Root Access

A hybrid drive, hybrid hard drive (HHD), or hybrid hard disk drive (H-HDD) is a type of large-buffer computer hard disk drive. It is different from standard hard drives in that it integrates a cache using non-volatile memory or even a small solid-state drive (SSD or SSH drive). Although the cache typically uses non-volatile flash memory, some drives use battery-backed volatile RAM (a hybrid RAM disk). The flash memory buffer can speed up repeated reads to the same location; a RAM buffer speeds both reads and writes, but must be written to backup storage before power is lost. History In...

Journeyman Geek

@iglvzx: i'm having a quiet week on SU as well, in general

not many questions i seem to be able to answer

unlike last month, which was truely epic.

iglvzx

@JourneymanGeek Yeah. Last month was very active from what I remember. Lot's of good questions and community effort.

Journeyman Geek

(that said, i don't really care THAT much about overall rep at this point, I just want badges. The lovely lovely badges ;p)

2

Bob

@JourneymanGeek You're well over the 'want-more-privileges' zone :P

Journeyman Geek

Ya ;p

iglvzx

4:57 AM

0

Q: Two Monitors to my laptop

I have two monitors and both supports only VGA. My laptop only have one VGA port. How can I connect both the monitors to the laptop? I tried VGA splitter but it is giving me only the clone but not working as extended monitor. Could you please let me know what options are there for me to make ...

^ Paul & Paul answered at about the same time

Having the same username would make comments confusing.

soandos

@iglvzx, well, so long as everyone knows that paul had the better answer :)

iglvzx

@soandos ...

lol

Paul

Paul's answer is definitely better.

iglvzx

There are more @Paul's than there are @Bob's :P

Paul

Heh. I remember when I first signed up and was surprised that the "Paul" userid hadn't been taken yet

Journeyman Geek

5:11 AM

this is why i have a long username

(and i figured there's be a lot of geeks here)

iglvzx

lol. As far as I know, I am the only "iglvzx" on the internet... <_<

Paul

I have a brother called iglvzx but he hasn't signed up to SU

iglvzx

@Paul Really?

Paul

Yes, my cat ran over the keyboard when my mum was completing his birth name registration

5

(in other words "no")

3

iglvzx

@Paul lol. Reminds me of a news story about a cat who drained a bank's funds by walking on the keyboard. Let me try to find it...

Couldn't find it. :( But I did find this! An Australian bank has apologized for issuing a credit card to a cat after its security aware owner decided to test the bank's identity security system.

Which lead me to this: Can I register my cat to vote?

studiohack

5:25 AM

@iglvzx d-o-n-e! :P

iglvzx

@studiohack Hmm... My request was before the question was cleaned up. Do you think it is still a bad question?

Bob

8:19 AM

@iglvzx ?

Journeyman Geek

8:41 AM

meta.superuser.com/questions/5116/… He does realise there's other mechanisms in place for voting to close right?

Sathya

@JourneymanGeek someone do a tl;dr for me

Journeyman Geek

@Sathya: Bon gart thinks we need to remove the counter next to vote to close so that people don't vote to close cause someone else did

Sathya

hmm

think I saw something on Meta Stack Overflow about the same

Journeyman Geek

I think he's convinced there's a high rep cabal ;)

Sathya

@JourneymanGeek yeah, so I gather

HaydnWVN

8:51 AM

Sathya worshippers? :D

4

Q: Troubleshooting Website problems within the local network

Have an external website which opens fine on some PC's, yet seems to time out (or symptoms of timing out, but never actually does) on others. Seems to only affect (some) of our newer HP Pro 3305 MT Workstations. All of which are running Win7 32bit SP1 with all updates. Older PC's (Win7 32bit SP1...

networking windows-7 website internet

ROFL @ my 'fix' - using the hosts file to redirect the page to a web proxy version of the site :/

for some reason that's killing our (already poor) bandwidth :(

Journeyman Geek

@HaydnWVN: LOLKULT.

Sathya

@HaydnWVN whatever works ;p

Journeyman Geek

You need to make offerings of cheeseburgers to the ceiling cat, or he will strike you down with his pawswat of wrath.

