Entries from July 2005 ↓

Oh, yeah… I noticed that too… Unfortunately I’m on a very quiet period, and not getting any interesting technical stuff, so that’s why I’m quite silent about those topics. I’m really sorry about that, but you know, we all have ups and downs.

– en

After quite some time considering various alternatives, I finally decided to leave my rock ages behind and buy myself a brand new digital camera. Ok, I know it’s not the fanciest one, but I’m pretty sure it serves my purposes.

The only thing I’m kinda disapointed with my Sony DSC-S40 is that I could not yet managed to get it working as a USB mass storage device. I’m getting a lot of I/O errors when trying to mount it. But it’s not much of a concern, since I got it up and working on PTP mode with Digikam. Also, if I really need it, I still can directly mount my Memory Stick, since I’m a happy owner of a Sony Vaio too.

Now I’ll haunt you with some ugly pictures of me from time to time.

– pt_BR

Após um bom tempo considerando várias alternativas, eu finalmente decidi deixar minha idade da pedra para trás e comprar uma câmera digital. Ok, eu sei que não é das melhores, mas com certeza atende às minhas necessidades.

A única coisa que me desapontou na minha Sony DSC-S40 foi que eu não consegui ainda montá-la como um dispositivo de armazenamento USB. Ocorrem vários erros de I/O quando tento montá-la. Mas eu não estou muito preocupado com isso, já que eu consegui fazê-la funcionar em modo PTP com o Digikam. Além do mais, se eu realmente precisar, posso montar diretamente o Memory Stick Also, já que eu sou um feliz possuidor de um Sony Vaio.

Agora de vez em quando vou assombrar vocês com umas fotos minhas.

Tip for overclockers. Sorry, it has nothing to do with Linux, but since it’s the first time in my life I manage to get an overclock working, and couldn’t find any complete information googling around, I had figure out the correct way of doing it, so I just want to register it for future reference.

I have an Abit KV7 (thanks Helio Castro for the suggestion) with a Sempron 2400+, 512MB DDR PC3200 (400MHz) and a very huge Volcano 12 cooler. The table bellow shows the general idea about what I did and the results I get:

As you can see, I managed to change my Sempron 2400+ into a 2800+. To make it happen, all I had to do was change the FSB, which makes the processor talks faster with the board and use all my RAM power (200*2=400MHz). But since that would also overclock the PCI bus, in a way my AGP/PCI devices wouldn’t work, I had to change the divisor to 6, so I could get 200/6=33MHz. Also, the VCore needs to go up because the more speed you want, the more power you need.

In the end I had a general increase of 20%. More MHz, more bogomips, and less time compiling (one test program reduced from 26min to 20min), with no changes at all in mobo or cpu temperatures, which proves that a good motherboard and great cooling are the secrets of a nice overclocking.

The previous entry in my blog was in portuguese because I wanted it to be a tip to former Conectiva users, which most of the time are brazilians. But after that I realized that the links posted could be interesting for others.

There’s been a discussion in coorker mailing list about creating easy ways to update Mandriva’s kernel. If someone wants to keep track of what’s happening, here are the links to the mailing list threads:

• it all started in smart mailing list in june
• continued in july
• then moved to cooker (with a comment outside the thread

Pro pessoal que usava Conectiva não ficar perdido, aí vai mais uma dica.

No Conectiva bastava simplesmente rodarmos um apt-get dist-upgrade que o sistema inteiro seria atualizado, inclusive a kernel. Acontece que no Mandriva não existe uma maneira tão simples assim. Você precisa antes de tudo procurar a versão mais nova do pacote (usando urpmq kernel ou smart kernel, sua preferência), e instalar manualmente a versão desejada.

Por exemplo: se eu tenho a versão 2.6.11-6mdk rodando, e quero atualizar para 2.6.12-3mdk, eu preciso comandar a instalação do pacote kernel-2.6.12-3mdk.

Mas não pensem que isso é ridículo, ou um problema sem solução. Como eu encanei que isso precisava de uma solução, acabei iniciando uma longa conversa sobre o assunto nas listas de discussão. Então, se alguém quiser entender o andamento e analisar as várias sugestões que estão surgindo para resolver esse problema, começe a ler:

• esta thread na lista do smart
• que continua nesta outra
• e que depois foi movida para esta thread na lista do cooker (e com uma mensagem desgarrada

There has been a discussion in Cooker mailing list about package splitting, size of downloads, and such. Someone post a comment that made me sad. I’ll paste the comment and my reply, and leave it as a message to everybody that cares.

> I don’t know many people who still have do not have a fast internet
> connection.

According to recent estimatives, only 12% of the active internet home
users in Brazil has some kind of broadband access. Also, Brazil holds
50% of the active internet access population in South America, and 32%
compared to all Latin America (South + Central). However, it’s estimated
that 2005 will face an increase of 90% in the number of broadband users.

Since the latest acquisition of Conectiva, any Mandriva initiative
should think in a more general way, not concentrating the thoughts on
European or North American markets only. I think the current desire is
to spread the product/company to new markets (specially old markets held
by Conectiva), and knowing about it’s particularities is essential.

As an old said I learn in school, “act local, think global”.