I just realized that I’ve been posting for Three years running. That’s a long time.

And I’m only sure that a couple of these posts were really helpful – but they probably all helped me at one time or another.

Anywho, Just thought I’d point out the 3 year anniversary. To me. Yippie!

I don’t recommend doing this as it may actually make your phone unusable. I recently acquired an iPhone (November 2008) and have been itching to mod it a little bit. No, I haven’t tried the jailbreak technique as I prefer to keep everything simple on my phones. But as soon as the warranty is up, you betcha.

Anyway, I just signed up for a service called TrapCall (TrapCall.com) and it required me to setup my phone to do automatic forwarding of voicecalls. So I decided to write down the steps required to undo and redo this setup (in case this company goes bye bye).

Program:
All you have to do is dial *004*18669676590*11# and hit SEND!

Unprogram:
All you have to do is dial ##004# and hit SEND!

That got me to thinking, what if I typed in 1800XXXXXXX*11# instead? Can I actually get this to forward anywhere I want? That’s pretty cool actually.

I’ve been reading a ton about high availability servers. A ton. And since we’ve been using the vmware free servers since 1.0, I guess it’s about time to get caught up on them again.

VMWare server 1.* was great – it’s free, ran reasonably well, and is free. The problem, however, was no native 64bit support, horrible RAM management, and no USB 2.0 support.

Welcome to VMWare server 2.*. Runs fairly well, is still free, and has 64bit support. No other options/features though.

So then I wanted to dabble in with HA – I need ESX right? ESX server costs money. My budget is pretty low at the moment so not-free is out of the question.

ESXi is free, however, so we’ll use that. Unfortunately you need to have at least 3 full-time servers for this to work (1 as a server manager, 2 as the mirrored servers)

First, download ESXi 3.5.*.
Then, burn the image to a CD
Load said CD into a server
Install on said server
Repeat on at least one other server

You should now have two fully functioning ESXi servers.

On your third server, install some version of Windows. I know, I know, windows blows. But in this case it’s not bad. Hard to break windows if you only use it for 1 single purpose. I ended up installing a VL version of Windows Server 2003 Enterprise R2 SP2.

Then, here’s where it gets a little expensive, you need to acquire a copy of VMWare Infrastructure. And by little expensive I really mean you should buy some lube to prepare for the… nevermind.

Without Infrastructure you cannot HA your vmware machines.

Install Infrastructure.

Tricky part: DNS settings. If you have only a few virtual hosts, you may as well hand edit your DNS hosts settings. If you have several hundred, a DNS server is more handy.

Power on one of your VMWare ESXi servers – then press alt + F1
Now type in “unsupported” without the quotes
Then type in your root password when prompted

vi /etc/hosts
Shift + I
Scroll down to the last line, hit enter to start a new line, and then type in your OTHER server’s IP information:
192.168.2.101 host2.localdomain host2
:wq!

Test the settings by pinging the host:
ping host2
If you get a response that’s a good thing. No response is a bad thing.

Now, do the same thing on the other host:
Press alt + F1
Now type in “unsupported” without the quotes
Then type in your root password when prompted

vi /etc/hosts
Shift + I
Scroll down to the last line, hit enter to start a new line, and then type in your OTHER server’s IP information:
192.168.2.100 host1.localdomain host1
:wq!

Ping test once again and it should work just fine.

Then, and only then, do we start to work on the infrastructure side of things.

Create a new datacenter
Right-Click and create new cluster. I’m choosing HA.
Right-Click and add a host. Type in the IP of the first host and root/password.
Right-Click and add the second host using the same method.
Infrastructure should automatically add them to the HA area.

Reset the 7940 and 7960 IP Phones to the Factory Default

In order to perform a factory reset of a phone if the password is set, complete these steps:

1. Unplug the power cable from the phone, and then plug in the cable again.
The phone begins its power up cycle.

2. Immediately press and hold # and while the Headset, Mute, and Speaker buttons begin to flash in sequence, release #.
The Headset, Mute, and Speaker buttons flash in sequence in order to indicate that the phone waits for you to enter the key sequence for the reset.

3. Press 123456789*0# within 60 seconds after the Headset, Mute, and Speaker buttons begin to flash.
If you repeat a key within the sequence, for example, if you press 1223456789*0#, the sequence is still accepted and the phone resets.
If you do not complete this key sequence or do not press any keys, after 60 seconds, the Headset, Mute, and Speaker buttons no longer flash, and the phone continues with its normal startup process. The phone does not reset.

