Compiled Thoughts by John Ciacia » Systems Administration

A week with the Cr-48

John — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 19:04:18 +0000

Within five minutes of unboxing my Cr-48, I was on the internet and all my plugins, bookmarks, and passwords were automatically synced. I have always been fond of living on the cloud, but this was almost utopia.

However, Chrome OS definitely requires a paradigm shift that I am not sure I am ready to take. As a web developer, I have crafted a very intimate relationship with Zend Studio, Photoshop, and a local *AMP stack. Although I have found alternatives to almost all desktop software floating somewhere in the cloud, most of these alternatives are not (yet) as powerful as their desktop counterparts, and severely hinder my productivity (almost as much as Facebook). That being said, John the developer probably won’t be using Chrome OS as his main operating system for a while, but John the student feels differently.

The eight hour battery life, (fairly) small footprint, the a/b/g/n and 3g wireless card makes it ideal for taking notes in class on Google Docs or browsing Facebook when the professors accent is just too thick to understand. I think this is exactly what Google was looking for. Chrome OS doesn’t work for John the developer simply because the applications aren’t up to par, not because of the operating system itself.

In the past week I have made every attempt to use the Cr-48 as my primary computer. For the most part, it was an enjoyable experience. Although, at times, it was a bit slow at switching between tabs. I’m not sure if this is due to the hardware, or if it is a glitch with the operating system itself. Below is a list of my likes and dislikes:

Likes

The battery life. Although, in the netbook scene 8 hours is not a lot, it is significantly more than my laptop.
Two finger scroll. A few weeks ago one of my roommates purchased a MacBook Pro and I fell in love with its tracpad. So I was delighted when I was able to scroll with two fingers. I would really like to see gestures in future releases of Chrome OS. Perhaps a two finger swipe to move forward and back in your browser or between tabs, a three finger swipe to move between workspaces, and pinch to zoom.
The wake up time. It is literally one second.
3G Card. When I don’t have access to WiFi I can enable the cellular modem. However, cellular data is expensive, and at this time, Chrome loads pages normally and eats through data pretty quick. It might be worth adding an option to allow users to switch their UserAgents and allow them to load mobile optimized pages.
Living on the cloud. It is very nice to be able to go to any computer in the world and have access your data. Plus it puts an end to the misfortune of a hard drive crash.

Dislikes

The shell. I have been a Linux user for four years and have grown very familiar with BASH. The shell provided with Chrome OS is complete crap (granted, its probably not a high selling point for the average user). I would really like to see a more powerful shell with the ability to use ssh keys, navigate through your html local storage.
Living on the cloud. At this current time, it is impossible for me to abandon.

LOL Monday – New Element Discovered!

John — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:45:47 +0000

Physicists at the University of Colorado recently announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. This new element has been tentatively named “Administratium”. Administratium has 1 neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 111 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

Each Administratium atom is held together by sub-atomic particles called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Administratium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Administratium caused one reaction to take over 4 days to complete when it would normally take less than a second.

Administratium has a normal half-life of 3 years; it does not decay but instead undergoes a reorganization, in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons and assistant deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Administratium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization causes some morons to become neutrons forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to speculate that Administratium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as “Critical Morass.”

Error 1327. Invalid Drive

John — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:31:54 +0000

There are several causes for this error. The one in particular that I encountered was caused by an incorrect data value in the registry.

Check the following locations in your registry and make sure there are no keys referencing an invalid drive location. If there is an invalid location – you may either fix it or delete it.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Dell Inspiron 1525 CD/DVD Issue

John — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:17:36 +0000

I was recently given a Dell Inspiron 1525 to fix. The CD drive was not working. I am not going to discuss the multitude of causes or methods to troubleshoot this issue. I am simply going to provide the solution that worked for me.

1. Temporarily remove any CD burning software.

2. Edit your registry. Navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

and delete “Upperfilters” and “Lowerfilters” values if they are present.
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060)

3. Remove the CD-ROM driver from device manager.

4. Reboot the computer and reinstall the CD-ROM driver.

Multiple Firefox Profiles

John — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:15:47 +0000

Whether you are sharing a computer with a roommate or are afraid you will screw something up while developing a Firefox extension – it is a good idea to have multiple Firefox profiles. I use one profile for general browsing, another while I’m doing web development, and another while I am doing Firefox development. Each profile has a different set of favorites and extensions installed on it. Each profile is setup for it’s particular task. Creating a profile is simple.

1. Close out of all Firefox windows
2. Open up a command prompt and type

“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” –profilemanager

3. This will start the Firefox profile manager. Click “Create Profile…”

4. This will start the profile wizard. Click the Next button.

5. Enter your profile name. I will be using “dev” for development.

6. Your profile has been created.

7. Now you can create a shortcut on your desktop that will open up Firefox using this profile. For the item location, use:

“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” -P “dev”

The -P selects the profile “dev.” Replace dev with the value you used in step 5.

Note: Only one profile can be open at a time. That is, if you open Firefox using your default profile, then click on the newly created shortcut – Firefox will open using your default profile.

Slow Network Transfer with Vista

John — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:21:07 +0000

The Windows Vista TCP/IP stack came packed with a multitude of new features, one being Receive Window Auto-Tuning. The TCP receive window size is the amount of data that a TCP receiver allows a TCP sender to send before having to wait for an acknowledgment. After the connection is established, the receive window size is advertised in each TCP segment. Advertising the maximum amount of data that the sender can send is a receiver-side flow control mechanism that prevents the sender from sending data that the receiver cannot store. A sending host can only send at a maximum the amount of data advertised by the receiver before waiting for an acknowledgment and a receive window size update.

While the intention of this feature is to enhance user experience, this has certainly not been the case for me. Rather than improving network transfers it caped mine at 50kb/s. To disable Receive Window Auto-Tuning open up an elevated command prompt and issue the command:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable