Has anyone stopped to consider that it’s probably because the apps you’re using are still written for a single core device?

The same thing happened to computer users when dual core CPUs were released – sure, you could run more programs concurrently, but since each program only used a single core, until they, and the underlying operating system, were rewritten.

A more direct analogy might be the retina display on iPhone 4 – it took a while for apps to be rewritten to support it natively instead of just doubling their pixels.

I’m willing to bet that iPad 2 will go through a similar process – for the time being things will feel the same, or at least a little snappier (as mail, spotlight et al will use one core while your app uses the other).

As apps are rewritten to support multicore and iOS 5 is released (which will no doubt boast better multicore performance), iPad 2 should feel like it is speeding up.

If you’re like me and you like to reduce the clutter in your loungeroom, but still want to be able to watch all your recorded TV shows and backed up DVDs, PS3 media server(PMS) might be something worth looking at. It’s stupidly easy to get up and running on Windows (i.e. as long as you have java installed you can just click and run), but on Linux it needs an extra step or two.

Many thanks to Mjohns930 over at the ps3mediaserver.org forum for his post which was the basis for this howto.

Step 1: Get the pre-requisites.

Open a terminal and run the following command, answering yes when it asks you to confirm that you want to install these packages:

sudo aptitude install mplayer mencoder ffmpeg sun-java6-jre

Step 2: Get PMS and unpack it.

Download the latest linux/unix Stable release from here and save it to your home folder, then extract it with the following command.

cd ~/
tar xzf pms-linux-x.xx.x.tgz

Step 3: Move PMS to the opt folder and give it rights to run.

mkdir /opt
mv ~/pms-linux-x.xx.x/ /opt/pms
cd /opt/pms
sudo chmod +x PMS.sh
sudo chmod +x linux/tsmuxer

Step 4: Modify the config.

gedit PMS.conf

Delete anything which is already there and pop in this basic config:

thumbnails = true
thumbnail_seek_pos = 300
mencoder_ass = true
folders = \/path\/to\/folder\/1, \/path\/to\/folder\/2
hide_videosettings = true
hide_enginenames = true
audiochannels = 2

Step 5: Run PMS and see if it works correctly. Fire up your PS3 so it’s ready to run, then do:

cd /opt/pms
./PMS.sh

The terminal will fill with text, and the PMS main window should pop up. When you check on your PS3, you should be able to browse the folder you added and play some videos.

If it all works the way you want it to, close the window. You can launch it like this whenever you need it, but it’s best to have it autolaunch in headless mode when your system starts so it doesn’t clutter your desktop.

Step 6: Making PMS start on boot.

cd /etc/init.d
sudo gedit startpms

In the new file, paste the following:

#!/bin/bash
cd /opt/pms
nohup ./PMS.sh &
exit

Save the file, then make sure it’s executable:

sudo chmod +x startpms

and insert it into your startup config

sudo update-rc.d startpms defaults

So while it may be great for the system image, it’s not the sort of thing I like to do for everything else.  For starters, my computer has about 600Gb of stuff on it, and I don’t want to be copying it all over to my server every night.

That’s where Robocopy comes in.

I have a file called backup.bat which looks like this:

@echo off
robocopy c:\users\leigh\desktop y:\desktop /E
robocopy c:\users\leigh\documents y:\documents /E /XJ
robocopy g:\ y:\games /E
robocopy s:\ y:\storage /E

So what does all that mean? The 2 lines copy  my user files over to a shared directory on my server which is mapped as Y:. Third line copies my Games disk over. Fourth line copies my Storage disk, where I keep anything else.

The /E switch on the end forces robocopy to copy everything recursively. The /XJ switch gets around a little issue with your documents folder, where there are Junctions to your music, pictures etc. folders. These junctions cannot be accessed by robocopy, so /XJ (eXclude Junctions) will skip them for you.

Robocopy is smart enough to only copy stuff which is new, or has been modified since the last time you copied. Everything else will be skipped.

Enjoy!

If you’re having the problem on a T400 where you can’t change screen brightness, even after installing all the correct drivers, try the following:

Right click on the green battery on your taskbar, go to ‘Switchable Graphics’and select ‘Energy Saving.’

You should now be able to change your screen brightness both via the function keys, and automatically via your power profiles.

Update: Turns out this is a bug with the original Bios which was shipped with the T400. Jump on to the Lenovo website and download the updated bios to fix it all up.

But thankfully with the introduction of Windows Vista (and by extension, Windows 7), we have some new options for installing Windows which don’t need disk wallets to be carted around wherever we go.

For this neat way of carrying around your install media, you’ll need a copy of a Windows DVD as well as a USB thumb drive. My copy of Windows 7 Enterprise is 2.23Gb in size, so I’ll be using a 4Gb USB thumb drive.

First, plug in your USB thumb drive and backup any data you wish to keep, as this procedure will erase it.

Open a command prompt and type DISKPART.

Accept the UAC which appears (if you haven’t already wound down the UAC settings so they don’t bug you) and you’ll be presented with the diskpart window.

Think of diskpart as a more advanced (and less comfortable) version of the computer management disk manager. You can add, change and remove partitions, as well as a bunch of other funky things.

Now we’ll select the disk we’re going to run on. Type LIST DISK to list the disks which are currently connected to your system. Mine looks like this:

I can see that my 4Gb thumb drive is disk 4. I’ll type SELECT DISK 4.

