Just stop making pennies and let the public melt them down - that way the Mint won't have to deal with disposing of them and they'll be put to some better use (recycle! or something)... but that's just my 10 cents
I too thought it might be a power supply issue as I've dealt enough with "flakey" computers to know most people's power supplies are sub-par and often problematic.
Originally I had an Antec True480 in the machine along with a 3Ware 5800 for RAID1 on two system disks. For whatever reason, that Antec supply would run very low on the 5V rail and the system would randomly crash/reboot once or twice in a 2-3 month period (took me a while to realize the 5V was really low). I had a similar problem with a different motherboard (AMD based) and an Antec True430 with a different 3Ware 5800 where the 3Ware would not even recognize both drives all the time when the 5V rail was low (4.5-4.6V). I think the problem was more with the Antec supplies in those cases.
Right now I have an Enermax EG651P-VE FM(24P) 550W supply in the machine and all the voltages are dead on. I realize that me testing the voltages with a cheap-o digital multimeter from Radio Shack isn't exactly a 100% guaranteed test, but I'd consider that Enermax a relatively good supply and in theory capable of easily powering 9 drives (one system) and a dual P3 600Mhz.
As for memory, the system does not have ECC memory (if that even really helps) but all three sticks are Crucial PC100 CL2 modules and have passed that Memtest 86 program running overnight (only 2-3 passes). Again, I don't think that memory test is a 100% guarantee, but it definitely makes me think other things are up.
I may try running the thing with two supplies here in a bit (I've done that often enough on other machines - run drives off one supply and everything else off another). I may also swap in some other power supplies I have lying around just to be sure.
What makes you say 1.8 was the last stable version? I've never seen any complaints with the newer 1.x series releases, and I just noticed that 1.12.0 has been released by Neil Brown.
Besides, and I may be completely off here, doesn't mdadm only create/manage RAID arrays? I thought all the code involved in the actual running of an array (including writing to one as any other block device) was in the Linux kernel. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
I too have this same exact problem and haven't been able to figure out what causes it. The array in question is a 1.6TB software RAID5 array with eight 250GB Maxtor SATA drives on Promise SATA150 TX4 controllers. A few months ago I noticed files that I'd coppied via samba being corrupted once they got to the array. As such I now checksum every file that I dump on it before copying from my windows box. I would say somwhere between 1/5 and 1/10 of the large (350MB+) files I copy to it get corrupted. If I copy them again, the MD5s are different, and usually the second copy gives me the same checksum.
Things I've noticed:
swapped out switches, network cables, and ethernet cards with no change
occurs going from my Windows box to the RAID array with Samba, generic FTP, and even scp
only seems to occur when copying to the RAID array, not when copying to the non-RAID system disk on the same server
happened with both an old Abit BE6 and with a newer Intel L440GX motherboard - I don't think the chipsets have anything to do with it
pretty sure it only happens between my windows box and the linux server, never from another box (which includes Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX)
only happens when I copy to the RAID array, reads seem to work flawlessly
strangely this only seems to occur with.avi files - I can't recall having any other types of files become corrupted but as a disclaimer 95% of the things being coppied to this server are AVIs
I've no idea what causes this, and as far as I know it only started happening somewhat recently (I've had the array for many years, although not always a full 1.6TB in size). Maybe it started when SP2 came out, I don't know. I can't 100% confirm I haven't always had this problem, but I've only noticed it starting a matter of months ago. Anyone else out there have any ideas? I'm at a loss. The Promise TX4s are what I'm currently eyeing as the problem source.
FYI: I'm using mdadm 1.11.0, ReiserFS 3.6.19, and a chunk size of 128k with left-symmetric parity.
Have they watched it? If so, have they ever seen things like ST:TNG, Babylon 5, Firefly, or even Battlestar Galactica? If they had, they'd realise there's better things to do with their money, no matter how much "better" this last season was.
I don't know about anyone else, but I personally have always felt the Star Trek franchise is more oriented towards "exploration" and general scientific curiosity. Don't get me wrong here, Enterprise and TNG had (have?) plenty of soap-opera-ish drama , but there's just something about them that appeals more to the curiosity than the rest.
