iT.Grunts

QUAD CORE CHERRY MOBILE TABLET FOR $99!

rjcool — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 21:09:08 +0000

Guess what! No longer are those quad cores going to cost you a pretty penny! Now in the Philippines, you could soon pick up a Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt with a quad-core CPU for $99.

The tablet has a smashing 7 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel display and a 1 GHz Action Semiconductor AM7029 ARM Cortex-A9 quad-core processor. For a price tag of $99 bucks? I will take it!

The Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt is to feature 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, WiFI, Bluetooth, a front-facing camera, microSD card slot, and a 4000mAh battery. All this while it runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean,and measures 0.42 inches thick and weighs 11.3 ounces.

The tablet is to go on sale in March this year! Hopefully it will also be available in the US.

CHINA BEATS USA IN SMARTPHONE MARKET!

rjcool — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 20:34:14 +0000

Today it was reported that China is not the global leader as the world’s largest smartphone market. It is evident with the low costs of manufacturing in China + the huge population market that they can sell to!

Based a report from Flurry, which tracks 2.4 billion app sessions per day – China beat the U.S. as the No. 1 market for most used smartphones and tablets. Analysts say US will not be able to recover from this downfall as the Chinese rate of growth is astronomical in nature.

In January, China had 221 million active smart devices and the US had 221 million. By the end of February China will have 246 million devices and about 230 million for the U.S.
In contrast India has only 19 million active smart devices. China grew 290 percent from 71 million a year ago in the smartphone business.

7 Minutes of Terror! [Video] [Mars Update]

rjcool — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 16:57:53 +0000

Enjoy the 7 minutes of terror!

via Discovery

Wow! Facebook Reading Your Text Messages

rjcool — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 21:43:43 +0000

Okay so get this, Facebook may be reading your text messages from your mobile devices. Looks like everytime I update their app, I am allowing more ways for Facebook to spy on me! It was revealed that Facebook can access a user’s text messages but Facebook today was quick to defend itself saying it does not read any content within a text message.

The whole story was revealed by Sunday Times newspaper which said that Facebook had admitted to scanning and reading text messages as part of an ongoing trial for a Facebook-branded messaging service. So the paper basically said that Facebook has access to reading and writing text messages as part of its Android application: That’s a permission that users accept when they go to install the app. But that’s a lot different than Facebook actually using these capabilities in a manner that consumers would likely not enjoy.

Facebook representatives said that the company’s Android app does not reading of user text messages. Facebook had been previously accused of copying users’ address books to its servers to enable the app’s social features. This was done with out user’s knowledge and had caused quite a frenzy. Internal sources tell us that Facebook wants to work on its advertising content and be able to present to you not just really targeted ads but also help you meet and connect with people who you would be interested in.

Now does that mean that Facebook may go into official dating business as well? How does “You may be interested in her” flag sound? Actually some analysts agree that this may be the feature that will hit Facebook in 2012.

messages, free facebok messages , free messages

How to read vmkdumps?

rjcool — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:49:40 +0000

So the other day a hypervisor PSOD’d on my. The infamous pink screen of death!

A reboot made me believe that it was fixed but it really wasn’t, the PSOD happened again!

So I rebooted the hyp for the third time and did the following to get vmkdumps and analyze them and make sure the issue was fixed. Usually I have seen PSOD’s happen due to hardware issues.

1. Reboot ESX 4.1 Host

2. Once up, i tried downloading the dump from vcenter but did not work, annoyingly slow. So cmd line to the rescue.

3. A PSOD results in generating a ESX Kernel dump that is stored in the /root directory. It is named as ‘vmkernel-zdump-.#.#.#’

4. Remember vmkdump is no longer used in esx4 so use esxcfg-dumppart -log DUMPFILE or esxcfg-dumppart -L Dumpfile

5. This will create a vmkernel-log.1 file

6. In that log you will see

@BlueScreen: Hardware (Machine) Error: Internal Unclassified Error. PCPU47 in world 4143:idle47 0:01:25:06.951 cpu47:4143)Code start: 0x41800fa00000 VMK uptime: 0:01:25:06.951 0:01:25:06.952 cpu47:4143)0x417f8017fd38:[0x41800fc9ed96]Power_HaltPCPU@vmkernel:nover+0x27d stack: 0x417f801 7fde8 0:01:25:06.952 cpu47:4143)0x417f8017fe48:[0x41800fbce7fe]CpuSchedIdleLoopInt@vmkernel:nover+0×985 stack: 0×41 7f8017fe88 0:01:25:06.953 cpu47:4143)0x417f8017fe58:[0x41800fbd3fce]CpuSched_IdleLoop@vmkernel:nover+0×15 stack: 0x2f 0:01:25:06.953 cpu47:4143)0x417f8017fe88:[0x41800fa32c57]Init_SlaveIdle@vmkernel:nover+0x11e stack: 0×0 0:01:25:06.954 cpu47:4143)0x417f8017ffe8:[0x41800fca5668]SMPSlaveIdle@vmkernel:nover+0x45f stack: 0×0 0:01:25:06.964 cpu47:4143)FSbase:0×0 GSbase:0x41804bc00000 kernelGSbase:0×0 0:01:25:06.965 cpu47:4143)MC:PCPU17 B:5 S:0xfa00000000400405 M:0×180 A:0×0 5
7. Googling says – 0:01:25:06.965 cpu47:4143)MC:PCPU17 B:5 S:0xfa00000000400405 M:0×180 A:0×0 5 – means that the cpu is having some machine check architecture issues which is used to detect and report hardware issues. You can read the kb article about MCE exception here.

