Quick tip on Bit Torrent speeds

I don't know if this works elsewhere, and it may be a quirk of my particular set of hardware and settings, but here's something to consider, anyway. In KL, Streamyx bandwidth for BT usually takes about 4 hours to get up to full speed (and full speed on a 4Mb line is ~300-350 kBps, which is all right). If you take off any limiters, some popular torrents (with like ~1000 seeds) can get you that speed almost immediately.

But if you're on torrents that have <150 seeds, which is still not too shabby, and you want that speed quicker than 5 hours, then here's a possibility - download something from Microsoft after you've started your torrents. It doesn't have to be big, and to be honest it doesn't have to be from Microsoft - any fast HTTP site (like anything served by Akamai, for instance) will do. For preference, virus definitions, which change daily, so it's always going to be fresh.

I can't explain why; probably just a quirk of ADSL.

Backing Stuff Up

What, exactly, do most people want to back up these days? And how do the various choices compare? Over the next few posts I'll see if I can interleave my experiences with Linux (which I have been meaning to do for eons) and the nitty-gritty of backups.

Some basic things for you to consider in doing backups, though...

1. Trust no one.
There are more issues here than you would think. You cannot trust a third party to keep your data inviolate, so encrypt it yourself. Or, ensure that the third party uses a well-known crypto algorithm and your pass(word/phrase) is secure. BUT! You cannot trust the third party to be in business forever either - even the largest banks can fail (taking your safe deposit box with it). Redundancy is the key here too. Are there other ways you must trust no one? That depends on what you are backing up and who you are using. Take time to consider the various scenarios.

2. Make the computer work for you.
Computers are stupid, but fairly deterministic (predictable). If you tell them to do stuff, they will usually do it. So automate your backups and tests! There are a number of ways you can ensure that your backups are tested by the computer automatically, so get that done. But remember: Trust no one - do it yourself every once in a while as well.

3. Nothing lasts forever.
Not even diamonds, no matter what Shirley Bassey tries to tell you. In a home/small office context, archival tape might be a bit overkill (but they will last for decades under proper storage conditions), so you may have to make do with other storage media. Just remember to copy them off every 2 years or so.

Networking basics

Okay, some stuff that was boiled down from the Internet on the issues of home networking with consumer-grade routers.

1. Where possible, separate your modem (ADSL/cable) from your router. This is so that a single hardware failure will not hurt you too much (if your modem hangs, your network is still intact, and if your router hangs, you can still directly connect to the Internet.

1a. The follow-on from that, of course, is to set your modem to bridge mode, allowing your router to do the login to the Internet.

2. Consider well the difference between routers in relation to their processing core (chipset), EEPROM and RAM capacities. The more of the latter, the longer the time between reboots.

3. Make sure if you run wireless, your router supports at least WPA/PSK, and no namby-pamby 8-10 characters either. While practically speaking your connection is cryptographically fairly secure on just 10-15 character passphrases, it does not mean more is worse.

4. Open sourced firmware. Vista/future OS compatibility. These may be some of the lateral issues you might not think about when purchasing such routers - but do.

Anybody who's into P2P will want to make sure that the router can handle it, and that there is only one router in the networking link between the P2P PC and the Internet access. The DIR-300 seems to be running fairly well for now.

Networking fun

I'm working on getting my networking stuff up and running. Ubuntu may have to wait until next week.

The Great Linux Adventure - part 2

STEP TWO - Installing Linux


Well, I'm not exactly stuck yet, but there are ramifications. A recommendation of 10GB worth of HDD space free before I install Ubuntu. Guys, I dunno about you, but I could fit XP in under 4, man. Win2K is under 2! Of course, you get the bare-bones system, but for 10GB I could install the world on Windows - even a few games, if I wanted to.

Anyways, I'm assuming that the figure above is just an advisory. Let's see how I do. I will, of course, have to unplug my CD drive from my ATA133 controller before doing anything else - system won't boot from the add-on, so I have no choice. And then, I can see how to go about it.

A cleanup is definitely due, though. I have to crawl through my 20GB hard drive partitions and see what I can backup and/or junk.

Will edit this post as I have time. Wish me luck.

[Edit One: Making room on the system]

First of all, let me make a correction. For some reason, I was mistaken about the boot capacity of the add-on card. It will, indeed, boot from CD - but only to a certain extent, after which it hangs. Since I didn't want to make life difficult for myself, I simply reconnected the CD drive to the motherboard controller. So I couldn't test to see if it would boot to Linux the whole way. But since Windows wont boot from CD (neither the install CD nor UBCD4Win) either, this is not a winning situation for either. I will try Linux boot from add-on once I've installed it on my hard disk.

Secod, these are the specs for my system
Dell Dimension XPSD233 ('upgraded' to Celeron 333MHz, 384MB PC133 RAM, Intel BIOS)
Maxtor 4GB on primary master, Connor Tech 15GB on add-on secondary master, LG GSA-4167B on secondary master
SiS300/305 series AGP 1x card, 32MB RAM
CMI 4-channel soundcard
Realtek PCI Ethernet card

OK, onto making room on the system. Imaged my Win2K partition, and restored it into a smaller size. Minimally useful 2K takes up 1.8GB of space, and ME takes up approximately the same size. These are fully patched and updated (no .NET framework, but everything else), with Office viewers (not on ME, since the 2003 viewers won't install), eBook readers, anti-spyware and malware, Opera, Nero(on 2K only)/PartitionMagic/Acronis True Image. My 2K partition is now about 4.4GB in size, leaving 10GB for Linux.

