Root Access

I'm from the pre-SATA era. Did laptop-harddrives switch over to using new connectors as well, or are they using the same types of connectors as they were during the "IDE hayday"?

Michael Frank

mostly they'll use SATA

Bob

IDE and other parallel connections are pretty much dead for modern data transfer

IQAndreas

4:18 AM

Aw, too bad. :(

I'm now a dinosaur; I'll just go drown myself in a pit of tar.

Psycogeek

until they come out with the parellel serial connection :-) where they 10X the speed with 10 serial transfers down a 40 pin line.

Bob

@Psycogeek interference would be killer

actually, they're kinda going in that direction now

Psycogeek

sure they will use serial data overlap backfeed , its a feature :-)

Bob

@IQAndreas I almost forgot, both usb3 and gbe actually have several parallel data pairs

but the cable standards/requirements become far stricter to control interference

IQAndreas

@Bob What about Fire Wire, did that technology die too while I was away?

allquixotic

4:28 AM

@IQAndreas the latest revisions of firewire are decent as far as transfer speeds; at least as good as USB 2.0, some better; but it's largely deprecated in favor of either USB 3.0, or Thunderbolt, on modern devices

in other words, the devices that used to push Firewire really hard -- Apple products, for instance -- are now Thunderbolt or USB 3.0

Thunderbolt is still mainly used with Macs even though it's eventually planned to be used in certain applications for "ordinary" PCs and laptops too.... the main problems are the cost of the equipment, and that very few devices can actually take advantage of that much speed

you can think of it this way: for a very long time, USB has been the most popular (by sheer number of units sold) in terms of devices supporting it, and computers supporting the host side of it; but there have been a number of "side shows" along the way that are less popular but fit niche needs

USB 2.0 is more or less deprecated in favor of USB 3.0, but it's still fundamentally USB, and I think USB (the latest revision thereof) will continue to be predominant -- although things like Firewire and now Thunderbolt will capture a small part of the side show for special needs

IQAndreas

@allquixotic Like with any technology. ;)

allquixotic

@IQAndreas why do you ask? looking to build a system?

Canadian Luke

Welcome @Ash

Ash

@CanadianLuke hi :)

Canadian Luke

I just wanted to sound like I was in here all along... I have no idea what people are talking about yet

IQAndreas

4:37 AM

@allquixotic My laptop (old, but faithful) is constantly running out of space on the harddrive (80 GB), and I'm tired of carrying an external harddrive wherever I go.

allquixotic

@IQAndreas heh, that's a fairly old laptop :)

Ash

@CanadianLuke :)

allquixotic

what are your use cases (what do you use the machine for)?

Bob

@IQAndreas I'm honestly surprised a Core2 Duo machine came with an 80 GB HDD.

IQAndreas

@allquixotic I'm hoping to buy a higher capacity harddrive, and I'm trying to figure out what will fit in it (and if they still even make drives with IDE connectors). And if I can find a drive with increased speed (will SSD work in mine?), all the better.

@Bob Should it have come with more, or less?

Bob

4:40 AM

@IQAndreas I would have expected more. Heck, for 2006... was SATA common then?

allquixotic

@IQAndreas for a machine so old, with 1 GB of RAM, I'd suggest looking into a new laptop

you'll have such an improved user experience, really...

IQAndreas

@allquixotic I upgraded to 4 GB not long after purchasing it.

Speed isn't an issue for me, I only use it for programming, and rarely play processor-intensive games.

allquixotic

@IQAndreas okay, but 4 GB today is like 256 MB in the time you're living in -- that is, really terrible

Bob

@allquixotic Not that bad.

allquixotic

especially for programming, with memory-intensive IDEs and all that

IQAndreas

4:41 AM

@allquixotic **cough** eclipse.

Bob

It's not great, and wouldn't be my first choice, but I can live with it.

allquixotic

@IQAndreas yeah

Bob

As long as Eclipse stays far far away.

o.O

> Windows® Tablet PC Edition

> 802.11a/b/g

Canadian Luke

Sexy! ~

Bob

Interesting to see a dual-band chip that doesn't support 802.11n

IQAndreas

4:44 AM

@Bob It came with XP, but I'm always in Ubuntu anyway.

allquixotic

hmm

@Bob does the Intel 965GM support SATA?