8. So we replaced the CPU and all was good.

Now you know

Comment if you have any questions or want to debate!

No HA over two separate ip subnets?

rjcool — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:34:28 +0000

So as I was working, my colleague who was fairly new called me and wondered why he can’t add two hypervisors into the same cluster and get HA to work right.

Hypervisor 1 had HA ok but hypervisor 2 had a HA error.

Now on further looking at the error I see the below pic. It clearly shows that the hypervisors are on separate segments on the network. Now lets all remind ourselves that HA wants to be on the same segment, the reason is that if the hypervisor fails over, the vms that are now on the good hyp should be able to use the network without any issues. Now you can over ride that by setting the das.allowNetwork where you can enter another subnet to talk to.

You can enter the das.allowNetwork custom setting in the HA advanced option shown below.

Now the way to fix this was to get both the hypervisors on the same vlan which is underway.

Do comment if you have questions or need to know more or correct me

Don’t forget that Snapshot!

rjcool — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:51:41 +0000

So I was working on a config and suddenly noticed that the disk was full and the vm halted! Now I was stunned to notice this. Usually I like to keep my disks at the 20% buffer that vmware recommends.

On examining the log, I see that a clone that was taken earlier failed as it timed out. And, knock knock, there was a snapshot that was left running!

A refresher, the process of cloning involves taking a snapshot of the vm, then doing a block per block copy of the original vmdk and then committing the snapshot which records the delta changes. In this case, the snapshot was not committed after it was noted that the clone had failed.

Since the vm was powered down, I went ahead with the delete all option and committed the snapshot which freed up a ton of space.

Also remember, its safer, in my opinion to power down a vm in order to commit a huge snapshot.

Post comments if you want to further discuss!

How to really understand %Ready time

rjcool — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 04:45:12 +0000

So today I had a customer complain of some slow performance on his vms.

His cluster was not over subscribed on its resources but I saw his database vms having ready times of about 80ms.

I quickly concluded that it was high CPU Ready time. Oh and by the way, his vm was 6vcpu. But I stood corrected when I saw what esxtop was showing.

Esxtop was constantly showing a ready time of about %0.3 or around that number. I was puzzled.

So whats really going on? Let me explain.

Vcenter polls real time data for every 20 seconds. And the right way to convert milliseconds to % is as follows,

Lets assume you are seeing 80ms of Ready time. Now 80/20,000 = 0.004 = 0.4% of cpu ready. So this means the vm is waiting for the cpu 0.4% of its time. Now remember that the cpu ready time threshold is 10% so this is pretty low.

This varies with the number of vcpus assigned to the vm. In this case, my customer was having the same vm show about 8000ms ready time for the past week.

That means, 8000/20,000 = 0.4 = 40% which means his vm was experiencing 40% ready which isn’t good. Now the real ready time per cpu will be 40/6 (because he has 6 vcpu) = 6.66% per vcpu.

I think 5% ready time is a sign to look for trouble while 10% is for sure trouble.

Google To Sell Heads Up Display Glasses by Year End!

rjcool — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:36:59 +0000

Google's rumored heads-up display glasses should become real this year, insiders maintained Tuesday. Multiple staffers told the New York Times that the Android-based glasses would go on sale in 2012 and cost as much as typical smartphones, which the newspaper interpreted as between $250 to $600. Google was being careful to phrase the project as a public experiment and not an attempt to fully establish a new category.

Functionally, the glasses should have a cellular link as well as motion and GPS sensors to fill out their augmented reality approach. Head tilts would be used to navigate the interface. Its interface would avoid the traditional web browser or other smartphone interface layers, and they weren't meant to be worn non-stop.

Google Latitude developer Steve Lee was directly linked to the project and was making location content a heavy focus, the sources claimed. Privacy was a concern, and it was likely the glasses would make it clear if the camera was recording content.

The project, said to look like the Oakley Thump line of MP3 player glasses, was already known to be the result of Google X, a semi-secret wing of the company that has been developing self-driving cars and other technologies that won't immediately translate to products. Glasses and other wearable computing are areas where Google wouldn't face much competition from Apple, Microsoft, and others.

via Source

Proposed type of solar neutrino spotted

rjcool — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:47:28 +0000

In a technical tour de force, physicists have spotted long-sought low-energy neutrinos zipping from the sun. The discovery confirms one of the first possible steps in the fusion cycle that helps power the star, says Cristiano Galbiati, a physicist at Princeton University and member of the large international team that reports the discovery in the Feb. 3 Physical Review Letters.

The newfound particles are produced when two protons and an electron interact to make deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen that helps feed the sun’s fusion. About 1 in 400 deuterium atoms in the sun are made in this proton-electron-proton, or pep, reaction.

Scientists can probe the sun’s inner workings by studying the particles produced in its thermonuclear reactions — in particular, the neutrinos that flood through Earth in great numbers but hardly interact with matter here. Researchers must build detectors underground to screen out these elusive solar neutrinos from other particle chatter.