Lifebook U810 and OpenSuse 11.2

OK, heartened by my OpenSuse 11.2 experience on the NB100 - where pretty much everything worked out of the box (webcam, hibernation, most of special keys), I thought it was time to try it on the U810.

The install went OK, didn't need the acpi/pnp boot hacks to get wired ethernet working, the ath5K drivers worked reasonably well (if still a bit slow). Startup and shutdown were snappier than before and the KDE 4.3 3D desktop effects work fast enough (and are better integrated than compiz+KDE 3).

However, there are a couple of show stoppers:

• Suspend and hibernate crash hard (power cycle hard) when there are SD/CF cards inserted. This appears (after a bit of digging) to be the eject action during shutdown. The only fix is to not do this which makes me uneasy about filesystem integrity and breaks automatic remounting on awakening.
• Webcam driver has been dropped as a separate driver pending inclusion in the uvcvideo core drivers - unfortunately this doesn't work yet.

Fair enough - back to OpenSuse 11.0 but I miss KDE 4.3. The version of KDE 4 that came with 11.0 was the .0 or .1 release which was frankly slow and nasty - so I have been using KDE 3+compiz. Upgrading KDE was not altogether trivial...

Toshiba NB100

I've just acquired a Toshiba NB100 - it was cheap. OpenSuse 11.2 went on quite easily and seems to work quite well though I have not tested it thoroughly yet. I took the plunge with KDE 4.4 and it seems to be quite nice now - the whole things starts up quickly and 3D effects work well (better integrated than KDE 3.5 + Compiz) though wobbly windows aren't quite as nifty as compiz. I find the desktop plane/expo features invaluable working on a small screen.

Good Points:

Upgradable to 2GB RAM
Network and VGA ports on the back of the unit
Opens flat
Dismantled it to put in a bigger HDD - it seems well built
- Big plate dissipates heat across the back of the keyboard keeping it cool and thus quiet
Three full size USB ports

Not so good points:

Case has to be opened to get at anything other than the RAM - and it's a fairly major operation
...in particular, swapping hard drives is a big dismantling job
No obvious spare ports/pads inside for easy modding
Battery sticks out at the back - but that does stop it tipping when the screen's right back

MSI K8N Master2

Are there any 2GB DIMMS that work in all 6 slots of the MSI K8N Master2?

The spec says it supports up to 12GB of RAM but all the QVL docs only rate it for 4 2GB DIMMS. I can put in 6 (decent, HP server pulls) and it counts up to 12Gb but keels over when it tries to boot. Clocking down to DDR 333 or even 266 makes no difference. All the DIMMS memtest86 fine in other motherbords.

I suspect the DIMM VRM's don't have the grunt to power a full complement of 2GB sticks.

Opteron BIOS Support

My home servers are primarily Opteron 2XX-based.

It seems that support for the OEM Opterons (OSP2xx, OST2xx) in BIOSes is somewhat patchy. Based on the boards I've seen Tyan and MSI don't support them in their public BIOSes (Tiger K8WE, K8N Master2, K8T Master2) but SuperMicro does (H8DAE). These CPU's will work but the ACPI P-States aren't published by the BIOS so Cool'n'Quiet/Powernow doesn't work. The SuperMicro will even take two Opterons with different power profiles - say an OSP275 and an OSA275 and correctly handle their different P-state voltages.

Since these CPU's are turning up cheaply on eBay this is worth remembering. I have a couple of OSP's in my Iwill DK8N since it doesn't do Cool'n'Quiet so the reduced 68W power envelope matters.

BTW If your K8N Master2 conks out when you enable Cool'n'Quiet you need to do this mod.

Joy of ESX

On to bigger things for a bit - I've been setting up virtual machine servers for work and, in parallel, something similar on a home build.

I run VMWare Workstation 6.X on the U810 and have run Workstation and/or VMWare Server 1.X on various home machines for some time (since Workstation V2.X in fact). In general, VMWare has performed well for me both for hosting dev environments but also a multi-server home environment. As a result, it was a no brainer to go for it for the work build - to replace an ageing GSX Server of some antiquity.

The work server came pre-built with VMWare ESX 3.X as requested but had sat around for a bit before we got it installed so by then we had our 4.0 upgrade keys. 3.X had an annoying dependence a Windows box with Active Directory on to do basic VM maintenence but 4.X has an improved web interface that meant we could ditch the Windows (we don't need HA/clustering the way VMWare does it).

OK, so we install 4.X and discover that EMC has thoughfully removed the raw disk access feature - which is a bit of a pain as I have a 48-disk array that I wanted to mount as raw-disks and use ZFS on a VM rather than a RAID controller. The functionality is still there but it requires manual hackery of disks which is not what I want in a production system. Nuts - time to buy a storage controller.

Since the Web interface on 4.X looked reasonable, I thought it made sense to upgrade my home system to VMWare Server 2.X which is free but sports the same Web interface - and it does raw drives! I built it on a new install on OpenSuse 11.0 - with a pair of 4GB CF cards as the boot drive (mirrored using linux md) - which made for useful re-use of the flash optimisations I did on the U810. For personal use, I rather like hosted virtual environments on Linux - I can use Compiz/Expo configured with a to view all my VM's consoles, live - zooming in to any one to work. Great when you're working on multi-server apps.

Unfortunately, I could not get the Web interface to run reliably - it would lock up on Windows or Linux clients, sometimes not come up at all, the server process would die unexpectedly - looking at the VMWare forums it appears that this is an unfixed "feature". Server 1.X with it's native client worked fine but was getting long in the tooth. Time to look elsewhere.

Enter Virtualbox - which is missing several features of VMWare (64-bit VM's on non-VT/AMD-V processors, Windows 98 guest support, Web interface) but, to compensate has a few other nice features - RDP access to VM's, working admin console and, most recently, live migration and HA features in the free version. It also takes up around 100MB of space rather than 300+MB which makes things less tight on the CF cards.

So, nothing is perfect - it's just which annoyances you have to put up with.

U810 Gripe

One thing that really annoys me about the U810 keyboard is the arrow key mapping. Normally, I have no problem with it but it really spoils Nethack - I could reverse the mappings but then the original assignments are pretty useful keys as well. Bah!

Rendang

This is a dry beef curry from Malaysia that packs a bit of a punch. Best with a lot of rice! Also great hot or cold as part of Nasi Lemak for breakfast - ideally eaten outside overlooking the Indian Ocean or South China Sea!

• 500g cubed beef (this is not a long slow cook so better, leaner cuts work best)
• 500ml thin coconut milk 

• 1 medium onion finely chopped
• 8 tbsp tamarind water (or lemon juice at a pinch)
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt

• 2 tsp finely chopped fresh galangal (or 1 level tsp dried)
  
• 2 tsp finely chopped fresh ginger (or 1 level tsp dried)
  
• 4 cloves finely chopped garlic
• 15-20 dried red chillies (or 4 tbsp crushed red chillies)
• 1 tbsp coriander powder
• ½ tsp ground cumin
• 1 lemon grass stem

1. Blend together the second set of ingredients into a smooth paste - adding a little of the coconut milk if necessary
2. Combine all the ingredients in a heat proof casserole and boil until half the liquid has evaporated
3. Reduce heat and simmer (or place in a low/medium oven) for 30 minutes until the meat is tender
4. Consume with caution

Adapted somewhat from the original Mrs Lee's Cookbook - there is a new revised version out that may be worth a look.