughout the entire site had to be changed through httpd configs.
     
     MariaDB database path startup script had to be changed as well.
     
     I wouldn't be surprised if I missed anything else... like the old PureFTPd setup. I cannot recall how to modify this...
   • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Wednesday, 28-Jun-2023 14:40:28 EDT Clarissa Walker

     in reply to
     Fixed the directory paths for PureFTPd...
     
     Going to have to mirror that directory again after that change.
5. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Monday, 26-Jun-2023 16:37:10 EDT Clarissa Walker
   Updated the server!
   
   apr: 1.7.3 -> 1.7.4
   curl: 7.86.0 -> 7.88.1
   openssl: 1.1.1t -> 1.1.1u
   
   apr-util was recompiled due to apr update
   httpd was recompiled due to apr, openssl, curl update
   php was recompiled due to openssl, curl update
   
   MariaDB will be updated in a few minutes.
   • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Monday, 26-Jun-2023 16:42:53 EDT Clarissa Walker

     in reply to
     MariaDB: 10.11.2 -> 10.11.4
     
     System will be rebooted due to a kernel update on the server.
   • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Monday, 26-Jun-2023 16:50:40 EDT Clarissa Walker

     in reply to
     System maintenance is complete for today.
     
     Server has some of the latest updates.
6. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Thursday, 15-Jun-2023 23:21:58 EDT Clarissa Walker
   Finally updated the ColoCrossing IP blocklist for the webserver; ballooned the file from ~8K to ~26K! The list had only been last updated in late 2015. At the time they had an IPv6 range as well. That disappeared in 2016.
   
   It's unfortunate they polluted a lot of IPv4 space over the years.
7. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Sunday, 04-Jun-2023 21:10:31 EDT Clarissa Walker
   Made a schematic and PCB layout of my custom parallel buffered JTAG (Wiggler) device. From a technical standpoint, the schematic and PCB layout are finished, but I keep cleaning up the PCB layout. So far:
   
   * PCB routing mistakes regarding nSRST - fixed
   * Potential safety issue between the JTAG header and DC barrel jack - fixed
   * via sizes - changed
   * identification text labeling - now present
8. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Sunday, 28-May-2023 22:22:30 EDT Clarissa Walker
   All week, I was building a homemade parallel buffered JTAG circuit. Honestly, this should've been done years ago. But the current routers I am using does utilize JTAG, so it's not a total waste.
   
   I originally had issues with the circuit, but it eventually worked on the old eMachines T1360 desktop. I also switched the 74HC244 IC before this, so who knows. I should try the original IC again sometime, as I think the original one is fine. (I miswired two pinouts on the test Linksys WRT54G-TM unit at some point.)
   • Show all 4 replies
   • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Sunday, 28-May-2023 22:32:08 EDT Clarissa Walker

     in reply to
     Status of WholeFlash dump using the practically elusive TJTAG 3.0.2.1 (known as EJTAG Debrick Utility v3.0.2.1 Tornado-MOD) with the unit. Took about 38 minutes to dump the entire flash chip on the system.
     
     An issue with this version: On Windows XP (on USP4, not sure on official SP3), upon calculating the elapsed time after the dump is finished, it crashes. But hey, at least you receive your file in the process. http://cwcyrix.nsupdate.info/gnu-social/public/url/30
   • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Sunday, 28-May-2023 22:58:09 EDT Clarissa Walker

     in reply to
     The circuit may work well with 74HC244s, but I implore you, try to source 74HCT244s! You will run into much fewer issues in the long run.
     
     You may likely run into a rare HC variant that will not work properly with TTL behavior for this circuit (most will work, of course, but still...).
   • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Tuesday, 30-May-2023 15:04:15 EDT Clarissa Walker

     in reply to
     Tested the JTAG circuit again with the first 74HC244. Confirmed: it does not work. Inserted the second 74HC244 in the circuit, and it works perfectly. The first part is known good.
     
