The collected works of duck - Page 6

foetz wrote:

llama wrote: I'm certainly not married to bash, I guess I just need to set up tcsh (or similar) properly so I have the things I'm now used to (up arrow history, tab completion with choices, ctrl-c break, etc etc). Is there a list of shells available on the system (eg an /etc/shells equivalent)? I seem to have a limited selection but I'm only eyeballing the bin directory so maybe they're stashed somewhere else?

if you wanna see which shells are there by default just have a look into /usr/bin and /sbin.
tcsh does cover what you listed except for tab completion with multiple choices. if that's a must you need to grab zsh from nekoware. if the nekoware zsh should cause problems because you're on 6.5.14 you can alternatively use mine for 6.2 which works fine with all 6.5.x versions.

If you don't want to go csh, then I suggest pdksh or one of the other reimplementations. I gave up zsh for ksh when an upgrade gave me a first time wizzard and haven't looked back. The one in /bin isn't much fun though.

mxaudio is quite nice for music (VERY low cpu usage) draws less than a percent on all R10k era SGI desktops I've used, and since it's xaudio, I believe the mp3 decoder is quite good. The only drawback is that it is not open source, and used to cost money so the package may be hard to obtain. They were nice though and released a free license when they shut shop. The license file I have says I may not redistribute The Software (henceforth known as The Software), so I guess I can't give it away? *eyes the yellow notice*

foetz wrote:

duck wrote: I gave up zsh for ksh

not sure which ksh you had but ksh88 as well as ksh93 pretty much suck for interactive use and don't come even close to zsh. for scripts however it's different

pdksh (where pd equals public domain)

I don't know, neko_gimp perhaps?

ISTR bananas, being the monoculture that they are (seeds were bred out of them a long, long time ago), had almost an entire species wiped out due to a disease (banan blight?) and the bananas we eat now are from the species that happened to be resistant, and hence is different. I understand it's not as tasty, but then I don't like bananas at all.

ClassicHasClass wrote: mens526? Sounds like a total sausage fest.

ISTR Mensa (latin for table) was originally supposed to be "Mens" (mind) but it seems they saw their error and changed it...

On a sadder note, the alpha suffered a fan failure (the reset pin is triggered on the CPU if no tach signal is found on the fan) and my uptime is now a shaky 2 days, with hopes that nothing else is broken since it rebooted spontaneously once after the replacement...

I even got a nice HP DL160 with twin 4-core xeons and the 8-drive SAS backplane, battery backed 410i raid card and ILO (unlicensed, so completely gimped, grmbl) off ebay to replace the alpha for the more critical services, but it seems that the new machine superheats the air in my closet causing it to go into howling fan overdrive mode and I can't sleep in the next room with that. Sigh.

Still, the alpha seems to run again (knock on wood) so I guess I'll keep the HP as a rack ornament and occasional kernel compiler. Watching it blast through builds with -j 16 was fun.

hamei wrote: all mei you, so bye-bye duck from Philly ..... (the one from Finland is safe)

Don't be too sure, I recently got a job as a web programmer

Heh, cool find

vishnu wrote: Sounds like a gold-plated opportunity to upgrade the cooling system in your closet!

Yeah, I took a hole in the door and screwed a grille on it which that helped a little, but it seems more drastic measures are required. Plan B is to drill a hole in the panels above the door and install another vent, with the hope that convection could cause some kind of air movement. There's a tiny vent connected to the building air ducts near the ceiling, but it doesn't seem to do anything at all. (Plan A rested on the presumption that given a "cold" air intake, air pressure would not be reduced by any movement out through the vent and causing the flow to stop.) If B doesn't work, plan C is to add a fan to suck the air back out into the apartment. D involves a heavy-duty air movement device.

Fortunately the alpha seems to be running OK now, and that gives me a little time to think up a solution.

hamei wrote: ALMOST !

Code: Select all

cc-1094 cc: ERROR File = audio_out_wav.c, Line = 166
The constant array dimension size is not a positive integral type.

int16_t words[0];


Aah, GCC coders.



alternatively



depending on what madness they're doing. The latter may need some additional bolt tightening.

hamei wrote: I lived in a house built in the twenties - lath and plaster, Spanish tile roof, built-in ironing board, all that stuff. The pantry had a vegetable cooler that worked great : it was like a very tall closet where the shelves were parallel wooden slats, maybe 50-50 wood and air space. At the very bottom there was a big vent to the outdoors and same at the top. Things like apples and potatoes that a refrigerator is too cold for kept much longer in this thing. And they tasted better, too - didn't get soggy. My grandmother had a name for it but that's long lost to history. She had a Murphy bed, too, but I remember the name for that one.