IQAndreas

@Bob It supports it, it just wasn't installed with an n card. I upgraded it to one quite a while back; found a good deal online.

allquixotic

odd that I don't even know

my old ThinkPad is a 965GM

Bob

@allquixotic ark doesn't know

@IQAndreas You're almost treating it like a desktop :P

And, no. It supports PCIe (or whatever interface they used for the wifi card).

I'm saying it's interesting to see a chip that supports dual-band but not n.

IQAndreas

@Bob This is why I don't buy MAC! media.beinglol.com/pictures/1476.jpg

allquixotic

4:46 AM

it appears the 965GM chipset supports SATA, but it's possible (I can't tell from the HP site) that his laptop has an IDE connector internally

@IQAndreas do you know whether your laptop's HDD is an IDE?

Bob

@allquixotic looks like the 965GM does support SATA

...toolate

IQAndreas

@allquixotic I can't find those details on the specs sheet. Is there any way of knowing without opening my machine up?

Michael Frank

@IQAndreas That would be more accurate if the switch in the Mac was set to off.

allquixotic

@IQAndreas running ubuntu?

lspci -nnvv should give it

(it'll tell us that the disk is mapped to such-and-such device, I think)

IQAndreas

@allquixotic Which controller should I paste the details for?

HackToHell

4:49 AM

Wheeee KSP doesn't crash if I use this forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/…

allquixotic

@IQAndreas everything

IQAndreas

gist.github.com/IQAndreas/b6205964a734476c8196

Bob

@allquixotic would that be affected by the AHCI toggle? <==

allquixotic

> IDE interface

IQAndreas

@allquixotic Shame, I'm guessing that limits my options considerably.

allquixotic

4:52 AM

@Bob could be, but it doesn't tell us the physical interface

Bob

only way to be sure would be to open it up

allquixotic

if his SATA controller is masquerading as a PATA controller (as set by the BIOS, which the ICH8 chipset could definitely do), lspci would tell us IDE

hmm, or look in the BIOS and see if it's set on IDE or AHCI

IQAndreas

@Bob Could there be more than one? (like in some desktops?)

allquixotic

@IQAndreas 965GM only has one disk controller. it's a mobile platform. it can support multiple disks, but there's one controller to save space

gen 8 chipset has that wonky IDE compatibility support feature

IQAndreas

@allquixotic I was thinking more like an IDE connector on the left side and the other connector on the right (since it was manufactured during an era "between" the two systems.)

Bob

4:54 AM

@IQAndreas that's not possible

you can't 'adapt' between PATA and SATA with a cable

the two are fundamentally different

'course, the combined SATA data + power cable on the HDD side is quite wide, about the same width as an IDE Cable

allquixotic

AH

try this: smartctl -a /dev/sda

we can look up the disk model number :D

Bob

Looks like this:

That's a pretty typical SATA connector for a laptop.

IQAndreas

@allquixotic smartctl is not installed on my system, but it recommends installing smartmontools. Yet, doing after doing so, the command is still not found.

Michael Frank

Couldn't we just take it out and eyeball it?

allquixotic

@IQAndreas you have to run it as root (or in sudo)

on my Debian Wheezy system it's /usr/sbin/smartctl provided by the smartmontools package

if you're running RHEL5, I quit

2

IQAndreas

4:59 AM

@allquixotic Is that an abbreviation for Red Hat? Or something else.

allquixotic

@IQAndreas yes, an extremely old version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux

what's your cat /etc/issue?

IQAndreas

@allquixotic Oddly enough, now smartmontools is installing.

@allquixotic I'm in Ubuntu if that's what you're asking.

allquixotic

I need a version :S 6.06 and 14.04 are like night and day

cat /etc/issue would've told me anyway

IQAndreas

@allquixotic Ah, right, 13.10.

allquixotic

that's fine

was just making sure you're not running some old crufty shit

IQAndreas

5:02 AM

I want to update to 14.04, but I'm running out of harddrive space, as mentioned earlier.

gist.github.com/IQAndreas/…

allquixotic

> Interface ATA 6

storage.toshiba.com/storagesolutions/archived-models/MK8009GAH/…

that's very IDE

you can find refurb or clearance IDE disks in that form factor in some circles I'm sure, but IDE is so outdated that you're not going to like the performance at all... I would really recommend upgrading to a modern computing platform.

depending on your budget and desired form factor, there are a lot of options available

IQAndreas

I feel like a patient in a doctor's office being told my options.

@allquixotic I'm already used to (and don't mind) the IDE speeds. Ubuntu boots in about 30 seconds, and that's fine by me.

