René Rebe

Four SAMSUNG SpinPoint T166 series, HD501LJ and more than 4 years in a 8-core server, here are the raw error rates:

1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0×000f 100 100 051 2
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0×000f 253 253 051 0
13 Read_Soft_Error_Rate 0×000e 100 100 000 479105152
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0×0033 253 253 010 0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0×0032 253 253 000 0
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0×0032 253 253 000 0

1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0×000f 100 100 051 6
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0×000f 253 253 051 0
13 Read_Soft_Error_Rate 0×000e 100 100 000 633936205
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0×0033 253 253 010 0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0×0032 253 253 000 0
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0×0032 253 253 000 0

1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0×000f 100 100 051 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0×000f 253 253 051 0
13 Read_Soft_Error_Rate 0×000e 100 100 000 494533244
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0×0033 253 253 010 0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0×0032 253 253 000 0
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0×0032 253 253 000 0

1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0×000f 097 097 051 54549
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0×000f 253 253 051 0
13 Read_Soft_Error_Rate 0×000e 100 100 000 844820954
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0×0033 098 098 010 20
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0×0032 098 098 000 20
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0×0032 253 253 000 4194449

Fail?

Update: Running “dd if=/dev/zero, …” on the fourth actually bumped the reallocated sector count even further:

5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0×0033 098 098 010 21
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0×0032 098 098 000 21

Selectively overwriting defect sectors?

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=1 seek=Y

Where X is the storage device, and Y the LBA sector address, …

Update 2: Some manual sector write, to reallocate loops later:

# 1 Extended offline Completed: read failure 30% 34103 663074301
# 2 Extended offline Completed: read failure 30% 34101 663073326
# 3 Extended offline Completed: read failure 30% 34084 664843895
# 4 Extended offline Completed: read failure 30% 34080 561288851
# 6 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 34007 409641893
# 7 Extended offline Completed: read failure 90% 32227 791207080
# 8 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 32227 791207080

I should just throw away this piece of s**t, right?

Update: Now with camera RAW support!

I updated my ExactImage-based QuickLook plugin to also correctly display 16 bit per channel files, enjoy: 1.7 update with improved 16 bit channel support. As usual: If you have another image format you like to preview on the Mac just let me know!

In late-2010 I already wrote in depth about Apple’s iTunes Connect App review times. As one of our latest Mac App updates kinda rushed a little faster thru the review, I wanted to give a brief update about the current state:

December 14, 2011 08:52 Prepare for Upload
December 14, 2011 08:52 Waiting For Upload
December 15, 2011 08:49 Upload Received
December 15, 2011 08:52 Waiting For Review
December 19, 2011 12:36 In Review
December 19, 2011 14:19 Pending Developer Release
December 20, 2011 00:16 Processing for App Store

While I do not know if that is just due lucky Christmas, at least it looks like the review times are now less than a week.

Update: And another such sprint:

December 18, 2011 06:15 Prepare for Upload
December 18, 2011 06:16 Waiting For Upload
December 18, 2011 07:57 Upload Received
December 18, 2011 08:05 Invalid Binary
December 18, 2011 08:20 Waiting For Upload
December 18, 2011 08:30 Upload Received
December 18, 2011 08:34 Waiting For Review
December 20, 2011 17:52 In Review
December 20, 2011 18:16 Pending Developer Release
December 21, 2011 01:04 Processing for App Store

Update 2: late-2012 report

Last saturday we went out to the thai / indonesian restaurant Goodtime in Berlin, Chauseestraße. While I have been there before -about a year ago- the last time was more of a short visit compared to the lengthier dinner this time.

My first impression was more positive than I remembered (I had some kind of canteen atmosphere in mind), the restaurant comes with some simple, white and stylish design chairs and painted walls. The menu includes the range of ingredients you would expect from an Asian restaurant: fish, chicken, duck, served with various vegetables, rice et al. And here comes the main point that pushed me to write this article: be warned that their kind of spicy is very spice. They really mean it. And this while I like and am really used to spice food. So unless you want to burn some flu away, and taste something beside hot, I suggest you order specifically without all the chillies.

