RandomNotes

Describe RandomNotes here. stuff not worth a page by themselves

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(8PM Aug 18 04) Got NTFS? Want to save some space?
Here's what I do. Using NTFS's built in compression can save quite a bit of space, and not much of a slowdown for linux.

note that, if the partitions cluster size is above 4KB, then NTFS compression feature will be disabled.

I've been doing this since I've installed colinux 0.5.0.
Right click on your colinux directory, and say Properties, Advanced. Checkmark "Compress contents to save disk space" and click OK.
Once you click Apply or OK on the properties box, it might bring up a dialog saying:

"Confirm Attribute Changes"
"You have chosen to make the following attibute changes: COMPRESS"
"Do you want to apply changes to this folder only, or do you want to apply it to all subfolders and files as well?"
Pick All subfolders and files, and click okay. Now wait a while as NT compresses the folder.
Once it's finished, the folder and contents should turn a bluish color, to indicate they're compressed.
This has saved me: crosscompilefs - Size: 3.00GB - Size on disk: 467MB gentoo_rootfs_2g - Size: 2.00GB - Size on disk: 845MB And my 256MB swap space is only using 4KB at the moment... Depending on your hardware, this could be a slowdown, or a significant speedup.
Slowdown: Fast CPU, fast harddrive = more CPU time used for decompression off a fast device
Speedup: Fast CPU, slow harddrive = less sectors read = lower IDE bandwidth used/more CPU used.
It's basically a tradeoff any way you see it -- if you're low on drive space, this is a good thing to mess with, as I said, I've been using it since 0.5.0 with absolutely no problems at all.

And don't forget to do

dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/zeroes
rm /tmp/zeroes

from time to time - this will purge some unused blocks.

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I already wrote it here (Network) but I think it may be useful to note it here too: coLinux-20040424-2 snapshot seems to have problems if the name of the TAP device contains accentuated characters (á, é, ...).

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Good info!.. maybe this is why the latest version not work for me and others!! Its this info already reported to developers?

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Not yet. I haven't registered on SourceForge and I nearly don't have any experience helping an open source project like this. Besides, English is not my first language, although I have read it a lot. What should I do? Should I write to the developers mailing list? Now that I know I'm not the only one experiencing that error I will post some additional info: I'm Spanish, and my localized Windows XP names Local Area Connections on "Network Connections" as "Conexión de área local". When coLinux starts, it shows these messages:

conet-daemon: searching TAP "coLinux" conet-daemon: scanned device "Conexi¾n de ßrea local 2" Error opening TAP Win32 Notice the wrong characters. It seems that there is a problem with the codepage. After some trial and error I change the name of the connection to "coLinux" and everything is working. Hope that helps.

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Oh.. Check How to Ask a Question. If you add the problems to the sourceforge database, you help the developers work a lot. Otherwise fishing feedback/bugreports is a puzzle, a pain, and a nightmare.. I suspect.

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Ok, I'll do it. Thanks Tei.

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As of version 0.6.1-2.4.26, the problem seems to be fixed.

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DevRandomProblem In colinux sometimes you may find some cryptographic applications freezing. This is due to the lack of randomness availiable to /dev/random. The solution is to open up the fltk console and type random charecters into it. Please see the DevRandomProblem page for more details.

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<Gniarf> just tried Fedora, ran fine once I updated GATEWAY in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 but then jerked off during apt-get operations (complaining about some database stuff). all was fine once again after a rpm --rebuilddb . also, the .xml file needs 'ro root=/dev/cobd0' instead of 'root=/dev/cobd0' in the section 'bootparams'.

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<Gniarf> it just took me 90 minutes to emerge Firefox on a Gentoo running in 128 Mo of RAM, and the beast wasn't even swapping. come on, I want real challenges !

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Would it be possible to use the virtual network setup by coLinux for other processes? Like creating a connection within Windows (a "localhost" replacement) that is actually sniffable? How?

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*How to quickly create a huge file under Windows* or resize an existing one to be even bigger: just use python with win32 extensions. there are the functions win32file.Set File Pointer, win32file.Set End Of File which you can use to move the end of the file much forward (create a 5 gb file in 0 time!)

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<golemB> Ugh. I am editing in IE rather than my beloved Firefox because that "Ads by DynamiContent" iFrame seems to be wrecking the entire editing frame. Must be some ugly unclosed tag or something. Please fix!

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Ditto on the DynamiContent complains, it breaks the 'Back' button! How about Google Ads instead?

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Mass Translated on 25 Dec 2004. ManuallyAdjusted on 25 Dec 2004.

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Timer problems

Colinux timer_cooperative does not play nicely with speedstep or AMD PowerNow. I found the clock running extremely slowly, at about 60% of correct speed.

To fix it you have to turn off speed stepping and synch colinux time to a good time source.

To Ensure SpeedStep or PowerNow is disabled.

Control Panel -> Power Options -> Power Schemes -> Always On.

Synching NTP with the host

To Set up colinux to use NTP to synchonize time with the host operating system.

1. First set the host to act as an NTP server.

 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Current Control Set\Services\W32Time\Parameters]
 "NtpServer"="pool.ntp.org,0x1"
 "Type"="NTP"
 "LocalNTP"=dword:00000001
 "Period"="SpecialSkew"
 
 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Current Control Set\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders]


 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\[[CurrentControlSet]]\Services\W32Time\Time Providers\NtpServer]
 "Enabled"=dword:00000001

Then

net stop w32time

net start w32time

2. Now set the colinux box to synch to the host.

apt-get install openntpd

vi /etc/openntpd/ntpd.conf

Change the servers line to:

# Whatever the IP of the host is as seen by colinux

server 192.168.0.1

Make sure the firewall permits NTP between the host and colinux.

You are done. Now all you have to do is ensure the host keeps good time.

Comparison to Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2

Is there still a performance win for coLinux 0.6.3 when compared to Microsofts now freely available Virtual Server 2005 R2 product? April 03, 2006 is when they announced the availability. This would seem to be a direct blow to VMWare, and even a response to coLinux, to equalize so to speak.

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MassTranslated on Sun Apr 23 17:36:43 UTC 2006