Maxtor Diamond Star Boot Error on ST62K

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I just received my new hard-drive, a Maxtor Diamonstar 90 – 8M (read 80Go and 8M of cache). So I decided to fdisk + cp -a my old distros to the new drive. Everything is ok .. I have something like this:

/dev/hda1  Win (I don't install this but leave a blank fat32 .. if)
/dev/hda2  Linux (my current debian)
/dev/hda3  BSD (NetBSD I think)
/dev/hda4  Data (10Go for what you wants)

After I finish my cp -a /dev/hda2 /dev/hdc2, I just chroot to this and run grub-install. Ok .. that’s fine (no error message), it’s time to reboot.

Ouch! My new system doesn’t want to boot, I get a ‘SYSTEM BOOT FAILURE, INSERT BOOT DISK …’ hum .. that’s sucks! Ok .. boot from a rescue CD (which I really love after a day of issue on this HD), just chroot to my new drive install Lilo instead of grub .. => Crash .. oh god .. I tried it a several times and have random crash. After 2 hours, I discover that the HD have some issues with the Prefetch Read/Write, so I disable it.. Ok, no more random crash. Now I need to fix the boot error issue. I tested several things, and took me a lot of time and i discover something. In my bios (I even made a new bios install), the default option is ‘auto detect’ from the kind of HD: Large / LBA / CHS.. And this fucking HD is detected as a CHS, so I forced it to LBA, and now it works. In fact the OS doesn’t bios so it can read/write on the HD, but Lilo or Grub use the bios directly.

To resume Maxtor DiamonStar:

  • Doesn’t support Read / Write prefetch
  • Do some bad thing w/ bios detection (I never seen this before ooo)
  • Are really quiet
  • Perform quite well: 56Mbs/sec in hdparm -t (far from my 110Mbs/ SCSI HD but..)
  • Are damn hot (really really hot !!)

I destroy 2 Maxtor HD in a previous life, I hope this one will work a bit longer. Anyway, this is really the last time I buy this shit.

Wifi Antenna TRENDNet TEW-IA040

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I just receive my new wifi antenna :) I fact, I’m currently using my NetGear WG311 as a AP, this works pretty fine, but the signal is a bit low in some part of my home. I decided to buy a small antenna to have better signal.

http://www.larsen-b.com/static/tew-ia040.gif

This one is a omni antenna, with 4dBi, with a SMA connector, and a 1 meter cable.

Beside, this one isn’t really a big antenna.. it works really greater than the default antenna (shipped w/ the WG card)

Obscufated email ?

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Little hack to make a bit harder for spammers to parse email address on the web.

def cryptEmailAddress(addr):
r = []
for l in addr:
r.append('&#%d;' % ord(l))
return string.join(r,'')

>>>cryptEmailAddress('jkx@larsen-b.com')
'jkx@larse....'

And simply put this in a href mailto: and enjoy :) Check the article’s pages on this website for a example.

Ion Window Manager

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Ion is a powerfull window manager, but the main issue of this WM is the configuration. We have already chat a little w/ Ian about this. While browsing the web, I discover this post on IBM Network.

So now, Ion is really fine, and IBM provide a nice doc :)

Who want some ? (Gmail Account)

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Hey Baby .. Do you want some ? (this come from the Duke Nuke3D game..) Anyway I get 4 Gmail account to give. So the first 4 posts here will receive one.

(I’m busy right now. So don’t expect this quickly) ..

New Design and BlogRoll

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I just finished the new design of this website. Now, it use 3 columns (instead of 2), and have some little CSS enhancement.

I have just write a little bloglines fetcher too. So you can browse my blogroll. It’s a bit too long to put it on every page so..

Saki va elle réussir son challenge ?

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Complètement Off-topic ici mais ca fait mon que je suis la pauve Saki ou plutôt ses mésaventures. Bien que je prèfère largement quand elle nous parle de son bricolage, de sa famille et de sa salle de bain, je dois avouer que là..

