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  • Meeeedia Server, why do you hurt me so?

    Bdr-bdr-bDRRRRR-bdr-bdr-drrrr-drrr-bdr-bdr-drrrr-drrr-bdr-bdr-drrrr-drrr-bDRRRRR….

    I’ve been sat here on and off through the day tweaking the server. I’m not sure why it’s randomly, occasionally rebooting. Seems to happen only under heavy loads, but weirdly more under heavy graphical loads than anything else, and it’s not like it’s a really umphy graphics card.

    One day I'll have a fully installed media server... It may not be today.

    Nothing in the logs, because it literally seems to be a DROP EVERYTHING NOW reboot. No errors recorded, just ‘la la la REBOOT la la la”. I’m trying to be a bit more gentle with it, I was asking it to simultanously scan the audio directory into Logitech Media Server and the film directory into Plex. This may have been a trifle harsh.

    I’m slightly wondering if the powersupply is flaking out, it’s meant to be 700 watts, according to its packaging, but it wasn’t exactly a pricey supply.

    Anyhow, it’s chugging along. I’d like to get it scanning the TV Series rips, but Plex’s having a complete hissy fit about that, refusing to even acknowledge that there are files on the drive. I’m hoping it’s a bug that’ll be gone when I upgrade it. Which I’d do…except it’s in the middle of scanning the audio directory. Which may take the rest of my life. Despite the 4 cores and 6 Gig of memory. Irritatingly, unlike LMS which does a quick scan of the number of files, then gives you a percentage, Plex (at least this version) seems to just give you the current file it’s scanning. Which is fine for ‘normal’ people who don’t ridiculous music libraries that have terrabyte drives all to themselves. Every so often it pauses and I think it’s done.

    But then…

    Bdr-bdr-bDRRRRR-bdr-bdr-drrrr-drrr-bdr-bdr-drrrr-drrr-bdr-bdr-drrrr-drrr-bDRRRRR….

    All I can do is hope that I work out why it’s rebooting randomly occasionally. Because that’s not the kind of behaviour I want to encourage.

  • One day I’ll have a fully installed media server… It may not be today. on Flickr.

    One day I’ll have a fully installed media server… It may not be today.

  • Portal on Flickr.

    Portal

  • An ‘unfortunate’ quirk

    So having installed the much updated Ubuntu 14.04 I’ve run into an interesting bug. Using the graphical filer window to copy large amounts of data (by which I mean, the smallest amount I was copying when the bug appeared was around 20Gig – or the amount of data I generated doing Dead Bug Jumping (which I really hope to get back to at some point))…

    It’ll be copying and copying and then *FZT* the machine reboots. No warning, no errors generated. Just suddenly reboots.

    I’ve no idea why.

    I’ve even less idea why because if I stick ‘cp -r ….’ on the command line it’ll happily do the job.

    Other than that I’ve done a lot of data shuffling, and I’m thinking we’re most of the way towards an install. I just wish I knew what this rebooting nonsense was about.

  • Oh goddess of successful upgrades, please bless this copy process…and make it go quicker. on Flickr.

    Oh goddess of successful upgrades, please bless this copy process…and make it go quicker.

  • Review: Covergalls

    So last year, whilst I was in the US I picked up some Covergalls. Now I’ve worn (C)overalls for working on the car for years. Years and years. My current set, which consist mostly of a mixture of oil, grease and grit combined with some cheap poly-cotton fabric came second hand from a classic motor show and are emblazoned with ‘European Airspace’ or something like that.

    I’ve also got an almost as ill-fitting and similarly grotty, but higher cotton percentage pair that I got in secondary (high) school for my work experience*.

    Part of the reason I’ve been loath to pay actual money for work wear is because it fits like shit. I mean, if it fits in the *cough* chest region then it’s flapping around like a tent elsewhere. If it fits elsewhere, then it doesn’t do up. So besides the point that they get covered in shite in my workshop (I’m not the tidiest, nor the cleanest of workers, and classic cars are hardly a feast of non-oilyness), if I’m going to buy something that doesn’t fit…I’ll get something cheap.

    Anyhow, fed up of this craptastic situation and with The Electric Minor Project slowly working its way towards actual progress I decided to fork out real money for a decent set of (c)overalls. After much searching I found Covergalls and after some more pondering ended up buying them.

    And they’ve languished at the back of the cupboard since. Why? Well, I’ve not actually done anything sufficient on the car, and also I’ve been slightly wanting to christen them on the Minor. But in the end I decided that I’d use them whilst I was changing the battery on the Prius.