Journeyman Geek

wait... IDE is quite over a decade old o0

IQAndreas

@JourneymanGeek I'm oldschool like that.

Bob

@JourneymanGeek SATA is over a decade old.

Journeyman Geek

5:07 AM

@IQAndreas: also pain in the butt to find spares for

@Bob: precisely

Louis

Hi all! I apologize for bad etiquette, but may I jump in and pose a question?

allquixotic

the largest HDD sold by Toshiba in that form factor (1.8" -- very unusual) is only 100 GB: storage.toshiba.com/storagesolutions/archived-models/mk1011gah

cc @IQAndreas ^^

Bob

PATA is over two decades old.

allquixotic

@Louis sure

Bob

Almost three now.

Journeyman Geek

5:08 AM

also sata pretending to be pata might be legacy mode

IQAndreas

@allquixotic Awww. :(

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: 1.8 is actually not that rare

@Louis: you just did

;p

IQAndreas

I'll have to find an old laptop and gut it.

allquixotic

@IQAndreas yeah, I'm pretty sure offerings from other vendors won't go much higher

you might be able to find one at 120 GB or so, but if you're wanting 300, 400, 500 GB, you're going to need to go SATA

and for that you're going to need a new system

Louis

@allquixotic Thanks
@JourneymanGeek ahh, whoops!

I've been trying out free VPNs to get around websites that block by region, and realized that all the while, my OneDrive has been syncing my OneDrive account over this VPN...

Journeyman Geek

5:09 AM

@allquixotic: I used to have a 250gb PATA drive somewhere

It never worked though

Louis

Should I disable OneDrive traffic while connected, or is there nothing to worry about?

allquixotic

@JourneymanGeek laptop form factor?

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: oh no

desktop.

my bad

IQAndreas

Thanks, you guys have been an immense help. :)

allquixotic

@Louis if bandwidth and performance are no object, don't worry about it :P if you care about having bandwidth available or you notice lag uploading files over the VPN, then you'd need to address that either by suspending OneDrive, or by routing it around the VPN (split tunneling)

Journeyman Geek

5:11 AM

@allquixotic: he might be worried about privacy

Louis

@allquixotic Not at all worried about bandwidth. These things are pretty fast. I'm worried about my files passing through some volunteer host

Bob

@JourneymanGeek pretty safe assumption that OD is encrypted in transit

allquixotic

@IQAndreas I don't know what your budget is, but a nice modern laptop with all you could need, with hardware tested to run on Ubuntu, is e.g. the System76 Gazelle Pro; look here

@Louis oh, it's free VPNs? well, you still shouldn't worry, in general, unless the SSL connection you're making to Microsoft is compromised (either now or in the future; in the future primarily is a concern if you aren't using Perfect Forward Secrecy) via something like Heartbleed

I know OneDrive does all its work over SSL/TLS, so your data is as secure/private as... well... as the crypto stack it's running on

which, as we learned in the Linux world recently, is not necessarily as good as we think it is

Bob

answers.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/wiki/sdfiles-sdperms/…

IQAndreas

@allquixotic A laptop designed with Ubuntu in mind? Beautiful (and saves a headache for those cases when finding working drivers becomes an issue)

Louis

5:14 AM

@allquixotic Okay, great. It uses the MS-SSTP protocol, just needed that reassurance. I guess I will hold off on that SU question about temporarilly disabling OneDrive :)

IQAndreas

@allquixotic I'm still stubbornly holding on until my laptop sighs its last breath, but thanks for the recommendation.

allquixotic

@IQAndreas yeah, the vendor will officially help you with any driver issues you might have, because they go to great pains to procure hardware that will work well and make sure Canonical commits to supporting it

Louis

Thank you for the ears, all.

allquixotic

@IQAndreas as you wish, but unless 20 - 40 GB of additional space is going to make a difference for you, you're still going to be lugging around an external hard drive

(or at least a USB thumb drive...)

@JourneymanGeek theoatmeal.com/comics/dog_paradox :D

Woov.

Journeyman Geek

lol

only some of this is true

IQAndreas

5:24 AM

@allquixotic Alas, you are right.