Don't know if it would work for your HP but it was great for fruits and vegetables.

Sounds like the principle I'm trying to employ; I doubt my electronics would enjoy the humidity of the big blue (white today) room though.

vishnu wrote: I'm thinking about buying one of those portable room air conditioners, with 5 computers on in the computer room the whole house air conditioner just can't handle the watts. I don't know what the story is in Jakobstad, do you ever need an air conditioner there? All my ancsestors came from above the arctic circle in Norway and they all assured me that no one ever uses air condtioning there...

Back before they air conditioned the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome it used to get brutally hot during the height of summer, and the beer vendors would be yelling "beer, get your beer here, air conditioning in a cup!"

It used to be pretty rare, but the last couple of years I have started to notice the boxes on the sides of people's houses, but it might be what is known as a "heat pump"? I don't know anything about such things...

The temperature around here typically ranges from +25 to -25 C, occasionally going past 30 at either end. I actually have a portable AC unit for my apartment (they wouldn't let me drill a hole in the wall to install a proper one even as I own the apartment) because it's south-facing (receiving sunlight all day) and this concrete building seems to retain the heat. It's loud and not very powerful, but just the dehumidifying effect is nice in summer. Why do people think that a south-facing apartment is a good selling argument?

No, the biggest problem is that my closet is tiny, I just need to get the hot air out. Alternatively, I could move to a bigger apartment so the machines can have a room of their own, but I kind of like not being in debt

Current temperature: 0C with prospects of going to -2 tonight. Unusually warm for January.

vishnu wrote: Duck, heat pump do you mean swamp cooler? Those are awesome in arid environments but don't work for crap in humidity.

No, I think it merely indicates that it can do both heating and cooling. In any event, I don't know so best not guess

hamei wrote: Ekchully, no. Ducky could tell you more but...

I haven't seen it, have I lost all my finn-creds now?-)

Yup, 2000 has the least bad memories associate with it to date.

Trekiej seems somewhat confused about what OpenGL does. It's not something that magically makes 3d fast, but a graphics library for displaying (2D and) 3D scenes, with the added benefit of the ability to offload the rendering from the CPU with specialized hardware that incidentally sometimes does the calculation more efficiently than a CPU with its general-purpose--and rest-of-the-system running--overhead.

What's muddled the waters is that nowadays graphics chips and drivers have all kinds of acceleration bells and whistles like video decoding acceleration, physics acceleration and (more importantly) what's called GPGPU (General Purpose GPU); where you can send the graphics chip arbitrary mathematical problems that it then uses its graphics cores and fast memory to run through. A couple of implementations for this are OpenCL and CUDA.

SGI machines can't do this (well, AFAIK, it's not something I've looked into) because back then it wasn't something you did. If you had a lot of calculations, you added a rack of C bricks to your Origin

Anyway, I am not an expert, see signature.

Hmm, irssi builds just fine on IRIX. If irc.nekochan.net would suddenly get an ipv6 address, I'd love to join

TeamBlackFox wrote: Are you ipv6 only now duck? I'm still stuck on ipv4 here in Virginia with Verizon FiOS.

Nah, I just can't get my vanity domain on v4

If you were reading this thread, then you'll know I mentioned upgrading the cooling in my closet. Things have now progressed a little.

First, I got a tool...


And then I removed the particleboard sheet that was just above the door. Lo, no cables or anything to impede progress apart from a buttload of nails. Whomever build this thing really wanted that thing to stay in place.





Alas, removing it caused some damage



So I phoned up my Dad and he scrounged arond for a spare piece of plywood, an afternoon at my parents (including mom's lasagna!) and I've produced this



I left the inner board off, because who cares what's inside the closet. I had some ideas of reducing noise by putting another board on the inside with the holes offset from the ones on the outer one to act as a sound baffle, but since I don't have another piece of plywood and it's weekend it can wait.

Tomorrow I'll go grab some grilles to put on the holes so they look a little less conspicuous.

And did it help?

Not sure, I powered up rimturs and it's been running with only my power (7 vCPUs, 10GB RAM) domU in idle for a while now with machine intake air (i.e. ambient) going from 28 to 32 to now 33. I imagine I can feel some air movement on both the intake (it's low on the door, in front of the machine) and the two output holes though.

I fear plan C (or was it D?) will have to come into effect with forced air movement, this is tricky because I'd need to power the fans somehow and I don't have a solid plan for that yet.