This leaves out about half-day's frustration in trying to get Win2K to redo drive maps. Windows boots, because it doesn't use drive letters until GUI loads (or somewhere there), but can't login. Had to use UBCD4Win to change my registry because couldn't load it on my XP machine over the network. Let's just say that it was a learning experience.

[Edit Two: Booting the various LiveCD Linuxes]

PCLinuxOS - First Linux and already I'm not impressed. Normal boot fails, due to blank screen. Had to reboot and use Safemode (VGA). Come on, my system is ancient! All the drivers should be working at this point! And even then, a KDesktop error "The process for the file protocol died unexpectedly" crops up. Uh.. right. What's that supposed to mean?

Will continue later.

The Great Linux Adventure - part 1

Greetings all;

My name is Greg, and this is my technology-based blog. Why separate my interests, you might ask. Well, language is one thing - as a Christian, I choose to moderate my language elsewhere and under other circumstances. However, when you work with computers - and politics - sometimes it is just a relief to cut loose.

Another reason is because I tend to skip updating my weblogs. Which sort of goes against the whole idea, so this way, I hope to update at least one blog every day.

Enough of that. Let's get on with the business. The first thing I want to blog about is the installation of the open-source OS, GNU/Linux. But before we begin, let me take you on a short journey through my computing life.

My first contact with computers came when I was about 7 or 8, with the original 8086-based PC. My cousin had just bought himself one of those monsters, and it had TWO 5 1/4 floppy drives! Add in a monochrome monitor, and Karateka was happily playing away. Well, we were happily playing away, anyways.

My next contact was when I was perhaps 10, with the Apple II. I believe we had computing lessons using Basic, and then the Macintosh came on the scene, and the GUI was kinda cool - although the single button mouse kinda sucked.

From then on, though, the Wintel alliance dominated my computer scene. From the 386DX2, to the PII, and then the Pentium D 2.80GHz (yes, my computers last a long time!) on the hardware side, to Win3.1, 3.11, Win95 OSR2, WinME, Win2k, WinXP on the OS side.

Of course, when I attended Uni, the systems there were slightly different. We used iMacs for the 1st year CS labs, and SunRays for the UNIX machines (actually, they were dumb terminals 'running' Solaris, but who cares?)

So, all of this just to let you know that I am not a Tech Dummy. I read SharkTank and SharkBait and TechComedy same as any of you. But Microsoft OSes run supreme and while I am not a fanboy, I am however realistic. This is my system of choice.

So why switch to Linux? Not the first time I tried, believe me. I used Red Hat a few years ago, when XP first came out (and let me tell you, while XP runs quite nicely on a Celeron333, once you install anti-virus and anti-spyware with on-access scanning, it becomes a dog), and even on my old machine it just couldn't detect everything. Installing programs was the IT equivalent of dancing naked around a fire howling at the full moon after having slaughtered a white cock... you get the picture. (Here's a thought, Linux enthusiasts - why not INCLUDE all the damned packages needed to install a particular program WITH the bloody binary? Pocking around with RPM and APT was a little beyond my patience level then) Luckily, with LSB, I'm at least minimally sure that one program will work on MOST distros. (Here's another thought, guys, as long as you expect users to compile your source code, Linux will be nothing more than an elitist OS)

Well, hope springs eternal; Dell now sells PCs with Ubuntu loaded on them, and my bloody Vista's taking its own sweet time getting here. Support for WinME has dropped off the face of the planet, and let's face it, Win2K is pretty stable and secure but I dare not install anything heavy on it with my Celeron333. So, Linux sounds like a good alternative. My understanding is that it's not so demanding on hardware as Microsoft's products, and I always liked free.

So here goes; my documentation of my experiences installing Linux and the software it supports. My end goal is to end up with a Celeron333, 3874MB RAM and SiS300 (32MB) video card that is at least as capable as my Pentium D. I've clapped in a RAID ATA-133 controller as well, so I might use that as my file server if this whole thing works out. If it plays DVDs and does some video encoding as well, that would be the icing on the cake but let's face it, I doubt it would be practical.

Along the way, I hope to enlighten some newcomers to InfoTech as to what all this means. And put my awesome linguistic skills to work ;)

STEP ONE - Linux distro evaluation

Well, already I'm stuck. Do you know how many distros there are out there? If you include non-Linux such as BSD and all the variants of a core distribution, there are hundreds. Thousands.

What is a distro? Strictly speaking, Linux refers to the kernel of the OS. Some people do think that a kernel (and maybe a User Interface) should be all there is to an OS; others believe an OS should allow you to OPERATE your system; hence, a Linux Distribution is a collection of applications and support libraries, along with the kernel and various UIs (including Graphical UIs). A core distro, AFAIK, is also known as a 'flavour'. Properly, then, since Linux seeks to be UNIX-like in nature, a distribution is properly known as GNU/Linux.

Looking through the many, many, many distros out there, any sane person will begin to wonder which one is best, and why there are so many. Well, so argue the FOSS/Libre crowd, this provides you with a plethora of choices, which is what you want in a competitive environment. I am certainly not in the business of evaluating all the possible installations out there, so I will simply pick a few to have a look at.

The ones I chose, ultimately based only a cursory look, are Ubuntu (K- and X- also), PCLinuxOS. I would have tried Fedora, but apparently (according to the magazine CHiP), it's got a few bugs in it. I'm also downloading Freespire. I'm not forking out any money for Linspire, but I have an old version of Lindows. Most of these are based on Debian, btw.

So I spent 2 days downloading the ISOs. Yes, Streamyx, my local broadband provider, isn't exactly very good, but I don't have any choice.

Next up, STEP TWO - Installing Linux. Wish me luck!