Now that we’re working on the disk we want to use, let’s blow away any existing partitions and start from scratch. We’ll use the clean command first. Ignore the error it gives – it’ll still destroy the partition whether it errors out or not.

and we’ll create a new partition with the create command.

Now we’ll move into the new partition we just created:

Activate the partition:

Format the partition as FAT32:

And go and make a cup of tea. The format will take a while to complete. The reason we’ve used diskpart is mainly because the standard format menu within windows explorer will only allow us to format the stick as either NTFS or exFAT – both are unacceptable for this exercise. When the format is complete, we’ll assign (get windows to assign the USB thumb drive a disk letter):

And exit.

Make a note of the drive letter of your Windows DVD and your newly formatted thumb drive:

Now we’ll copy everything from our Windows DVD across to our USB thumb drive. Do this from a Windows command line as follows:

The different slashes after the xcopy command will copy absolutely everything off the disk and display what’s being copied as it’s doing it’s thing.

Once it’s finished copying, congratulations! You’re now the proud owner of an extremely compact and ultra fast install medium for Windows Vista or 7.

From Apple.com:

Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.

Bam! That’s their selling point! Somebody gets paid lots of money to write that sentence, and they earn it all, because that sentence will sell several billion of these things.

Geeks are getting pissed off because this isn’t a real computer/doesn’t run OS X/doesn’t have XYZ/is a glorified iPod touch. This is because geeks know nothing about advertising, which is another way of saying they don’t know how people work. Admen get paid to understand the entire planet and to synthesize it all into a sentence. So when you look at Apple’s advertising, you know that this isn’t just empty speech. Apple has figured out what the entire world wants and it is magic and revolution. That’s how they’re selling it. They figure the only people who won’t want an iPad are people who don’t like magic.

And guys, they have a point. This thing could save the publishing industry and the newspaper/magazine industry. It could revolutionize the digital fine arts. It does essentially everything that can possibly fit on a screen that size, almost unconsciously. It is so magic that it does things you’d never imagine wanting something to do. (There’s a hands-on video of a guy handing the iPad to his friend, and by the time the friend’s picked up the other end the screen’s flipped over and reoriented itself for him.)

Apple is such a big and powerful company that it can get away with things you don’t even notice because there’s so much going on. They’ve killed every photo frame company on the planet today, you know that? A cottage industry annihilated. They’re going to reintroduce the part of music that went away when the LP died because they’re offering a special music format with artwork and special footage and just unbelievable immersion in an album, and that entire format is so minimal to their plans that they don’t see fit to mention it on the iPad site. I’m betting they’ll kill most of the Kindle, because people like magic more than they like epaper. And when developers hit this thing, you’ll see them kill off proprietary industry after proprietary industry, because now the hardware’s available, most data you’ll ever need is available, and so the only thing you need to make a beautiful program is a beautiful graphic designer.

It’s easy to look at the iPad skeptically and say that, no, it’s not doing anything truly new. It’s basing itself off the iPhone and the Macbook. Sure, the unibody is revolutionary, the battery is revolutionary, the interface is revolutionary, but it’s all been done before. To which I say, Yes, but it’s never been done all at once. It’s like how Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band wasn’t making any sort of music that wasn’t all pioneered. Yeah, but it did it all at once. And after it came out, music exploded because suddenly everything was allowed. This is kind of like that.

Apple’s not stupid, critics of Apple. It’s launched two products in a row that led to Apple’s dominating the music industry and gave it a position of power in the movie, television, phone, and gaming industries. It’s not like they did that accidentally. This is the most powerful company that’s ever existed.

How did they accomplish that? What will lead to them becoming more successful in all those and gaining an even larger monopoly in other fields? It’s really not hard.

Verizon launched a Droid ad two months ago that essentially let the world know how doomed they were. The ad showed a bunch of “iDon’t”s. iDon’t have 5 megapixels. iDon’t have multitasking. Item after item of flaws in the iPhone that this new technology could solve.

Apple, meanwhile, showed a phone that could speak foreign languages at you, identify birdcalls in the wilderness, guide you through cities. They weren’t selling technical features. They were selling you magic. Real magic. The kind of magic where, thanks to world-class designers and programmers and marketers, it actually comes true.

The iPad is a 10” computer with a 16GB flash drive and multitouch technology. What makes that so worthwhile? Haven’t we seen this before? How is this better than a Windows tablet or a netbook?

Here’s why. Apple’s not actually selling a computer. Or a flash drive or multitouch. They needed to make those things for their product, but that’s not what the product is. The product is, simply put, a magical screen that can do anything you ever want it to, no matter what that is.

Here you go. It’s five hundred dollars. If you pay me that, I will give you this magical thing that can do anything. You don’t have to read a manual. It will do anything, and it will do it right now, out of the box.

Other companies are selling computers. Apple’s selling magic. Which one would you rather have?

This article was written by Rory Marinich.

At the moment when I want to get in to the sandbox, I’m using VMWare Workstation. I’ve used it for quite a while, and am very comfortable with it. But there are other virtualisation platforms out there, so I thought it was only fair that I have a look at the other options which are available. So today we’ll be comparing VMWare Workstation with Sun Microsystems’virtualisation client, Virtualbox.

VMWare Workstation 7

Workstation 7

It’s the Ferarri of desktop virutalisation products, with a venerable history and is produced by a company which does nothing but virtualisation – so you’d think they’d be pretty good at it by now. The version I’ll be playing with today is VMWare’s latest and greatest, which sports improved 3D capabilities, driverless printing, and even has the ability to run a VMWare vSphere server from within VMWare Workstation.