3

HaydnWVN

@JourneymanGeek +<:o)

Sathya

[citation needed] — Sathya 8 secs ago

Bob

9:06 AM

@HaydnWVN Still not working?

How about PuTTY in raw mode, port 80, send the following:

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.rhs.org.uk

(empty line after it)

That should be a basic working request, if that fails...

@Bob two empty lines*

HaydnWVN

@Bob I've only come back to it this morning after troubleshooting it on friday... I'll try PuTTy shortly, all affected machines are in use until around lunchtime

Bob

Well, if that fails, can I say the site hates those machines? :P

Perhaps try @whoeversuggestedit's idea of swapping the (internal) IP/physical port with a working machine?

Sathya

only thing that's more painful than using Visio to do some sequence diagrams is to do the diagrams via Remote Desktop through a VPN. Ugh.

Tweeted by SathyaBhat on July 9, 2012 at 9:01 AM

jokerdino

No, programming using Perl.

Bob

Visio... shudders

It's nice for basic stuff, but sometimes I wonder if it might be easier to use MS Paint...

@jokerdino How about Lisp?

jokerdino

9:18 AM

Lisp is a hack of Perl.

Bob

Wait, didn't Lisp come first?

eh

:P

I need to go learn an esoteric programming language sometime

jokerdino

9:21 AM

superuser.com/q/446585/104400 - Hmm

Write some answer even if you don't know for sure.

Sathya

@jokerdino askubuntu.com/suggested-edits/14799

jokerdino

that question sucks. Boo

i didn't even want to edit it

so, thanks for doing that for me.

Sathya

@jokerdino unregistered user + using Cyber cafe == poof season coming

jokerdino

hmm right.

we really need a garbage collector =)

Sathya

9:43 AM

-1

Q: Just Got ubutnu 12.04 and laggin OD {help plz]

IT's sorta laggy. Anyone help? :/ I have WIndows 7 as my other OS and it goes fast.

o.O

facekeyboard

I never knew about the Ctrl + F4 shortcut in Firefox (close tab)

@Sathya ...

jokerdino

@Sathya face-freaking-palm

Bob

I feel embarrassed to share a first/user name with him...

3

jokerdino

9:44 AM

@Bob Fail.

Bob

@jokerdino Hey, I use Ctrl + W normally...

jokerdino

Ctrl-Q is too close. So, I avoid that

Bob

@jokerdino What does that do?

Sathya

Ctrl+W here too,

jokerdino

@Bob Close your browser altogether

Bob

9:45 AM

@jokerdino Does nothing here :P

jokerdino

@Sathya Hmm right. I also tend to close tabs instead of refreshing.

@Bob maybe it's a linux thing :/

Bob

Probably... it doesn't work in safe mode either, so it's not one of my addons blocking it

jokerdino

forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=861 hmm

Bob

Wait, it does :P

jokerdino

So what just happened?

heh :P

Bob

9:51 AM

ouch

No warning? o.O

jokerdino

if you have multiple windows yes.

now you know why i don't use ctrl-W

Sathya

dare I try?

Bob

Wait, it didn't warn

wtf

Sathya

no, not with my VPN connection on

jokerdino

@Bob oops. apparently it doesn't

Bob

9:53 AM

@Sathya Ctrl+Q seems safe :P

Sathya

I use Chrome, soo...

Bob

@jokerdino Only if you click the close button with the mouse, apparently :\

jokerdino

@Bob :/

Bob

@Sathya Chrome doesn't obey that in Windows (for me)

Sathya

in Ask Ubuntu General Room, 24 secs ago, by gcc

I have one mdvr. I want install kernel. How can I do that ?

gcc is asking how to install Kernel. Yes.

Bob

9:54 AM

@Sathya mdvr?

jokerdino

@Sathya hehehe

Sathya

@Bob I have no freaking clue what that is.. though

jokerdino

remote control (From Google)

Sathya

superuser.com/questions/446628/…

8 downvotes yet only 4 spam flags

jokerdino

i flagged it

Bob

9:55 AM

@Sathya can't see

jokerdino

but still not enough

Bob

but I can guess :P

o.O

0

A: Raspberry PI without OS on it?

What they all said, but, the EASIEST path is to run a Linux distro that does what you want and is as minimalist as possible, and then strip off anything that you don't want. Fairly soon it will stop being Linux and become a bootloader with SD & HDMI support. That is essentially indistinguis...

