[GTALUG] Two Things

[Howard Gibson via talk]

   I promised to mention the Raspberry Pi Meetup.

   Power-over-Ethernet: One cable to rule them all, without catching fire!  

   https://www.meetup.com/Raspberry-Pi/events/nwgbwqyzgbpb

   A second thing has come up that may interest somebody.  The York Regional 
Science and Technology Fair is coming up this Saturday, and they are still 
looking for judges.  From organizer Nathalie Rudner...

Dear Howard,

  Our fair is days away and we are still a few judges
short! We would appreciate it if you could please spread the word and/ or 
consider bringing a friend!  A few more judges will help us ensure that
every student is judged in a timely manner and that your schedule is not
too busy!  It also helps us cover for unexpected absences.If you know of
someone who would be interested in helping us out, please share the
folloing link with them so that they might register. 
https://secure.youthscience.ca/sfiab/yrstf.  I greatly appreciate your help
with this,Thank you!Nathalie RudnerYouth Science Canada Regional
Coordinator - York Region 

-- 
Howard Gibson 
hgib...@eol.ca
jhowardgib...@gmail.com
http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson
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Re: [GTALUG] war story: fixing a doc bug can be hard

[Stewart C. Russell via talk]

On 2019-04-09 1:47 a.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> 
> I assume that there is some perl convention for documentation (POD?),
> but I'm not immersed in that culture.

Yeah, POD can make a decent man page without fiddling with groff. But
maybe test the source with sane-width terminals (<= 80 cols) to see if
any reformatting must be made.

Outside groff, there's also the Heirloom Documentation Tools
 which are somehow based
on the original Solaris source. A newer - and frankly glorious - option
is A G Rudi's Neatroff  that's not
only able to typeset bi-di texts but it also handles Opentype ligatures
for efficient handling of Arabic and Farsi.

> |How many people are limited to 80 columns.
> 
> You are being sarcastic, right?

80 column terminals aren't the thing amongst the kids today. Used to
work with folks who'd use full-screen terminals with 8 px fonts, and not
windowed with tmux or anything.

> Buy an UltraHD TV or monitor. 

Or get two 16x9s, and flip one vertically. It means your desktop looks a
bit O_o, but it works.

cheers,
 Stewart

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Re: [GTALUG] Dell servers for cheap

[Lennart Sorensen via talk]

On Tue, Apr 09, 2019 at 06:08:27AM -0500, o1bigtenor via talk wrote:
> I bought one a couple years ago, not quite as cheaply as listed previously
> though, and can add that it is possible to put a SATA drive into the bays
> you are limited to a hard 2 TB limit (would guess that its related to 32 bit
> access somehow).

2TB is 2^32 512 byte sectors.

But yes SATA drives should work, if it is a machine with 3.5" drives,
rather than 2.5" drives that some of them use.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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Re: [GTALUG] Dell servers for cheap

[o1bigtenor via talk]

On Tue, Apr 9, 2019 at 1:32 AM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk
 wrote:
>
> | From: Stewart C. Russell via talk 
>
> | via Seneca:
>
> Thanks.  I always like to hear about this kind of thing.
>
> | == Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers
> |
> | - quantity available: 22 units
> | - some with 2x dual core processors, others with 1x dual core processor
> | - 4GB RAM (8x512MB; only a few have more RAM)
> | - some have PERC RAID controllers
> | - rack mounting rails included
> | - a few fibre channel HBAs may be available
> | - limited quantity of sleds for Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drives are 
> available
> | - specs: 
> https://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/2950_specs.pdf
>
> I think that the newest processors that these could have were
> discontinued 10 years ago.  And they take a lot of power.  For
> example, the Xeon X5365 (pure guess at a best case) takes 150W by
> itself.
>
> Beware of noise.  Rackmount servers are best kept in server rooms.
>
> 4GiB RAM is a little light these days, especially for servers.  Memory
> is FBD (not consumer stuff).  There are no free slots.  Replacement
> memory might well be cheap on ebay or kijiji since it is well past its
> prime -- I haven't looked.
>
> SAS drives are expensive and there's probably not much to recommend
> them for our home labs.  Consider: 73GB SAS drive for $20 vs. a 120G
> SATA SSD for $24.99 (current Newegg.ca sale; $4.99 shipping).  I think
> that these boxes can only support SATA with an added controller.
> ---

I bought one a couple years ago, not quite as cheaply as listed previously
though, and can add that it is possible to put a SATA drive into the bays
you are limited to a hard 2 TB limit (would guess that its related to 32 bit
access somehow).

Regards
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Re: [GTALUG] Dell servers for cheap

[D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk]

| From: Stewart C. Russell via talk 

| via Seneca:

Thanks.  I always like to hear about this kind of thing.

| == Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers
| 
| - quantity available: 22 units
| - some with 2x dual core processors, others with 1x dual core processor
| - 4GB RAM (8x512MB; only a few have more RAM)
| - some have PERC RAID controllers
| - rack mounting rails included
| - a few fibre channel HBAs may be available 
| - limited quantity of sleds for Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drives are 
available
| - specs: 
https://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/2950_specs.pdf

I think that the newest processors that these could have were
discontinued 10 years ago.  And they take a lot of power.  For
example, the Xeon X5365 (pure guess at a best case) takes 150W by
itself.

Beware of noise.  Rackmount servers are best kept in server rooms.

4GiB RAM is a little light these days, especially for servers.  Memory
is FBD (not consumer stuff).  There are no free slots.  Replacement
memory might well be cheap on ebay or kijiji since it is well past its
prime -- I haven't looked.

SAS drives are expensive and there's probably not much to recommend
them for our home labs.  Consider: 73GB SAS drive for $20 vs. a 120G
SATA SSD for $24.99 (current Newegg.ca sale; $4.99 shipping).  I think
that these boxes can only support SATA with an added controller.
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