One of the things I like to use workstation for is creating a Team, where you can simulate a customer’s network with virtual servers and virtual routers, then introduce a new element and see how the existing stuff reacts. It’s very handy, and means that a lot of the time I can walk in to a customer’s site with some answers up front.

Virtualbox

Virtualbox

Produced by Sun Microsystems, one of the last great Unix companies, Virtualbox is a simple and straight forward virtualisation platform. Things are simplified a little bit, but you’ve still got access to an impressive feature set. So there’s no Team environment or any of the fancy-schmancy stuff which you’ll see in VMWare Workstation. But you can still run multiple virtual machines, snapshot their disks and so on.

One of the most impressive features Virtualbox has at its disposal is that its remote display mechanism is acutally RDP. So no need for special clients or tools when you’re connecting to a virtual machine which is running on a remote server – just fire up your favourite RDP client and away you go. You’ll also be able to connect USB devices via RDP from no matter where you are.

And the two best things? Virtualbox is free, and will not only run on Windows, but also Mac, Linux and Solaris.

Installation.

Just telling you the features of each isn’t really going to get your blood flowing, so I figured the best way to show them side by side is by giving them a little challenge.

I’m going to fire them up and run through the Windows 7 Enterprise (64bit) installation. Once each installation is finished, I’ll shut the machines down, then drag race them from power on to desktop, and then we’ll do some speed tests to see who’s come out on top.

So first up, the build. We’ll start by creating the virtual machines. I’ll choose the new machine option on each client:

Ok, so VMWare has a typical and custom option, although typical is … typically all you’ll need. Virtualbox loses points here for having an exclamation mark on their welcome page, which seems friendly, but could also me misconstrued as someone shouting at me.

Moving on… Next screen is all about which OS we’re going to install. VMWare does it by asking you to specify your installer disk, then checking that disk to see if it recognises it. You can see on the left that it’s detected Windows 7 x64. Virtualbox, on the other hand, asks you which OS you’re going to install.

Ok, here’s where things start to break up a little and the two programs go their seperate ways. First up, VMWare is asking me for my ‘Easy Install’information. For those who don’t know, you provide your CD key and login details up front, and VMWare Workstation will complete the installation for you, allowing you to go off and make a cup of tea while it finishes, and you’ll come back to your shiny new desktop.

At the same time, Virtualbox is asking about RAM sizes. VMWare doesn’t specifically ask you how much RAM you want to commit to this virtual machine – you have to change it later on. I’m going to assign 1Gb of RAM, as that’s what VMWare is doing, and I want these machines to be as similar as possible.

Then VMWare asks you to name and specify the save location for your VM.

Now they’re both asking about hard disks. With VMWare, you simply specify the size you want and it’ll create the virtual disk within that virtual machine’s folder. Virtualbox asks whether you want to use an existing disk or create a new one. I’ll select new…

Which launches the disk wizard. I’ll create a 40Gb disk as that’s what VMWare is doing.

Righto. Both setups have finished.

Time for some fine tuning. As you can see, both machines are single processor, single core, with 1Gb of RAM and 40Gb of hard disk space. I’m going to leave everything else pretty much default here, but there’s some interesting stuff to play with.

Let’s press start and begin the installations. VMWare gets off to a flying start by booting the disk and beginning the easy install process.

Whereas Virtualbox first asks you for a disk (I forgot to specify it when at the hardware tweaking screen).

Then it begins the normal Windows 7 installation. No easy install here.

So Virtualbox is a little more fiddly to get a virtual machine up and running, but that’s not the important part. Let’s make a cup of tea while the installs are happening, then we’ll look at performance. To make things as fair as possible, I’ll only run one virtual machine at a time – that way they won’t be getting in each others way when it comes to RAM, disk access and processor power.

Before we start, however, we need to make sure that the different virtual machines have the same playing field. Each product has its own system for allowing a virtual machine better access to its host. VMWare Tools on one side, and Virtualbox Guest Additions on the other. I’ll install them now.

VMWare tools start automatically thanks to easy install, and reboots the virtual machine once they’re finished.

Again, Virtualbox is a little more hands on. Select Devices > Install Guest Additions from the menu at the top of the screen and follow the steps as so.

Phew. Glad that’s over with. So now we’ve got two roughly identical machines. One on VMWare and one on Virtualbox. I’ll change the desktop themes so that they stand out a little. VMWare Workstation gets a cool scene, whereas Virtualbox gets… whatever the hell those things are.

First thing you may notice is that VMWare has Aero enabled, but Virtualbox doesn’t. This is due to the fact that while Virtualbox does support 3D, it only supports OpenGL, not the DirectX which VMWare supports (and is required by Aero). While that isn’t a huge problem, it’s something which is worth noting. It’s also worth noting that 3D support on Virtualbox is the same on all platforms, so you can play OpenGL games on your Linux box.

Features.

Well, what do you want? Both programs let you build and run a multitude of virtual machines with very little fuss. I guess I should stick to the sexy features, though. VMWare introduced a new feature a little while ago (Workstation 6.5 from memory) called Unity, which allowed your virtual windows to float over your host desktop so you didn’t have to be viewing the virtual desktop in its entirety. It looks like this:

Multiple operating systems can stack above your normal start button, and are each given their own individual colour. In this case I only have Windows 7 running, it has assigned itself a pink start button, and its windows also get the pink treatment. Were there multiple operating systems running, they’d each have a different colour and stack up above the start button.

