page last modified: 21 Jan 2012 19:58

My Fit PC2 (2010)

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.

Current Log | Log for 2011 | Log for 2010 | Log for 2009

January 2010

I have banned the MSN Bot from the site. It was downloading all pages twice, the first time the compressed version, then seconds later the same page uncompressed. The other bots just download the compressed version. It was using more bandwidth than all the other other web spiders put together, and only delivering 1% of the total traffic (Google supplies 95% of all my visitors from search-engines). It looks like Microsoft writes search bots as poorly as its other software. I have also blocked Yahoo! slurp bot for the same reason - lots of web crawling, and no visitors.

I am trying to cure the problems with the web-page display on small screens - things may be look weird for a while.

Fixed the problem with the right-hand side of the page not wrapping on small screens, it was the <pre> </pre> tags around the MSN bot entry above. I have made the lines a lot shorter to cure it. Still cannot get the left side to wrap, except when I turn CSS off.

Moved KoLMafia from the XP box to this one. Biggest problem was working our which version of JRE to install. The only ongoing issue is the (known and expected) captitilization of the filenames in the scripts directory due to Java on the XP being filename case insensitve. The only application I now need the XP for now is Forte Agent (email). Once I can get Wine to work with Gmail I can give the laptop back to Mum.

Getting closer to a working Wine. With the latest Agent6, and Wine 1.1.37 I get an

err:secur32:SECUR32_initSchannelSP libgnutls not found, SSL connections will fail

error where previously there was no error message, but I have the libgnutls13 package installed. More head scratching ... Apparently I might need libgnutls26 which is not available on Ubuntu 8.04LTS.

Feburary 2010

I found a repository with libgnutls26, but cannot install on Ubuntu 8.04LTS due to version issues with some of its' dependent packages, so I tried compiling Wine from source to see if it could pick up what it wanted from libgnutls13-dev, but that did not work, I still get the same error. I looks like I will have to wait for Ubuntu 10.04LTS to be released (I have to be carefull which version of Ubuntu I install on this machine due to the video chipset on this machine, see notes further up the page).

DNS records tweaked. (anything).morgad.co.uk should now point here, not just www.morgad.co.uk.

I have buggered something up, 'host morgad.co.uk' works, 'host www.morgad.co.uk' has stopped working. I will wait till tommorrow to see if the DNS has sorted itself out.

'host www.morgad.co.uk' is now working again this morning, but 'host anything.morgad.co.uk' is not, even though I was told it would work. I will look into this next week.

The machine locked solid playing a video in mplayer, I had forgotten why I had set totem to be my default player. It also spontaneous rebooted last week when adding photos to gallery3. I suspect the GMA500 video drivers.

No incoming web or NTP traffic for a couple of hours - looks like my router threw a fit (outgoing connections were fine) a reboot of the router fixed things.

Not much to write here at the moment as I am putting most of my spare time designing and building a greenhouse for the garden.

March 2010

I have replaced the crappy R-Driver III USB Sata/IDE adaptor that I got cheap on Ebay, and which kept corrupting the data, with a a Maplin Combi HDD Dock (A12JY). It works much better, the power supply runs cooler and does not make nasty buzzing sounds. It will make back/archive of data to Sata disks a breeze when I have finished using it to pull the old data from all my IDE disks. It needs to sit beside the FitPC as it is a fraction too big to sit on top and would muck up the cooling.

April 2010

April is nearly over, and I have been mostly sorting out the garden and the kitchen, so nothing to write about in this blog. The only computer related stuff I have done is to install PowerTop. Following the recomensations it made I reduced the power consumption of mt FitPC from 14 watts to 12. Every little helps.

May 2010

It looks like official support for Ubuntu 10.04LTS on the FitPC might take a while, and if Intel jump straight from Xorg 1.6 to Xorg 1.8 for GMA500 support, 10.04 might have to be bypassed entirely.

June 2010

The Wireless network was not being used for much, so added one extra Cat5 port and went fully wired. Me not sitting 2 feet from a microwave transmitter = good.

Another couple of months, and I will give each year a seperate page on the site.

July 2010

Not much going on computer wise, but I hope to have the photo gallery going shortly, as Gallery3 is nearly released. Then you can see how bad I am at growing potatoes.

August 2010

I have now split the 2009 entries to their own page.

I sent off for a quote for a new Windows7 box to run Finereader10 on. I find it frustrating that the company I contacted has not replied yet, one week later. I am trying to use local computer suppliers, but they don't seem to want the business.

Trying to get this quote is becoming very frustrating, local dealer did not reply in 2 weeks, even after phone call. So contacted European headquarters, and another dealer contacted me within 1/2 an hour. Now a week after that and they have yet to supply a quote as well ... another week of this and I will name the companies concerned here so you can avoid them.

September 2010

If you decide to purchase a Petite Dehumidifier, and it has a GME GFP241DA power supply, make sure you keep the receipt and original box for when you need to return it for refund/replacement. Seems the power supplies tend to fail after a while (mine lasted 6 months). Now trying to find a replacement 9V 3A PSU.