Wait, strip parts off a Linux distro so it is no longer Linux?

Going through old Firefox questions :D

So much has changed since they were first answered

Hm

@Sathya Should we flag to migrate old closed questions?

jokerdino

don't.

Sathya

no

Bob

:\

Well this particular one seems very relevant to webapps (closed as off topic here)

meh

Oliver Salzburg

10:04 AM

Yay. I'm back on the first page! :D

jokerdino

@OliverSalzburg gratz

Oliver Salzburg

The world is balanced again :P

Well, I was on the first page where it counts the whole time anyway ;D

jokerdino

I feel so bored.

Sathya

@jokerdino I'll give you my job, do it.

:P

Oliver Salzburg

Bored?

jokerdino

10:08 AM

@Sathya hehe :P i have no idea about SQL.

Oliver Salzburg

Being bored is always an opportunity to try a new thing.

jokerdino

@OliverSalzburg Point. But I don't exactly know what.

Sathya

@jokerdino sql.learncodethehardway.org

jokerdino

Right. May be I'll give it a try this time then.

Bob

Which way should these dupes be closed/merged? superuser.com/questions/9986/bypass-googles-tracking-links superuser.com/questions/445222/…

old [closed] => new or new [closed] => old? :P

Oliver Salzburg

10:19 AM

The fragility of Windows really amazes my sometimes. I just had to hard-reset my system due to a freeze initiated by unplugging my USB headphones.

I'll never do that again I guess :P

Bob

o.O

never happened to me before

You probably just had really bad timing :P

HaydnWVN

@Bob regarding the simple HTTP request in PuTTy... Any tips as my session closes before i have enough time to perford the steps :/

Bob

@HaydnWVN Are you using raw mode?

HaydnWVN

yup

*perform

Bob

> Some network routers and firewalls need to keep track of all connections through them. Usually, these firewalls will assume a connection is dead if no data is transferred in either direction after a certain time interval. This can cause PuTTY sessions to be unexpectedly closed by the firewall if no traffic is seen in the session for some time.

HaydnWVN

10:24 AM

@OliverSalzburg urgh, USB... double-URGH USB Headphones :P

Bob

the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.58/htmldoc/…

I usually have 5-10 seconds before it closes :P

HaydnWVN

thx

Bob

Either type fast or write it all out in Notepad, copy it, connect PuTTY, right click (paste) and hit enter two-three times?

I don't think keepalives would work for raw mode - the "application level" ones don't and the TCP ones are too infrequent

jokerdino

oops, wrong room.

tombull89

@OliverSalzburg I unplugged a laptop yesterday from it's power supply and the machine bluescreened on me...

Bob

10:28 AM

Eh, you're all unplugging things

Nothing's beaten my Shift+T in Notepad = BSoD yet! :P

HaydnWVN

most of my users BSOD and when asked reply "i didn't touch anything" ;)

@Bob setting TCP to 2 seconds seems to keep it alive for about 8 seconds... Long enough to see the reply anyways, i'll try it from one of the 'broken' PC's shortly

Oliver Salzburg

@tombull89 :D

Sathya

-1

Q: Wierd "!" marks in my python generated HTML

I have a python script that generated a report. It works otherwise fine except there are wired ! marks in the output html especially inside the hrefs causing them to break and sometimes in the td tags breaking my table. Can someone suggest what the problem might be. Thanks

python

HaydnWVN

Weird way to spell weird...

Sathya

10:45 AM

@HaydnWVN ther's a 'wired' in there too

Bob

@HaydnWVN It does happen!

Oliver Salzburg

@HaydnWVN What's wrong about USB headphones? I really like mine :D

HaydnWVN

@OliverSalzburg I've never been a fan of USB 'virtual'/software drivers for things which really should be hardware ;)

i'm old, i'd rather save my processes for actual applications :P

Oliver Salzburg

@HaydnWVN Heheh, I actually intentionally bought some with a "built-in sound device" back then, because I had issues with my onboard one.

The worst thing about these is, they put a blinking blue LED right into the "remote control" on the cable.

Which is always right in your face.