As for Virtualbox, it’s ‘Seamless Mode’is similar, although there are some differences. Here’s what it looks like:

Note that the start bar of my virtual windows 7 machine is sitting on top of my host start bar. This seems all well and good until you try to launch multiple guest operating systems at once:

Instead of VMWare’s clever coloured start buttons, the taskbars for each operating system stack on top of each other rather clunkily. A solution for this is to move them around within their respective operating systems, although this can be a little invasive.

Oh, dear god! So many taskbars! So we’ve got the host on the right, Windows XP Guest at the bottom, Windows 7 Guest on the left and OpenSolaris up top. Not exactly slick, but I have to say – it’s nice not having pink borders around everything.

Remote access is an interesting difference too. VMWare uses VNC, allowing remote computers to control guests with ease. Virtualbox, on the other hand, uses RDP – the protocol behind Windows’Remote Desktop connection.

The only other real difference is the ability of VMWare to create Teams – groups of computers which are seggregated from the rest of the network by a virtual router, and allow you to testbed an entire infrastructure. Of course, this probably isn’t of much interest to your average geek. Hell, even I only use it once in a blue moon.

And now, a Drag Race.

This will be performance test one. From a fully shutdown state, I’ll power each machine up and we’ll see how long it takes for it to fully boot and be at its desktop. I’ll use timestamps on the screenshots to compare times. I’m going to time from the virtual BIOS screen until Internet Explorer starts (I’ve placed it in the startup folder of the start menu) and completes rendering the home page.

First up, VMWare. Let’s see what you’ve got.

From 14:48:12 to 14:49:32 is a grand total of one minute and twenty seconds (1:20). Not too shabby. Let’s see how Virtualbox does.

Woah! 14:56:25 to 14:57:04! That means that Virtualbox started in thirty nine seconds! That’s just under half the time it took VMWare Workstation to boot.

Synthetic Benchmarks.

I don’t particularly like synthetic benchmarks, but as I don’t have anything better to show the performance differences, I guess some SiSoft Sandra testing will have to do.

Dhrystone scores are pretty much on par, as one would expect. Remember that each of these virtual machines is only using a single virtual CPU, so the fact that their scores are pretty much half the host system is fairly impressive.

Again, whetstone shows that the two virtuals are neck and neck in the gigaflop department.

Memory performance sees VMWare Workstation edge ahead a little, with performance almost on par with the physical host system.

Oh dear. This is where synthetic benchmarks start to suffer a little, either that or Virtualbox is using some kind of clever memory based disk caching.

Yep. Definitely something funny going on here.

Conclusion.

Look, this is a tough call. Both platforms are pretty impressive, and synthetic benchmarks don’t always give a clear picture. When I looked at Virtualbox a year or two ago, I was a little underwhelmed, and stayed a staunch VMWare supporter. But this latest version is softening my cold heart. Its feature set has increased significantly (including their version of Unity, where virtual windows float over your desktop), and its performance seems as good as (if not better than) VMWare Workstation.

That being said, It still seems to me that VMWare is the more stable of the two, which you’d expect from a company which does nothing but virtualisation.

So if you’re looking for something which is free so you can have a toy around with virtualization, then I’d suggest giving Virtualbox a try. It’ll allow you to quickly and easily segment off applications into a separate working environment so they don’t interfere with your main Windows desktop.

If you’re planning on using Virtualisation in a corporate environment any time in the future, you’re best off spending some cash on VMWare Workstation, as its core technologies are very similar to the operating environment you’ll encounter in the real world – vSphere, for example.

Of course, you could also go for one of VMWare’s free products, like VMWare Server or VMWare Player (which now has the ability to create virtual machines instead of just play them), but how they’ll perform is a matter for another article.

Today I’m going to be playing around with the new version of ACE management server from VMWare. As you probably know, they’re all for running normal operating systems in completely abnormal ways, and ACE lets us do even more abnormal things – like installing a virtual machine which can run entirely from a memory key, while avoiding touching the host operating system at all.

Of course, you don’t necessarily need to use Linux for this. In fact, any operating system which is supported by VMWare can run in this manner. So if you’d rather run Windows or OpenSolaris, go right ahead. The principle is exactly the same.

The reasons for doing this aren’t immediately apparent, but bear with me. Running virtual machines usually requires VMWare Workstation or a similar product. It’s fine if you’re doing it at home, but what happens if you want to carry your computer in your pocket and run it wherever you are?

For example, a computer on a stick would be perfect for the following uses:

• Remote workers who need a set level of security, but only have untrusted machines to use.
• When you’re travelling and only have access to Internet Cafe computers
• When you’re a massive nerd who gets kicks out of doing stupid things which essentially waste your time.

I’m sure that there are a lot of different reasons you could want to do this sort of thing, but the usefulness of something isn’t always a prime concern to me. The fact that we can do it is cause enough. So let’s get started.

EDIT: Before we begin, there’s a slight problem with this. I barelled into the install thinking that it’d all work just fine, but unfortunately there’s some licensing concernes when it comes to using the PocketACE portion of the ACE environment. So while we can create PocketACE instances, it’s impossible for us to run them without paying upwards of $1700 for licensing. So if anyone at VMWare would like me to show this feature off for them (and my *massive* visitor base) then please let me know. Otherwise, please view this purely as a technical exercise.

The first thing you’ll need is a copy of VMWare Workstation 7, VMWare ACE Management Server Virtual Appliance, and trial keys for each. These can be obtained from the VMWare website, here. They’ll last for 30 days to give you a taste test of the technology, after which you can decide whether or not you want to go ahead and buy a full version.

