Root Access

> There’s also not much value to be found in budget power supplies. Solid 500 watt units start at around $40, and few reliable entries can be had for less than $30. While the Everyday Machine could technically be served by a 300-watt supply from Seasonic, your savings would barely buy dinner for two at McDonalds.

(Everyday Machine: Core i3-6100 Skylake 2C/4T @ 3.7 GHz, MSI B150M Pro-VD motherboard, 8 GB DDR4-2133 memory, 250GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO. No discrete graphics card.)

Journeyman Geek

@bwDraco depends on what you do every day

bwDraco

See linked article.

Journeyman Geek

That feels like a funny in between machine which would benefit froma graphics card

If i wanted to build a basic basic web + word processing machine, skylake is overkill

I'd go for a cherry trail platform system

bwDraco

That particular MSI board is designed for office PC builds.

Journeyman Geek

2:07 AM

I'm of the opinion that for 'basic' office builds you don't need that much power.

bwDraco

The build as designed isn't even going to break 100 W under load.

qasdfdsaq

Thats ignoring the whole point of lower power supplies, namely money saved from lower power consumption.

bwDraco

Processor's rated for 51 W, but that's pretty much it.

Memory probably accounts for ~5 W, and the SSD and other parts aren't even going to push 20 W.

Journeyman Geek

I seem to be under the opinion that the sweet spot for 80+ bronze or better is 50-80% load for most efficiency

and blah, the system I'm using as a server is discounted on amazon and thanks to the discount, cheaper than what I paid I suspect

amazon.com/ASRock-Beebox-BEEBOX-N3150-2G32SW10-US/dp/B01717UM2K/… upgraded to 8gb of ram is what I'd use as a 'basic' office box

bwDraco

Day-to-day power consumption is going to be around 30-50 W, and idle power would hover around 15 W.

Journeyman Geek

2:12 AM

2gb of ram is too little - that thing will hold up to 16. OS's included on a little emmc, but you can throw in msata or a regular drive

(I'm using one as a home server)

bwDraco

In fact, I'd probably build around a Pentium G4400 (Skylake 2C/2T @ 3.3 GHz) and shave another $60 from the build (though it will be noticeably slower for tasks like rendering big web pages).

Definitely won't drop to 4 GB of memory, though, as that would measurably hurt performance while only saving $15-20.

Journeyman Geek

8GB feels like the sweet spot

bwDraco

There is very little to be saved (<$5) by dropping to an H110 board, but you'd lose a lot of features.

Not much that can be taken out at this point without crippling the user experience.

Journeyman Geek

2:41 AM

and... another part of my headphones broke.

Reinforced with cloth and epoxy

bwDraco

3:00 AM

...and I'd probably pick this PSU: newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438053

Perfect 10 from JonnyGURU.

Ripple, in particular, is virtually undetectable.

Adds a bit to the build but would prefer efficiency in a build of this sort.

Bob

3:27 AM

@JourneymanGeek ...is it just slowly disintegrating?

Journeyman Geek

Other than the cups and the cable?

Yes

wierdly those are the things that usually fail earlier

Bob

4:35 AM

@JourneymanGeek They're the failing parts on mine :P

I just found some epoxy at Daiso... o.O

Journeyman Geek

yup

Daiso has everything!

Except the things they don't

Bob

@JourneymanGeek I've found that the 3M Micropore tape (technically, paper bandage) is great at temporarily holding headphones together :P

It's got a bit of stretch to it.

Journeyman Geek

At this rate my headphones are ~~more machine than man~~ held together by epoxy

TWO more breaks and I'm buying a new one

Bob

@JourneymanGeek Two? o.O

Journeyman Geek

two

Bob

4:49 AM

You're gonna run out of headphone to break at this rate.

Journeyman Geek

That's the whole idea

Bob

lol

might as well preemptively epoxy the thing

Journeyman Geek

I'm considering this

Bob

I have a new pair sitting in the cupboard... maybe I should get that one out?

Journeyman Geek

;p

Bob

4:51 AM

(getting tired of dealing with the dodgy buttons)

Journeyman Geek

meh

I probably will order a new one once repairing this stops being fun.

Bob

lol

@JourneymanGeek I had 'fun' gluing my phone case back together and it kinda worked but looked ugly as sin

ended up buying a new one

...and then not using it cause my phone feels better without a case -_-

Journeyman Geek

sounds right

and I can reuse the cable and some other parts

bwDraco

5:07 AM

I'm completely out of the loop when it comes to datacenter tech. Hyperconverged infrastructure is one of those new things I just looked up.

Can someone with DC experience give me a primer with all this newfangled tech?

"Hyperconvergence"

"Hyperscale"

"Big Data"

"Software-defined [storage | networking]"

"[Infrastructure | Platform | Software] as a service"

I just don't get it.