Oh, and if you're curious, there are some pics of my rack (as of 2015-02-10) here

Pontus wrote: Very nice setup! I envy your soekris, mine blew up in a thunderstorm. And the "monitored" APC PDU is on the wish list as well.

Thank you, and yow! Have you no such things as lightning protection over there?

That PDU is really nothing special, glorified rack mounted power strip. It can turn on/off ports and monitor the (total) output via SNMP though, which is nice. Also, like the console port server, it's got ssh support, but it's got such a slow CPU it's barely usable.

vishnu wrote: For fan power you could just buy an el-cheapo 12 volt linear power supply (I'm a purist, no switchers!). It wouldn't have to be much larger than your hand, run it off line voltage plugged into a wall outlet, and it's problem solved!

Yup, this was exactly my plan, get a small power supply from the not-quite-local electronics store, potentially solder in an IEC320 connector and hide it above the door (there's a nice bit of space there now that I don't have the inner wall panel mounted)

Now for an...

UPDATE

It didn't take long for the machine to overheat again with only convection cooling, even though it does seem to be cooler in the closet than usual (nominally 28 rather than 30 on my trusty wall-mounted outdoor analog mercury thermometer)

I tried jury rigging a computer fan with a spare PC power supply and a 4-pin molex to 3-pin fan connector converter to one of the holes, but that didn't seem to help, it motored up to 34 degrees (intake air) and started howling again. I wonder if that test failed because most of the air came from the second hole rather than pulling from below.

An infrared camera or just an independent thermistor would be rather useful right now, I have no idea if my modifications have been ineffective or the DL160's temp sensors are screwy. Oh well. It's more a fun project to get the HP running now that I got the Alpha to run stably again (for 28 days uptime and counting

TeamBlackFox wrote: What about adding an A/C vent to the closet?

Not sure what you mean by that, there's a tiny vent near the ceiling that is straight into the (apartment) building ventilation system, it doesn't seem to do much. I couldn't add an A/C unit into the closet because there are no places to vent the output air other than into my apartment and that doesn't seem smart. Besides, there's no space for it.

guardian452 wrote: There are lots of options but I think your best bet is to get an AC-line powered small box fan and stick it in the space above the door. On low speed they don't make much noise.

Yeah, that might end up being necessary. I want to try more with PC fans though first.

guardian452 wrote: I think a louvered plate (search for: inlet or return duct) in the door (inlet) and also the panel over the door (outlet) would also help with appearances, they make them in white and they are reasonably handsome.

Yup, got some. I just hadn't installed them yet in the picture. They're not white because I'd have to wait for a week then and couldn't be arsed to

Trippynet wrote: I think it's just a case of being a bit more forceful with airflow. You're right that air will choose the path of least resistance, so your fan will likely be pulling a reasonable amount of air *in* from the other hole. Having two out-blowing fans might be better. Oh, and make sure the input vent at the bottom is big enough too.

Yeah, the bottom vent is about the same area as the two new holes.

Trippynet wrote: Do you know if your building vent is blowing air out or in? If it's in, that's going to cause all manner of problems and should probably be sealed up (gaffer tape would do).

No clue, my guess is out. The stairwell seems to be lower pressure than outside, so whenever I open the window (tiny apartment ) or the balcony door air flows in. The kitchen vent--which is an entirely separate vertical shaft--sucks out, with MUCH more force than the one in the closet. If I put an A4 paper on that one, it'll stay in place. No such reaction in the closet.

Wow, thank you, especially jp for the excellent advice (I'm surprised anyone cared enough to comment ). I think that sounds like the path to take if I can't keep the heat in check with just the fans. I'm currently running at test with two PC fans, and so far it doesn't look too good. So far, it seems the fans have slowed it a bit at least. Maybe some baffles and airguides could seal the gap.

Alas, SGI is dead and sold. The new owners won't likely dig up the license generator unless you shower them with money.

Before we all jump back in here, I'd like to point out that this has been rather extensively answered already. Perhaps ivelegacy ought to make acquaintance with the search function.

Edit: On second thought (and some quick searching of my own) I may have jumped the shark, apologies if that was the case.

uunix wrote: now I use SMOKE for my new hobby of video editing (Octane2 + 02 + Indy).

By the way, do these old versions of smoke do 1080p video in some format? Rendering anything might be painful though...

uunix wrote:

duck wrote: By the way, do these old versions of smoke do 1080p video in some format? Rendering anything might be painful though...

