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Zxian

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Everything posted by Zxian

  1. That's not true either. Distributing Microsoft software can only be done legally by certified resellers. You'll find this is the case a lot when it comes to laptops - manufacturers provide the user with the license, and a recovery partition, but no disc. When purchasing the laptop, you can pay another $5-10 for the media.
  2. Just figured I'd update people on this. I managed to finish things (at least for the major setup). jcarle helped me with making it pretty. The cluster we've got uses Cluster Resources Maui scheduler. Part of the information on the page comes from the scheduler (letting us know what resources have been requested), and part of it comes from the individual nodes (updated via cron every 5 minutes or so). All the colors are dynamically chosen to help make the quick overview of status a lot easier. If any nodes are down (determined both by the scheduler and if they haven't been updated in more than 10 minutes), the entire row goes red. I ended up taking your suggestion in the end and simply storing the uptime in seconds (taken from /proc/uptime) instead of relying on the uptime command. The formatting of uptime changes based on whether or not the system has been up for more than a day... which makes things ugly. If anyone wants the PHP code, just ask. (IP is hidden for obvious purposes...) schroedinger.htm
  3. Thanks for the info prathapml! Glad to see you're still peeking in now and then.
  4. That's not true. The recommended power supply rating for various video cards is completely overrated. My system here uses 300W AC (roughly 250W DC) when running at full tilt (CPU and both graphics cards stressed), and it's got less power-friendly components than most systems do. Just because a PSU is rated for 550W doesn't mean that it is quality, or that it can actually produce 550W. I've tested several PSUs that can't run at their maximum power output for more than a minute before turning themselves off. Power supply calculators overestimate the amount of power systems actually draw. Have a look at what some real-life systems draw out of the wall here.
  5. Every PSU will have it's manufacturing defects. You're bound to get some angry customers posting about the product. Also - if you're asking these kinds of questions about your system build, you do NOT need an 850W PSU. Believe me when I say it - you don't need that much power. What are the specs of your computer? We'll be able to help you a lot more with finding the PSU that will best suit your needs. My guess is that you won't need to spend more than $100.
  6. It's quite clear - selling something that belongs to MS is illegal. This includes making a CD and selling it for profit. Now, as far as I know, it's not illegal if you give a copy of something that is readily available from Microsoft.com (without requiring a login or a licensed copy of XP/Vista). Note the key word here is give.
  7. Per partition. This is incorrect. The 2TB limit comes from the MBR standard that's used on most hard drives these days. To get around this problem in Windows, you'll need to use GPT disks, which are only availabld on XP x64, Server 2003 SP1 (or later), or Vista.
  8. You should be alright with the 120mm exhaust fan that comes with the case, and possibly another 120mm fan in the front (if you decide that it's needed). It's easy enough to install afterwards, so you could always buy it later if needed. What hard drive did you add? Honestly, I'd suggest that you give Vista another chance. Once you get used to some of the changes, you'll find that you might like some of them. Yes, at first it's a bit of a transition because options are in different locations, things look different, etc etc. However, Vista will be able to make better use of your system resources than XP ever could. All the hardware listed will work well under 64-bit Vista with fully supported drivers. This talk about Vista being "bloated" is the same stuff we heard 8 years ago about XP. Personally, I find it all FUD, and would ask the computer store if they could install Vista x64 on the system, but omit the product key. Last time I checked, this will allow you to use the full-featured OS for 30 days to give it a try. If you like it, just purchase a copy and insert the product key (no need for a format or reinstall), and if you really don't like it, then you can format it clean and install XP.
  9. The build looks fine. I don't know what that auto-control software you're talking about is doing, but your system should go together smoothly. Processor, motherboard, and memory should all be compatible without any troubles. The CM590 would be a better case, but there's nothing wrong per-se with the 534. I'm using two of them now with systems similar to what you're looking at. I'd also recommend Sapphire or Diamond video cards for the ATI 4850. I don't think it should be too hard to find a good one that will keep the total budget under 1000 euros.
  10. First off - that motherboard is not ok. It's an old chipset for starters, and doesn't really have all that much in terms of good features. I'll repeat the build that I suggested to another member in this thread. Intel E8400 ASUS P5Q Deluxe 2x2GB OCZ Platinum DDR2-800 Western Digital 640GB 7200RPM hard drive (WD6400AAKS) Pioneer DVR-216D ATI 4850 512MB Corsair HX520 Antec P182 See if you can get those parts from the vendors in your area. Just a word of warning - stay away from Maxtors. I've read information here and there that the quality has improved since they were bought out by Seagate, but they're still no match for Seagate brand or Western Digital. The price for that 8800GTS is far too high... I know that parts in Europe are generally more expensive, but that's still a really bad price. Where exactly in Europe are you located?
  11. Simple question... is it possible in Server 2003 to get a Terminal Services user to autologon on startup? I know that a console session can be autologged in, but I can't figure out if I can get the same thing setup for a Terminal Services user. Would I need a custom VBS or batch script setup?
  12. Just because a game doesn't work well on a brand of card doesn't matter much. There's a whole range of performance on both sides of the coin. A nVidia 7200GS isn't going to handle BF2 very well at all, but an 8800GT will. On the flip side, an ancient X300 will perform poorly, but the 4850 or 4870** will. ** 4870 isn't worth the money in my opinion... you're paying over 50% more for less than 50% better performance. You do the math.