Installing VMWare workstation shouldn’t be too much of a trouble for anyone with half a brain cell remaining (hell, even I can do it), so I won’t bother doing a step-by-step for it. Once it’s installed and you’ve rebooted your system, we’ll go ahead and load our new ACE virtual appliance. Again, you should know how to load a virtual image, so I won’t go through this.

Boot your new virtual appliance. It’ll go through the standard Linux boot structure and ask you to set the new root password.

Once it’s finished booting, a screen will appear which shows what your ACE server’s details are. Below you can see that my server’s IP address is 192.168.0.11 – the IP it pulled from my DHCP server.

As it says in the banner, we need to configure our server before we go any further. So fire up a browser and go to https://your.server.ip.address:8000 and log in with the root password you created during startup. You’ll then be greeted with the setup screen.

Hit start and enter the license key VMWare gave you, along with your name and company if you wish.

Select a database server, or select the embedded database if you don’t have a database server lying around. Surprisingly, I’m going for the embedded option, but it’s only because I want to keep things simple.

Enter some login details for a local administrator, or use an LDAP domain account. Again, I’m going for the simple option.

Upload custom SSL certificates if you have them, or just hit next to use the one the ACE server pregenerated when it did its initial install.

Boring logging stuff which nobody cares about.

Then hit Restart to make your changes take effect.

The whole virtual appliance won’t restart – it’ll only be the service which runs on the appliance. So it should be quite speedy. Once it’s one, you should be able to go back to VMWare Workstation and connect to your sexy new ACE Management Server.

Enter your IP address, then your password when prompted.

And you’ll drop in to your new ACE Instances screen.

Groovy. So now that we’ve got the framework in place to install our copy of Linux on to a USB memory key, we should probably get ourselves a copy of Linux, right? Well, for those who haven’t installed a version of Linux with VMWare, be prepared to revel in its simplicity.

Create a new Virtual Machine with some very basic hardware requirements. For your hard disk, go about 1Gb less than the actual size of your memory key, as the extra ACE framework will take up a bit of space. In my case, I’ll be using a 4Gb memory key, so I’ll cap my disk space at 3Gb.

Hit go, and your Linux install will complete itself.

And when finished, it’ll drop you to your new desktop.

Right. So now we have the framework, and we have the guest operating system. Time to bring it all home by putting our new operating system on to our memory key. Shut down your shiny new Linux machine and go back to its information page. Click on the option labelled “Enable ACE features”

Then on the next screen, choose the following option

Choose a name for your new ACE package, and select where it will be stored on your computer. This isn’t where your memory key is, this is a hard disk on your local machine. We’ll deploy it to the memory key in a sec.

Next, choose which versions of VMWare player you’re going to install. I’m only going to choose Windows, as that’s all I plan on running this machine on, but if you wanted to run on different flavours of Linux, you’d have those options too.

If you want to set a password to restrict starting of this Virtual Machine, you can do so here. I’ll leave mine blank for now.

Double check your settings and click finish.

VMWare will now go bundle up your virtual machine into a nice little encrypted package which is ready for deployment to your USB memory key. And when I say encrypted, I’m talking about a 128 bit AES cypher. Not too shabby, really.

Once complete, you’ll be able to deploy it to your portable device. Hit finish.

Then choose your USB device.

And hit “Deploy” to begin the process. This will take a little while, depending on the speed of your USB device, so it’s possibly time to go and make a cup of tea.

Is it still going?

Shit. Guess I’ll go and have a smoke too.

It’s done? Hot damn! Ok, let’s unplug the Memory Key and fire it up on another machine. On the root of the memory key is a file called run.exe, so we’ll just run that and…

What? Licenses? But I have trial licenses! It says so on my VMWare account page!

Well, shit. Looks like I just spent a couple of hours writing this for nothing. Well, maybe not for nothing. We have run through an interesting install of a fresh piece of software, and barring the licensing issue, everything went pretty smoothly. If anyone out there would like to send me some screenshots of a PocketACE deployment in action, astro@irrationale.com is the place to do it.
- Leigh Henderson.

But once it’s up and running, should you dedicate a monitor/keyboard/mouse to a computer you barely use? Or is there another option?

Thankfully, one thing Linux has in spades is Options.

Today I’m going to deal with X11 forwarding over SSH. As you may know, SSH is one of the primary ways of connecting in to your Linux server, but it’s normally used for terminal commands – something some people aren’t all that comfortable with.

X11 forwarding over SSH allows the display of any programs you’d normally run from within a Gnome or KDE session to be displayed remotely, with only a few steps to make it possible.

Requirements.

First up, you’ll need an SSH client for your current machine. If you’re using Windows, the best option in my opinion is PuTTY, as it’s free and easy to use. On Mac, your SSH client comes built in, and is called ssh.

Next, we’ll need an X server. Windows-wise, there are a couple of options such as XWin32 (commercial software) and XMing (freeware). As I’m a cheapskate, I’m going with XMing. Again, Mac users have this preloaded providing you installed X11 when you installed OSX.

Windows Howto.

So, first step. Install PuTTY and fire it up. You should see a window like this:

The Host Name or IP Address field is the important one here. Enter the name or IP address of your Linux computer. Leave the port at 22 (unless you’ve changed the default SSH port), then click on SSH in the tree on the left hand side.

Turn on compression to speed up your connection, and bring Blowfish to the top of the list. Blowfish is still relatively secure, but will be a heck of a lot quicker than AES at passing information as your computer doesn’t have to encrypt things so heavily.

Next, click on X11, and turn on “enable X11 forwarding.” You can also modify the display number if you intend to have multiple machines displaying at once, but I usually leave it as default (display 0).

Finally, let’s go back to the session option at the top of the tree and save our session so we don’t have to type this stuff in every time. I’ll call this connection ‘mycomputer’and press save down the bottom. Then it’ll appear in the bottom window next time I start PuTTY.

Ok, go ahead and click the Open button in the bottom right corner to connect to your machine. You’ll be greeted with a username/password prompt. Use your standard user login, though – as root logins over any remote connection are a serious no-no.

Good, so we’re now connected via SSH and X11 forwarding is enabled. But we can’t run anything just yet, as we don’t have a local X server to display the information we’re after.

So after installing XMing, I’m going to start it using XLaunch, which can be found in your start menu. There are essentially two main options for us to use. First, we can use multiple windows, which will allow us to run single programs within Windows, kind of like VMWare’s Unity functionality. We’ll try that one first.

The next screen gives us the option to start a client, which essentially we’ve already done with PuTTY. You can select another option, which will use an embedded version of PuTTY to connect to the remote machine transparently and fire off a command, but that’s a howto for another day. For now, we’ll leave it off.

Next up is some advanced stuff about font servers which we won’t worry about at this stage.

And finally the option to save your connection as and .xlaunch file should you want to run it again in the future. Save if you want to, then hit ‘finish’.

Once you do, it’ll disappear and you’ll notice a new X logo in your task tray. This means that the X server is now running and ready to accept commands. Go back to PuTTY and we’ll give it one. In PuTTY, I’ll type ‘firefox &’– the ampersand breaks the process off and lets it run on its own so we can continue using the terminal.

Holy cow, Batman! Remote Firefox!

So running one program at a time is fine, but what happens if we want a full desktop? First thing we’ll do is close our current XMing session by exiting any open programs, right clicking on the X in the tasktray and selecting ‘exit.’Then we’ll fire up XLaunch again to select a different X server layout.

I’m going to choose ‘single window,’as I prefer to have remote sessions locked a way somewhat.

Hit next all the way through and press finish. You’ll be greeted with an ugly gray crosshatched window.

That’s what an X server looks like when it’s not rendering anything, so there’s no need to panic. But let’s put something up there to cover the blandness.

Back in PuTTY, type ‘gnome-session &’if you’re a Gnome user, or ‘kde-session &’if you’re a KDE person. It’ll send a command off to your other computer that it’s to launch your main desktop environment, and after a moment it’ll display like this.

So that’s the ins and outs of connecting to your Linux machine via a seamless X11 forwarded session.

Mac Howto.

Oh, if you’re a Mac user, I probably should tell you how things are done. It’s pretty difficult, so maybe you should all go grab your security blankey right away.

First, open up a terminal session by browsing to your applications folder, then the utilities folder, and clicking on Terminal.

Type the following command:

ssh your.server.ip.address -XC

The X enables X11 forwarding, and the C enables compression.

Once you log in, all you need to do is fire off some commands like ‘firefox &’and you’re away. Easy, huh?

Remotely possible?

The last thing I’d like to note is that this option is also quite possible over a remote connection (say, from the office so your boss doesn’t know what you’re  browsing). All you need to do is set up some port forwarding on your router and point port 22 at the IP address of your Linux server. Then from the office, fire up PuTTY and enter the public IP address of your internet connection.
Enjoy!

So let’s say that I have four 1Tb disks lying around which I want to thow into my new file server. At some point in the future, I’d like to upgrade my capacity by replacing one or all of the disks with larger ones (say, 2Tb).

How do we go about it?

Before we start, there’s a few things that we need to be mindful of. Rules of ZFS, if you will. They are:

• A vdev cannot have any additional devices added to it, but its devices can be replaced.
• A vdev cannot be removed from a pool. You have to destroy the pool and start over.
• A raidz vdev must contain disks of equal size.
• A raidz vdev can be expanded, but some trickery is required.

Essentially when you create a group of disks in a zpool, you’re creating what’s known as a vdev. A vdev can be a single disk, an N-way mirrored array, a RaidZ1 array or a RaidZ2 array. It can also be a logging disk, a cache disk or a spare disk, but we’ll get on to them down the track.

For my experiment, I’ll be using files instead of disks, but creating 1Tb files is plain silly, so I’ll use 1Gb files instead. So wherever you see a space reading in Gigabytes, assume that it’s Terabytes. To create the files, we’ll first create a folder for them to live in, then make a few 1Gb “disks” for each scenario we want to experiment with.

root@Zues:~# mkdir /zdev
root@Zues:~# cd /zdev
root@Zues:/zdev# mkfile 1g flat1a && mkfile 2g flat2a && mkfile 1g 1b.... and so on. 49Gb of disk images total!

Scenario 1: Flat dynamically striped array (“Dynamic” RAID0)

The reason ZFS striped arrays are called “Dynamic” is because… well, they are. Adding or replacing disks is simple and frighteningly quick – most times involving only a single command, and no reboots to make it take effect.