I simply don't understand the trends in today's IT world.

I'm not an IT pro and I need a place to get started.

I want to make sure I at least have a basic understanding of the latest datacenter technologies so that I have a better shot at getting an IT job.

Go away, Clippy!

Any good freely-available documents or articles out there that explain all this stuff?

It seems we're going through an age of massive change as Big Data takes off and the world becomes increasingly mobile.

Michael Frank

5:28 AM

@bwDraco Big Data isn't really taking off... It's just what happens when Data grows. Eventually it'll just be called Data again. Or perhaps Bigger Data?

sas.com/en_us/insights/big-data/what-is-big-data.html - SAS are probably a good example of what Big Data is/does though.

Journeyman Geek

5:43 AM

@bwDraco protip. Most of these mean nothing

2

Bob

5:57 AM

lol

s/DC/marketing/

bwDraco

@Bob In the future (when the chatbot is operational again), feel free to actually use the !! s command.

Journeyman Geek

6:11 AM

bwDraco

Sep 5 '15 at 3:48, by DragonLord

I've experimented with wake-up times as early as 4:45am in the past (because top CEOs often wake up 6am or earlier), but could not get consistent results.

I will be trying again in a few days, schedule permitting.

See ya, gotta get to bed.

Journeyman Geek

lol

I overslept today!

bwDraco

5:30 AM target.

theguardian.com/money/2013/apr/01/what-time-ceos-start-day

My schedule is very empty and unstructured for the time being but expect it to fill up over the coming weeks and months.

Most of these CEOs start cleanly right at the time, no snoozing.

See ya soon. Guess I'll be getting four hours of sleep tonight...

(Setting alarms for 5:20 and 5:45.)

Psycogeek

@bwDraco hypewords :-) in 20 years the new versions of the similar things, will have to be called super gamma universal hyperscale elite.

bwDraco

Like I said, I want to be out of bed by 5:30 tomorrow, 6:00 at the very latest.

I'm going from night owl to early bird.

To the community: I will be attempting to wake up at much earlier times than I have been for the last several months. I may be very grumpy over the coming days and weeks as I transition to the new schedule, so please be gentle towards me. Thanks.

jokerdino

6:30 AM

It's OK.

Bob

@bwDraco I tend not to anyway. Saying s// in chat expresses my intentions clearly enough without cluttering it up.

> C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off.

blog.codinghorror.com/is-your-computer-stable

Faheem Mitha

6:54 AM

@JourneymanGeek Ah, ok.

@JourneymanGeek Need to look at what?

Journeyman Geek

letsencrypt

Faheem Mitha

@JourneymanGeek Ah, ok.

Bob

8:17 AM

we have a 2.8m hole in the back yard...

Dave

8:39 AM

Morning. Moab has a high rep (and so I usually just believe people like this), but has made a comment which makes me think my understanding is wrong. Can some one clarify, are we allowed to reply with software recommendations (it's just asking is a no no) as this seems to be a grey area - superuser.com/questions/1041092/… (see his comment on the only posted answer)

Burgi

morning

i think his point is that answering only encourages the asking

Journeyman Geek

@Dave asking for software is OT. Answering with software as part of a solution is not.

2

Burgi

its still a low quality answer IMHO, the answerer should expand on why those two packages above everything else

Dave

Thanks :)

Oh yes @Burgi, I agree with that :)

Burgi

i wish we had flexitime i'd work 11-8 quite happily

Dave

8:51 AM

We kinda do here, so I do 8 - 4 (I'm happy to work in the day, I'm just not happy to sit in traffic during rush hour)

And we remote in a lot

The only good thing about remoting in is saving petrol money. It's quite hard to work though as the environment does make a difference

Or I'm just not disciplined enough

Burgi

agreed, i could never work remotely

i'd be playing games instead of working

Dave

But, at my last job, they provided standard RDP access so I could use all my computer monitors. Where I am now, we have to go via some poxy java app which launches from the browser and is limited to the 1 window

That makes it hard... I have 3 monitors and used to using 3, so going to 2 is bad enough ha ha ha

Burgi

lol we have a similar thing

Dave

And my understanding is Java has been known to have security issues! So I'm surprised it's the path they take but those IT folks are normally bright and have reasons so I don't argue with them

So what do you do Burgi

Burgi

my dev PC isn't even on the domain so i have to do crazy things like transfer my docs to google drive to transfer them from the VDI to my local machine

Dave

8:56 AM

Well, today, the security part of our domain is down.. so we can't access much

Burgi

i'm a web dev but somehow i've become the sharepoint administrator :(

i think my boss did some sort of bait and switch when getting me to agree to take the job...

