Wierd Stuff

Core Maintance Software

Manual - Customized Software Installs

Nexus Ports

The following ports are automatically enabled on all ECE computers:

PortProtocolIP RangeComment
10 000 to 10 010TCP and UDP129.97/16ECE 355
10 000 to 10 100
ON LINUX		TCP and UDP129.97/16ECE 355
22 222UDP129.97/16SIP Video
22 224UDP129.97/16SIP Audio
22 232UDP129.97.8/24Sip local video
22 234UDP129.97.8/24Sip local audio
4000UDP129.97/16SIP setup??
5060UDP129.97/16SIP basic audio
5061UDP129.97/16SIP messages
Echo RequestUDPall internetPing Service
UserAppSVC.exeAny129.97.56/24UserApp Security Tracking
NtTsyslog.exeAny129.97.56/24Syslogging of security and Windows Messages

Software List

The following is a list of software which I've installed.
If you have any questions contact me, Eric, by visiting me in E2-2357 or email at praetzel@uwaterloo

Special Software Installs

This software is manually installed:

Software Hints

Unix Installs (from Sanjay June 2007)

Log Analysis

SoftwareName	SoftwareVersion	ECE_Courses	General Description
AMANDA	2.5.0		
BOUML	2.29	ECE251,ECE355	
Dave's ColdFire Emulator	0.3.2	ECE354	
Data Display Debugger (ddd)	3.3.11	ECE355	
Doxygen	1.4.4		
Electric + SFS	7.00	4th Year Projects	C version of Electric VLSI CAD Package
Electric / Java	8.03	4th Year Projects	Java version of Electric VLSI CAD Package
FireFox	1.5		FireFox Web Browser
GCC for SPARC Systems	4.01	ECE251,ECE355	GCC optimized for Sun SPARC processors with Sun Forte backend code generator
GCC for ColdFire 5307	3.4.6	ECE354	GCC cross compiler
Mtx	1.2.18		Magnetic Tape eXecutive utility used to control tape drive
MySQL			
Opera	8.50		Opera Web Browser
Scons	0.96.1		
SmartMon Tools	5.33		
Sonnet 10.52		ECE 471(?)	
STAR	1.4.3		Super TAR tape backup software
Xcircuit	3.4.26	ECE241	There are drawing programs, and there are schematic capture programs. All schematic capture programs will produce output for inclusion in publications. However, these programs have different goals, and it shows. Rarely is the output of a schematic capture program really suitable for publication; often it is not even readable, or cannot be scaled. Engineers who really want to have a useful schematic drawing of a circuit usually redraw the circuit in a general drawing program, which can be both tedious and prone to introducing new errors.
NG-SPICE		ECE241	SPICE 3F5 Simulation Engine
KJ Waves		ECE241	SPICE GUI / Front End
OpenOffice	2.2		Office Productivity Application Suite

Linux Installs

Software to Investigate

  1. Mono - Ximian's open-source C# implementation
  2. IBM "Rational" software. MS VC 6.0 is needed , but it does not have to be preinstalled, I believe. PATD has to be set so that VC is accessible from Rose Real Time.

Nexus Servers

Nexus (Windows 2000, XP) Problems

Nexus (Windows 2000, XP) Q: disk

Nexus (Windows 2000, XP)

Memory Use

  • UserAppSVC - 1.4M memory used
  • Firefox 1.5.0.7 70M memory used
  • Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 46M memory used
  • Norton NAV,SAV 17M memory used
  • Putty 500k + 3M per window memory used
  • Windows Media Player 9.0 6.7M memory used
  • StarOffice (OpenOffice) quickstart 8.3M memory used, 22.3M with blank text document open

    • Nexus Tuque Installs - Testing

    Note - to find the uninstaller look under the registry in: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

    Nexus Software Installs - Testing

    Installed

    Polaris

    Note: In order to use much of this installed software you will have to run Q:\eng\ece\utl\menu.bat and, probably, reboot. If it isn't in the path run it from Q:\eng\ece\utl\menu.bat ie Xilinx, CVS, Visual Prolog, PSpice 8, MaxPlus

    Notes

    Student Photo System

    ECE 324 Computers

    ECE 222 Computers

    E2-3344

    Standalone Win 98

    Special Computers

    Harddrive Speed (RedHat)

    hdparm -c1 (32-bit xfer) -d1 (DMA) enabled unless otherwise stated.