To create a dynamically striped array is as simple as:

root@Zues:/zdev# zpool create dynamic /zdev/flat_1a /zdev/flat_1b /zdev/flat_1c /zdev/flat_1d

Which gives us:

root@Zues:/zdev# zpool list dynamic
NAME SIZE USED AVAIL CAP HEALTH ALTROOT
dynamic 3.97G 79.5K 3.97G 0% ONLINE -
root@Zues:/zdev# df -h |grep dynamic
dynamic 4.0G 21K 4.0G 1% /dynamic

Four gigs of space. Not bad. Replacing our disks in the future happens like this:

root@Zues:/zdev# zpool replace dynamic /zdev/flat_1a /zdev/flat_2a
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool replace dynamic /zdev/flat_1b /zdev/flat_2b
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool replace dynamic /zdev/flat_1c /zdev/flat_2c
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool replace dynamic /zdev/flat_1d /zdev/flat_2d

root@Zues:/zdev# zpool list dynamic
NAME SIZE USED AVAIL CAP HEALTH ALTROOT
dynamic 3.97G 104K 3.97G 0% ONLINE -
root@Zues:/zdev# df -h |grep dynamic
dynamic 4.0G 21K 4.0G 1% /dynamic

So It’s as easy as pie to replace disks to increase the size of your array, and although I did them all at the same time, it’s quite simple to do them one at a time.

Let’s see how it performs:

Pros:

• Maximum storage
• Maximum simplicity
• Great performance
• Replace any disk at any time to expand the array

Cons:

• Zero Redundancy

Conclusion:
Best if you want something really simple, with lots of storage space and very little redundancy.

Scenario 2: Mirroring (RAID1)

Building a mirrored array is a little tricker to get your head around. The first way to do it is to add disks in pairs and let the system figure it out. My preferred way, however, is to create a standard ZFS array of two disks, then attach the other two disks as hot mirrors of the two first ones. I’ll have to call this array ‘reflect’because the words mirror and mirroring are reserved by ZFS.

root@Zues:/zdev# zpool create reflect /zdev/mirror_1a /zdev/mirror_1b

and now we’ll attach the mirror disks:

root@Zues:/zdev# zpool attach reflect /zdev/mirror_1a /zdev/mirror_1c
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool attach reflect /zdev/mirror_1b /zdev/mirror_1d
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool status reflect
pool: reflect
state: ONLINE
scrub: resilver completed after 0h0m with 0 errors on Wed Oct 14 21:27:04 2009
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
reflect ONLINE 0 0 0
mirror ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/mirror_1a ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/mirror_1c ONLINE 0 0 0
mirror ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/mirror_1b ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/mirror_1d ONLINE 0 0 0 55.5K resilvered
errors: No known data errors

The available space of this array, as you would imagine, is 2Gb thanks to their being two 1Gb disks available.

To upgrade a mirrored array, you simply need to detach the mirror disk, replace the primary, then attach a new mirror disk. For example:

root@Zues:/zdev# zpool detach reflect /zdev/mirror_1c
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool replace reflect /zdev/mirror_1a /zdev/mirror_2a
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool attach reflect /zdev/mirror_2a /zdev/mirror_2c
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool status reflect
pool: reflect
state: ONLINE
scrub: resilver completed after 0h0m with 0 errors on Wed Oct 14 21:30:16 2009
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
reflect ONLINE 0 0 0
mirror ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/mirror_2a ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/mirror_2c ONLINE 0 0 0 34K resilvered
mirror ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/mirror_1b ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/mirror_1d ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

But hang on a second! Even though we’ve upgraded one of the mirrors, we’re still only showing 2Gb of disk space! We should have at least 3Gb avaiable!

root@Zues:/zdev# zpool list reflect
NAME SIZE USED AVAIL CAP HEALTH ALTROOT
reflect 1.98G 96K 1.98G 0% ONLINE -

Don’t panic, this is standard operating procedure. In order to make the new disk space available to the pool, we need to export it and re-import it.

root@Zues:/zdev# zpool export reflect
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool import -d /zdev/ reflect
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool list reflect
NAME SIZE USED AVAIL CAP HEALTH ALTROOT
reflect 2.98G 94.5K 2.98G 0% ONLINE -

Note the -d slash and the file path are only necessary when you’re working with files. Were these actual disks, I could just type “zpool import <poolname>” and get the same result.

As for performance, mirroring is definitely the way to go if you’re concerned about throughput. Over a 100 megabit network, this array gives perfect performance:

Pros:

• Excellent Redundancy
• Excellent Performance
• Still fairly simple
• Can upgrade the array mirror at a time
• Can roll back to dynamic array at any time by detaching mirrors and adding them to the pool

Cons:

• Very expensive

Conclusion:
Great mix of redundancy and flexibility, but not for the faint of wallet.

Scenario 3: RaidZ1 (RAID5)

A Z1 array is essentially a RAID5 array, but much, much sexier. Why? Because it has a Z in front of it!

Seriously, though, the RAIDZ array sits pretty much half way between naked disks and mirrored disks, providing n-1 redundancy so that while you’re secure, you can still have a good amount of storage without breaking the bank. Let’s go ahead and set one up.

root@Zues:/zdev# zpool create z1 raidz /zdev/raidz1_1a /zdev/raidz1_1b /zdev/raidz1_1c /zdev/raidz1_1d
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool status z1
pool: z1
state: ONLINE
scrub: none requested
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
z1 ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz1_1a ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz1_1b ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz1_1c ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz1_1d ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

So now that the RaidZ array has been created (note that the vdev specifies that it’s raidz1), let’s look at how much space we’ve actually got to play with.

root@Zues:/zdev# zfs list z1
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
z1 96.5K 2.92G 31.4K /z1

Remember, n-1 spacing means that even though we’ve got 4Gb of disks, we only get 3Gb of space, and then 1/64th of that space is reserved by ZFS.

