Lie-chan and Mei-chan Upgrages 1

Time finally worked it's way around to tax season, and I finally was able to get a 550W power supply for Lie-chan, and a new case for Mei Ren.

The PSU didn't take too long, maybe about 30 minutes. Luckily both the old 750W and the 550W were both modular, and they really mean it when they say modular; I didn't even have to use the cables provided with the 550W, all the cables from the 750W all plugged into the 550W! Now that's modular! That was a nice surprise.

It took me four hours (not including the hour that I had to run and get fans) to get Mei Ren all transferred over. I had both cases open and stripped down in the room to work on it. The new case is a Cooler Master Elite 335U by the way.

Not too many problems occurred, though I did have quite a few hiccups... The metal used for the CM case is stronger than the Raidmax Thunder case, in most areas anyway; overall, it still is sturdier than the Raidmax case.

Seeing how all the PCI and 5.25" bays had the twist/bend off type covers, I took all the 5.25" covers off and a couple of the PCI ones (at first). After transferring the motherboard, I realized I didn't have space to break any of the other PCI ones off, so I put it back in the old case, and took the rest of the PCI covers off. At this time, I realized I had a couple special motherboard stand-offs that held the motherboard in place (so you don't have to worry about aligning the holes), so I rearranged the motherboard stand-off pattern a bit (I originally just screwed them all in lol). After that, transferred the DVD burners and the HDDs over and then left for the local computer store (well, if a 30 minute drive counts as local). I realized that the front and side panels had mounts for 140mm fans, and all I had was the 120 from the Raidmax, thus why I decided to run to the computer store. I made it 5 minutes before it closed (whew), but they were quite low on fans (I luckily snagged some NZXT fans for 14 a piece (there was a couple more fans that I found before I left the section, and they were a dollar more for less CFMs... Yeah, no.). I still have some space between the heatsink (Zalman 9700... I think it's the 9700...) and the upper side fan, but if I want to put a fan there, I'm gonna need a slim fan.... I'll probably just leave it open.

After I got back, I put the front fan in, and to my displeasure, the mounting holes did not line up perfectly... Luckily, the holes were just big enough to where I was still able to mount it. I then ran all the front panel wiring (which wasn't attached to the front panel and was very pleasant) and cable managed them, then I mounted the PSU and started working with those wires... I did the IDE and SATA cables before that though.

Since the PSU isn't modular, cable management and running was very awkward and a bit strange. I did get it decent enough to allow maximum airflow. Anyway sometime after this I thought I was finished... I kept remembering that I didn't disconnect the USB cable for the card reader from when unplugged everything in the old case, and I also remembered that I never really saw the lights for the card reader light up either... I looked and looked for the cable after I got all the PSU cables connected... Then finally, I decided to look a pile of cables and miscellany in the same room, and first found the cable for the card reader that connects the Firewire port to the motherboard (at this point I was relatively ecstatic, seeing that I was that much closer to finding it), and then after a bit more digging, I found the clear cable with shielding I was looking for. Success! I connected it and kinda cable managed it a bit (I didn't want to fuss any more with it since I already spent quite a bit of time doing it and I was quite tired), then put it together and turned it on. I didn't screw anything up which was good. I disconnected it and was about to move it when I remembered that I forgot to check the HDD and power LEDs... So I reconnected it and looked at it. No lights, so I flipped all the plugs and put it back together and moved it back to the room it goes into and reconnected everything. I turned it on just to look at the lights and they look nice (I just got to GRUB and shut it down from there).

So the next couple upgrades for Mei Ren is a couple of SATA DVD burners (or BD whichever comes first), and maybe a modular PSU.

Slept like a rock after I was done. (LOL)

openSUSE 12.1 Part 2

I got the wifi + bluetooth combo card made by Intel, and it only seems to work like the AzureWave one where I only can get wifi. Except I can only get wifi in 12.1. Looks like I'm going to have to RMA this one as well... Dammit.

Well, I did find one thing out. The wireless defaulting to off problem is the same problem I experienced a couple months ago. Just had to blacklist acer-wmi and it's on upon boot.

Computer Cluster 2

So after digging a bit, I found a different HPC Linux distro that seems a little closer to what I want to use for a cluster. I was going to comment on the previous entry, but I couldn't for some reason.

Anyway, it's called KestrelHPC, and if I read it right, I only need one install of Debian/Ubuntu to run it. Which means I won't need a disk for every node, and just for the frontend node.

One of the nice things I found is that it's not a dead distro. Last update was back in October, so It's still being worked on.

Again, I still need a USB wireless stick to get anywhere with it, and I won't download /burn it until I'm ready to start experimenting with computer clusters again.

Anyway, thought I'd post the HPC distro so I don't forget about it (and don't have to make a bookmark for it).

Mei Ren 2

I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but after unlocking the other cores, there was a bit of voltage leak to the CPU (I'm assuming that's what it was) which caused a digital ticking noise (which I lost a bit of sleep due to it that night). I stepped up the frequency level from -2% to 0% to see if it changed anything, but it didn't seem like it.

