Moblog - Comments

Pasi Kärkkäinen: Lenny's Xen Kernel 2.6.26 Causes DomU Freezes

nospam@example.com (Pasi Kärkkäinen) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:57:20 +0100

Many people are seeing this bug, me included.

Do you guys have a reliable/fast way to reproduce this?

What should be done is to get a stack trace for each guest vcpu to see what's happening (going wrong), so it can be debugged and fixed.

In dom0, like this:
/usr/lib/xen/bin/xenctx -s System.map-2.6.26-2-xen-686

Repeat that command for each guest vcpu.
The first vcpu is number 0, next is number 1 etc.

If you have a 64bit dom0, xenctx might be under /usr/lib64/.

The System.map file should be the actual correct System.map for the guest kernel.

nw: Disable Annoying "Disk not formatted" Dialog on Vista/Windows 7

nospam@example.com (nw) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:16:25 +0100

many softwares which encrypt the whole drive require a drive letter, so deleting it is not the solution. this script works fine, it's the best solution i currently find:)

Moritz: Disable Annoying "Disk not formatted" Dialog on Vista/Windows 7

nospam@example.com (Moritz) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:27:27 +0100

Neat solution, thanks, didn't think about that. Of course it only works for known drives, and I'm not sure it'll work for every partition encryption software (ie. that the drive letter is shown once the partition is decrypted).

Jeff: Disable Annoying "Disk not formatted" Dialog on Vista/Windows 7

nospam@example.com (Jeff) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:56:48 +0100

>>Other than disabling autorun completely, there is no official way to stop the "You need to format the disk in drive X before you can use it"

FYI: This is wrong! The official way is to simply remove the drive letter from that specific partition in disk management...

Moritz: Microsoft LifeCam Webcam - Drivers Only

nospam@example.com (Moritz) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:56:47 +0100

There is one archive for Windows XP and one for Win7, each contains all LifeCam drivers.

ali pali: Microsoft LifeCam Webcam - Drivers Only

nospam@example.com (ali pali) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:53:11 +0100

im comfused! witch ones the one for lifecam VX-3000?
plz tall me

Moritz: Vista: Windows Update Error 80070011 Semi-Automated Fix

nospam@example.com (Moritz) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:56:57 +0100

I cannot recommend to move winsxs and have no solution, sorry. After too much trouble I only move the profile data directory (explained here) and leave the rest alone.

It doesn't help to move winsxs, because all updates replace files on the system partition anyway. Files are NOT COPIED to their destination, but hardlinked, so keeping the winsxs directory on C won't take more space! I'm not sure what happens if a later update changes the same files, I guess the previous update will stay, but maybe one could find a way to cleanup the directory, which is still better than move it completely.
So, a solution might be to scan for files inside winsxs that are linked only once, which means they are not in use by the system, and move/delete those files?

Moritz: Windows Vista: Moving Program Files and User Data, Revisited

nospam@example.com (Moritz) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:52:04 +0100

I can confirm that this (method 1) still works very well using Windows 7.

Ullrich Fischer: Vista: Windows Update Error 80070011 Semi-Automated Fix

nospam@example.com (Ullrich Fischer) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:28:05 +0100

I followed some detailed instructions to replace c:\windows\winsxs with a link to a folder on my e: drive so that I could free up some space on my SSD 60 GB C: drive. Since then updates are failing. I'm wondering if updates have a problem copying themselves to of finding what is in the destination of that link. Is there a registry setting somewhere that needs to be updated to take care of this? I'm getting error 80070011 for any update that I try to install.

Aaron: Lenny's Xen Kernel 2.6.26 Causes DomU Freezes

nospam@example.com (Aaron) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:24:23 +0100

Yes, at first I tried limiting the Dom0 only - but that didn't solve it for me.
I got the idea from this bug report:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=524571

I have the latest (official) packages for Debian Lenny installed - but I use the workaround for about 50 days now and don't have a problem with limiting each DomU to one CPU, so I didn't test if the bug is still there.

And I agree, the second issue isn't really a problem

Moritz: Evaluating Dropbox and Syncplicity: A First Comparison

nospam@example.com (Moritz) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:19:38 +0100

I've been using Syncplicity to synchronize some of my files between my Laptop (WinXP) and desktop (Vista, now Win7). Sometimes it eats up my CPU and I have to kill it, but apart from that I'm happy. But I don't need it for restore - for (network) backups, I use another app, Crashplan. You're right, restore on a file basis sucks. Dropbox supports that.

Syncplicity "looks into adding this feature in a future release", until then, you can file a Restoration Request.

Moritz: Lenny's Xen Kernel 2.6.26 Causes DomU Freezes

nospam@example.com (Moritz) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:08:03 +0100

Thank you for your information. Unfortunately, I need multicores inside my DomUs. Did you try limiting the Dom0 only? Is that even possible?

I guess you have tried the latest Xen+Lenny kernels? I cannot believe they still haven't fixed this.

The second issue - problems with DomU shutdown - on the other hand isn't as bad, I never shut down DomU's.

Aaron: Lenny's Xen Kernel 2.6.26 Causes DomU Freezes

nospam@example.com (Aaron) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:34:23 +0100

Any update on this problem?

I don't know a fix, but I have a workaround - or at least in my case it works:
Limit the Dom0 to one cpu ("(dom0-cpus 1)") and also every DomU ("vcpus = 1"). Until the kernel update yesterday I had an uptime of approx. 50 days and no problems.
But unfortunately there's another bug to consider if you want to use this workaround:
http://old.nabble.com/Domain-status-after-shutdown-command:----s---td15565767.html

I just wanted to write this because the Etch kernel won't get security updates much longer.

Patrick: Evaluating Dropbox and Syncplicity: A First Comparison

nospam@example.com (Patrick) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:31:38 +0100

I installed Syncplidiocy on my one PC and selected the dirs that it should back up. I let it back up everything, before I installed the program on my other PC.

After installing on my other PC, I assigned the correct folders for it to sync with on the new PC, and it started inital sync.

When I returned about 6 hours later, it had reached 11 % and had stalled. After a while I exited the app and started it again. It now started working again.

It looked like it was downloading files, but the time left got smaller and smaller, and the amount of files suddenly dropped. I wondered how it could download so fast, and after 15 minutes it had downloaded the whole 1.5 GB.

So I went to check, and of course only some of the files was there. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was, that now Syncplidocy had DELETED the files on my original computer, meaning that ALL MY DATA IS LOST!!!

So I went in help, but they offer no form of contact with the free edition - even though having DELETED MY FILES!!! The manual said to use the recycle bin, but this only offers restoration on a SINGLE FILE BASIS! So does it expect that I sit and click "restore" 10.000 times????

I am appalled! Luckily I took a backup a few days ago before starting out with apps like this, and lucky for me. But days of work is lost!

Fritzybabe: Microsoft LifeCam Webcam - Drivers Only

nospam@example.com (Fritzybabe) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:04:59 +0100

What a hero!!!! You'll never get a job for Microsoft - you're too helpful!
By the way the Windows 7 and vista 64 bit works for XP64 as well unlike any of the Microsoft packages.