- October
- 31st
- 2008
vista on ssd : set ntfs allocation size to 64k
Posted by MaEl in: Bits-and-Bytes Comments (0)
To unleashed the performance of SSD, we need to set the block size to at least 64k. See the benchmark here. Of course it came with some side effect. You’ll lose some of usable disk space. I don’t have the tool to resize the allocation size. Partition Magic 8 doesn’t work either so, I opt for fresh install instead.
- October
- 1st
- 2008
low level format hdd using dd
Posted by MaEl in: Bits-and-Bytes Comments (0)
Need to securely wipe HDD data?? Got 2nd-hand HDD?? Got bad sector?? Yes, It’s time to do a low level format(Zero-fill). In Linux, we can use dd. The command is as simple as
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda &
[1] 5645
Set it as background process and it will print out the PID. This process takes a while depending on the HDD size.WARNING! This will destroy ALL data on the HDD, all boot sector info and all data on all partitions. To watch the status, just enter
kill -SIGUSR1 5645replace 5645 with the PID
62796+0 records in
62796+0 records out
65846378496 bytes (66 GB) copied, 1748.1 s, 37.7 MB/s
- August
- 16th
- 2008
Global Positioning from PING response time
Posted by MaEl in: Bits-and-Bytes Comments (0)
PING probably the most popular tool to determine network response time.
How PING works??
The PING program works much like a sonar echo-location, sending a small packet of information containing an ICMP ECHO_REQUEST to a specified computer, which then sends an ECHO_REPLY packet in return.Ping shows the time for a roundtrip, i.e. 2 x the distance.
Some PING test on piXca.net
location avg.(ms) |
location avg.(ms) |
Santa Clara, U.S.A. 132.7 Florida, U.S.A. 197.5 Vancouver, Canada 119.0 Austin1, U.S.A. 171.9 New York, U.S.A. 202.2 Austin, U.S.A. 171.5 San Francisco, U.S.A. 120.5 Hong Kong, China 62.6 Sydney, Australia 135.7 Amsterdam3, Netherlands 239.0 Chicago, U.S.A. 155.6 Amsterdam2, Netherlands 240.8 Stockholm, Sweden 294.0 London, United Kingdom 241.4 Munchen, Germany 217.0 |
Singapore, Singapore 97.2 Cologne, Germany 279.0 Paris, France 243.7 Amsterdam, Netherlands 240.4 Melbourne, Australia 170.5 Krakow, Poland 297.4 Cagliari, Italy 259.4 Madrid, Spain 301.5 Copenhagen, Denmark 287.5 Lille, France 249.6 Zurich, Switzerland 281.7 Porto Alegre, Brazil 336.4 Johannesburg, South Africa 482.1 Shanghai, China 377.0 |
(PING done by http://www.just-ping.com/)
Nearest City –> Hong Kong (approx 30ms).
Most far City –> Johannesburg (approx 241ms).
Let say my server located somewhere in Tokyo.
The distance between Tokyo – Hong Kong is 3000km.
Given that almost cities connected by under sea fiber cable so, the network
speed is theoretically limited by the speed of light. (approx 3×10^8 m/s).
Some speed calculations:
Hong Kong : 3000 km / 30 ms = 1.00×10^8 m/s
Singapore : 5500 km / 47 ms = 1.17×10^8 m/s
Vancouver : 7700 km / 60 ms = 1.28×10^8 m/s
the results is 1/3 of light speed..
so slow.. why??
# The actual distance traveled will be longer, more like zig zag than a straight line.
# Repeaters, switches and routers will slow down transfer speeds. The more equipment the signal has to pass through (for example routers), the longer it will take to reach its target.
# The actual speed of the signal will never quite match the speed of light. Even with fiber optics (glass) the speed of light is about 30% slower than through vacuum or air, and most of the distance covered will be through fiber.
# A beam of light bounces around like a pinball when it travels along the thin (admittedly extremely thin) fiber, and that will of course make the distance traveled even longer.
World map of submarine cable systems
No wonder Johannesburg is super slow
Read the rest of this entry »
- June
- 23rd
- 2008
EPSON PM-A890 – Scanner Works
Posted by MaEl in: Bits-and-Bytes Comments (0)
I got some spare time to setting up scanner driver for this Epson all-in-one (PM-A890)
Before I forget.. these are the step I took to configure the scanner.
(Test system – Ubuntu Hardy)Make sure you have the latest libusb.
- June
- 2nd
- 2008
WP-Geo resetting image stylesheet
Posted by MaEl in: Bits-and-Bytes Comments (0)
By default, if your theme stylesheet(css) have a setting for images to have a background colours and borders, maybe some thing like this
- May
- 27th
- 2008
WP-o-Matic : Cron job done! but no campaigns processed
Posted by MaEl in: Bits-and-Bytes Comments (37)
After struggling to make cron job work properly, now it doesn’t process the campaigns. It processes the campaigns only if the campaign is new. For the 2nd time, it doesn’t worked. the campaigns status in dashboard still showing next! even if I manually access the secret WP-o-Matic cron url. Browsing the source code and I found out that there are several bugs in the wpomatic.php. The process stucked at getCampaigns function.
- May
- 18th
- 2008
Clarkconnect DynDNS,EveryDNS updater
Posted by MaEl in: Bits-and-Bytes Comments (2)
Clarkconnect has its own dynamic IP service and automatically map system name.pointclark.net for you. It has its own daemon to update the IP address automatically. But for me, I don’t think the *.pointclark.net domain is useful for me. I’ve used the DynDNS dynamic IP services for several years and I don’t like to have to inform others about my new domain. Plus, I used EveryDNS dynamic dns nameserver for pixca.net and I need to update it if my ip change.
- May
- 17th
- 2008
Server Moved: From Ubuntu to Clarkconnect
Posted by MaEl in: Bits-and-Bytes Comments (0)
At last.. I got timed to update my webserver.. It have been running Ubuntu Server 7.10 since January 2008. The best thing about Ubuntu is its community support and software support. Software and library are ready to used.. no need to compile. Inheriting debian apt-get make software installation a breeze. Great to linux-noob like me 
- May
- 10th
- 2008
Windows XP Service Pack 3
Posted by MaEl in: Bits-and-Bytes Comments (0)
SP3 has been released officially today.. after being delayed several times. Slashdot news report that it has creating a havoc for several users. I’ve updated mine and it works both for my desktop & eee PC.
- April
- 22nd
- 2008
Vista & Dev-C++
Posted by MaEl in: Bits-and-Bytes Comments (0)
Dev-C++ is a good free IDE (Integrated Development Environment) .Easy to be use especially for a newbie like me