Anyway, I left it on last night to see if anything would happen, and I didn't hear anything at all. There's only a slight digital "screeching" noise now, but I actually have to put my ear next to the case to hear it.

Cool! Now I don't have to switch the PSU off to kill the voltage leak.

It was a bit annoying, since I had to boot into openSUSE, then reboot for it to pick up my Wifi card. Now that I don't have to switch the PSU off, I don't have to do the boot-reboot thing now.

Awesome!

Just need to test 12.1 on it somehow before making it an official install. Wish I had a... Wait... I think I can borrow an unstable SATA drive from my friend... I'll have to remember that later.

openSUSE 12.1 Part 1

Well, I checked the site about 8 minutes ago and it was there. Seems like it was officially released at 06:12 this morning (UTC-7). I'm downloading it now, and will burn it and stuff it in the laptop bag. I'll do all the testing later.

(edit 1)

Okay, I haven't really found anything different from RC2, but I did find a couple things.

To get my Bluetooth to work, the wireless has to be turned on. And I can use the function key for turning the wireless on and off to do so. And for some reason, I can't use my Bluetooth mouse on boot until sometime after wireless is turned on. For some weird reason, my trackpad got permanently disabled which didn't help the situation beforehand.

12.1 also did not ship with GRUB2 as I read somewhere in the openSUSE pages (either in the news or Wiki), but I can't find it and I don't feel like finding it. I really wonder why, since GRUB2 is so much easier to use.

I installed GRUB2 (the package in openSUSE), and then did an install of it. I guess I forgot to update-grub and when I rebooted, I was left at the CLI for GRUB2. Seeing how I'm not an expert at it, I can't get back into 12.1 to do so. My only two options are to either (1) reinstall 12.1 and re-update or (2) attempt to fix it with 12.1 live. I think the first option is the more viable one, since it doesn't really take too long.

Anyway, good thing I used a spare hard drive, since I would not have been happy to not be able to boot into anything. More to come.

(edit 2)

As I've thought about it, I don't really want to deal with the troubles of installing GRUB2 (at least for the computers that have multiple OSs on it anyway. I may just reinstall it on the testing drive for Triela, and see what happens, but I will need to test it on Mei Ren to see if I can flip the top screen upside down... Then again, I really don't want to enable wireless on every single boot, so I might just do this testing out of curiosity (and boredom).

Lie-chan is really the only viable (and "partial") install of 12.1 I could do, provided that I keep Ubuntu for GRUB2, since Lie-chan is hard-wired to the wireless bridge.

Anyway, off to finish a few things and continuing the experimentation.

(edit 3)

So I got done with all the experimentation.... Turns out I can't use update-grub (in any format) to properly populate the grub.cfg file... So definitely a no on GRUB2 in 12.1

Screen orientation still works just fine. One thing I noticed with the window previewer is that each screen has its own space, and you can move the windows between screens. Cool! I'm pretty sure it was already there, but I didn't really think much about it and didn't really test it out then.

One of the other things I noticed is that the "menu bar" only resides on one of the screens (main screen) when in a side-by-side configuration (and I'm assuming the same for the notifications bar).

Okay, here comes the weird part. When I booted into 12.1 on Mei Ren, wireless was automatically on. WTF? I'm going to safely assume that it has either has something to do with Triela or laptops in general (so either it's something with Triela+12.1 or 12.1 disables it by default for laptops).

Which means I can easily migrate to 12.1 for openSUSE only computers (Mei Ren and the jukebox). I could also migrate for Lie-chan, but I'm still very disappointed that 12.1 did not have GRUB2 as default.

I realized that I completely spaced the HDD from my friend, so I'm actually gonna have to wait longer to do the installation test for both Mei Ren and the jukebox, since I don't want to kill the existing 11.3 install if I don't have to.

I also tested 1080p on Mei Ren with 12.1 and VLC again. Nothing different in quality... Well, I did forget to turn the "GPU acceleration" on again, but I don't think it makes that much of a difference.

Well, I think that's it until I get the HDD for easier testing (well... easier roll-back).

openSUSE 12.1 RC2 Part 7

Well, I have about 16.25 hours left before the official release of 12.1.

I was hoping for midnight UTC time, but when it became that time, a new countdown graphic of "17 hours left" replaced the "1 day left". I feel like I was very, very mislead.

So I gotta wait until 10am until I can download and burn it (I'm gonna have to take a blank CD with me so I have something to burn on).

openSUSE 12.1 RC2 Part 6

Hmm... It looks a bit funny, but it works I guess.

I think I might have tried Chrome with M3 or RC1, I can't remember, but I should test it just in case. Probably last test since there's not a whole lot I can think of that I need.

Now that I think about it, I am going to miss gkrelm (maybe two "l"s?) a bit. I might be able to install it, but I'm not sure if it's going to work. I only used it for CPU temps, though I didn't really pay too much attention to it; it's just something that's nice to know every so often. Since I don't really do a whole lot with Triela (a few old games, but that's in W7), I'm not horribly concerned.

Anyway, probably won't say if Chrome works or not... I don't think there's a real reason to, since I'm quite sure it'll work.