Battlestar Galactica is a great show, but the premise is "run like hell and save our asses". I loved Firefly and Babylon 5 just as much, but only Babylon 5 ever really explored the interactions between cultures/species. Star Trek generally always explores "strange new worlds" and "new life and new civilizations" in some way or another. That's what appeals to me, and I believe those who donated money think along the same lines. Star Trek stimulates the mind and brings out the curiosity in us --- that's why it's "needed".
I didn't read the article (or the rest of the/. comments), but hard drives make much more sense than any optical storage medium in certain cases.
Media will always wear out, regardless of what type it is. When you have huge amounts of data to back up, it's much nicer to be able to copy it to the latest greatest storage medium quickly and efficiently. Thousands of CDs/DVDs even with an automated "disc changer" would take a hell of a lot longer to transfer than a bunch of servers with hard drives.
With a hard drive solution, you can just build a new server with new drives and copy everything over from the old one as fast as the hard drives and network allow. Couple this with RAID and multiple servers in different physical locations and you have a pretty damned resilient data archive.... and just for fun, here's an (old) example of people using hard drives for large scale backups.
Microsoft claimed that they were not eligible for security updates because of licensing, the company state that they were licensed, but it was easier to install from other discs.
Wow, rather troll-ish sounding if you ask me.
A company (MS in this case) should only be held responsible if their product failed while being used -correctly-. If some idiot company decides to install a pirated or non-licensed copy of windows on your hypothetical safety mechanism, that company is to blame - not Mircosoft. If they installed from "other" discs (pirated ones), then they're still running illegal software regardless of if they bought some licenses and did the equivalent of sticking them on a shelf to collect dust.
Keep in mind though that I am not a lawyer, and US law seems to be rather mangled at times -- Hell, if someone can sue a fast food chain for coffee being hot, surely there's a way to blame Microsoft for the errors of a completely separate company.
They changed this on me last night right in the middle of using it for some research. My biggest pet peeve is the separation of posts, or lack thereof. When their search term highlighting kicks in and highlights a bunch of words, it's hard to tell where one post ends and the next begins. I'm NOT a fan of this new design. At least they should let us choose the old one!
It's my personal opinion that MP3s sound better. However I'll admit it's been a while since I tested Ogg's (the encoders may have improved significantly since then). At that time I felt Oggs changed the overall tone of the music by making it brighter, and therefore felt MP3s were better because they didn't seem to suffer from that problem. But because I don't have experience with the new Ogg encoders, I won't mention them anymore.
Now, on to the subject. Most of my music I listen to is metal (Megadeth, Children of Bodom, etc) and classical. A 128kbps MP3 of any type of metal is unbearable in my opinion. They have horrible high end response and sound about like a FM broadcast. Once you get up to 256 or 320kbps, I can't tell the difference between them and the originals on 99% of the songs I've tested. However, for my classical music, I can rarely tell the difference between (128kbps MP3s on the softer tunes and 192kbps on the more complex ones) the MP3s and my CDs. Another example is a Harry Belafonte song (Monkey) that I downloaded. It was a 56kbps MP3 and I can't tell the difference between it and the original on vinyl (for those who don't know, it was recorded many decades ago).
Therefore, I feel one of the most important things to base your format/enocder/bitrate selection on is the type and source of music you'll be encoding. 128kbps might seem like CD quality on classical music, but for a Children of Bodom song it's not even close.
Also, I listen to all my encoded stuff through a SB Live Value connected to my Sony STR-DE415 receiver using either my pair of Sennheiser HD590 headphones or JBL S38 loudspeakers. For my MP3 ripping I use Exact Audio Copy with a Plextor PX-W124TS and encode them using LAME 3.89beta with the --r3mix command line.
Ahh yes... nothing beats some good metal to code by. I prefer mainly the earlier Metallica and Megadeth albums (although every single one of them rocks!). I don't know why, but something about Kill 'Em All just gets me in the mood to code.
Slashdot Mirror
Brian? Is that you?
