Root Access

@JourneymanGeek I think the inverter failed. The old monitor keeps trying to start up, with a faint flicker and squeal noise each time, but never actually turns on.

Michael Frank

@allquixotic They just landed on earth... I knew it wouldn't be good from the first moment lol

Michael Frank

4:19 AM

@JourneymanGeek Is that an amp or a DAC of some kind?

Oh... It says it right there on the PCB.

Journeyman Geek

5:13 AM

@MichaelFrank: its the desktop headphone amp I have

its made by a company called SMSL. cost me ~45 dollars

Michael Frank

@allquixotic Just unlocked Varion :)

@JourneymanGeek Yea, I went to their website... It's all in Chinese :S

Journeyman Geek

lol

yeah, I hit it with google translate

Michael Frank

hmm... it's difficult to navigate with Firefox + Google Translate :/

keep getting pop ups

Journeyman Geek

lol

There's a reason its a small obscure chinese company ;p

Bob

5:31 AM

@JourneymanGeek local shop got some bulletproof black in. no hod available in aus though :( [yes I did post this in the comms room by mistake]

Journeyman Geek

yeah, I saw that ;p

Bob

apparently the local distributor can't source hod

anyway, now I have a proper bottle of waterproof ink :P

Ash

5:51 AM

strange : the package seems to be installed , but I can not start reditr , any ideas ?

`ash@mimas:~$ sudo apt-get install reditr
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
reditr is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
ash@mimas:~$ man reditr
No manual entry for reditr
ash@mimas:~$ reditr
bash: reditr: command not found
`

Bob

@Ash the executable name is probably different from the file name. google for a command to list the files in a package

Psycogeek

For all those times , when a person posts a question, they already know the answer, but just want to confirm youtube.com/…

Stargates Daniel being told by the "Anchient" Morgan La Fay "You have your answer i suggest you act on it".

And (if you happen to be the questioner) here is the perfect responce from daniel to youtube.com/watch?v=y7xNDJsFGzU the first :22seconds

Daniel responding with "I am getting sick of hidden clues and cryptic messages" And downvotes :-)

Ash

6:10 AM

@Bob I had the .deb file , turns out it was in: /opt/reditr/reditr_app

Erik

6:33 AM

Anyone seen this "bug" before: postimg.org/image/mceei9bg5

These empty Windows just popup

At one point it seemed like they were Excel processes, at least they went away closing down Excel tasks. But I'm not really sure.

Don't know what to Google for either, not finding anything related.

Win7.

Bob

@Erik: superuser.com/questions/69696/…

Erik

I like Process Explorer, but I'm (not this machine) on a restricted system, government.

Can't install that on the client computer or do the computer I remote from.

or do - or on

Bob

@Erik Then contact your admins and ask them to fix it. And/or get them to reimage your machine.

Erik

I'm the admin...

Bob

Then reimage your own machine.

Erik

6:47 AM

I can do a reimage of the client computer, but was hoping I didn't have to.

Bob

There are some things you can't troubleshoot without the appropriate tools.

Well, you could spend a bunch of time guessing. But not worth the trouble.

Erik

Like this one...

Bob

In your environment, you should be able to reimage relatively easily.

In a home environment, I'd prefer troubleshooting, because reimaging/reinstalling takes a lot of time with a lot of potential data loss.

Erik

That's true, this is a users computer I'm talking about though, not my own, and reimaging is disruptive to their work, so I try to avoid it.

Bob

@Erik Personally, I don't like reimaging. But you don't seem to have many options.

Erik

6:49 AM

Maybe there's some PowerShell tricks or scripts to identify the process?

Bob

The easy solution in less restrictive environments is to simply identify the culprit process and kill/fix/replace it.

Erik

Yup...

Bob

@Erik Sure. You could probably whip up something in a C# program and wrap it in PowerShell (oh hi @allquixotic) and use that.

But is it worth the time and effort?

Erik

Maybe if I could make something that could do other useful stuff as well...

Related stuff.

Bob

3

A: How to get list or enumerate all handles of unmanaged windows with same class and name

You probably need to call EnumWindows to enumerate ALL top-level windows. You'll have to use their window handles to get their titles and window class information. See http://www.pinvoke.net/default.aspx/user32/enumwindows.html for an example that does very close to what you're asking.