     I may have run into the one 74HC244 that does not work with TTL spec so far! 😮 But, this is why I have ordered six of them. This is also a reminder to use the recommended 74HCT244 for the buffered JTAG (Wiggler) circuit instead.
9. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Tuesday, 16-May-2023 23:59:00 EDT Clarissa Walker
   That same disk now has 8 bad sectors from 2 known. This may have occurred after Sis sent some files from her old ASUS X555DA laptop to the server. This also makes sense since there were weak sectors in about four areas I know of.
   
   Reference:
   http://cwcyrix.nsupdate.info/gnu-social/public/notice/77
10. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Saturday, 13-May-2023 19:44:16 EDT Clarissa Walker
    Sis now has a laptop that replaces the old ASUS X555DA laptop. Ironically, it's another AMD APU variant based system. But, it's a more recent Ryzen APU, so it's better than the previous one by default.
    
    Original storage and memory specs are 256GB and 8GB respectively, so those were upgraded to 512GB and 16GB before handing it off to her.
    
    I have since mirrored the original modified 256GB NVMe SSD storage to one of the notebook drives and to the server, so there are two local copies, just in case.
    
    I will also keep an eye on the new 512GB NVMe SSD, though I seem to have insanely good luck with SSDs so far (only one died so far and it was a Sandisk X110 128GB SSD... after 7 years of near constant use).
11. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Friday, 21-Apr-2023 01:38:31 EDT Clarissa Walker
    Server upgrade from Ubuntu 22.10 -> 23.04! PHP will need to be recompiled, because libicu has been upgraded in the process. It did not break here because I did not remove the package from this server yet, but it is removed from the compile box.
    
    I am not aware of any other packages that were upgraded that would break anything else regarding the web server.
    • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Friday, 21-Apr-2023 02:08:12 EDT Clarissa Walker

      in reply to
      PHP 7.4.33 is recompiled to now use the latest known libicu for Ubuntu 23.04. Now to remove most of the obsolete packages from the main web server...
12. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Apr-2023 16:45:26 EDT Clarissa Walker
    Slow migration to the other DDNS, nsupdate.info. The database for this GNU Social setup is fixed, the other database stuff... less likely.
    
    Server will need a redirect, eventually.
13. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Saturday, 15-Apr-2023 16:15:11 EDT Clarissa Walker
    Finally, Sis handed me her gaming system for upgrading!
    
    Mom's HP laptop now has an SSD instead of and HDD (but it is SATA!). Someday she will get an NVME in its place, as the system supports it.
    
    Now, on Sis's build: the SteamGames HDD is now an SSD. As of this post, the original system drive is being mirrored to Mom's old HDD for final migration to the NVME on the new build.
    
    Main reason is the build had a seamless transition from Windows 7 to Windows 10 by the use of two partitions on the old 1TB HDD. This time, the new build will not have this; the NVME is only 512GB. Windows 11 will not be installed on that system at this time, and only the Windows 10 partition will remain. Since the old system is BIOS/MBR, the setup will need to be converted to EFI/GPT for the new build.
    • Show all 5 replies
    • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 20:07:14 EDT Clarissa Walker

      in reply to
      The migration to the new build is complete. However, it took me nearly 10 hours.
      
      One was the Windows Update that took almost 40 minutes (!) on the temp drive. Noticed something was up when Disk Cleanup was running quite slow.
      
      Two was the fact that I was trying to convert BIOS/MBR to EFI/GPT without any notes! This is the issue that took up a LOT of those 10 hours. Oh, and MBR2GPT always failed converting the system drive... That, and I kept screwing up the way Windows booted, lol.
      
      I now have some conversion notes, but there will be no recovery partition for that system, so it will need installation media whenever something goes very wrong (which is extremely rare).
    • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 20:11:09 EDT Clarissa Walker

      in reply to
      After I handed the system back to Sis, we booted up the machine. She was astounded at how fast it loads things now: "Now I don't have to wait a kajillion years for it to load!"
      