Not sure duck, I work at 720 at the moment. Give me 6 months and I may have a better answer.

foetz wrote: that stuff has been used for movies so 1080 shouldn't be a problem

Sounds promising, what kind of intermediate format could you feed these programs? I suspect they won't eat mov/h264.

Hmm, while the admins are stitching threads, this post perhaps ougt to be rebased. I feel bad for polluting that old thread now...

hamei wrote: I have an HP switch that is the exception to that rule : they took a 45* chop out of the bottom and laid a big fan over at an angle. Pretty clever way to get some quietness and a lot of air movement into a 1U case.

Don't I wish they kept that design for the DL160

Ah, it's the 3.5" size.. if they were 2.5" I'd have jumped on the offer. Got enough (too many) of those already

In the future wastes people will be bartering using HP drive sleds...

chicaneuk wrote:

duck wrote: Ah, it's the 3.5" size.. if they were 2.5" I'd have jumped on the offer. Got enough (too many) of those already

In the future wastes people will be bartering using HP drive sleds...

This guy on eBay has them for £9.99 with free shipping... not a give away but not terrible, unless you need 20 of them or something

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-5-Tray-Cadd ... 2ed3bdff16

I actually have access to amounts of these drive sleds on dead disks (which the support company never want us to return) but I think it'd look a bit suspicious if I started stripping the caddies off!

The ones I need are even cheaper, still not as cheap as free...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-HP-2-5-SA ... 259c83216b

Are the G6/G8 ones interchangeable I wonder or did they shuffle things around just so you have to buy new ones.
This is all academic anyway, the DL160 that uses them is still overheating if I leave it on.

I wonder if you'll see much of a difference serving files and NIS

The Xbow doesn't matter, but IIRC the system board does, you might need the 1467 (later, octane 2) for dual R12k 400 and up. If I could be arse to, I would search the forum and find out for you. *hint*

ajw99uk wrote: AIUI the 0887 is OK for 300MHz R12K but not (always?) 270MHz - can't remember where I saw that asserted, but a search here for "octane 270mhz 0887" yields mixed (and informative) results for that and faster CPUs.

http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/ ... ading.html mentions a specific version of an R14K for the 0887 board, but confirms a single 300MHz should be okay on 0887.

Well, I was guessing, my octane runs dual 300 on an 0887 quite happily.

jan-jaap wrote: I know the 270Mhz R12000 requires the 1467 main board.

This is an interesting quirk. Has anyone speculated as to why this is the case? Or should I heed my own repeated advice and use the search?

pentium wrote: I seem to recall when SAQ was burgled they took everything BUT his SGI's.

Another benefit to computing gear you can't lift with one arm.

ajw99uk wrote:

duck wrote: The kitchen vent--which is an entirely separate vertical shaft--sucks out, with MUCH more force than the one in the closet. If I put an A4 paper on that one, it'll stay in place. No such reaction in the closet.

Plan Z - move the computer to the kitchen and a kitchen appliance to the closet?

I think plan Z is no more than "move"

It fails because there's no rule to make the default target (whatever happens to be first in the makefile) if I translate your localized error message correctly. Either read it to find out or try something like "make all" (or "gmake all" since GNU is most often all these people know about).

Are you sure this master branch snapshot actually builds?

Got a SCSI LTO-3 or LTO-4 drive kicking around? Toss me an offer

Full height, half height, internal, external, these things do not matter. I won't be using it externally though, and robots are often too heavy to ship.

foetz wrote: time to turn my alpha on and hold a minute of silence

Turn it on? Why would you ever turn it off?

smj wrote: Er, for most Alphas you're going to need to have that moment of silence before you turn it on, or after you turn it off...

Mine's pretty quiet, since I got rid of that first-gen 10K RPM drive.

Yup, I tried it once with a friend in Sweden. I think he used some other software that was compatible with it, though I do know he once had an indy. It was pretty rad.

I don't know about the feel, but it certainly looks very much like the granite Indy keyboard (also used for the Indigo2 IIRC) and puck mouse, apart from the colour. I have one of those (and puck mouse) connected to my Octane at the moment and it's very nice with ALPS keyswitches. The model number for those are 9500900

I would humbly beg to differ. In my opinion, the mardigras cards for Octane are better for Maya because they do not glitch like the odyssey boards do (both the V6 and V12 I've had have acted in the same way).

Maya doesn't support the advanced features of the VPro anyway so you really only get a speed boost in the graphics. For my use case, that was less significant than a dual cpu module.