JDPFu.com 2025

Completely unrelated … VoIP QoS trials in da House!

Fact 1, SunRocket Gizmos slow down internet activity when installed as SR requests. By half.

Fact 2, Having more than 1 device on a LAN with the same MAC address is a really bad idea – google "ARP" for details.

Fact 3, Placing the gizmo behind your router is more secure, but there are trade offs in complexity and/or voice quality.

Fact 4, I’ve been working with Cisco/Linksys tech support for 6 weeks to solve this issue.

Fact 5, My setup:

• Comcast 6000down/384up Kbits/sec
• Toshiba DOCSIS 1.1 modem – replaced for a 2.0 modem recently
• WRT54GX-v2 router / 2.00.16
• Gizmo on the "inside"
• Multiple PCs and other media devices

Linksys has given me some ports to be forwarded to the gizmo – they seem like a major guess.
We have double checked my QoS settings; basically, Gizmo is HIGH and all other devices (by MAC) are LOW. Also, I’m on a beta version of the next firmware; so far so good.
Linksys Support: "kindly try to forward port 10,000-20,000, 5060-5061, 53 and 69 using UDP protocol" to the gizmo. I have no proof this will work, but wanted to share. Seems like shots in the dark to me. None of those ports interfere with others I need, so I’m willing to try.

Ok, I logged into the Gizmo on 7/27/06 to make these settings: according to it, the following ports are reserved: 68, 16384-16403, 5060. Better than what Linksys support is suggesting.

I may disable the SPI, once I figure out exactly what is really does. Facts, not hearsay.

If someone finds this interesting, throw me an email in a week or so with the URL back here. Once I have a known good config, I will create a clear picture of the network and settings, if there is interest.

Old Home
New Home

Now a Fully SOX compliant site! SOX is Sarbanes-Oxley.

• MI – Stock Screening
• Manifest Investing – Solomon’s Select Dashboard
• Manifest Investing – Tin Cup Dashboard
• Manifest Investing – Creme List Dashboard
• Manifest Investing – ETF Sector Radar Dashboard
• Manifest Investing – Fundamental Forecasts
• Manifest Investing – ICLWager Dashboard
• Manifest Investing – Challenge Club Dashboard
• Manifest Investing – Manifest 40 Public Dashboard

My public Watch List of stocks, assorted Mutual Funds, and ETFs.

I caught the end of a reality show and saw the legalese at the end saying that the $1,000,000 prize was in the form of a 40 year annuity or current cash value. So, I did a quick calculation in Excel to figure out what that annuity would be. $220/month over 40 years earning 9% interest is $1,037,615.

If you put a lump sum in now and never add anymore money, you’d need $70,000 at 9% interest to grow to $1,031,140 over 40 years.

Could you save $220 per month with an understanding that after 40 years, it would be likely to be at least $1M?

Another example, shorter time frame: $400 a month over 30 years at 9% is $737,000. Compound interest and lots of time rocks! Use it!

Is there any good excuse not to become a millionaire when it is sooooo easy? 9% interest isn’t very much. This is about what the US Stock Market does annually over any 20 year period. You don’t have to be a good investor, just put the money in monthly and do not pay attention to it. Consistency. Consistency. Consistency.

How are you doing on your $1M? Check it with this simple calculation that happens to work in 2006 (it won’t work in later years due to inflation):
Multiply your age times your realized pre-tax annual household income from all sources except inheritances. Divide by 10. This, less any inherited wealth, is what your net worth should be.

So, if you’re 40 years old and earn $95,000 in salary and $5,000 from investments pre-tax, then your net worth should be $400,000 (40 times 100,000 divided by 10). If this test shows you’re an "under accumulator of wealth," then you might want to think hard about making some changes.

1. Good character, good work habits, good education (human capitol always comes first)
2. Liquid Assets are freedom
3. Live within your means

October 2010 Update

This article has been getting hit a bunch, so I thought an update might be helpful. The array built below is still working nicely. I’m still using it as a NAS, NFS, CIFS Server, Samba Server, DLNA server and for protected storage to the local machine. The local machine is now a Core i5-750 with lots of RAM that also runs a few virtual machines. The machine also runs compute processes since it has plenty of excess CPU and excess RAM available.