      Oh, it needed Ethernet drivers. Installed those, and it's fine now.
      
      The system now has an additional Downloads drive, as the old system's partition is low on space.
    • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Sunday, 16-Apr-2023 23:32:11 EDT Clarissa Walker

      in reply to
      Unsurprisingly, the installation post-migration needed activation. Sis shows up and says, basically, "Hey, the computer just started showing this Activate Windows on the screen."
      
      I have a legitimate Windows 7 Home Premium product key I now use just for Windows 10 installations when the hardware is majorly upgraded. However, it's been used on two machines so far, so...
14. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Thursday, 13-Apr-2023 12:28:54 EDT Clarissa Walker
    So, the current 4x4TB file server now has two bad sectors on one drive. I was waiting for that to happen eventually, as history showed some weak sectors in a certain area. Thinking the corruption issues will stop here for now.
    
    The old 4x2TB (3x2TB) file server had one bad sector on one drive within a week of setting it up (2015) and remained there until its retirement in 2022. So, I'm pretty optimistic so far. 🙂
15. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Saturday, 08-Apr-2023 23:22:59 EDT Clarissa Walker
    Started messing with my MiniDisc stuff again yesterday, mainly the Sony MZ-R900 and Sharp MD-MT831 units.
    
    For the Sharp unit, I wanted to know how long the original Li-Ion battery lasted: it was about 9 hours! As for the Sony MZ-R900, it was a pretty short test run. Unit is fine.
    
    Also redone a MiniDisc with more proper music files and created a new MiniDisc with the Sony MZ-DN430; it has been relegated to solely be a NetMD recorder now.
    
    Also for today, it was to test the rest of the MD portable collection. So far:
    
    Sony MZ-R37: fine. Previously, it was noisy, but it is quiet now. Odd.
    Sony MZ-R500: repaired corner crack near the ENTER button.
    Sony MZ-N510: fine.
    Sony MZ-E33 (black): Severe skipping on all tracks on one MD. Cleaning the lens did not work, but simply greasing the track where the laser is located worked; no more skipping.
    Sony MZ-E33 (white gold): I preemptively greased the laser track like the black version of the unit, and it is now fine.
    • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Saturday, 08-Apr-2023 23:29:09 EDT Clarissa Walker

      in reply to
      I also greased the Sharp MD-MT831 unit (though I don't recall re-greasing the Sony MZ-R900...).
      
      What little skipping no longer happens on that unit.
      
      --
      
      Also on the Sony MZ-R500: a plastic screw end on the front end needed gluing in; not mentioned on the previous post.
      
      --
      
      Finally broke my main noise-canceling headphones (right ear section cracked), but I fixed them; they are holding well so far now.
    • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Apr-2023 22:05:05 EDT Clarissa Walker

      in reply to
      Sharp MD-MT831 battery update!
      
      Original Sharp AD-T51BT lithium battery: ~9 hours
      Odd Chinese Sharp compatible lithium battery: ~17(!) hours
      
      Though this says more of the age of the original battery than anything; I would expect a practically fresh one to go ~13 hours at least.
      
      Notes:
      * Original Sharp battery capacity is ~850mAh
      * Odd Chinese Sharp battery capacity is apparently ~1000mAh
      * Original Sharp battery year is circa 1998
      * Odd Chinese Sharp battery was obtained in 2012; expected to be a year older
    • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Apr-2023 22:17:06 EDT Clarissa Walker

      in reply to
      Correction: Original Sharp battery: 850mAh -> 800mAh
16. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Apr-2023 21:51:49 EDT Clarissa Walker
    Server upgrade... again.
    
    httpd: 2.4.56 -> 2.4.57
    apr: 1.7.2 -> 1.7.3
    apr-util needed recompiling due to apr update.
17. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Sunday, 09-Apr-2023 04:56:04 EDT Clarissa Walker
    Server upgrade!
    