Dave

You not keen on Sharepoint? I don't know much about it, but I think I don't like it, but I don't know why I don't like it

Burgi

this version isn't as terrible as the older versions i've run into

Dave

:)
I have to get back to work... so long all

Burgi

its just the alien stack i have to learn

Journeyman Geek

9:02 AM

@Burgi and how to use em.

@Dave 2 27 inchers seem optimal for me, tho I miss my little 10 incher sometimes.

Burgi

its a good job @qasdfdsaq isn't around to pounce on that inuendo

Bob

@JourneymanGeek That could mean anything. (OT => on or off topic? :P)

@JourneymanGeek TWSS?

Journeyman Geek

@Bob oh my.

OT always means off topic tho

Bob

Burgi

i have a question about sockets vs processors but i'm not sure if it is better suited to serverfault

can i ask it on meta first to check if it is on-topic?

Bob

9:15 AM

Journeyman Geek

9:31 AM

@Burgi or ask it here.

Dosen't sound like live support

Burgi

so i got one of my underpowered virtual servers upgraded last night (added 2 more CPUs). when i compare it against the production server i noticed that it has 2 fewer sockets. what are sockets in this context?

	Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2660 v2 @ 2.20GHz

	Maximum speed:	2.20 GHz
	Sockets:	2
	Virtual processors:	4
	Virtual machine:	Yes

CPU

	Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2660 v2 @ 2.20GHz

	Maximum speed:	2.60 GHz
	Sockets:	4
	Virtual processors:	4
	Virtual machine:	Yes

the clock speed mismatch isn't an issue

Bob

It means meh.

The hypervisor can expose processing cores however it likes.

It can give you 4 sockets with 1 core each, 2 sockets 2 cores each, 1 socket 4 cores, whatever.

Some hypervisors also let you configure hardware threads per core.

In a virtual environment "socket" means nothing.

Except maybe for licensing.

Burgi

thats what i was thinking

Bob

Well, the other exception is if you're actually spread over multiple physical sockets and you're dealing with NUMA and want to keep some kind of memory locality.

Most typical virtual environments don't give you more than one physical CPU's worth of resources anyway.

The ones that do, it might be best to configure the virtual layout as close to the physical one as possible.

End of the day, it's not your job to worry about it if you're not the one setting this up.

Oh piss off.

DavidPostill

@Dave @Burgi

48

Q: How do I recommend software in my answers?

I have a piece of software that I would like to recommend as a solution to problems. I'm trying to avoid answering with "link only" answers, and so I need help on how I can answer valid questions with software that I know will help the OP. We do not advocate users asking for software recomme...

Burgi

9:45 AM

thanks @bob

DavidPostill

"We do not advocate users asking for software recommendations. However, there are times that an answer will recommend a piece of software." ...

Burgi

is it worth me posting that as an actual question so you can do an official answer?

Bob

@DavidPostill The gist of it is "Ask for the how, but if the how includes a software rec then so be it."

Burgi

@DavidPostill thats roughly what i thought

Bob

@Burgi I wouldn't be answering it, probably. I don't think I can flesh it out enough. But you can go ahead and ask if you want.

Also, I cannot guarantee that's 100% correct :P

That's mostly off the top of my head.

Burgi

9:48 AM

it seems reasonable enough

DavidPostill

@Bob @Burgi Exactly. And the highest voted answer in that link says exactly how you should recommend software if that is you answer.

@Burgi I have a standard comment I use for link-only software recs: "Please read How do I recommend software for some tips as to how you should go about recommending software. Provide more than just a link, eg some additional information about the software itself, and how it can be used to solve the problem in the question."

Or "Please prove a link as well as ..." if they don't even provide a link.

Burgi

thanks for the canned reply, i'll see if i can make use of it

Bob

10:09 AM

@allquixotic i.imgur.com/ohsVTG8.gifv

Michael Frank

@Bob Heh... my baby did that to herself the other day.

DavidPostill

@Bob "This is another way to keep the dog hot and warm." How can it be hot and warm at the same time ;)

Journeyman Geek

🐕

Oliver Salzburg

@Bob Don't get me started!

bwDraco

roar

Michael Frank

10:26 AM

Oh yay, Diablo 3 can be suspended correctly on PS4 now! :D

bummi

@bwDraco could you find a dupe for this ? superuser.com/questions/1041474/…

Journeyman Geek

@Bob ping

bwDraco

10:52 AM

Sorry, my laptop crashed last night without an obvious explanation. I just started it up.

qasdfdsaq

Woof?

Meaow?

Croak?

What does the fox say?

Oliver Salzburg

I'm currently working on extending our SMS infrastructure. It would be pretty cool if anyone would allow me to send them a few SMS and confirm receiving them. If someone wants to help out, please send me your mobile number via email: oliver@salzburg.so

Journeyman Geek

@OliverSalzburg any country?

bwDraco

@JourneymanGeek He's in Germany, so I probably cannot test it.

