14 Aug 2007
I don’t like deleting emails and, accordingly, don’t. Windows Live Search may not agree with me. This is alternately because Office/Outlook 2007 sucks, or it does. I’m presently rebuilding its index of my email because it somehow manages to continue blissfully unaware of thousands of messages in email folders. This is what happens when your email program mandates dependence on an external search product. Generally speaking, I’m not too desparate when it comes to looking for other files on my system (though, I’ve got to confess at this point, I am increasingly so after adopting WLS) — email search is the critical feature for me.
I am at the point where if this continues to prove ineffective I will be abandoning either WLS, Outlook, or both.
But for now I’m waiting for a rebuild and using Kerio’s excellent webmail product to conduct searches near-instantaneously and vastly more comprehensively than Microsoft’s obviously deficient search does.
07 Aug 2007
Now, I’m not sold on this whole greenhouse thing just yet (The Great Global Warming Swindle had at least as much sway over my opinion as that Powerpoint presentation to which it was, perhaps, a counterpoint), but as a matter of mere consumption (and intellectual curiosity) I was keen to learn just how much power one of my computers, in particular, was using annually.
This one sits in a cupboard, answers to the name of ‘whisper’, reaches obscene temperatures in summer (yet does not crash), and, at its heart, features a low-power-consumption processor and motherboard by VIA. It also has two hard drives and a single 512MB (8-chip double-sided (16 total)) DDR-400 DIMM.
And that is all.
Most of the time, it’s relatively untaxed… it acts as file storage, a web server for miscellaneous stuff I want to share quickly, and a development box for more adventurous things. At one stage it was hosting streaming media (and, very very briefly, a Counter-Strike server… it is horribly under-specc’d for such duties). It’s also useful for SSH’ing into and bypassing proxies when you really need to get to something (entirely legitimate, mind), but increasingly less so as a certain workplace of mine blocked SSH out access when we moved floors. No matter — I’ve identified a HTTPS-SSH solution to that particular problem, but haven’t been motivated to implement it just yet!
So, here’s the run-down:
Load Idle
VIA EPIA PD10000 23W 15W
Generic 512MB 2W 1.5W
ST380011A 12W 8W
ST380011A 12W 8W
49W 32.5W
Most of those have been rounded a little bit, but… let’s just say it only uses 49W at the most.
Then, there’s the 65%-efficiency-at-full-load (230W) power supply to consider. We’re no-where near full load, but let’s just say it’s consistently efficient (or, in-efficient) regardless of load. In practice, it’d probably be slightly better for lower loads due to reduced heat production.
So, our 49W suddenly becomes (49×1.35) 66.15W
That’s 579.47kWh/year, which (apparently) equates to about 400KG of emissions. This, friends, is absolute worst-case scenario. More realistically, the system will be idle most of the time, using 384.3kWh/year, and pumping out around 260KG of carbon.
I’d be interested to see how this would compare to a typical laptop computer.
For this particular computer, there’s only a little that can be done to improve efficiency. The obvious target is the two hard drives, which, combined, draw nearly as much power as the rest of the system! Considering there’s not a dramatic amount of storage presently in use, I could almost justify replacing these with a solid-state device (in the form of an IDE-card reader bridge, because real SSD drives remain prohibitively expensive and difficult to obtain in this country) if the need were really there.
And what would create such a need? Well, part of the reason I wanted to find out was to see how many hours this thing could live off a fairly cheap UPS for. Turns out it’s probably got at least an hour’s worth of life in it, which is moderately incredible compared to the typical ten-minute-or-it’s-fsck-time expected parachute expectancy!
The only problem in adding a UPS is that they’re not the world’s most energy efficient devices themselves, with an APC 500VA model chewing 24BTU (82.02W, since we’ve been working in that thus far) per hour when “online”. BTU is a measure of thermal energy dissipation, by the way, so probably it’s also less-than-ideal for sticking in a cupboard in which the next-largest heat source is probably the power supply at a meagre 17.15W (assuming its inefficiency is purely thermal, which, of course, it won’t be — other non-thermal radiation must account for at least some of its loss).
So, there we go. A fairly useless exercise that will become marginally less useless if ever there are rolling brownouts in Sydney and I need something to be able to weather the power storm. The other great thing about UPS is they provide fairly decent power conditioning, too. Given you can pay about $50 for a decent 6-way surge protected board, or only $140 for a 500VA (300W) APC UPS these days, it’s really not that bad a deal afterall.
Sources:
VIA EPIA-PD10000 power usage: http://www.via.com.tw/download/mainboards/3/4/OG_EPIA-PD_111804.pdf
Generic 512MB DDR-400 memory power usage:
My memory, from prior reading and specs of higher-quality memory that actually publish such data.
Seagate ST380011A power usage:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/manuals/ata/cuda7200pm.pdf
SFX-230M2 switching power supply (used by a lot of big OEMs like Dell and HP, it turns out) specifications:
http://www.sirtec.com.tw/photot2/10205/210205R11.pdf
01 Aug 2007
For some reason, the FreeBSD ports tree decided to eat itself. Parts of it (i.e. entire categories) just aren’t there (and I doubt very much they ever were), like ports-mgmt. And there is absolutely no documentation on how to rebuild/repair a screwed up Ports Collection. The only vaguely non-mainstream thing I did was run 6.2-STABLE. Methinks I’ve done something wrong in switching that over, so am now rebuilding and making worlds again. Much scrolling text, as my younger brother would observe.
01 Aug 2007
If anyone has a spare grand sitting around they feel like spending this lovely evening, there’s a just-serviced LSC Axiom 36/72 lighting console going on eBay in a bit over 3 ½ hours. In Melbourne, but with roadcase included. I’d buy it, but I’m broke… something to do with not being able to do any real work on account of trying to get *nix setup forever. Ubuntu is perfect, but for the fact that it wouldn’t consider booting for me for some reason. Blame VIA/EPIA for their clone low-power hardware, methinks.
29 Jul 2007
So Ubuntu is utterly refusing to install and I’m scared to use Gentoo, which was vaguely the next resort. And I’ve had enough of CentOS’ absurd package management system (really, RPM does make things impossibly difficult compared to apt-based systems). I’m going to try installing FreeBSD tomorrow and compiling bits and pieces, because that’s how metro stayed online all those years and whilst I don’t have Dale’s skill, I don’t doubt that the methodology was sound. Plus, FreeBSD is one more environment to test this project on — a dedicated server we were vaguely offered a few months back is running NetBSD, so it’d be good to begin scratching together a handful of skills in that area, just in case!
On the plus side, I got all system configuration stuff (esp. Samba, which can be a lot more difficult than perhaps it should be at times) worked out last week (i.e. the system was nearly perfect, but for being utterly unable to install even SRPM packages of a more recent Python version), and Michael went through installing everything with me at work… we had to battle Windows a little there, but even it relented. So close. Then I’ll spend heaps of time cutting layouts to markup and seeing them working, and non-Youthworks time taking Satchmo for a spin (which will hopefully lend itself to a certain application very nicely). The lovely thing about all this is I need Django to work for CYIADA, so I’m supported in getting it up and running, but then have enough ‘spare’ hours in the week that I can engage in freelance projects that ultimately mean I know what’s going on with CYIADA and am mildly more competent to make minor modifications as required accordingly.
Some of those projects might even feed back into the project, which would be a bonus — but even if they come to nothing, it’s worthwhile for skills development alone.