    Speed tests are read tests hdparm -t and -T in square brackets []

    Historical Computer Purchases

    Monitor Purchases

    Network Equipment

    "Operating Systems"

    UWDir update

    For the university

         http://ego.uwaterloo.ca

First - use the 3nd link to set it to use your Polaris/Nexus password
using the EngMail server.

         http://ego/~uwdir/UW-SignOn.html

Then click on the link to "Update Your UWdir Data".

         https://ego/~uwdir/Update

    Trivia

    2004 inventory

    Linux Optimizations

    HDParam tests (cache Read, drive read) -c1 -d1

    UPS Inventory

    Unless otherwise stated all UPS's are APC Smart UPS

    UPS Events

    Apr 2009 - CPH-1333A battery failure resulted in UPS continually power cycling.

    Mar 2009 - severe battery failure (puffing, venting, hot) on 1400VA in E2-2361 on Unix rack

    Dec 2008 - Major failure of 3000VA UPS in E2-2361 on Unix rack

    2006? - minor battery failure on 1400VA UPS in E2-3340 resulting in UPS turning off and not failing onto mains

    UPS Batteries

    Batteries only seem to last 2 to 3 years. This is signif. shorter than the 20+ years I was used to at a commerical UPS mfg. Visually batteries indicate overcharing (puffing, cracking) and some failures involve the battery going high-Z.
    Measuring voltage on a pair of 3000VA APCs UPS the battery to a battery pair was 26.2V and 27.4V so overvoltage charging could only happen due to a difference in battery capacity and/or impediance- resulting in the lower capacity/higher-Z battery being overcharged.

    Replacement Batteries

    Projects

    WOL

    WOL works with Wake-up on Windows with M2N, M3 Asus AMD MBs. ether-wake on Linux (net-tools rpm)

    Websites with useful info:
    Good backgrounder: http://www.dslreports.com/faq/wol?text=1
    Linux source code: http://ahh.sourceforge.net/wol/
    Great site listing tons of packages to use: http://gsd.di.uminho.pt/jpo/software/wakeonlan/mini-howto/wol-mini-howto-3.html
    Magic UDP packet port 9 (almost all)
    AOpen M/B supports WOL with PCI card using connector
    ASUS P3 require PCI eth nic support WOL - none of ours do
    P4P-800VM apparently supports WOL but I've not gotten it to work.

    Special Software - Windows

    HD Specs

    Special Equipment

    Software Tools for Windows

    Securing Information

    FYDP Computer Demand

    Computer Performance Evaluation

    Altera Quartus is our heaviest software and is used as a performance indicator.

    For each test case several runs were performed. The first is often garbage.

    October 2011 Performance Summary

    Quartus 10.1 x64, Win 7, 4G RAM, M2N PV-VM, DDR2 Q11.1 x64, Win 7, 4G RAM, M5A88V Q9.0 x32, Win XP, 4G RAM, M3A785
    Disk 2.2GHz x1 2.5GHz x2 2.5G x2 + SAV 2.7GHz LE1640 "250" 3.0GHz x2 DDR3 "270" 3.4GHz x2 DDR2
    Nexus N: 33,39,38 25,26 30,28,25,30 39,29,29,29 31,32,32 39,27,24,25
    Local HD 26,26 24,18,19,18 19,19 - 13,13,13 23,21
    Linux IEEE (single HD) 34,32 22,23,23 - - 43,26,25 25,25,25
    Linux P: (SAS 15k rpm RAID 6) 36,34 25,24 25,25 - - -
    USB Key 55,56 47,43 - - 40,44,40 41,41,43