Erik

6:51 AM

Nice

Bob

leeholmes.com/blog/2009/01/19/powershell-pinvoke-walkthrough

Heck, I think I did this before for a codegolf -_-

Oh wait, that was a different thing

here's a ready-made one: powershell-knowhow.de/powershell/?p=321

Erik

Do you know if there's any PS3.0 in there? I'm on 2.....

oh that's c#

Bob

then hwnd => processid: social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/…

1

Q: Find process id by window's handle

i have a problem with getting a specific PID of a process, the problem with this process is that it's a hidden process, it's not showing on task manager / powershell, completely hidden. what i have do far is the main window handle of this process, the question is, how can i get the pid of it. ...

c#

Erik

ah nm, I need more coffe, I'll give it a whirl

Bob

@Erik gist.github.com/Elusive138/890f38bc36deecb821c9

give that a shot

do note that it finds a lot of invisible windows

Michael Frank

7:12 AM

@Bob This is good advice.

From my current job, there are many times where you could definitely fix the issue given enough time, but it's just easier and faster to say "Go work on another workstation, we'll rebuild your machine and let you know when it's ready".

Bob

There, updated to no longer find invisible windows

@Erik you can directly compile and run C# from PS - that's an entirely valid PS script you can copy and paste :P

@MichaelFrank depends if you have the luxury of easy reimaging

but I don't know of any place that would have policies that restrictive even towards their own admins, yet doesn't have an easy way to reimage

Michael Frank

@Bob I work at a place where I can't install applications I may need to fix an issue.

Erik

Hmm, how do I directly compile? Just run the script as a usual PS script?

Bob

@Erik it's just PS

The Add-Type command does the compilation for you

Erik

Ok, but I'm getting missing terminator "@

It's not missing

Bob

7:18 AM

note that there will be false positives - but at least it narrows it down

@Erik make sure you aren't copying line numbers? shrug

Michael Frank

"Your Amazon.com order of 2x "WD Green 2 TB Desktop Hard..." has shipped!" - w00t!

Bob

use the raw one: gist.githubusercontent.com/Elusive138/890f38bc36deecb821c9/raw/…

Erik

Hehe, did not copy line numbers.

Bob

@MichaelFrank Greens? :(

Michael Frank

@Bob What's wrong with greens? :X

Bob

7:20 AM

@MichaelFrank WD Green? Well, they're slow.

Whoops.

Fixed repeating entries - the list wasn't cleared.

Michael Frank

@Bob A guy at work is using them for the same thing I will be, and he said that Reds would have been better, but the price difference wasn't worth it.

Bob

@MichaelFrank At the very least get Blue/7200RPM...

Psycogeek

blacks are only ~20% faster than greens, and much faster when it comes to headhopping . Greens should have the idle changed immediataly if they sleep in the stupid 8seconds they used to sleep in. I always widile at them as soon as they come in, because not all controller connections support altering that.

Erik

Bob, ok, worked now, but the only output it gave was Explorer.exe...

Michael Frank

@Psycogeek They're going in a NAS that'll be used for Movies/TVShows as well as photo backup

Bob

7:36 AM

@Erik In that case, then, your problem windows do have a title. Or maybe they aren't top-level windows. Or they're otherwise bugged.

Anyway, remove the $_.WinTitle -eq "" -and check and try again, see if there's anything you don't recognise.

Or, y'know, give up and reimage the thing :P

Psycogeek

If you want to see the bigest complaints about greens being slow, it is usually Really freaking slow like waiting 3-5 seconds to get the data going again. All due to the thing going to sleep. People who control the sleep via the "firmware" are not likely to complain.

Erik

@Bob Hehe, worked now, give it a go on user's computer when the problem appears.

Bob

@Erik The whole point of the -eq "" is for it to only show processes that have windows with no titles. If you're testing on your own machine, that doesn't have a problem, it was working perfectly well

Erik

Yeah, I know :)

Now.

:P

Psycogeek

I am sure the genius who thought that 8seconds was a good timing to go back to sleep for the green drives, was only trying to get more "Energy Star" points, not IQ points.