Bob

@OliverSalzburg Mine has the light a good half metre down the cable :P

How close is "right in your face"?

Oliver Salzburg

11:00 AM

@Bob When I wear them, the remote is at lap-height.

Close enough so you always see the LED.

I modified mine and glued a piece of black felt over the part where the LED shines through.

But this one is powerful, you still see it through the openings on the sides :P

I'll get pictures some time ;D

HaydnWVN

Glued felt? Sounds like overkill! Just use electrical tape ;)

Bob

@OliverSalzburg Is it that annoying? :P

Oliver Salzburg

@Bob It's intense.

Bob

Mine is hidden by the keyboard tray, if it's even in a position to be visible :P

Journeyman Geek

there is no such thing as overkill

favours blu tac for that

@HaydnWVN: I use a USB sound card for listening to music ;p

Oliver Salzburg

11:10 AM

@Bob I'll make pictures in the dark later today ;D

HaydnWVN

Ewwww i've had the pleasure of trying to remove heated blutac from carpets/clothing... Its painful! I steer clear of it now ;)

@OliverSalzburg People pay good money to add 'footwell lighting' in cars ;)

Oliver Salzburg

@HaydnWVN :D

HaydnWVN

i'm trying to find more resources/info on redirecting www requests via the hosts file, namely actual page requests rather than TLD DNS style ones... Drawing a blank :(

Bob

@HaydnWVN Not via hosts...

Did the PuTTY request work?

HaydnWVN

11:25 AM

waiting for user to go on lunch

Bob

lol

What's the time?

HaydnWVN

12:26 here

lunchtime is 13:00, can't see why users can't go for lunch earlier when i'm trying to fix something GRR

Bob

@OliverSalzburg Phone camera, horrible in low light conditions: i.imgur.com/PvbQA.jpg

:P

@HaydnWVN lol

Weirdest bug in a while, though

HaydnWVN

@Bob that looks about as good as my 3GS' camera lol

Boris_yo

11:41 AM

Sup ppl?

Bob

@Bob This is with some light: i.imgur.com/vaZX7.jpg

@HaydnWVN it's a SII, which stupidly insists on trying (and failing) to autofocus.

If I could manually focus, it would be so much better :P

HaydnWVN

Same with most 'smartphones', not to mention most 'point n click' cameras... Talk about painful!

Bob

@HaydnWVN Hey, when I turned off autofocus on my N8, it actually didn't try to autofocus! :P

HaydnWVN

Nokia for you... Bring back Nokia!

the camera on the N95 is still better than the iphone 4S

Bob

lol

How about the 808?

Pity they aren't releasing it in Australia (hint hint Nokia!)

iPhone cameras have always lagged behind :\

HaydnWVN

12:19 PM

yeah and nokia's were always awesome, so were sony erricsons for that matter

just tried PuTTy HTTP request on a problem PC... Nothing, no response at all, no error either

Bob

:S

ok

definitely not browser related (but we kinda guessed) :P

you can ping fine...

:\

Tried swapping cables/IPs yet?

And perhaps a different OS (e.g. live CD)?

The first should rule out router issues, the second OS issues

HaydnWVN

think my next step is a live CD followed by a NIC change

tried cables and IP's

Bob

If none of those work, maybe try physically moving the computer? xD

HaydnWVN

it's weird as these affected PC's have no problems with anything else local/internet browsing that i'm aware of

just this 1 site lol :o

Bob

And if that works, well... uhm... I don't know what to say.

HaydnWVN

12:29 PM

lol, shouldn't but i'm willing to try anything at this stage

the only pattern is the age, make and model of the PC's

Bob

But... but... :P

HaydnWVN

it's so odd and totally crazy i've got to get to the bottom of it

lol

Bob

There's no way anything running in a web browser should be aware of that... unless there's a rogue Java applet or something :P

HaydnWVN

i've got a 'fix' (ie direct a favourite for the website to a web proxy version of the site) but its not a solution as such

rhs.org.uk

see anything on there that you would call a cause?

lots of javascript

but nothing else i can spot

Bob

JS has nothing to do with no response to a GET

In fact, nothing on the page should influence it

There was absolutely no response. I'd think some sort of routing issue, but...