@allquixotic But I just had a thought, perhaps something like this can suffice for non-essential files: newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA3SD1879642

allquixotic

@IQAndreas good idea. they have them up to 64 GB. it's not a king's ransom, but for code, that should go a fairly long way I'd think

Bob

@allquixotic I'd be worried about reliability though.

allquixotic

'course, the 64 GB model is basically a microSD card with a USB-A adapter :P so perf expectations should be accordingly

Bob

Typically flash drives can't take that many writes.

allquixotic

@Bob yeah, def

ironically it will probably give his 4200rpm IDE HDD a run for its money :P

Journeyman Geek

5:32 AM

hmm

actually

allquixotic

With a C2D and 4 gigs of RAM, except for the Storage subsystem he's basically using a similar platform to what I had to use at work for like 1.5 years

Journeyman Geek

@IQAndreas: I do seem to recall there's a IDE SSD model that was floating around.

ASSUMING his system is ide

@Bob: I have one of those. I love it

allquixotic

It is IDE, at least that's the physical connection we know he has

IQAndreas

@Bob Which is exactly why it will be used for non-essential files. ;)

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic: c2ds are sata iirc

least both my R60 and R61 are

allquixotic

5:34 AM

@JourneymanGeek The 965GM platform supports both sata and IDE but his specific hdd is IDE so we know his laptop has an IDE connector

He posted his smartctl, I looked up the model number and found it's IDE

Journeyman Geek

There's a slightly odd chinese company called kingfast/kingspec

allquixotic

we don't know if the laptop also has a sata port

But I doubt it

Journeyman Geek

newegg.com/Product/…

About 80 quid for 64gb. NOT sure if it'll have a great performance improvement

They also seem to sell direct kingfast-ssd.com/consumer-grade-ssd/…

(I was considering this for an upgrade at one point, to an older system)

IQAndreas

@JourneymanGeek But is that only for desktops, or do they have laptop sized ones?

Journeyman Geek

@IQAndreas: the ones I linked are for laptops

allquixotic

5:40 AM

Sleepy time for me, night

Canadian Luke

@IQAndreas All the SSDs I've seen for consumers are 2.5" drives, so laptop or desktop

Journeyman Geek

And its probably slightly pricy cause its such an odd product

IQAndreas

@JourneymanGeek Tempting, that looks just what I'm looking for. But is it worth spending $120 for +40GB? I'll have to sleep on this one.

Journeyman Geek

@IQAndreas: naturally

IQAndreas

I can't thank you guys enough for the assistance. I spent an hour earlier on Newegg entirely lost; now things are clearer thanks to you.

Journeyman Geek

5:45 AM

I decided it wasn't, and you might be able to get it cheaper shopping around. And no, 120 dollars should get you a little more ;p

@IQAndreas: no problem

Lucky I was considering the same situation before ;p

IQAndreas

@JourneymanGeek I meant I'm at 80GB now, so if I buy the 120GB version, I'm basically spending $120 for an extra 40GB of space.

Journeyman Geek

@IQAndreas: yup, and potentially better read/write speeds, and better random access

IQAndreas

@JourneymanGeek How much better? Wouldn't it still be slow from having to go through a parallel connection?

Journeyman Geek

6:10 AM

Ide could handle up to 7200 rpm drives. You wouldn't get sata level performance but

Its still likely to be faster

HackToHell

6:33 AM

Cool ^_^ humblebundle.com/…

And google wallet is back in humblebundle

jokerdino

6:59 AM

@allquixotic what was that?

sammyg

7:21 AM

is it not possible to flip the start menu button and the order in which new program windows are added to the taskbar?

Sathya

@allquixotic ah, nice. I worked in Chennai for about 3 & half years

sammyg

so that the start button sits on the right? and the program windows open from right to left?

that would be the idea

maybe i can get that by switching to arabic windows... no?

hey look at this

i had no idea... it was like that... i would have expected that though

too bad i don't understand arabic

eh forget it, i'll just flip my screen over

Journeyman Geek

7:48 AM

rofl

looks like lots of people have done the reverse by accident

Oliver Salzburg

9:41 AM

Do any of you guys know what a MSDN Platforms subscription costs?

I called every reseller in Germany, and they didn't even know what I'm talking about

Bob

@OliverSalzburg What, the thing that costs twice as much in Au as it does in the US?

Journeyman Geek

;p

@Bob: isn't that everything?

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Surprisingly, no.

Hardware & other physical goods are often more like 10%-20% more. Sometimes the same.

And that makes sense now that the AUD is a bit lower...

Oliver Salzburg

@Bob All of their products do ;D

Bob

Online subscriptions and downloads though? Fuck off.