    Summer 2011 Quartus 9.0 vs 10.1 Performance Tests

    Hardware RAM Q 9.0 x32 Win XP Q10.1 x32 Win XP
    Eric's Nexus 3.1GHz x2 3G 37, 28, 26 35, 23, 25
    Q9.0 x64 3.1GHz x22G 23, 11, 10, 10
    2.6GHz 1-core2.5G 33, 23, 21, 21
    2G 34, 23, 25 37, 23, 22
    1G 34, 26
    512M 166 !!
    2.5GHz 2-core1G 33, 23, 21, 21 46, 22, 22
    2G 32, 21, 22 38, 19, 19
    3.1GHz 2-core2G 28, 17, 18 34, 14, 15
    4G 28, 17, 17 34, 14, 15
    2.3GHz 2-core, M2N-PV, Win 74G 32, 22, 22 19, 19
    2.2GHz 1-core, M2N-PV, Win 74G 38, 27, 31, 27 28, 26, 26, 26

    Computer Problems

    Asus M2NPV-VM Motherboard and PS/2 and USB

    Enabling CPU Virtualization seems to solve the interrupt issue (mouse or keyboard not working if they're USB) which can plague the last BIOS

    Computer Evaluation

    Jan 2008 - ComSol P3 vs P4

    P3 systems are 600MHz to 1GHz with 256M to 384M of RAM. P4 systems are 1.5 to 2.4GHz with 512M ram. A Comsol 3D simulation was run on all machines.
    P3's -- 19 to 25 seconds
    P4's -- 8 to 10 seconds

    Note that Intel has had the rug pulled from them by AMD and are
moving fast to catch up.  They've "killed" their Pentium line of
processes and are now calling them "core".  These are due to come
our real soon now.   I believe that they've, finally, wrapped the
Intel Mobile power saving features into their desktop CPUs to
reduce power consumption.

PROBLEMS
--------
1) Only one serial port and it doesn't come out of the case by default.
        We need 2 serial ports for the Coldfire computers.
        We can do this via a dual serial port card ($52 per card).
        Another possible solution may be USB <--> Serial adapters but
          this is very unlikely as the serial communication programs do
          not yet support USB.

2) Fedora Core 5 installed and worked well - AFTER I droped in a supported
        network card and did a full OS update.

TESTS
-----
AMD system works with Norton Ghost (finding NDIS drivers was awkward and
the boot CD had to be manually massaged).

AMD system works with auto and locked network speed/duplex.

AMD system seems to automatically use power saving features with Fedora
Core 5, and it's easy to add with Windows (enable Minimal Power Saving
Mode after installing Power Now.

PERFORMANCE
-----------
This compares performance using Altera Quartus II 6.0 for compiling a sample
ECE 325 processor in VHDL.  This is the most CPU intensive application in
our PC labs.  Compile times are currently around 5 minutes using an Quartus II
3.0 on existing P3's (1.2 to 1.4 GHz).

Power Draw
----------
P4 3.0GHz HT System - 200W power draw, noisy fans
P4 3.0GHz Celeron Dual System - 110W, noisy fans
P4 2.4GHz Celeron - 85W, noisy fans

P3 System - 55W power draw

Historical power consumption:
	P2 System - 47W 	
	P1 System - 33W
	486 System - 25W
	386 System - 32W

AMD System - 55W power draw most of time, peaking 100W when number crunching


Performance
-----------
P3-1.2GHz - 2:45 compile time on C: disk (2:50 on N: disk!)

