Hardware Upgrade Failed

So, I bought two modules of DDR RAM

and a Radeon HD2400 Pro Video Card.

I read in the computer magazine PC-Active

that is video card supports hardware

h.264 decoding. So I was interested in

this card. Usually I would have bought

an Nvidia card, but since the webshop

I usually buy computer hardware didn't

have a suitable Nvidia card with an AGP

slot, I had to take the ATI one.

And yes, it causes trouble, no it doesn't

work. As soon as it tried to enable the

graphics, the computer freezes. I already

updated my BIOS to the latest version,

but it wouldn't help.

It's not the cards fault, because I tried it

in my older computer, and there it works

fine. So, this seems to be a compatibility

error with the Gigabyte GA-K8VT800 mainboard.

It works fine with an ASUS P4T-F mainboard.

But now I have this situation, the older computer

with a better video card then the newer computer.

This is a kinda useless situation.

The Gigabyte mainboard is also having trouble

when I want to add some more memory to it.

It just refuses to work with more then one

memory module installed, but it doesn't seem

to care which one it is, as long as it is one module.

So, it seems not to be an incomatibility with my

new memory module, since it works also with

just one of the new modules installed.

Edit: the ATI video card is also causing trouble
on the other mainboard. It works but it refuses
to enable the TV-out. It sees the TV, but
enabling it fails. I should never buy an ATI
video card again, nothing but trouble :/
.... but I could not find a Gefore 8 series
video card with AGP interface.....

Edit2: It now works, now I connected my monitor
using a DVI-to-VGA adaptor on the DVI port.
It seems the card is using some funny wirering
that only enabled tv output when the monitor is
connected to the DVI port, and disables it on the
other port.

Uploading a photo over IPv6

So, ya know, I have this website,
www.blaatschaap.be. This website
offers IPv6 connectivity. Also, I have
IPv6 connectivity at home. My ISP is
xs4all, and they offer an IPv6 tunnel (proto41).

So, last week, a problem appeared on the
website. It seemed to be impossible to
upload a photo. When I tried to upload
a photo, it just timed-out. I tried to change
some settings on the server, but without
result.

After I started using a sniffer, the true
problem showed itself. The problem wasn't
at the server, but at my home.

Look at the result from the sniffer:

So, what are we seeing here.
The first three packets show a TCP handshake,
nothing unusual there. Since I am uploading
an image over a HTTP POST, there is a lot of data
to be transferred, which is in the next packet.
In a reply to that packet, we receive a ICMPv6
packet 'too big'. So, that's the problem, the packet
my browser tried to sent was too big. According
to the IPv6 Specs, the client is supposed to send
a smaller packet when it receives a ICMPv6 too big
packet. When looking at what the sniffer shows,
that appears even to be happening, but for some
reason, it still doesn't seem to work.

The MTU, is 1480 for a Proto41 IPv6 tunnel.
The default MTU for Ethernet networks
is 1500, so changing the MTU to 1480 solves the
problem. (see this link)

So, now I've found the problem, and know how to
fix it, it's time to have this fix made permanently.
So, looking for the fist solution:
adding:

pre-up /sbin/ifconfig $IFACE mtu 1480

to my /etc/network/interfaces file. (See this link)

Applying this solution does set the MTU to the
desired value, but also makes IPv6 to stop
working. So, this solution is no option.

The solution that did work is

up ip link set mtu 1480 dev $IFACE

With that line added to my /etc/network/interfaces
file, my IPv6 connectivity works, and my MTU is set,
so I will not generate packets that are too big for
my tunnel. (See this link)

BlaatSchaap Coding Projects

Lol, so, I got a job as a coder since the
begin of this month, so now I have a
few days off because of
ascension (? hemelvaart, says google translate)
it was 21 may, some christian feast)
Anyways, I got a few days off, so, what am I
doing in my spare time? coding! lol

I started coding some on my IRC bot again.
The design wasn't right the way it should be,
and I moved some code from the IRC class to
the Bot class. Still isn't quite the way I want it,
but it's better now. Hard to separate, what should
be done by the protocol and what by the bot's code.

But I should keep in mind some changes I am planning
to do later. I wish to separete my code into different
libraries, so, it should be possible to use the IRC protocol
class and use it to create an IRC client. Not that I am
planning to do so, but I just want the code to be clean.

Speaking about libraries, I am indeed planning to make
bot plugins also, just to load new commands into the
bot as a library. Not just that, I am also looking at some
stuff about mixing languages. As I am working at a
company that uses Delphi, I suppose my (Object) Pascal
skills to get better. So, I was looking at ways to mix
pascal and c(++) code.

So, there are two pascal compilers available for the
Linux platform. The GNU Pascal compiler and the
FreePascal compiler. Soon it turned out the GNU
compiler didn't support libraries yet, so it fell off,
leaving the FreePascal compiler as the compiler to use.

Well... first I tried if I could just write some function
in Pascal, create an object file, and link it so some
object file from C code, but that fails, since the
pascal code expect the some pascal runtime code.

So, then writing an so file, failed... the compiler kept
complaining about linker errors, and this error
was mentioned on many internet sites as well

Free Pascal Compiler version 2.2.4-1 [2009/05/12] for x86_64
Copyright (c) 1993-2008 by Florian Klaempfl
Target OS: Linux for x86-64
Compiling t.pas
Linking libt.so
t.pas(17) Error: Can't call the linker, switching to external linking
t.pas(17) Fatal: There were 1 errors compiling module, stopping
Fatal: Compilation aborted
Error: /usr/bin/ppcx64 returned an error exitcode (normal if you did not specify a source file to be compiled)

So, after trying some stuff, it turned out that adding the
parameter -XX (Smart Linking) to the compiler solves
the problem and generated a usable .so file, that can
be used from C code.