If you enter an invalid key sequence, the buttons no longer flash, and the phone continues with its normal startup process. The phone does not reset.
If you enter this key sequence correctly, the phone displays this prompt:

Keep network cfg? 1 = yes 2 = no
4. In order to maintain the current network configuration settings for the phone when the phone resets, press 1. In order to reset the network configuration settings when the phone resets, press 2.

If you press another key or do not respond to this prompt within 60 seconds, the phone continues with its normal startup process and does not reset. Otherwise, the phone goes through the factory reset process.

I use FaH at home (PS3, File Server, Gaming Rig) and at work (Workstation, Non-Production Server). The beta SMP clients give the most points so I end up using those when I can.

I did get this error though:
MISSING_WORK_FILES

Booo.
So I changed the shortcut from:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Folding@Home Windows SMP Client V1.01\Folding@home-Win32-x86.exe" -smp
to:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Folding@Home Windows SMP Client V1.01\Folding@home-Win32-x86.exe" -delete 1

Then when you run the program it’ll say “deleting work unit from queue” and then self-close. You may need to run this for all 4 in the queue (or more if you’ve set it that way). Just change -delete 1 to -delete 2, -delete 3, -delete 4, and so on.

Make sure to change it back to -advmethods or -smp if you want it to run again.

I have heard this one so many times that I just had to write about it: people complain that they bought a 320GB HD and it’s only reading 298GB. Or they just bought a 750GB HD and it’s only reading 693GB. Or… the list goes on and on.
I’ve also heard people purchasing RAM upgrades and then complaining the system is not recognizing the installed RAM.

Hard drives are measured in the 1000bytes = 1KB, 1000KB = 1MB, 1000MB = 1GB, 1000GB = 1TB etc by the manufacturer. The computer, however, will read 1024bytes = 1KB, 1024KB = 1MB, 1024MB = 1GB etc. You can see there’s a difference. The larger the drive, the larger the difference. A “40GB” drive should show up as roughly 37GB for a loss of 3GB. A “1.5TB” drive should show up as 1.38TB, for a loss of 114GB. Generally we just tell people this is due to formatting. It’s easier to explain that way.

RAM is measured in the computer-used 1024 base scale. There could be a number of reasons why the RAM is not showing up correctly. I’ll list some reasons, starting with the most common:

You have Shared Video Memory – A small amount of your physical RAM is actually used to run the video of the computer (anywhere from 1MB to 256MB)
You’re running a 32bit Operating System – 32bit OSes can generally only read up to 3.25-3.5GB of RAM. There are a few exceptions, but this is a general rule of thumb – so even if you install 16GB, the system will only read the first 3.25-3.5GB.
Your board can not read the chip you installed – This usually happens on older computers. If your board only supports 256MB chips and you install 512MB chips, the board will either not read the installed RAM or only read the first 256MB. A BIOS update can alleviate this issue.

For the most part that’s all there is to it.

Oh another part:
RAM is a volatile storage device that allows instructions to be stored randomly for use by the CPU. When you turn off your computer, you will lose whatever was in the RAM. RAM can transfer data at sustained multi-GB/sec speeds.
Hard Drives (HD) is a physical media storage device that allows users to store data permanently. When you turn off your computer, you will not lose the data on your HD (hopefully anyway). HD’s can transfer data at sustained maximum of 90MB/sec. Bursts are generally limited to less than 120MB/sec. That is as fast as the physical drive can go – most users will experience system performance within the 20-40MB/sec range.
RAM is faster than the HD.

One of the worst companies to find drivers for is Acer. That is followed closely by Fujitsu and Sony, and then probably IBM. HP and Dell are both very easy to find drivers for.

Take, for example, my current Acer laptop: Extensa 4420. You can “find” the drivers for it, but they won’t all work. XP support is non-existent, but since it came with 32bit vista, you’d think it’d be an easy task to reformat the laptop and install 32bit vista business.

Nope.

If you ever need to find drivers, here’s the source:
ftp://ftp.work.acer-euro.com/

Here’s another hint: if you can’t find your model number, or the drivers don’t seem to work, just change the model slightly. In the example above, the 4420 drivers don’t all work. But the 4430 drivers do.

I also had another Acer laptop that wasn’t even listed on Acer’s website. Odd. I had to go to that acer-euro site (not the americas one) to find anything even close to the model number.

Just figured I’d put this out there for others to use.