The hardware RAID card was removed when the motherboard was replaced. The new CPU/MB has 6 SATA connectors internally, so those are being used. No complaints. For more information on Migrating Software RAID.

The Infiniband cable just works and has never had any issue.

The machine has an Intel PRO/1000 NIC ($25 @ newegg) to be certain of reasonable GigE network performance and possible future compatibility with VMware ESX/ESXi.

I’ve tuned both the disk cache and network buffers available to improve performance for large file transfers.

I’m considering adding AoE, ATA over Ethernet, and iSCSI servers to this machine so others on the network can access the storage too. AoE seems like a more efficient solution available for block storage access.

The RAID5 setup hasn’t had any issues in years. No dropped disks due to vibration or any other issues … besides being nearly full most of the time. I guess that’s the way of all storage.

Original Article Follows:

Ok, after months of research and finally finding all the parts at "reasonable prices", the array has been ordered, delivered, built, tested on multiple OSes and brought into production use. I’m mostly happy and will outline what I’d do differently this time.

Parts:

• Addonics Array w/ Infiniband port – $139
  http://addonics.com/products/raid_system/mst4.asp
  http://addonics.com/products/raid_system/images/amst_front_large.gif
• Addonics Infiniband Cable – $80
  http://www.shopaddonics.com/mmSHOPADDONICS/Images/aaib4c150.gif
• Addonics Infiniband 2 quad SATA bridge (inside computer) – $50
  http://www.shopaddonics.com/mmSHOPADDONICS/Images/ad4saml-pci.gif
• 4x Seagate 320GB perpendicular drives (running quiet and cool) – $400
• Promise TX4310 4xSATA2 Hardware RAID PCI card (RAID5 capable) – $115
  http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?segment=RAID%205%20HBAs&product_id=165

Step 1. Put the 4 drives into the array and connect all the power and SATA2 connections.
Step 2. Connect the Infiniband cable to the array.

Step 3. Install the Infiniband-2-SATA in the computer; leave room for the SATA cables that will waste 2 card slots – yes, this design sucks. I connected the SATA cables before installing this inside the computer.

Step 4. Install the Promise card in the computer, connect the SATA cables from the converter to the RAID card. Test the drives with Spinrite.

Step 5. Fight with the Promise drivers (not included b.c. they are complete idiots), you’ll need to update the firmware, windows drivers and web management software. Promise doesn’t include any of this software on the CD that comes with the card. Worse, they use a proprietary extension to the ZIP format that only a current WinZip supports. After all the zipping is done, they saved 4K from a self-extracting EXE. Stupid, stupid. Long story short – HW RAID works under WinXP, not Ubuntu Edgy. Promise support answers email with – that’s an old card and we don’t support that kernel.

Step 6. Curse … a lot.

Step 7. After spending 3+ weeks fighting to get HW RAID working under Linux, give up and use software RAID – ‘mdadm’.

Step 8. Good news – under current Linux kernels, the Promise controllers are recognized as JBOD controllers, so software RAID can be used.

Step 9. Partition each drive with an "autoRAID filesystem", use mdadm to create a RAID5 array (chunk size 128K), mkfs -t jfs /dev/md0 (or whereever the mdadm tells you the device is located), use mdadm to pull the array info needed for the /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf file, update the /etc/fstab with the /dev/md0 device and mount point, create the mount point, mount /dev/md0 /raid5, and start using your array with some test data.

Step 10. reboot your box and verify that it comes up and the array is automatically assembled and mounted. If not, start reading the man pages.

What I would do differently:

• Don’t buy Promise RAID card (I really wanted an PCI-X1 card anyway)
• Pick a hw RAID w/ XOR engine that is supported by the Linux kernel (no proprietary drivers without complete source).
• Don’t use Infiniband cables. Don’t get me wrong, the cable is great and solid connection. My problem is the $80 for it and the $50 for the converter into SATA2 connector I needed. I’d try the eSATA-MP cable next time and find a RAID card that can accept it. There are very few Infiniband RAID cards (I gave up looking). The converter design really bugs me. They should have "end-mounted" the sata connectors, not side-mounted them.
• Don’t bother with LVM2 unless you really need it. I learned this lesson a few years ago and I won’t make that mistake again.
• Use either XFS or JFS file systems. These are the highest performance general purpose file systems that are included with standard kernels. Don’t use a file system that isn’t part of your normal kernel – another lesson I learned a few years ago. I really would like to use ZFS, but it isn’t included in any kernels to my knowledge. I’ve been a fan of JFS since 1996 running AIX. I’m still a fan, it has never let me down. Some dated file system benchmarks. Some newer RAID benchmarks that show hw raid is often faster. However, here’s an article from a Linux kernel developer as to why software RAID should almost always be used for internally connected disks.
• Run Spinrite on all drives before making them part of any RAID config. Best to find any issue before getting everything up and RAIDing.
• Double check all your connections – a loose SATA connection in the array caused me to waste about a week assuming the Promise controller was bad hardware, not bad software.

A few links:
http://addonics.com/
http://www.newegg.com/
http://www.pricewatch.com/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8874
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=387769
http://www.howtoforge.org/archive/2007/1/14?s=988d6534035fb8aea0a7793bb3318eb7&
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2002/12/05/RAID.html

The Amazing JDPFu.com GPS Application. It is simply uncanny and will tell you exactly where you are!

Ok, the other Senator responded to my Thoughts On Immigration that I forwarded to his office. The response follows:

Dear Mr. P:

Thank you for contacting me regarding immigration reform. It is good to hear from you.

Illegal immigration is a problem in this country that must be solved. I became involved with the immigration reform bill because it was clear to me that this issue touches the lives of Georgians on a daily basis. Moreover, I believe the people of Georgia elected me to represent them and to work constructively to meet the difficult challenges facing our nation.

From the early development of this legislation, I fought for the inclusion of a border security first provision. I felt strongly that this issue should go to the floor of the Senate for a free and open debate with all Senators having the opportunity to offer amendments and have them voted on. That has not happened. For that reason and because certain amendments have been adopted that make the bill unacceptable, I cannot support the bill in its current form.

Due to the tremendous response from Georgians, I am now convinced that many people do not believe our government will enforce the border security provisions in the legislation. Therefore, Senator Isakson and I communicated to President Bush that Congress must pass, and he should sign, a supplemental appropriations bill to fully fund the necessary expenditures to secure our borders.

I will continue to approach this issue by tackling border security first and separately from any other immigration measure and I will oppose comprehensive reform unless and until that is done. That is why I voted against cloture twice on the immigration bill.

This is the most important domestic issue facing our nation today. The Senate should not limit the traditional amendment process or the custom of unlimited debate. We should take as much time as necessary to openly and thoroughly debate the bill.

Immigration reform is a process and we are nowhere near the finish line. The President and Congress must work together to secure the border first. Once this is done , we can work to resolve the collateral issues. I believe we can get there, but we are not there yet .

High Tech Workers Unavailable in USA? …. Here’s a legal team describing the techniques to ensure they comply fully with the law, yet don’t select a US worker who is qualified. This lets them get a cheaper, H-1b visa worker.

Summary from youtube:
Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers. See what Bush and Congress really mean by a "shortage of skilled U.S. workers." Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and thousands of other companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week.

Many of my friends started here on H-1b visas … my beef, isn’t with the workers from foreign countries, rather, it is with the employers and our elected representatives who tweak the system to allow these abuses.

Lou Dobbs did a story on this too.

Ok, I’ve been looking for a replacement for this TiddlyWiki solution that I’ve been using for 2 years. There are many good things about this tool and a few bad.
The Good

• Easy to use
• Everything is stored in a single .HTML file
• Simple Wiki Syntax
• Search
• Journals
• Tags
• No database backend

The Bad

• HUGE file – over 210KB today
• JavaScript isn’t split from the main HTML file
• No remote updates allowed, only local file access allows edits
• Everything is stored in a single .HTML file
• Limited scalability
• No multiuser capability
• JavaScript for everything? Perl/Ruby would be better.
• No images, limited format control
• No database backend
  ‘’The Replacement Candidates’’
• ServerSideWiki – a take-off from TiddlyWiki
• LesserWiki – - a take-off from TiddlyWiki
• SoloWiki – a take-off from TiddlyWiki
• Typo – RoR-based wiki
• MediaWiki