:)
Heh
Just stop making pennies and let the public melt them down - that way the Mint won't have to deal with disposing of them and they'll be put to some better use (recycle! or something) ... but that's just my 10 cents
I too thought it might be a power supply issue as I've dealt enough with "flakey" computers to know most people's power supplies are sub-par and often problematic.
Originally I had an Antec True480 in the machine along with a 3Ware 5800 for RAID1 on two system disks. For whatever reason, that Antec supply would run very low on the 5V rail and the system would randomly crash/reboot once or twice in a 2-3 month period (took me a while to realize the 5V was really low). I had a similar problem with a different motherboard (AMD based) and an Antec True430 with a different 3Ware 5800 where the 3Ware would not even recognize both drives all the time when the 5V rail was low (4.5-4.6V). I think the problem was more with the Antec supplies in those cases.
Right now I have an Enermax EG651P-VE FM(24P) 550W supply in the machine and all the voltages are dead on. I realize that me testing the voltages with a cheap-o digital multimeter from Radio Shack isn't exactly a 100% guaranteed test, but I'd consider that Enermax a relatively good supply and in theory capable of easily powering 9 drives (one system) and a dual P3 600Mhz.
As for memory, the system does not have ECC memory (if that even really helps) but all three sticks are Crucial PC100 CL2 modules and have passed that Memtest 86 program running overnight (only 2-3 passes). Again, I don't think that memory test is a 100% guarantee, but it definitely makes me think other things are up.
I may try running the thing with two supplies here in a bit (I've done that often enough on other machines - run drives off one supply and everything else off another). I may also swap in some other power supplies I have lying around just to be sure.
Thanks for your comments!
What makes you say 1.8 was the last stable version? I've never seen any complaints with the newer 1.x series releases, and I just noticed that 1.12.0 has been released by Neil Brown.
Besides, and I may be completely off here, doesn't mdadm only create/manage RAID arrays? I thought all the code involved in the actual running of an array (including writing to one as any other block device) was in the Linux kernel. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
I too have this same exact problem and haven't been able to figure out what causes it. The array in question is a 1.6TB software RAID5 array with eight 250GB Maxtor SATA drives on Promise SATA150 TX4 controllers. A few months ago I noticed files that I'd coppied via samba being corrupted once they got to the array. As such I now checksum every file that I dump on it before copying from my windows box. I would say somwhere between 1/5 and 1/10 of the large (350MB+) files I copy to it get corrupted. If I copy them again, the MD5s are different, and usually the second copy gives me the same checksum.
Things I've noticed:
- swapped out switches, network cables, and ethernet cards with no change
- occurs going from my Windows box to the RAID array with Samba, generic FTP, and even scp
- only seems to occur when copying to the RAID array, not when copying to the non-RAID system disk on the same server
- happened with both an old Abit BE6 and with a newer Intel L440GX motherboard - I don't think the chipsets have anything to do with it
- pretty sure it only happens between my windows box and the linux server, never from another box (which includes Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX)
- only happens when I copy to the RAID array, reads seem to work flawlessly
- strangely this only seems to occur with
.avi files - I can't recall having any other types of files become corrupted but as a disclaimer 95% of the things being coppied to this server are AVIs
I've no idea what causes this, and as far as I know it only started happening somewhat recently (I've had the array for many years, although not always a full 1.6TB in size). Maybe it started when SP2 came out, I don't know. I can't 100% confirm I haven't always had this problem, but I've only noticed it starting a matter of months ago. Anyone else out there have any ideas? I'm at a loss. The Promise TX4s are what I'm currently eyeing as the problem source.FYI: I'm using mdadm 1.11.0, ReiserFS 3.6.19, and a chunk size of 128k with left-symmetric parity.
Have they watched it? If so, have they ever seen things like ST:TNG, Babylon 5, Firefly, or even Battlestar Galactica?
If they had, they'd realise there's better things to do with their money, no matter how much "better" this last season was.
I don't know about anyone else, but I personally have always felt the Star Trek franchise is more oriented towards "exploration" and general scientific curiosity. Don't get me wrong here, Enterprise and TNG had (have?) plenty of soap-opera-ish drama , but there's just something about them that appeals more to the curiosity than the rest.