Tout le monde retient son souffle ? Alors acceptée ou pas cette thèse ?

En tout cas bon courage pour les derniers mètres..

Alinea 2

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Ok let’s go. I’m working on Alinea2 right now. Alinea is the stuff that power this website and others. I’ll hope to get it working quickly.

Beside, this is a big work.. I loose my time with CSS hacking right now ! I guess I should stop this but .. i don’t.

from AlineaLib import motivation
motivation.enable()

Let’s go :)

You can find the whole stuff on PythonFr SVN.

RSS for SVN

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Phil has finish to hack the SVN hooks to produce a RSS feed for the latest commits. This is pretty kool ? Now I don’t have to manage a mailing list for SVN commits.

I’m just wondering why his feed is out-dated on the python-weblog, and isn’t on the python-planet ?

Python web developpement: the dilemma / Act 2

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After a long trip around the Python web developpement tools, it’s time to fix. In a previous post (please read all comments before ..) we have talk for a long time about various web frameworks. Here is my personnal conclusion:

  • A web framework has nothing to do with templates. It need to allow to wrap templates easily, but it should’nt deal with them directly. (I have done DTML in a past life.. no thanks:)
  • A web framework has nothing to deal w/ the object-store. It should let me store objects as i want (without too much pain)

In the previous post we talk about the different approach: Threads, Mod_Python, Twisted, and Fork (in comments)

I have tested quite a bunch of framework right now, all have some nice feature, and drawback. To conclude my tour and explain my choice, some little points:

Webware

I really enjoy Webware, because the API is really easy learn, and work like a charm. But as explain before, I have too much trouble w/ the threads in.. I hope cheetah will cleanup the way it includes Kits.. a long thread on the mailing list.

Mod_Python

I don’t like the mod_python Publisher etc etc, I feal too close-to-apache. So i guess the I will choose MP Servlets. Performance are really good, and doesn’t need to maintain a server process on the host. This is good news because i want to host a couple of little websites. The major drawback is that there is no way to maintain (or even limit) a pool of objects between request. (without apache tweak) Another bad point is that debugging is awfull, need to restart all the time ..
But mod_python offer a lot for deployement..

Twisted

This is the most flamewar subject, I ever seen on the Python community. I used twisted, and yes it’s really fun and powerfull. But I don’t want to mix deferred and threads (for DB .. and others stuffs). If I want to mix differents networks stuffs, twisted is my tool. but as previouly said (comments) I ‘m not really fuent with twisted.web

Skunk-Web

Hum, this is a fork based server.. I haven’t tested it a lot because it’s really template base, and I want to use Cheetah or ZPT not another-templating-o-matic. And fork, may cause issue if you have some hits (but skunk really seems to work well under heavy load so.. )

And now..

So, yes, i haven’t choose one of this. In fact, in the previous post somebody ask me about Quixote, so i decided to test it. And I found an interesting stuff,
Quixote use: scgi (mod_scgi + daemon), old-fashion-cgi or mod_python, medusa or twisted.

So I can:

  • use mod_python in production area. (nothing more than apache :)
  • use mod_scgi if i want to run the server as a different user. No need to use su-exec or fight w/ ownerships…
  • use medusa to develop. And that’s a really good point because i can use pdb to debug,and avoid to restart mod_python again and again.
  • use old-fashion-cgi on system that only provides this..
  • test Durus + Dulcinea for the fun.

There is some drawbacks of course:

  • really small documentation right now (check the Quixote Wiki)
  • I don’t really like the way it map the URL namespace to the modules
  • come w/ custom templating system, but cheetah has a handler (infos in the wiki)

As Phil said: This is your new toy, until the next.

He’s right. I dream one day, Python web’s framework will be more unified. Quixote is a good example of what power we can achieve if the framework cover a large amount of different approach in a unified way.