Psycogeek

8:58 AM

superuser.com/questions/778811/engineering-whatsapp-group <--- uhh Whatdis with whatapp? Seems inapropriate to be asking for peoples numbers.

Journeyman Geek

9:10 AM

@Psycogeek vtc, comment

i'll nuke it when I get home

(Out sniffing out a place that had my odd shoe size)

Jesus Christ

9:33 AM

guys, how to open a new console window on windows, change the directory, and make it stay on the screen? I tried a .bat file with "chdir /d some_directory" but the window disappears after the command is done

oh, I've found it.

just type the commands one after another

my chdir was wrong parameter switch, sorry

Psycogeek

wacks jesus upside head :-)

CBenni

10:11 AM

why are literally all good dedi hosters in EU?

I was searching around for dedicated servers, 3+ GHz, sub 70$/mo. I found these: i.imgur.com/UdVg6vZ.png

germany, germany, germany, germany, germany (using Hetzner)

I literally dont get it.

Bob

10:23 AM

@CBenni s/literally/figuratively/

:P

@allquixotic ^

@CBenni btw, "3+ GHz" is meaningless

I can find you a Pentium 4 with that clock for something like $30/month. A laptop running a Haswell i3 or even a Haswell Pentium will outperform it by a factor of 5, at least.

Heck, a modern Atom is at least on par if not better.

If you want cheap, look out for the L5420 and L5520 ones. Facebook sold several datacentres worth of them a few years ago.

They're Nehalem-era. 5 years old now, and a little dated, but still decent for most uses of a budget dedi.

Certainly orders of magnitude better than a P4.

CBenni

ah right

yeah I was finding i7s

I am pretty sure those are decent (?)

hetzner.de/en/hosting/produkte_rootserver/ex40ssd was one of the ones I really liked

Bob

They're clocked at ~2 GHz, IIRC, and their main advantage is their multithreading performance (lots of cores), but they're still better than a P4 for single-threaded perf.

@CBenni They're not budget.

They're in that weird space of "not really cheap but not real server hardware either".

CBenni

mh

Bob

If you want cheap, get an older Xeon. If you want good, get a modern Xeon. If you really want excellent single-core/thread performance on a budget, then consider an i7.

CBenni

yeah, its supposed to be a game server

running 4-5 game servers, and some smaller stuff

Bob

10:30 AM

@CBenni Which game? Not all game servers are that CPU-intensive.

CBenni

Terraria

with 32 clients at least

on the top server

Bob

Heh. Map size?

Large maps are far more intensive :P

CBenni

Thing is, I feel like windows hosting is barely affordable. So we run mono... And mono isnt that great

yes, we run large maps

Bob

@CBenni Do you have a point of reference?

e.g. how well does it run on your own desktop?

CBenni

I currently run a 20$/mo DigitalOcean box and its enough for 1 server

Bob

10:31 AM

@CBenni Yea, mono perf is pretty shit compared to .NET in some areas

CBenni

avg 50% CPU+RAM usage, 100% peaks

so, we cannot run 2 on there - meaning, for 4 servers wed be at 80$/mo

Bob

I'm running a Terraria server on an L5520, but it's only had two players max at any time :P

CBenni

and theres no load balancing (if one server is very active, others wont)

so were looking for at least a quadcore with the speed of a slow i7 or fast i5

price tag, up to 70$/mo

24+ GB of ram would be nice, but we can deal with 16

Bob

@CBenni DigitalOcean seems very reluctant to release actual CPU models. Makes me suspicious.

> We use server-grade Intel Hexcore processors between 2.0 GHz and 3.0 GHz.

CBenni

yeah, their CPUs arent that fast

Bob

10:34 AM

@CBenni Note that a Nehalem i7 and Haswell i7 are again vastly different.

CBenni

@Bob, thats a problem im having, I never know HOW fast somethings gonna be

Bob

That's an empty Terraria server running a large world on L5520s.

CBenni

since core clock speed is usuall the other thing depicted (aside from the rather random CPU names), its hard to see

Bob

Wait, no, they're L5539s. Close enough, just more cores.

CBenni

2.2G RAM?

wat

Bob

10:36 AM

@CBenni Clock speed is useless with modern CPUs :\

@CBenni 48 GB on the box :D

CBenni

thats with 0 connected clients, I think

Bob

Actually, @CBenni, I invite you to run your 32-player one on my box for a few days and see how it performs :P

That'll give a real idea of performance.

