Category Archives: Linux
How to check RAID status on an Intel board
I don’t want to dwell on how many hours I just wasted trying to get the status of an embedded RAID controller on an Intel S3420GP board running openSUSE 11.3. The solution is to avoid the dizzying array of software … Continue reading
Solving openSUSE 11.3 mail server problems
Rather than follow an upgrade path, I painstakingly migrated the mail server configuration from an openSUSE 11.0 server to a fresh install on an openSUSE 11.3 server. Here are the problems I ran into and how I solved them: Problem: … Continue reading
fdisk problems with large partitions
I recently upgraded my 3ware 9550SX-8LP RAID5 array from 250 GB drives to 1 TB drives. After the lengthy RAID initialization process, I tried to create a partition using fdisk. Unfortunately, fdisk seemed to only create a partition size of … Continue reading
Problems with PHP’s get_browser() on openSUSE 11.2
I just spent way too much time trying to debug PHP’s get_browser() on an openSUSE 11.2 server. All I wanted to do was display a funny little note about what web browser a user was surfing with, as in, “You … Continue reading
OS X for the Linux user
About 1.5 years ago, I made the switch from SuSE Linux to a MacBook Pro running OS X 10.5. Here are some brief notes I made regarding the transition: OS X’s Spaces gives you virtual desktop functionality. I don’t think … Continue reading
Using EDID data in xorg.conf
I have two Hanns-G JW199D (19″ 1440×900) LCDs connected to an nVidia GeForce 8400 GS video card. They worked great until I upgraded from openSUSE 10.3 to 11.0; Xorg seemed to have problems configuring the LCD connected to the video … Continue reading
Software RAID performance on various IDE configurations
I have two 500GB IDE drives that I will use to create a software RAID1 (mirrored) array. How should I connect them to maximize performance? I’ve used software RAID on my personal file servers for years and ask myself that … Continue reading
openSUSE 11.1 > Ubuntu 8.04 server
Ubuntu seems like it’s the latest and greatest in the world of Linux distros, but it just didn’t measure up to openSUSE during my install fest last night. I run openSUSE at work so I figured I would get some … Continue reading
PHP zlib.output_compression fails to set Content-Encoding
This is what the PHP docs say about the zlib.output_compression INI directive: Whether to transparently compress pages. If this option is set to “On” in php.ini or the Apache configuration, pages are compressed if the browser sends an “Accept-Encoding: gzip” … Continue reading
I found XMMS again!
These past few years I’ve been frustrated with the media players that modern Linux distros have been pushing. I have my music organized nicely in a familiar directory structure and I usually just want to play an album. I don’t … Continue reading