@OliverSalzburg Some pricing here: visualstudio.com/en-us/products/how-to-buy-vs

Oliver Salzburg

9:46 AM

It's the only subscription for which they didn't put a price on the site

@Bob Yeah, it's missing the one I want

Bob

@OliverSalzburg Looks like you get hit just as hard as we do :P

Oliver Salzburg

@Bob Yeah, compared to USD, the prices suck

Bob

@OliverSalzburg Uh oh:

> MSDN Platforms is available exclusively through Microsoft Volume Licensing.

Oliver Salzburg

Yeah

Oliver Salzburg

10:11 AM

Okay, just called 3 more resellers, none were able to help

HackToHell

10:47 AM

:O

Michael Frank

11:08 AM

Cleaning out the spare room and I found a box with three of these in it!

elotouch.com/Products/lcds/1515L/default.asp

Completely forget I had them.

Bob

@MichaelFrank 1024x768

!!no

ChatBot John Cavil

Michael Frank

@Bob Yea... :/

I was thinking maybe pair them up with RasPis and turn them into a semi-portable Artemis simulator

artemis.eochu.com

Bob

> for XP, 7 and 8

that aint running on the pi

Michael Frank

Ahh... nope.

allquixotic

12:07 PM

@Sathya the folks I know from TN are very serious and hard workers who i never see take a break, except for afternoon chai :P and they don't joke around a lot... someone else on my team from Delhi erupts in laughter almost every other statement ;p

@jokerdino that was "PLZ DOWNLOAD DAWNGATE N PLAY WITH ME D:"

Sathya

@allquixotic that about... is pretty much what I observed :p

allquixotic

I'm very used to a Tamil speaker's accent now, since I know like 8 of them, but one of them talks EXTREMELY fast (yes, fast even compared to a native English speaker!) and I can't always put together the words :D

@MichaelFrank nice :D I've seen that before somewhere in a youtube video but didn't realize what the software was behind it

wow, The Universim is going to just barely make the funding goal at this rate :O

they have $100k out of $320k to go and 10 days... it's almost 33% left

no one willing to pay more than $1350 individually tho :P

Bob

12:30 PM

@allquixotic :(

Michael Frank

12:42 PM

0

Q: CryptoLocker Ransomware. Can you recover files?

Today one of our PCs got infected with nasty CryptoLocker trojan crap. The PC was a Windows XP machine with up-to-date NOD32 a/v. As you probably know the virus encrypts your file with an 2048 bit RSA public key and only the bad guy has the private key. So... they ask for 1.16 BTC or 500 EUR as ...

Ouch.

Journeyman Geek

@allquixotic people complain to me about it all the time

Oliver Salzburg

> The PC was a Windows XP machine

Journeyman Geek

@MichaelFrank this is why I keep multiple, full system backups. And then back them up.

Oliver Salzburg

If it was still running XP, the data on it could not have been important :P

Journeyman Geek

@OliverSalzburg: meh, people keep legacy systems running longer than they should

Oliver Salzburg

12:45 PM

@JourneymanGeek I know they do, which leads to questions as the one above ;)

Journeyman Geek

@OliverSalzburg: I actually plan around hardware failure

Oliver Salzburg

If I have important data, I know better than to only have it on some workstation with an unsupported OS and without any backups

Heh, it was probably the computer of the boss

> I like XP, you're not touching my machine!!! I have important data on it!

Braiam

just me or the site is slow?

Oliver Salzburg

1:22 PM

@Braiam Seems fine here

But given that it uses a CDN...

Journeyman Geek

@OliverSalzburg: My dad's like that

allquixotic

@MichaelFrank that's terrifying

fortunately I have offsite backups at home and at work :D

Bob

> Linux magic

!!no

ChatBot John Cavil

Braiam

there it is the culprit!

Michael Kjörling

1:38 PM

@MichaelFrank Hey, at least that question is decent. The proposed duplicate is a lot worse.

> Is there any way of decrypting it as it very important files and i dont have a backup of these files.

allquixotic

security.stackexchange.com/search?q=cryptolocker

Journeyman Geek

@Braiam: Cloudflare has been slightly problematic.

new problem tho, and not as wierd as some of the other stuff we have seen

Braiam

@JourneymanGeek well.... cloudflare is blaming SU, tho :P

Journeyman Geek

11

Q: Meta.SU seems to be broken.... in multiple ways

I was originally going to post about an unrelated bug The posting page on MSU telling me I have no title or tags and not letting me do so. . I've tried changing the title, and adding more tags. I'm a little stumped. I'm currently on firefox 29.0 (with adblock plus and oneliner installed)...