Category Archives: Tech

Finding ECC memory errors on HP servers

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A little perl utility to help you find failing memory in HP servers.. This utility parses hpdiags output to report the value of the ECC memory error counters in the spd registers since the last boot. This utility will report errors even when memory prefailure notification (which would otherwise log these errors to the IML) is disabled in the BIOS. Note that a small number of corrected errors does not necessarily indicate a problem.

At a minimum it requires perl and the XML::Simple module. It will run hpdiags and parse the output, though you can pass it an existing hpdiags XML filename instead with the ‘-f’ option. The output or any errors looks like this:

[root@hpserver ~]# /tmp/hpdiags_ramcheck 
hpserver.domain.com:
    Product Number : 555555-001      
    Serial Number  : USE1234567
    Model          : HP ProLiant DL385 G6
    ROM            : A22 02/09/2010
        (1) Corrected single bit error(s) on DIMM 1
            SPS-DIMM 4GB PC2-6400 SDRAM DDR2 RDIMM  (P/N 501111-001)
        (7) Uncorrectable multibit error(s) on DIMM 2
            SPS-DIMM 4GB PC2-6400 SDRAM DDR2 RDIMM  (P/N 501111-001)

The 5 Best Reasons to Jailbreak Your iPhone 3G

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While there are tons of things I love about my jailbroken iPhone 3G (OpenSSH, VNC, Google Voice), I have a few favorite apps. As I’m cheap, all of these are free, save for my #1, which was well worth the $0.99:

      5. Five Icon Dock lets you add an extra icon. Yeah, it seems trivial at first glance, but you can put all four Stacks on your dock, plus still have single-touch access to a fifth icon. Mine has my Phone first, followed by a Stack called “Apple” (with SMS, iPod, Mail, etc), a Stack called “Web”, a Stack for “Games”, and a Stack for “Utilities”.
      4. Stack v3 gives you sort of an instant categorization view. I put mine on my Five Icon Dock, which gives me access to about 90% of what I do every day within two touches of any screen.
      3. The 3G has a camera, but only the 3GS an newer can shoot video… until now. Cycorder gives you 15 FPS video on your 3G.
      2. Apple might have added multitasking to iPhone OS 4, but they won’t enable it on the iPhone 3G. Get ProSwitcher and listen to Pandora or Slacker while running other Apps.
      1. If you have iPod/iPhone accessories which aren’t “Apple Certified”, you’re probably tired of the Airplane Mode warning. I found it annoying when I would occasionally use the USA Spec iPod Integration in my MDX, but with the iPod/iPhone alarm clock I got for fathers day, I suddenly found myself anooyed every night. Fro $0.99, Popup Blocker is my sanity savior, allowing me to block dozens of different types of nusiance alerts.

Ten Days and Counting

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After all the stress I’ve had the last two months, I will be thrilled to close on our new home in ten days. As if loan issues weren’t enough, Thursday was my first 13 hour day at work, debugging a sporadic e-mail receipt problem which turned out to be a problem with Cisco’s latest PIX firmware. For reference, Sendmail logging a “421 4.4.1 collect: I/O error” means you need to turn ESMTP fixup on the PIX. The network team owes me a beer.

On the less stressful side, the little one has been toddling around the apartment, though she refuses to budge unless she’s clutching my fingers. Watching her walk, stumble, and get right back up makes the stress melt away.

Webmail 2.0

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One of the really annoying things about starting a new job is learning a completely new infrastructure. Oh it’s not figuring out what 900 Linux hosts do, learning to debug SAN issues, or comprehending the multiple financial businesses my new company is involved in that’s the challenge. The challenge is figuring out how to conveniently read my personal e-mail.

Since most internet access there is restricted or proxied, I decided to just make better use of my webmail setup which runs Squirrelmail. It’s a fine product, but it’s not very flashy, and lacks any sort of Gmail-like conveniences like drag-and-drop message control. Sure I could use ssh to tunnel multiple ports through multiple hosts so that I could run Thunderbird locally, but really web applications like e-mail have gotten a huge boost from “web 2.0” technology like AJAX, so why not?

I spent about an hour looking at various applications, and ended up installing a PHP-based application called RoundCube. The product is still very much in development (you can’t collapse folders, can’t force a message pane at the bottom of the screen, and the inbox list doesn’t always refresh even though it tells you that you have a new message), but looks promising and has a really nice UI. It was simple to set up, so until I stumble upon something better, I’m hooked. It’s definitely high on my “cool AJAX apps” list with mp3act (a really cool streaming music server).

If anyone has any recommendations for other webmail apps (or other must have AJAX-enabled apps), please comment below.