Electronic gadgets, hobbies, developing
Kos Cycling – Day 2
Kos Cycling – Day 1
PlantronicsHub – major memory leak?
I’ve noticed that process SpokesUpdateService is promoted to the top of my Memory list. Here an example which I captured today (just 24hrs after my last reboot) but on the other day I’ve seen 2.4 GB wasted:
It turned out to be part of PlantronicsHub software. I will disable to for a while an see how it will behave.
bash-4.4$ sudo launchctl remove com.PlantronicsUpdateService bash-4.4$
Note: need to find out how to prevent starting this after every reboot.
References to other guys reporting very same:
- http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1,2266926
- https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1430655
- I’ve opened Plantronics Case 06390520: ref:_00D507IyW._50038xj5MQ:ref
Update 2018-08-21
This message I got from Plantronics Support:
Dear Jaroslaw,
Please update the hub to 3.11.2 this should solve the issue you were experiencing.
Please let me know how it goes.
The case number for your reference is 06390520. If you need any further assistance, please let us know.
Kind regards
Angela
Technical Support
I’ve upgraded to 3.11.2, will see 😀
New home virtualisation lab
Intro
It’s been a while since I’ve built my current home lab. It’s based on Lenovo M910t. In general, I’m quite happy but it’s lacking expansion flexibility.
So I’m looking for a replacement. Below my notes from research and calculations of total cost.
New system components
Cost estimation.
| Component | Description | Price [PLN] |
|---|---|---|
| Case | - Fractal Design Define R5 👍 - be quiet! Silent Base 800 - Phanteks Enthoo Pro | 439 |
| CPU | AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X | 3365 |
| Motherboard | MSI X399 SLI PLUS | 1290 |
| RAM | - 48GB from old PC - 16GB - Crucial 2400 Total: 64 GB (with option for expansion up to 128 GB) | 630 |
| PSU | SeaSonic Focus Plus Platinum 650W (SSR-650PX) | 478 |
| HDD | PC - 2x 2TB from the old (ZFS root, RAID1) - 1x 4TB from the old + 2x 4TB new (ZFS storage1, RAID5) Total: 2+8 = 10 GB HDD On-demand backups - 1x 2TB from the old (backup, via old USB dock) | 880 |
| SSD | - 256GB from the old (zfs storage2-ssd) | 0 |
| M.2 | - 256GB from the old (ZFS cache) | 0 |
| CPU Cooler | - Noctua NH-U12S TR4-SP3 - Arcetic Freezer 33 TR 👍 | 170 |
| Video card | Used one from ebay or Allegro | 35 |
| Delivery | 20 | |
| Total [PLN] / [USD] | 7307 [PLN] 1964 [USD] |
Considerations
- Do I really need 16-cores/32-threads AMD 1950X? Perhaps 12-cores/24-threads 1920X for 2699 PLN (1k less!) would be sufficient?
- CPU cooling fans may not have enough clearance to populate all 8 RAM sockets? Answer here.
- Is it possible to use 6 RAM DIMMs? User guide says that allowed configurations are 1, 2, 4 & 8. This forum thread advises that any even number of DIMMs is perfectly supported.
- Cases
- 8x 3.5” HDD case or 6x 3.5” HDD + 3x 5.25” bays for my old Icy Docks bay?
- What’s the min width to fit 155mm-high CPU cooling? Phanteks Enthoo Pro can fit max 193 mm cooling -> OK
References
- Cases
- PSU
- https://outervision.com/b/PoX7fi – PSU calculations, min 500 W
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_Plus
- Cases
Does the CPU cooler has enough clearance for all RAM DIMMs?
Tech It Out was kind enough to provide this response and the photo on the MoBo I’m interested (MSI X399):
And how does it look on the picture:
Sample quotations
From Morele.net
From x-kom.pl
Summary
After deeper deliberations (it’s hell lot of money! And I’m completely self-funded… Also Threadripper 2 is about to be released on August) I decided:
- Immediately buy 2x 4 TB WD Blue disks and replace my Storage1 pool 3x 2 TB → 3x 4 TB which should give me enough disk space
- Wait till August and see how (and if) release of new CPUs and MB chipset X399 change the situation.
Regardless of all, this was quite interesting exercise!