HaydnWVN

12:37 PM

but a ping and tracert go through ok lol

Bob

so something wrong with TCP packets?

HaydnWVN

certainly a possibility

but why only to that 1 website? :P

surely the PC's would have all sorts of other problems, not just with websites

Bob

no idea...

HaydnWVN

its a bizzare one thats for sure

Bob

better if you can isolate it to the OS, the network (NIC - wtf?) or neither (the other hardware - wtf‽)

my bets are on OS if you've done the IP/cable switch already

I'll be back in an hour

HaydnWVN

12:41 PM

yeah exactly, thankfully each is relatively easy to try

Bob

wait, are you using an onboard NIC?

HaydnWVN

yup

Bob

you can't exactly swap that out :P

HaydnWVN

can disable it and throw a PCI card in ;)

erk... providing they're got a PCI slot :O

Bob

lol

if they have PCIe

They probably have PCI

HaydnWVN

12:44 PM

fingers crossed :P

cya in a bit

Bob

of (decently sized) (relatively) recent desktop computers/motherboards, I've only seen those with AGP slots that don't have PCI

cya

Oliver Salzburg

12:55 PM

Great :D

jokerdino

Better than most fork bombs xD

HackToHell

Today tried a fork bomb in my school's dell optiplex server

Server held out for 5 mins :P

Sathya

1:10 PM

@OliverSalzburg O_o

HackToHell

6

A: Video-editing software for Windows 7

For the FOSS (Free and Open Source) side, I am investigating (in order of most promising to least): Lightworks [10.04 beta] (Windows, Mac, Linux) Fancy, high-tech and has 33 AlternativeTo likes. It will truly be Open Source in about a year, IIRC. Lightworks is an Oscar and Emmy award winn...

Nice collection

HaydnWVN

@Bob seen/used 'Firebug' - might be handy for exactly what's happening with the HTTP request

HackToHell

Aarg threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/…

Bob

1:34 PM

@HaydnWVN It's not getting a reply - Firebug can't show you any more than Fiddler

@HackToHell You think that might be causing it?

@OliverSalzburg There was this great little program for opening massive text files :P

Here it is, the site has since gone down :\

I haven't used it in a while :P

Of course, the SO question (!) on this does list UltraEdit as a possibility, so just how freakin' big is that?

HaydnWVN

2:25 PM

@Bob Uninstalled all security software, installed new NIC, disabled old and its STILL doing it

live cd next

Bob

@HaydnWVN One last thing to try, eh? :P

Journeyman Geek

whoot

first >100 daily rep this week

Oliver Salzburg

2:41 PM

@Bob UE is usually fine. I just inserted a BOM in the hex edit view and then switched back to the text view. Fun :)

Bob

@OliverSalzburg o.O

HaydnWVN

@Bob Linux live CD and 'mini win xp' both WORK

Bob

I actually don't have anything capable of opening large files at the moment :P

@HaydnWVN :D

Oliver Salzburg

I had an issue with double-UTF8-encoded data in a database and was playing around with a few ideas to fix it :)

Bob

i.e. Windows (the installed version) died

Oliver Salzburg

2:42 PM

2

A: How to correct double-encoded UTF-8 strings sitting in MySQL utf8_general_ci fields?

I tried the posted solutions, but my DB kept spitting up errors. Eventually I stumbled upon the following solution (in a forum I believe, but I can't remember where): UPDATE table_name SET col_name = CONVERT(CONVERT(CONVERT(col_name USING latin1) USING binary) USING utf8); and it worked a trea...

Bob

@HaydnWVN Perhaps some dodgy OEM software (considering same purchase date)?

Oliver Salzburg

This is the solution that worked best in the end

Bob

@OliverSalzburg Double encoded?

HaydnWVN

@Bob I can't find anything really, they're HP workstations with HP drivers, all upto date

Bob

:S

And yet, even a basic HTTP GET fails

HaydnWVN

2:44 PM

@Bob yup!

about giving up for now, gonna get the users to use a web proxy for that site, will bear it in mind (if/when) i have to reinstall one of the PC's that i check it afterwards for it possibly being some kind of deployment issue

Bob

can you try a GET / HTTP/1.1 without the Host: line?

It should return a 403 error page (well, the HTML of that page)

Also try a HEAD