    httpd: 2.4.55 -> 2.4.56
    php: stays at 7.4.33, but libraries were updated, requiring a recompile
    
    underlying libs
    apr: 1.7.0 -> 1.7.2
    apr-util: 1.6.1 -> 1.6.3
    openssl: 1.1.1s -> 1.1.1t
    • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Sunday, 09-Apr-2023 04:56:12 EDT Clarissa Walker

      in reply to
      silent upgrade from a few days ago (though this should've been done last month!):
      
      mariadb: 10.6.11 -> 10.11.2
18. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Saturday, 08-Apr-2023 23:09:45 EDT Clarissa Walker
    Went back to the MIDI box yesterday. Started playing some FLAC and WAVE files and realized the music sounded a tad off; some channels were off balance.
    
    
    Stuff done to the machine so far since the last maintenance run:
    
    * The sound card's audio jacks needed some contact cleaner.
    * The sticky optical drive door needed rectifying.
    * The RAM sticks needed cleaning.
    * System drive defragmentation.
    
    Reference: http://cwcyrix.nsupdate.info/gnu-social/public/notice/55
19. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Apr-2023 10:46:24 EDT Clarissa Walker
    Total bandwidth limit on the server has been clipped a bit; rate limit remains the same, however. This shouldn't affect the response rate of the server much.
    
    Now, the only thing is to wait for the mid-split upgrade so the total upload would be higher than 10Mb (avg)/sec.
20. Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Monday, 03-Apr-2023 19:51:44 EDT Clarissa Walker
    Finally, I have started updating my No-Intro set... from September 2018 to a more recent set, ranging from 2021 - 2023, depending on the set.
    
    Around January 2023, homebrew, pirate, and aftermarket stuff is no longer included by default. In my opinion, this is good, because is would be initially assumed that original commercial ROM and disk images would be present.
    
    However, they can be added back in with different settings. I separated the aftermarket ones from the original sets in the /alt/ directory for now; may move those to /aftermarket/. Someday, I will grab the pirate ones as well; those need different settings.
    • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Monday, 03-Apr-2023 20:05:12 EDT Clarissa Walker

      in reply to
      Almost forgot, was running into some file corruption issues for some time on the rebuilt file server.
      
      First noticed the issue when I was creating some slipstreamed Windows XP CDs to use on the programmer machine.
      
      It became worse when I was transferring data to that same server to store No-Intro ROMs; almost 20 ROM archives had bad CRC errors and the GBA pack had one corrupted file which wasn't present on the main laptop.
      
      I eventually replaced all four data cables with some I bought a few years ago and were in storage for a bit less. Those replacements were originally meant for a compile box, but the box is now a laptop instead. 😝
      
      I haven't run into the corruption issue since, but I'll keep watch for it. This is why I originally use an external hard drive to do initial work on, then send it to the file server later, but the external drives are not on hand right now.
    • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Monday, 03-Apr-2023 21:01:00 EDT Clarissa Walker

      in reply to
      Found the telltale sign re: bad data cable... it was on RAID5 drive 2 (layout: 0 - 1 - 2 - 3; drives are in order of manufacture date). That particular 4TB drive now has a UDMA CRC Error Count of 1, a recent happening during a bunch of large file transfers.
      
      Since I replaced them all, this may no longer be an issue right now.
    • Clarissa Walker (amisapphire@cwcyrix.nsupdate.info)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Apr-2023 09:37:53 EDT Clarissa Walker

      in reply to
      This one I caught a few hours ago: happened while archiving some Nintendo 64 ROMs.
      
      Miraculously, the initial transfer from two days ago did not corrupt any of them (those are big endian; also lucky, because there is no local mirror...), but copying them for the byte-swapped conversion set directly on the server corrupted one ROM in that copied set. This is becoming much less frequent, at least.
      
      Checked RAID5 status, array is fine. This issue shows up over a wireless network; should try wired network and local transfer... and probably examine the SATA ports on the motherboard, among other things (which I may eventually replace anyway).