Battlestar Galactica is a great show, but the premise is "run like hell and save our asses". I loved Firefly and Babylon 5 just as much, but only Babylon 5 ever really explored the interactions between cultures/species. Star Trek generally always explores "strange new worlds" and "new life and new civilizations" in some way or another. That's what appeals to me, and I believe those who donated money think along the same lines. Star Trek stimulates the mind and brings out the curiosity in us --- that's why it's "needed".
I didn't read the article (or the rest of the /. comments), but hard drives make much more sense than any optical storage medium in certain cases.
... and just for fun, here's an (old) example of people using hard drives for large scale backups.
x .html
Media will always wear out, regardless of what type it is. When you have huge amounts of data to back up, it's much nicer to be able to copy it to the latest greatest storage medium quickly and efficiently. Thousands of CDs/DVDs even with an automated "disc changer" would take a hell of a lot longer to transfer than a bunch of servers with hard drives.
With a hard drive solution, you can just build a new server with new drives and copy everything over from the old one as fast as the hard drives and network allow. Couple this with RAID and multiple servers in different physical locations and you have a pretty damned resilient data archive.
http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20030425/inde
Microsoft claimed that they were not eligible for security updates because of licensing, the company state that they were licensed, but it was easier to install from other discs.
Wow, rather troll-ish sounding if you ask me.
A company (MS in this case) should only be held responsible if their product failed while being used -correctly-. If some idiot company decides to install a pirated or non-licensed copy of windows on your hypothetical safety mechanism, that company is to blame - not Mircosoft. If they installed from "other" discs (pirated ones), then they're still running illegal software regardless of if they bought some licenses and did the equivalent of sticking them on a shelf to collect dust.
Keep in mind though that I am not a lawyer, and US law seems to be rather mangled at times -- Hell, if someone can sue a fast food chain for coffee being hot, surely there's a way to blame Microsoft for the errors of a completely separate company.
They changed this on me last night right in the middle of using it for some research. My biggest pet peeve is the separation of posts, or lack thereof. When their search term highlighting kicks in and highlights a bunch of words, it's hard to tell where one post ends and the next begins. I'm NOT a fan of this new design. At least they should let us choose the old one!
Why on earth are they integrating SPF into technology? I mean, it's not like Slashdotians ever go out into the sun or anything...
Laugh! It was a joke!
Just imagine a Burrwolff of ... er, wait a minute...
It's my personal opinion that MP3s sound better. However I'll admit it's been a while since I tested Ogg's (the encoders may have improved significantly since then). At that time I felt Oggs changed the overall tone of the music by making it brighter, and therefore felt MP3s were better because they didn't seem to suffer from that problem. But because I don't have experience with the new Ogg encoders, I won't mention them anymore.
Now, on to the subject. Most of my music I listen to is metal (Megadeth, Children of Bodom, etc) and classical. A 128kbps MP3 of any type of metal is unbearable in my opinion. They have horrible high end response and sound about like a FM broadcast. Once you get up to 256 or 320kbps, I can't tell the difference between them and the originals on 99% of the songs I've tested. However, for my classical music, I can rarely tell the difference between (128kbps MP3s on the softer tunes and 192kbps on the more complex ones) the MP3s and my CDs. Another example is a Harry Belafonte song (Monkey) that I downloaded. It was a 56kbps MP3 and I can't tell the difference between it and the original on vinyl (for those who don't know, it was recorded many decades ago).
Therefore, I feel one of the most important things to base your format/enocder/bitrate selection on is the type and source of music you'll be encoding. 128kbps might seem like CD quality on classical music, but for a Children of Bodom song it's not even close.
Also, I listen to all my encoded stuff through a SB Live Value connected to my Sony STR-DE415 receiver using either my pair of Sennheiser HD590 headphones or JBL S38 loudspeakers. For my MP3 ripping I use Exact Audio Copy with a Plextor PX-W124TS and encode them using LAME 3.89beta with the --r3mix command line.
Ahh yes... nothing beats some good metal to code by. I prefer mainly the earlier Metallica and Megadeth albums (although every single one of them rocks!). I don't know why, but something about Kill 'Em All just gets me in the mood to code.