All in all it was ok, however, for the price I would expect better, prompter service, as well as a more pleasant atmosphere: as the tables are placed fairly close to each other, the waitress’ often move them around to match group sizes, and when people come and go, including the waiters, they may often hit your chair, or table :-/

You can get similar quality food in Berlin Mitte, for nearly half the price at the Otito - only their tables and walls are not painted as nice, however the atmosphere is somewhat less hectic, …

With all the reviews about Bulldozer performance, I wonder how much is to be attributed to Intel’s compiler not generating latest, greatest, vectorized code for AMD CPUs, …

I still believe that Bulldozer delivers excellent server performance, especially when it comes to hardware assisted virtualization, and that desktop performance would look better with unbiased benchmarks, (and a better “core package” aware Window process scheduler) …

I got quite some CPU cycle requirements. For some time now I’m waiting for AMD to deliver sub 100 Watt (e.g. 95W) CPUs, but unfortunately the 95W editions of the Phenom II X6 1055T and 1065T are nearly impossible to come by (except you are an OEM ordering thousands of them). So I got a test system with the regular, 125W 1055T, and it just keeps running too hot.

While I’m still waiting for the Bulldozer to appear, and in a 95W flavor no less, I decided Sunday is a great day to experiment with undervolting the aging, hot silicon I got at hand. Actually it turned out the beast of a silicon I got can be undervolted by huge margins, from the factory settings:

NbVid NbDid CpuVid CpuDid CpuFid UNb CpuMult UCpu PCore
P-State 0: 32 0 6 0 17 1150.0mV 16.50000 1475.0mV 23305mW
P-State 1: 32 0 14 0 12 1150.0mV 14.00000 1375.0mV 20625mW
P-State 2: 32 0 18 0 6 1150.0mV 11.00000 1325.0mV 15370mW
P-State 3: 32 0 22 1 14 1150.0mV 7.50000 1275.0mV 10838mW
P-State 4: 32 0 26 1 0 1150.0mV 4.00000 1225.0mV 6738mW

Down to so far stable:
Read the rest of this entry »

The Chaos Computer Club apparently got their hands on the German’s federal trojan, 0zapftis! According to the preliminary analysis a piece of junk, full of security holes, …

For years the increasing trend for public monitoring, including CCTV, becomes questionable: beside common sense, many studies find no security improvement at all. Rather the contrary: due intended (but often not archived) cost savings, CCTV usually comes with reduced human resources for real people to be present, guard and inform citizens. Until someone notices a riot on a monitor the victim is usually nearly dead, already. In case the CCTV was not plain defect to start with, or the tapes (or discs) lost or already deleted, the images are usually too blurry to identify and search the wrongdoer.

It looks like the politicians have not learned the lessons from the former DDR, which is still known for their systematic monitoring of all their citizens. The western world will soon be on par with measures taken by the Stasi back in those days. An this despite all the memorial installations all over Berlin.

You got a Fujitsu fi-series scanner, such as a fi-5120, fi-6130, fi-6140, older, or never and like to use it on an Apple Mac(intosh)? Search no more!

ExactScan now comes with built-in drivers to supper a whole range of Fujitsu fi-series scanners, no matter if they are a couple of years old - or brand new!

Simply plug in the Fujitsu fi-scanner USB cable to a free USB port of your Mac, download and lunch ExactScan and the feature rich document capture application will list the scanner and batch scan at high speed on your Mac! Using ExactScan Pro you can even scan with OCR to searchable PDF, use the digital imprinter, and rely on many more automatic detection, such as automatic detection of colors and text orientation.

The possibilities are endless.

Some time ago I got a black NEC display which comes with four video inputs: VGA, 2 DVI and even DisplayPort as well as USB hub with two upstream ports. As I found no setting available on the monitor to change the USB upstream port to use, I usually just changed the USB cable when I had another computer for some testing on my desk.

However, today, I found out that there is a NEC MultiProfiler setup utility which allows to permanently assign dedicated USB ports per video input. This way I finally got a full KVM switch inside the monitor, assigning the first USB port to the DisplayPort, and the second USB port to all the other video inputs, used for temporary testing of various stuff.

Oh, cool: one can hack, and restore old SDK (and GCC) support in Xcode 4!

And also install Xcode 3 on Mac OS X 10.7, Lion.

I have not yet checked how well that works, though.

Updated: hack-installed Xcode 3.2.6 appears to (mostly) work on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), e.g. Xcode itself and the Interface Builder do work, Dashcode, however, fails to lunch due to some missing Framework symbol (_dispatch_get_concurrent_queue expected in /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib).

Update 2: As the link went dark, here is an archived full quote:

In looking through the isDevToolsCompatible function again, I noticed that it would return true if the COMMAND_LINE_INSTALL environment variable was set no matter what version Mac OS X you are running.

It’s now possible to greatly simplify the installation process:

• Mount the Xcode 3.2.6 DMG
• Open Terminal
• Enter the commands:

  export COMMAND_LINE_INSTALL=1 open "/Volumes/Xcode and iOS SDK/Xcode and iOS SDK.mpkg"

The open command will launch the installer app and allow you to install Xcode