As I was trying to figure out how to copy a LVM volume, I came across this. Interesting way of using LVM snapshots to manage multiple copies of the same OS. Continue reading
Using LV snapshots to manage multiple versions of an OS
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Category Archives: Computer geek stuff
Merging multiple avi files into one.
To concatenate multiple files into one, I’ve found this:
http://techtips.chanduonline.com/2006/08/15/how-to-join-multiple-avi-or-mpg-files/
Will test it out tonight
File access speed of file based VM vs physical disk access VM
I am curious to find in my environment how much worse a file based VM is at file access vs one that is based on a physical partition.
File based VMs are much easier to manage and backup, but at what cost? Continue reading
Bash scripts I've found usefull
To convert avi files to mp3s (used this page as reference)
This script converts all the avi files in a folder to mp3s.
for file in .; do for filename in *.avi; do mplayer -dumpaudio "$filename" -dumpfile "$filename".mp3; done; done
Tried the above script, and I kept getting core dumps. Modified it to use ffmpeg instead of mplayer.
for file in .; do for filename in *.avi; do ffmpeg -i "$filename" -ab 128k -vn "${filename%.avi}.mp3"; done; done
To convert mp4 files, I found this at this site. It uses some pretty advanced techniques (at least to me) to pass the output of one program (faad) to another (lame).
I added the -V9 (V9=lowest VBR quality), since I wanted a small file size.
#!/bin/bash
for i in *.m4a; do
echo "Converting: ${i%.m4a}.mp3"
faad -o - "$i" | lame -V9 - "${i%.m4a}.mp3"
done
rtorrent is great
I’ve been using TorrentFlux for a while on a headless server with great success for the past few years. Recently I’ve had some issues with it, mainly due to the fact that on some larger torrents, it seems to hang, seeding many torrents seems to eat a ton of memory, and CPU load.
So after some looking around, I found rtorrent. A full text based torrent client. Continue reading
I am NOT liking SuseStudio so much anymore.
I am not liking SuSe Studio so much anymore. The main goal for using it was to easily and quickly build xen VMs that I could deploy on my xen server at home. Continue reading
Setting up new Xen machine on OpenSuse 11.1 using SuSe Studio
I am liking SuSe Studio quite a bit.
I’ve made a Xen server barebones OS on top of which to run xen virtual machines, and built it in SuSe Studio. Very painless process, which produces a very small download, which requires zero installation. Well not zero installation, since on initial run there needs to be some unassisted setup done by the system. Continue reading
Photo Editing
Just a thought about speeding up photo editing…
Or at least speeding up workflow and reducing the time to get the image displayed, by removing the network storage from the picture, at least temporarily. Continue reading
Computers Power usage/cost of running.
Files server:
On 05May2009 (5pm) I’ve installed the Watt Meter on the file server PC to get an idea of how much juice it uses. The File Server is currently running 4 x 250gig Segate drives, and 1 x 500gig segate drive, on a VIA EPIA EN15000G Mobo.
So far (10pm 06May2009), it’s used up 2.24kWh, and averages about 90W while under usage (writing a 5gig file to it)
The next morning (06May2009) two drives were spun down, and power draw was down to 70W.
As of 24 May 2009, the file server has used up 34.46kWh.
Working out the usage/costs:
34.46kWh over 19days = 1.81kWh/day = 662kWh/year => @ $0.10/kWh, cost/year = $66.2
A few other thoughts:
I considered putting a different mobo in the file server machine, to add more speed, howevet, the VIA mobo can’t be beat for power usage.
I know the computer eats between 70W-90W (total power at the plug). assuming on average, each drive eats 10W, that’s 50W total (for the 5 drives). So the Mobo, power supplty and SATA card must be eating 20W-40W.
Still need to think about this motherboard upgrade…
UPDATE 05August2009
Did the MoBo update. The Via board’s LAN port got fried in a lightning storm.
New board is a Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2 with an AMD Sempron LE-1250 CPU (45W) .
The system pulls in 102W, which is only 10-30W more then the old system. Not bad.
More accurate measurements:
Under no load, with all 5 Seagate drives shut down, the system was pulling 69W
Under load, with all 5 drives active, doing a parity check, pulling in 119W
Xen server:
Next step is to get the Watt meter plugged into the xen server and do the same over the course of a month or more.
Total wellbeing medical spa : Additions/ideas
Meeting with Jason for the past few times has inspired me to get back into writing code. More importantly writing code differently. Writing better code.
So I’m going back to the Spa website to continue the work on that site.