My current Home Virtualisation Lab “Wieloryb”
Wieloryb as a home lab
My current home server which I use many for virtualisation, serving also some net services is reaching memory and disk-space limits. I named this server Wieloryb which in Polish means The Whale.
Hardware
So far I have:
- Lenovo M910t server
- 64 GB RAM
- 1x 1 TB SATA HDD (3.5”) – configured root ZFS Pool (RAID1)
- 3x 2 TB SATA HDD (3.5”) – storage1 ZFS Pool (RAID5)
- 1x 254 GB SATA SDD (2.5”) – storage2 ZFS Pool
- 1x 254 GB (M.2) – cache for ZFS pools (Cache and L2ARC). I know, L2ARC should be mirrored but I decided that I will take the risk
- PCI-e 4x SATA board to provide 4 + 4 SATA connectors (M’board + PCI-e board)
- The three 2 TB HDD disks and 254 GB SSD disks are stored in Icy Dock 4-disks cage. The disk cage allows to connect all 4 disks through 4 SATA connectors
- The disk cage is powered by an external PSU (as the PC’s PSU is not strong enough)
- On-demand backups are made to a 4 TB SATA HDD using i-tec USB HDD dock
- Remote management is possible thanks to Belkin Net KVM
- Sending critical alarms via SMSes as well as forwarding of SMSes from my old mobile SIM are done thanks to Nokia USB stick and Gammu software
- And finally – a small UPS
Picture of the lab
Software
For greater flexibility and separation between different tasks I decided to use Proxmox as virtualisation manager. No issues with that: it does what it should, small issues can be justified by a very attractive price (0 USD…).
How to workaround MacBook Pro 2017 scroll lag
Another embarrassing problem with my MBP: when scrolling in e.g. Chrome, Safari or actually – any other window, there is annoying lag. When you scroll continuously, it’s more or less fine, but when you pause to read and then want to scroll, it stutters.
After a bit checking here and there, it turned out that if I increased keyboard backlight timeout from 5 seconds to 1 minute, the problem has been worked around!
Well done Apple, well done‼
MacOS QuckLook Plugin for Java class
Quick Look at Java classes!
This Quick Look plugin allows you to decompile Java class and look at the content.
Chef resources failing with wrong constant name
When trying to add a custom resource, no matter what, I always got a wrong constant name error, for example:
resolving cookbooks for run list: ["01_test-cookbook"] Synchronizing Cookbooks: - test-cookbook (0.1.0) Installing Cookbook Gems: Compiling Cookbooks... ================================================================================ Recipe Compile Error in /home/jhartman/.chef/local-mode-cache/cache/cookbooks/test-cookbook/resources/append_line.rb ================================================================================ NameError --------- wrong constant name 01TestCookbookAppendLine Platform: --------- x86_64-linux-gnu
It turned out to be an issue with my cookbook name: it’s not allowed to have a cookbook name starting with a number (as later, it’s converted into a class name).
So my cookbooks as below are causing the problems:
drwxrwxr-x 8 jhartman jhartman 15 Apr 22 21:45 1_PreRequisites drwxrwxr-x 7 jhartman jhartman 14 Apr 22 23:38 2_OracleDB drwxrwxr-x 9 jhartman jhartman 16 May 3 18:12 3_NCC drwxrwxr-x 6 jhartman jhartman 13 Apr 22 22:22 4_PostInstallation
They should be renamed into something else, for example:
drwxrwxr-x 8 jhartman jhartman 15 Apr 22 21:45 A_PreRequisites drwxrwxr-x 7 jhartman jhartman 14 Apr 22 23:38 B_OracleDB drwxrwxr-x 9 jhartman jhartman 16 May 3 18:12 C_NCC drwxrwxr-x 6 jhartman jhartman 13 Apr 22 22:22 D_PostInstallation
Note, inside the files, there are references to the names, so you may need to update them accordingly, for example using:
$ find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i 's/2_OracleDB/B_OracleDB/g'
After this, no more strange errors after adding resources.
PS: When you work on MacOS, you may face another problem with your resources: MacOS trash files (._* or .DS_Store) are causing another (similarly looking) error. Take a look at this web page.
GitHub projects
Just to inform (in case when Google stop working one day 😃) that my public projects are stored on GitHub https://github.com/jaroslawhartman