CBenni

ram usage barely increases under load, only the CPU goes up

woah thats a crazy offer

well have to see about that

Again, from the fact that the DO droplet has been working, I have a general idea of what we need

Bob

@CBenni You're running with the sgen GC, that might be different.

CBenni

our peak users yesterday was 20 I think

Bob

10:37 AM

@CBenni Lemme know if you want to.

Oliver Salzburg

@Bob what the...

Bob

Based on your idle screenshot, though, the DO CPUs are a bit more powerful than mid-range Nehalem Xeons.

CBenni

yeah ill have to talk with someone. And were using sgen as a test, since pure mono would crash after a few hours

Bob

lol

CBenni

I want to see if sgen fixes that

Bob

10:38 AM

@OliverSalzburg Hm?

@CBenni I'm actually running a rather old version of mono.

Whatever Debian testing ships with.

The newer ones are supposed to be far better-performing.

CBenni

ah

Yeah bob, that makes sense, im using the most recent stable release

Mono JIT compiler version 3.2.8 (Debian 3.2.8+dfsg-4ubuntu1)

Bob

terraria@terraria:~$ mono --version
Mono JIT compiler version 3.0.6 (Debian 3.0.6+dfsg2-12)
Copyright (C) 2002-2012 Novell, Inc, Xamarin Inc and Contributors. www.mono-project.com
        TLS:           __thread
        SIGSEGV:       altstack
        Notifications: epoll
        Architecture:  amd64
        Disabled:      none
        Misc:          softdebug
        LLVM:          supported, not enabled.
        GC:            Included Boehm (with typed GC and Parallel Mark)

3.0 is about 2012

CBenni

mh ok

Bob

3.2 is supposed to be much better

but, yea, lemme know if you want to try this server out

it's sitting pretty much idle :P

CBenni

i.imgur.com/mN1LR3o.png and that would be cool, but ill have to talk to 0x33 first

hes the person im doing this for

Bob

10:41 AM

also, the terraria server has been running for over a week with no incidents (restarted to change world). I've run it for over a month before.

CBenni

Thats definitely interesting - our server crashed like... 4 times since yesterday

and it was in internal code, within mono itself

Bob

@CBenni You might be running into the address space limit under load

you're on i686. 32-bit.

CBenni

but we only have 2 GB RAM?

Bob

that means max 2 GB address space per process (3 GB if large image aware, not use how exactly that works on linux)

@CBenni that's address space, not physical RAM

CBenni

how can we run into space problems, doesnt 32 bit go up to like 3.8G?

ah. mh. How can I find out and/or fix it?

Bob

10:43 AM

@CBenni monitor its RAM usage? :P

CBenni

probably use a x64 system

Bob

if it goes above 2 GB, especially if above 3 GB, then that might be it

CBenni

mh. I will have to do that, but ive never seen the RAM usage go far above 1G

Bob

@CBenni :

terraria@terraria:~$ lscpu
Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                0
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 44
Stepping:              2
CPU MHz:               1600.000
BogoMIPS:              4266.83
Virtualization:        VT-x

CBenni

is there like some tool that logs RAM usage over time? id run that in the background

thats your server?

Bob

10:45 AM

There certainly is, but I don't know of any off the top of my head.

@CBenni Ya.

CBenni

I think that might run into problems with many connected clients. when we were like 20 people on the server, wed have an average of 60% CPU, but with 100% spikes every so often. I wouldnt like it if the server lags on every autosave

But that would have to be something we need to test

Additionally, the terraria client saves the resolved IP from domain names instead of the domain name you entered :/

Makes it hard to get people to switch servers all the time lol

Bob

based on the bogomips (an entirely inaccurate ballpark figure), this CPU is slightly weaker than the DO one you're on

@CBenni if you want to test on mine, you can one-to-one NAT it: debuntu.org/…

CBenni

lol. From what I see, that metric is completely irrellevant?

ah, thats cool

Bob

@CBenni it's pretty pointless, yea :P

@CBenni basically, for your testing you won't even need to tell the players that it's a different IP :)