My Fit PC2 (2009)

Here follow some random thoughts on the successes and failures I have had with my new server, currently using 14 Watts, and running the copy of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS that came with the machine. See the Fit PC2 Forum. This website is run on the Fit PC, if it suddenly disappears I may be rebooting, re-installing another version of Linux or have taken it to a Devon and Cornwall LUG meeting.

If I knew the Fit-PC2i was coming out, I would have held off buying my machine. 2Gb would have been very nice! The loss of two USB ports to get the extra ethernet port might have caused me to make some interesting choices about what peripherals I connected to it, and I would definately needed the Compulab mini USB extender cables, which they don't currently sell via the UK reseller.

My networked HP PhotoSmart C7280 printer worked first time - I just ran 'sudo hp-setup' to set it all up, and installed the 'hplip-gui' package to get the pretty front-end. Xsane works with the in-built scanner and document feeder as well :-)

It works as an NTP server, but takes about 24hr to really settle down. It is not as stable as my 4801+FreeBSD+GPS server, but for a public NTP server on a broadband connection it is good enough.

I am having all sorts of fun getting USB storage to work, if I plug it direct into the PC it get recognized, then disconnected again. I have to plug it into the hub built into my monitor for it to be mounted correctly in Linux. Will try and borrow powered USB hub and see if it fixes things. Powered hub fitted 31/10/2009 - seems to have fixed things, looks like the USB ports on the FitPC2 may not have been able to handle all the high power devices I had.

Note I had to change the long thin USB cable that came with the hub (a Maplin A08CQ) to a shorter, fatter cable with a ferrite 'lump' on it before the PC would notice that the USB hub was connected. Also note that their web-page is wrong, my PSU is marked 3 Amps, not the 3.8 Amps that they advertise.
I have bought a CnM ultra slim external DVD drive. I got it running properly by using the powered hub (provided I plug the 'data' cable into the Fit PC, and the 'Power' into the hub).

I think I may have found a possible reason for the USB problems. According to fitpc2-sb-man.pdf the total available USB current is 1500 mA, and when i plugged the Asus monitor (3 port USB hub + webcam) into the powered USB hub, lsusb said it was drawing 500 mA ! Why the heck did Asus put a USB hub inside a monitor and not make it a powered one? Given that I also had a hub powered DVD drive and wireless keyboard/mouse plugged in, it was not suprising that the Fit PC was struggling. I don't even use the webcam, but there is no way of switching it off (but I have it covered in electrical tape).

I need to sort out if the Fit PC can boot from media attached to an external hub, or if they have to be connected directly, so I can prioritize my USB connections.

I have updated the BIOS to fix the phantom battery issue, but I still have not got the CPU temperature sensor to work, I can monitor the disk temperature via SMART tools if I need to (disc currently at 35 degrees).

The PC is currently working with Hyperthreading disabled in Linux (as delivered), apparently due to a problem with the GMA500 graphics driver, I don't know how much performance this is costing. Hyperthreading is enabled in the BIOS.

I need to try tweaking the BIOS settings, changing from Cstate to CV3 to try and improve reliability. DONE 26/10/2009 - now to see if machine runs any better.

I need to try and mount one of the broken disks from the old server, and try to retrieve any data I can get from it. I know file system is corrupt in /usr, and it was mounted using LVM and MD mirrored disks, so I do not know if it is going to be possible, but it might be possible to salvage /home with all my personal stuff and the old website on it. Also I also need to try and recover any usefull data from my dead Windows XP box. For some reason I have a lot of dead computers. I also always keep my old disks when I scrap my computers, so I need to go back and re-check them for forgotten stuff as well.

In the longer term, I want to replace the Hard-Disc with a SSD drive to improve performance, but I am waiting for prices to drop a bit. Question: will the performance of the SSD be better fitted inside the case (via the Fit PC's sata->ide bridge) or via the USB ports?

The HDMI -> DVI link to my monitor worked perfectly first time with no adjustment from me. The HDMI -> HDMI link to my SONY Bravia did not work at all, I have no idea yet who is 'at fault'.

I am having some performance issues playing back video, I had not realized the mess of problems there were with the GMA500 chipset under Linux. However things might be improving in the new year (or might not!). Also some interesting links on Charlie's Blog Part one, Part two

I got the very simple cgi sitemap generator going, which stops me having to update sitemap.xml by hand each time I update the site, and *only* publishes the pages that I want, and not every html file on the server. Here is the code which just needs editing per the comments at the top of the file. Also My sitelist.txt file, and My sitemap.xml file for reference if needed.

I can rip audio CD's at a reasonable speed (4x), but for some reason the MP3 encoding is running slower than I remembered on my previous machines (barely 1x). This is with 128Kbit MP3 files, I need to check and see if I have got one of the settings screwed up, as I have over 500 disks to re-rip. Currently using Grip + LAME.

Approx once every 4 weeks the machine freezes, it was not just when running Firefox. I managed to get a trace in the syslog. I have pasted it to the forum in case anyone can help.

I have installed a PHP accelerator and enabled compression in Apache to improve page load times. But I forgot that every time PHP gets updated, you have to re-compile and re-install Eacellerator. If you fail to do so then Apache fails to start. I have put together a simple shell script for next time that will stop me tearing my hair out, and called it 'updated-php-so-reinstall-eaccelerator.sh'. It would be nice if I could hook this into the PHP post-update script so it gets called automatically every time PHP gets updated? (long shot!)

If I ever get the time I need to re-visit my GPS code on my GPS page, I really need to bolt the back-end of my cvs2kml2 script onto the front-end of the mtkbabel program, but my perl-fu is weak at the moment. Or I might set up a chain of simple batch files instead. I have to be able to proccess .bin files as I have the ones I have been collecting on my trips during the last three years, that I cannot go back and re-do.

They say on the forum that Ubuntu 9.10 is now offically supported. But how does it perform compared to 8.04LTS? I will let others find this out first. Also is there an easy way to upgrade without full re-install?

Memo to self - if half the keystrokes from the wireless keyboard go missing, stick new batteries in, even though the 'low battery' LED has not lit up.

December 2009

It turned out that adding the last modified' date to the top of each page just took 2 trivial lines added to the php page head code. If you do a 'view source' on any of the main pages, you can see that all complicated html is generated by the head1.php and tail1.php files, leaving the html files as just the content you are reading. This also simplfies maintainance as all the menus and css are in one file. It also adds the date into the html header as well.

Gallery2 does not work properly for me on this machine, so I have now installed the latest Gallery3 Beta (not publishing this URL yet). I had problems with the watermarks looking ugly, then I installed Imagemagick and told Gallery to use it instead of GD and the watermarks now work :-)

I have hit a slight problem with uploading the pictures - most of them are in Olympus ODF (raw) format. I need to find some software to turn them into decent quality jpegs (in bulk). The files are approx 10 Mbyte each ...

I have updated the style of the links menu on the left side. I tried a javascript expanding menu for all of 12 hours and then turned it off again, it was not worth the 60 Kbyte per page overhead. I have also stripped out the icons and made the menu text-only, it makes things more readable and far faster to load on my phone. I have tweaked the css to get the menu to display ok in Internet Explorer, but ultimately I only really care about how the site works in Firefox.