Journeyman Geek

@bwDraco I'm aware of where he is

hence me asking

bummi

11:10 AM

@OliverSalzburg If it's not urgent, I can help perhaps, in the evening forgot my mobile at home

Oliver Salzburg

@JourneymanGeek Yes

@bummi Any contact is appreciated :)

We're expanding our international capabilities and we can't rely on our customers for troubleshooting :(

bwDraco

@Hennes: If you're mass-editing (including to remove a deprecated tag), please try to do it in small batches every couple of minutes or so. The quantity of edits you're making is flooding the front page.

(Cross-post from Ask a Super User Moderator.)

Sathya

@OliverSalzburg will send you mine. India's supposed to be the toughest :p

Oliver Salzburg

@Sathya Awesome

bwDraco

Got out of bed at 5:30 AM today. Not sure how much longer I can last, though.

5 hours ago, by bwDraco

To the community: I will be attempting to wake up at much earlier times than I have been for the last several months. I may be very grumpy over the coming days and weeks as I transition to the new schedule, so please be gentle towards me. Thanks.

5 hours ago, by bwDraco

Sep 5 '15 at 3:48, by DragonLord

I've experimented with wake-up times as early as 4:45am in the past (because top CEOs often wake up 6am or earlier), but could not get consistent results.

Hopefully, it'll work this time.

bummi

11:27 AM

It'll get easier the older you grow :)

bwDraco

lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/…

> This is the part of your morning routine over which you have the greatest control. To fit it all in, it’s a must to start early. The latest any of the surveyed executives wake up is 6 a.m., and almost 80 percent wake up at 5:30 or earlier.

My mom most definitely does not like me getting out of bed earlier than 7:00 as it starts to throw off the schedule.

When I ran the CEO wake-up time experiments last summer, I went to bed as early as 9:00 PM, early enough to cause issues with dinnertime.

The results were very inconsistent. One day, I would be out of bed much earlier than intended (starting at 4:45 AM proved to be very disruptive), and the next day, I wouldn't get out of bed until 11:00 AM.

bummi

for me, usually 1:00 am - 6:00 am

bwDraco

I hope this experience does not repeat this time around, but I can't guarantee anything considering how the experiment failed about six months back.

I started the day with a nice, hot bath and a cup of coffee.

I also might be very grumpy at times as a result of this experiment, so please be gentle and forgive me.

Burgi

all good geeks go to bed at 3am so you are only giving yourself about an hour to sleep... that will kill you

Bob

11:46 AM

@JourneymanGeek pong

bwDraco

Hello?

Bob

Sorry, dozed off for a bit there.

Journeyman Geek

@Bob see steam. Can't reply for now tho. Walkies

Bob

@JourneymanGeek ah, right. mind running a couple tests when you get back? :P

I wonder where this went wrong

Burgi

do other businesses have to fill out request for change forms each time you do your job?

qasdfdsaq

12:07 PM

So someone is crowdfunding a caffeine bracelet

bwDraco

I'd rather just brew another cup of coffee.

qasdfdsaq

The advantage is it's less work than actually making coffee, doesn't make you put on weight unlike drinking coffee, and cheaper.

meow

@Bob back

Neaow

12:34 PM

sigh

Busted doorbell, and before you know it, you get a UPS InfoNotice saying they've made their third and final attempt.

Called (800) PICK-UPS. They'll try once more tomorrow.

qasdfdsaq

How is it a final attempt if it isn't a final attempt?

bwDraco

Just had to schedule an additional delivery attempt.

qasdfdsaq

Ah

If only there was something like... oh, a mobile phone theey could use

Journeyman Geek

They never do that

qasdfdsaq

Some companies do here

Journeyman Geek

12:45 PM

We usually leave a note asking them to call back

qasdfdsaq

They never do that here :-P

People are paranoid about their phone number

Burgi

why is domestic internet so expensive in america?

Journeyman Geek

Cause its a literal monopoly

Burgi

is there no competition?

Journeyman Geek

Not really

and the incumbants tend to try to keep competition out

bwDraco

12:57 PM

@JourneymanGeek Two choices here: Verizon and Time Warner Cable. Switched to the latter because of pricing.

Journeyman Geek

I have 4 choices. Maybe 6

and three different options for what media its over

I think ADSL is uncommon but one ISP does cable, all do fibre

bwDraco

Unless you consider LTE an acceptable alternative (and it's not a substitute for wireline Internet access due to its limited capacity; even T-Mobile's unlimited LTE plan extends to the phone only and tethering is limited to 14 GB before it gets throttled.)

Journeyman Geek

Mostly no

Anything with a monthly cap won't work for me

bwDraco

allquixotic has a grandfathered Verizon LTE plan which he uses as a replacement for wireline Internet.

Transcript for