    Changing the battery on the Prius is a surprisingly involved procedure, involving removing a brake controller, and whilst it wasn’t going to be filthy I’d be outside for a while poking and fishing. So I popped on my shiny new (c)overalls and set to.

    I can sum up the experience in one word. Awesome. Maybe two words. Amazing.

    They don’t ruck up, they actually fit, they’re comfortable. I can use the loo without shimmying out of them and shedding crap everywhere. At fucking last.

    They’re sturdy, and feel like they’ll last, certainly for the level of hardship they’ll have with me.

    I have never been quite so excited about (c)overalls, but for my female type friends, I highly recommend them. They are about 50 billion times better than any (c)overalls I’ve ever had before.

    Mens, I cannot help you. You’ll just have to live with your sucky (c)overalls.

    * Yes, I did my work experience at a Ford garage. It was literally my last choice.

  • shadesofmauve:

    pyoorkate:

    shadesofmauve:

    imagemusanocturnis replied to your post:lawofboredom replied to your post “I am still…

    Ohdear, how’d it go?

    I don’t think the magic little pills did jack shit.

    At 3 in the morning I took more regular nyquil and actually slept, though! Like, for more than two hours straight! o/ I might have turned the corner!

    Sleeping is amazing. A while back I had this awful cough. It wasn’t like the cough itself was awful, but the continuous, sleep depriving, persistence of the bastard thing was an absolute killer. I ended up nearly in tears at the GP having tried codeine and night-nurse (which essentially contains pre-med and normally knocks me out completely), and every single over the counter medication.

    I got a script for Temazepam, which knocked me out until, I think, 12 midday. I slept for a good 14 hours. And woke up still feeling sleepy. The next night I took a half dose which left me groggy at around 10am… The third night I took 1/4 of a tablet and got a nice sleep. I still felt dozy, but after 3 nights of sleep I was finally able to cope with the world again without wanting to cry. And actually started to get well again.

    …so I therefore wish you a peaceful night’s rest.

    That’s really the thing. The chest cold isn’t horrific, in and of itself (though I have been coughing hard enough to pull muscles) it’s that it’s kept me from sleeping. For days. I’ve been pretty close to tears, just because I’ve had five straight days of no improvement whatsoever — probably because I couldn’t sleep. And staring at the clock in the wee hours, knowing that you’re missing out on the one thing that’ll really help, makes it much worse.

    So the thought that maybe, just maybe, the cough has quieted down enough that the over-the-counter meds will work… it’s making me almost giddy.

    Any long period without sleep is just torture. It actually is a form of torture. And it’s amazing how quickly people go to pieces without it… There’ve been lots of studies of the impact on healing of lack of sleep, and it’s really negative, which is why it’s so crappy that most hospitals are terrible, terrible places to try and sleep.

  • Failure is a dish best served…err…on rapidly spinning platters?

    I failed to check one teensy tiny thing. The old install was still running as 32 bit. Because, well, the processor it ran on, with its single core, was a 32 bit processor.

    The new one? 64 bit. Should be running a 64 bit OS.

    Also, Ubuntu doesn’t seem to like the upgrade very much. It’s working, but there’s random errors, and various bits seem to have failed.

    …so tomorrow I’ll be upgrading the upgrade. Well, nuking the site from orbit (it’s the only way to be sure). On the plus side, it means I can yank the 1Tb drive that’s just sitting there at the bottom of the case.

  • shadesofmauve:

    imagemusanocturnis replied to your post:lawofboredom replied to your post “I am still…

    Ohdear, how’d it go?

    I don’t think the magic little pills did jack shit.

    At 3 in the morning I took more regular nyquil and actually slept, though! Like, for more than two hours straight! o/ I might have turned the corner!

    Sleeping is amazing. A while back I had this awful cough. It wasn’t like the cough itself was awful, but the continuous, sleep depriving, persistence of the bastard thing was an absolute killer. I ended up nearly in tears at the GP having tried codeine and night-nurse (which essentially contains pre-med and normally knocks me out completely), and every single over the counter medication.

    I got a script for Temazepam, which knocked me out until, I think, 12 midday. I slept for a good 14 hours. And woke up still feeling sleepy. The next night I took a half dose which left me groggy at around 10am… The third night I took 1/4 of a tablet and got a nice sleep. I still felt dozy, but after 3 nights of sleep I was finally able to cope with the world again without wanting to cry. And actually started to get well again.

    …so I therefore wish you a peaceful night’s rest.

  • Upgrade day!

    So, the poor old media server today finally got disassembled. After many years of service a new 4TB disk arrived today which prompted the gutting and rebuilding of the old computer…

    IMG_20150204_150240
    (more…)