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A Home Fileserver using ZFS

For many people who use a computer, knowing where to store growing amounts of data can become tricky.

You start off with one disk, run out of space, buy a bigger one etc. And if you have a camcorder you’ll be generating gigabytes of data for every Mini DV tape you record. Also, you may have a digital video recorder attached to your TV and wish to permanently keep some of the programmes/films you’ve recorded. Now you’re talking hundreds of gigabytes, if not terabytes of storage that are required to handle all this data.

And then there’s the problem of backups… oh boy, this will be a fun project 🙂
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Shuttle XS35GT: Installing XBMC 10.0 Live (Dharma)

After you’ve bought your Shuttle XS35GT silent media center / HTPC, you’ll want to install some good software to make the system work well. Personally, I like the XBMC software, and here I’ll describe how to install it on the XS35GT.

In order to reduce costs, use less memory & disk space, and make the system run faster, I have chosen to install Ubuntu Linux with XBMC, rather than use Microsoft Windows.

Also, as the XS35GT contains no DVD or CD reader, we will be using a USB memory stick as a replacement for a CD/DVD boot/install media, so ensure you have one handy. A 1GB or 2GB device should be sufficient. The XS35GT refused to boot off one of my USB memory sticks and so I had to try another one that it would boot from, so if you get this problem just try another stick and you will be OK.
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Shuttle XS35GT: Installing XBMC Dharma beta 2 Live

After you’ve bought your Shuttle XS35GT silent media center / HTPC, you’ll want to install some good software to make the system work well. Personally, I like the XBMC software, and here I’ll describe how to install it on the XS35GT.

In order to reduce costs, and make the system run faster, I have chosen to install Ubuntu Linux with XBMC, rather than use Microsoft Windows.

Also, as the XS35GT contains no DVD or CD reader, we will be using a USB memory stick as a replacement for a CD/DVD boot/install media, so ensure you have one handy. A 1GB or 2GB device should be sufficient. The XS35GT refused to boot off one of my USB memory sticks and so I had to try another one that it would boot from, so if you get this problem just try another stick and you will be OK.
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Shuttle XS35GT: The ultimate silent media center HTPC

The long-awaited Shuttle XS35 series of small form factor (SFF) PCs has finally arrived, after a long release delay caused by cooling problems.

For home media center (HTPC) enthusiasts, this series of computers is ideal for making a media center because they are completely silent, due to the fact that the case houses no fans. Instead, the model range use a combination of (1) a massive heat sink and (2) holes in the case to dissipate generated heat.

For the media center enthusiast, half of the model range is of particular interest: the models that include second generation NVidia ION GPU hardware. According to NVidia, this ION hardware provides over 10 times the performance of integrated graphics, and significantly reduces CPU load. This enables the XS35’s integrated dual-core Atom D510 processor to run at between 5% to 10% CPU load when watching 1080p HD video content. That is impressive!
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Climate change: Climategate

In the last few days the internet has been ablaze with news of leaked documents, emails and computer code from computers at the CRU — The Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK.

In what is being called ‘Climategate’, evidence is beginning to emerge of collusion to exaggerate temperature increases, hide temperature declines, block Freedom of Information requests, block scientists with differing views from being published in magazines & group deletion of emails to prevent data disclosure.

But what exactly happened, and why all the fuss?

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What happened to global warming?

On 9 OCT 2009, the BBC News site published an article entitled ‘What happened to global warming?‘ which claims that for the last 11 years, since 1998, we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

As we are bombarded on a daily basis with news telling us that man’s activities are producing carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide is responsible for global warming/climate change, and that unless we drastically reduce carbon dioxide levels then global temperatures will continue rising and we will all be doomed, the title of this article seemed very intriguing.

The article states that although carbon dioxide levels are continuing to increase, temperatures are not increasing. This seems at odds with what we should expect, according to the current consensus amongst many scientists studying climate change: i.e. more carbon dioxide should equate to higher global temperatures.

So I read the article with great interest and then took a look around at recent news from other sources to see what other people and scientists are saying on this interesting topic, and this is what I found.

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Link list: October 2009

Here are a few selected links from my trawl through the blogosphere and information super highway, aka The Internet for October 2009.

The links here cover subjects including 10GbE, Storage, Sun, Oracle, “The Cloud”, Solaris, Linux, iLife, iMovie, Aperture, Final Cut, video editing, mind mapping tools, photography.

Enjoy!

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Link list: September 2009

Here are a few selected links from my trawl through the blogosphere and information super highway, aka The Internet for September 2009.

The links here cover subjects including version control systems, git, Storage, Sun, Oracle, Solaris, Linux, Apple, Snow Leopard, ZFS, HP, self-improvement, getting things done / task management, mind-mapping, finding lowest price camera equipment etc.

Enjoy!

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Home Fileserver: Handling pool errors

Until today I had never encountered even one read, write or checksum error on my ZFS NAS. Today I saw one checksum error coming from the mirrored SSD root boot pool which I have just installed.

Unless you’re using a file system like ZFS (or NetApp / Veritas…$$$), then you’ll almost certainly never even know that errors are occurring within your storage system. Ignorance is bliss, apparently, but I’d rather have information available so I can act on it, determine the root cause of the problem and try to prevent re-occurrence.

Unresolved storage errors can often lead to bigger problems later, so let’s fix the problem right now while we can.
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Home Fileserver: ZFS boot pool recovery

If you should be unlucky enough to be unable to boot your OpenSolaris NAS one day, then these notes taken from a real restoration test might help you get back up and running again quickly.

After setting up a supposedly robust mirrored ZFS root boot pool here using two SSD drives, I decided to give it a system test by completely destroying the boot pool. I did this in order to understand and verify the process of restoring a boot environment from scratch, and I have documented this process here in case I need it one day, and you’re welcome to use it too if you need it. 🙂
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Home Fileserver: Mirrored SSD ZFS root boot

When I started using this ZFS NAS for additional tasks, I realised that my boot environment was becoming more important, and was a weak point in this system.

Initially I wanted to run a master copy of this website locally on this ZFS server, and that entailed installing WordPress and the OpenSolaris AMP package comprising of the Apache HTTP server, MySQL and PHP. Also, I enabled and configured the VNC server. All of this required a fair amount of configuration and I didn’t want to have to do it again in the event of drive failure. Once is enough, so I wanted to discover how to backup and restore my boot environment to protect my investment in time and painstaking configuration work.
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