Now let’s say it’s a year down the track, we’ve mostly filled our array with files, and we want to replace these disks with larger ones. First, you’ll have to make sure that the “Expand” option is enabled on the array, otherwise it won’t automatically grow when we add the new disks.

root@Zues:/zdev# zpool get expand z1
NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE
z1 autoexpand off default
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool set expand=on z1
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool get expand z1
NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE
z1 autoexpand on local

Excellent. Now we can go ahead and replace out our disks with the new 2Gb models we just bought.

root@Zues:/zdev# zpool replace z1 /zdev/raidz1_1a /zdev/raidz1_2a
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool replace z1 /zdev/raidz1_1b /zdev/raidz1_2b
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool replace z1 /zdev/raidz1_1c /zdev/raidz1_2c
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool replace z1 /zdev/raidz1_1d /zdev/raidz1_2d
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool status z1
pool: z1
state: ONLINE
scrub: resilver completed after 0h0m with 0 errors on Wed Oct 14 21:54:17 2009
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
z1 ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz1 ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz1_2a ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz1_2b ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz1_2c ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz1_2d ONLINE 0 0 0 31K resilvered

errors: No known data errors

root@Zues:/zdev# zfs list z1
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
z1 123K 5.87G 31.4K /z1

Excellent. Just under 6Gb of space to play with, although I shudder to think how much four of those disks cost. Let’s see how it performs.

Ok, so performance is a little bit degraded because of the fact that the system needs to calculate parity blocks during the write process. It also increases CPU utilization for the same reason.

Pros:

• Single disk Redundancy
• Can also add spares which can kick in if a drive fails
• Halfway between naked drives and mirroring for price

Cons:

• Not so stellar performance
• To upgrade, all drives must be replaced

Conclusion:
Not for the faint of heart when it comes to upgrade paths, but definitely one of the most versitile options

Scenario 4: RaidZ2 (RAID6)

Essentially this is the ZFS equivalent of RAID6, and offers two disk redundancy – i.e. two disks can fail before you need to start worrying about data. The only downside is that you’ll lose two disks to parity information, so it tends to get rather pricey. First, let’s create a RaidZ2 array:

root@Zues:/zdev# zpool create z2 raidz2 /zdev/raidz2_1a /zdev/raidz2_1b /zdev/raidz2_1c /zdev/raidz2_1d
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool status z2
pool: z2
state: ONLINE
scrub: none requested
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
z2 ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz2 ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz2_1a ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz2_1b ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz2_1c ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz2_1d ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

and the available space?

root@Zues:/zdev# zfs list z2
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
z2 101K 1.95G 31.4K /z2

Ew. Not much space to play with, considering we just threw 4 1G disks at it, although we had the same sort of thing with Mirroring. Upgrading this array is the same as a RaidZ1 array, in that we need to enable exand, then upgrade all four disks at once.

root@Zues:/zdev# zpool get expand z2
NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE
z2 autoexpand off default
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool set expand=on z2
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool replace z2 /zdev/raidz2_1a /zdev/raidz2_2a
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool replace z2 /zdev/raidz2_1b /zdev/raidz2_2b
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool replace z2 /zdev/raidz2_1c /zdev/raidz2_2c
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool replace z2 /zdev/raidz2_1d /zdev/raidz2_2d
root@Zues:/zdev# zpool status z2
pool: z2
state: ONLINE
scrub: resilver completed after 0h0m with 0 errors on Wed Oct 14 22:17:12 2009
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
z2 ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz2 ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz2_2a ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz2_2b ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz2_2c ONLINE 0 0 0
/zdev/raidz2_2d ONLINE 0 0 0 56.5K resilvered

errors: No known data errors
root@Zues:/zdev# zfs list z2
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
z2 126K 3.91G 31.4K /z2

So with four 2Gb disks, we now have just shy of 4Gb of space which is double redundant. Let’s see what its performance is like:

Another small drop thanks to the extra parity we have to write, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Pros:

• Double disk Redundancy
• Can also add spares which can kick in if a drive fails

Cons:

• Underwhelming performance
• To upgrade, all drives must be replaced
• Lots of disk space lost to Parity

Conclusion:
In a massive array, RaidZ2 would be very worthwhile, but in our example, two disk redundancy can be performed by Mirroring just as easily and have the added bonus of being much easier to expand.

So there you have it, folks. I’ll admit that this look into ZFS and its various options isn’t exactly in-depth, but hopefully it gives you an idea of what is available.

Final Conclusion.

I can’t tell you which style of zpool layout to go for. For most people, a flat dynamically striped array is probably all they need, as all they really care about is the size of the array. Others might baulk at the idea of putting so much data in the hands of the gods – after all, a flat array is horribly susceptible to disk failure.

Having weighed up all the options, I can say that the most likely one I’ll go for is a four-disk mirrored array. The fact that I can upgrade two of the disks and leave the other two alone is a massive bonus, as it means that while I enjoy the luxury of double redundant disks, I also don’t have to buy four new disks when it comes time to upgrade. Two (or even one) new 2Tb disks will bump my storage array to 3Tb – more than enough to keep me trucking.

If you’d like to simulate any of these options, all you need to do is grab a copy of the Opensolaris LiveCD, whack it in to your computer (or your virtual machine software of choice) and give it a go.

Enjoy!