  13. Don't plan on spending that $2500, unless you want to toss your money away. Unless you have a specific need for anything more, the system I described above will serve your purposes without any troubles. I also have stayed away from ATI cards until recently. All of my systems are currently running nVidia cards of various eras, but I'm planning on slowly migrating back to ATI on my future upgrades and computer builds. Here's a very short list of why: Vista Driver stability Lower idle power consumption (often lower load power consumption as well Generally speaking - a better price to performance ratio. A 4850 can be found for the same price as the 9800GTX, but in most situations the 4850 is a better deal ATI had their rough patch a while ago, but to be honest, since they've were bought out by AMD, their product quality has improved.
  14. Quad-core isn't really necessary for most applications. A higher-speed dual core will often give better value for money. If I had to spend a reasonable amount of money on a system right now, I'd do something like the following: Intel E8400 ASUS P5Q Deluxe 2x2GB OCZ Platinum DDR2-800 Western Digital 640GB 7200RPM hard drive (WD6400AAKS) Pioneer DVR-216D ATI 4850 512MB Corsair HX520 Antec P182 That's a pretty complete system that should handle most of what you throw at it. If you need a monitor, Samsung's make very high quality screens. Logitech is my default choice when looking at keyboards, although there are a number of Microsoft options that are nice as well. You should be able to find most of those parts at NewEgg.com for a good price. I'm guessing that the above build will tip the scales at about $1000.
  15. If you want to install the base system, I think disc1 and disc2 are all you need. disc3 contains several of the extras packages IIRC.
  16. Are you both downloading heavily? The BEFS series of routers are fairly old, and might not be able to handle high numbers of connections, like those found in P2P programs like BitTorrent. The same IP is because the forum checks your external IP - the one that is given to your router from your ISP. The internal address isn't all that useful, otherwise most IPs logged would look something like 192.168.x.x.
  17. My server is now considerably quieter than my workstation. I'm only using three fans in that case - all of them are 800RPM Scythe Slipstream fans. Two for the exhaust, and one on the ThermalRight Ultra 120 Extreme. The build of the case is top notch, and I really can't fault anything about it. It's designed to have a ridiculous amount of room for equipment, and it does that beautifully. $280 is FAR overpriced for that. Just make sure that when you buy it, you get the Stacker 810, and not the STC-T01 model. The latter has space for two PSUs (completely rediculous) and removes one of the 120mm fans.
  18. Thanks for the suggestions. I don't think any of the pre-built solutions are really viable for me, since I'm coupling our scheduling software into this web-app. For the record, there are about 30 Linux servers (all running CentOS), and I want/need to monitor more than just uptime data. I'm keeping track of the amount of memory that a user has requested on a particular server, along with the actual memory usage (same goes for swap), system load, kernel versions, disk usage, etc etc. All of this information is currently pushed to the MySQL server on our management node every 15 minutes. The uptime program in Linux has the following kind of output: [root@schroedinger scripts]# uptime 16:49:24 up 93 days, 7:55, 9 users, load average: 0.06, 0.05, 0.06 After I've cut it down as I want it, it looks something like this: [root@schroedinger scripts]# uptime | awk '{print $3" "$4,$5}' | cut -d"," -f1,2 93 days, 7:56 My main problem was that the TIME datatype in MySQL can't handle days above 34. After working with this for a while, I don't think there's going to be much use for me to store it in a date format, since I probably won't be doing any manipulation of the data afterwards.
  19. I'm trying to setup some simple monitoring software here, and I figured that the easiest way of keeping track of all the various servers we have would be to store their system status in a MySQL database. I'm trying to figure out the easiest way of storing the individual machine uptimes. The TIME datatype seems ideal, until I read about the restriction of only storing 34 days in the day portion of it. DATE or TIMESTAMP aren't really much better, since I want something in the form of days-hours-minutes-seconds (roughly). I'm starting to think that simply storing the uptime as a string is easiest...
  20. So... this news is a little old, but Hamachi has updated their licencing. Instead of providing Basic and Premium versions, they're now categorized into Non-Commercial and Commercial. The biggest feature upgrade for me - running the program as a system service. LogMeIn Hamachi Homepage
  21. Did you run chkdsk from the command line, or from the drive properties box? Open a command window (Start->Run->cmd->Ok) and then type the following: chkdsk E: /RAssuming that E: is the drive letter of your external hard drive. Do you hear any strange noises or clicking coming from the drive itself?
  22. I've got just about the same thing, and I'm definitely not in the category that you suggested. While I don't run any active AV software, there's plenty of other things that contribute to the initial slowdown of boot times.I'd say that from the moment the Windows logo appears to a fully functional working desktop, I'm in the realm of 45 seconds. A large portion of that is waiting for my network drives to re-map themselves. I could probably reduce this by writing a small script that does the mounting and have that run on startup, but it doesn't really bother me. I'm rarely rebooting my system anyways.
  23. Why do you need a 64-bit executable from a batch file? 32-bit apps will run perfectly fine in most scenarios on 64-bit OSes.
  24. https://secure.logmein.com/home.asp LogMeIn seems to do exactly what you're looking for. I've used it on a number of systems, and it's more or less seemless.
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