Not only the use of Pascal code is on the new stuff list
for the BlaatBot Project, I have also been looking into
some XML parsing code, to integrate some site stuff
into the bot. I have been using this XML parser to parse
some XML code, and so far I am happy with the results.

The author or that code also offered a possibility for a
BSD-style license, what would be great so I do not have
to worry about having to change my own license and
release my code under a BSD-style license as well, as it
has been in the past. For the moment, it's just, the code
really needs some cleaning up, and when that's done,
it will be released again. For the time being, there is
some ancient code from the project at sourceforge.
Don't look at it, it's ancient and ugly.

Windows 7 on an MSI Wind?

So, I've been running Windows 7 ever since
the public beta was released. So, first the
beta, later the Release Canditate. And it
ran fine so far. I've been running it first on
my Pentium 4 (1,6 Ghz) and installed it later
on my Athlon64 (2,0 Ghz) too. It works nice
and I had nothing to complain about.

So, today I decided to install it on my laptop,
it's an MSI Wind. Installation went fine, but
very soon, messages about disk corruption
started to pop-up. After running chkdsk,
the problems returned immediately.
It seems Windows 7 is corrupting it's own
file system.

A Windows Vista beta also did something like
this on my old laptop. I don't know, but
Windows 7 runs without any problem on
my desktop computers, but it hates my laptop.

Upgrading to IPv6

So, since about an hour ago is my internet connection

using the IP version 6 protocol. My ISP xs4all has been

offering IPv6 for a while now, but just today I decided

to configure it. 

My router doesn't even support it, 

but that turned out to be no problem at all.

I've been using my old laptop as a server,

and it's running an irc daemon for a while 

now. I've configured the IPv6 tunnel

according to the instructions on the xs4all.

Not much about that, just enable IPv6 in

the config file, enter the IPv6 address, and 

the IPv4 address on the other end of the tunnel.

Then I installed radvd, entered my IPv6 address

range in the config file, and without any other

configuration, all my other computers got IPv6

connectivity. 

But it's not only my home that got upgraded,

also blaatschaap.be got upgrated to IPv6.

As you could have read in my dutch blog, I've

obtained a year of free dedicated hosting at OVH.

OVH also offers IPv6 connectivity. Unfortunately,

their servers do not support it out-of-the-box.

A little configuration was required as well, 

their default kernel only supports IPv4. They

use custom pre-compiled kernels. Fortunately,

on their ftp server they also has a IPv6 enabled

version, so I downloaded, configured lilo, and 

rebooted. The kernel support was working,

but still no connectivity. A quick look on their

forums showed the IPv6 address had to be 

assigned manually. After doing to, IPv6 

connectivity was working.

Crisis?

Everyone in this world should now it by now

there is an economical crisis.

But who's to blaim for this misfortune?

Who's to blaim for the fact many people

lost their jobs? Is it the USA to blaim?

Or who should be blaimed??

Well... if you ask me, the media should

be blaimed. Radio, TV, newspapers...

Every day they are talking about this

damn crisis. That's when the real crisis

started.

By telling people there is a crisis, they

start acting like it, causing the crisis.

By telling people there is a crisis. they

stop spending money. So the shops

won't sell, so the fabrics won't

produce so they need to fire people.

So, in the end, I blaim the media they

kept reporting the crisis, to actually

have caused the crisis.

Yes, there was a problem to begin with,

but it went out of control, which should

not have happened, if the media didn't 

report about the problem so extensive

as they did.

The crisis exsist in the minds of the people,

when you control what the people think,

you control reality.

So, who caused this crisis. The media? 

Are they really to blaim? Or are they

just being used, as everyone else.

In the end, I am just thinking who's got

an advantage by this crisis. I have no clue

who could possibly have an advantage with

this crisis. So is it just the media after

all? Just to have some 'sensational news' to

report? Or is there more behind this crisis?

So. Yesterday I was at Hans' place. 

Played some Age of Ampires, watched a 

movie (Wall-e)  (yes, really!) (lol) 

and played some wii. Today... 

to continue what I was doing the 

day before. My computer. As I mentioned

before. It was Windows 7 beta installed. I

tried to install Windows XP next to it and 

it BSOD' ed with code 7F and parameter 00.

Some googleing told me this means a devide

by zero in some driver. As this error appeared

during the detection of the hardware, it 

appears to me this is the cause. The website

also says it is likely to be caused by broken

hardware. Since my video card was suspected

before of misbehaviour. As I wrote in an earlier

blogpost, the time I removed the USB/FireWire

controller. Well... I placed a different video card

now and the installation program doesn't BSOD

anymore. So it seems the problem is solved. 
I installed Windows XP on a different hard disk now,

since I was first thinking that the Windows 7 instalation

sitting on the same hard disk might cause the problem.

So... of all the hard disks I had emtied, they are all filled

with some data again. And now my I need to get a new 

video card for my Pentium III machine, since that's a

low-profile case, and I need a card with suitable backplate,

wich was the card I used in my Pentium 4 now.

And since my computer uses a newer video card now,

Windows 7 might be so kind to "unlock" so eye-candy now.