P4-2.4GHz Celeron - 1:25 compile time
P4-3.0GHz D Celeron - 1:20 compile time (dual cpu Celeron)
P4-3.0GHz HT P4 - 1:10 compile time (hyper-threading, quasi dual CPU)

AMD Athlon 64 2.2GHz (rated 3.5GHz) - 1:00 compile time
AMD Athlon 64 Dual 2GHz (rated 3.8GHz) - 1:00 compile time (dual CPU)

System Info:
AMD - joined to Nexus, minimal software install
P3 - typical Nexus machine, fully loaded with s/w and NAV
P4 - not on Nexus, NAV added a 1 sec delay to compile times 

System Cost:
AMD 2GHZ Athlon 64 A8N-VM, $447
AMD 2.2GHZ Dual Athlon 64 A8N-VM, $630

P4P800VM P4 $503
P4P800VM Celeron dual $337
	CPU prices +$120 for P4, +$230 for Mobile P4
AMD CPU		2GHz mobile $106,
		2GHz Athlon 64 $197,
		2.2GHz Dual Athlon 64 $381,

July 2006 - NOTE new AM2 processor using DDR2 coming no CSM M/B yet.

    Investigation

    Card Swiper Configuration

    To set the baud speed (1200N81) with Centos 5.2 in rc.local add "stty -F /dev/ttyS0 1200"

    To set the automatic login (GUI widget doesn't work) edit /etc/gdm/custom.conf

    Add the user to the group which holds the serial port to allow access.

    There is no password, and auto login, for the default account so disable keyboard locking.

    HTTPS on Centos 5.x

    genkey server_name.x.com

    Apache rewrite to redirect http to https

    From http://davmp.kimanddave.com/2008/03/30/installing-mailman-to-use-https-on-centos-51/

    # You.ll need to insert two RewriteRule lines in your httpd config files to redirect all non-https requests for Mailman features to the https site. And if you don.t have any rewrite features setup elsewhere, you.ll need a couple of other lines. You can find out the most about this process by reading the Apache docs for the RewriteEngine here. But, since I.ve already got a virtual host file that represents the config I want to have Mailman show up as a part of, I simply added lines like the following:


   ...
   RewriteEngine        on
   RewriteCond          %{HTTPS} !=on
   RewriteRule          ^/mailman/(.*) https://davmp.kimanddave.com/mailman/$1 [L,R]
   RewriteRule          ^/pipermail/(.*) https://davmp.kimanddave.com/pipermail/$1 [L,R]



   ...
   Include "conf.d/mailman.conf.include"


And then renamed /etc/httpd/conf.d/mailman.conf to /etc/httpd/conf.d/mailman.conf.include. These settings prevent Apache from allowing these URLs to work for any other virtual hosts.

    Investigation

    Sunfire V65x, Intel SE7501WW2 motherboard, 4G, Dual dual core 3.06GHz Xeon (32 bit), Nov 2008

    The onboard raid is Adaptec 7902 software raid. It may support hot swapping of drives available at boot time - but it does not support adding extra drives when booted.

    Power draw for these servers is around 220W at boot time and 140W when running Centos 5. A modern quad core Xeon blade server sucks 140W with dual 15k RPM HDs. Both are much higher than comparable AMD systems (typically 45W for a dual core in light use).

    I tested the system by setting up RAID 1, installed the OS and pulled one HD. Immediately the OS gave errors about the pulled drive. Booting into the RAID controller software revealed that the RAID array was "optimal"! Reboot with the HD re-inserted and all seems well. I was not able to find how the software raid was being done. /proc/mdstat revealed nothing. When I pulled the one harddrive again the OS pretty well hung. This is symptomatic of software RAID with RedHat.

    The raid used revolves around the dmraid commands. "dmraid -l" to list support -r to list the current setup and driver. Then "-s -s asr_raid1array" lists the raid particulars.

    The Ultra 320 SCSI HDs are curious. I've seen one where the BIOS, at boot time, flagged it as failing - but the SMART tools said that the health status was fine. The drive had bad sectors but SMART monitoring was not reporting that - only the temperature. I inserted a failing HD and it was not detected at boot time - but the SMART Health Status was failing.

    My conclusion is that the RAID on these blade servers is less than useless.