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  • How do I program a hardware button on my laptop?

    - by daniel11
    So I have a set of touch screen buttons on the top of my laptop's keyboard, (one turns on power save mode, one disables/enables the mouse touch pad, one toggles the wifi adapter, and two turns the volume up/down). However there's another one that opened a file backup utility that came with my laptop. Since I bought my laptop, I've uninstalled that utility, rendering this button useless. Would it be possible to reprogram that button to open another file or program on my computer? And if so, what are the requirements and how would I go about doing it? Thanks in advance!

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  • Maxivista vs. Synergy vs. hardware KVM switches [closed]

    - by GetFree
    I have 2 PCs on my desk, each one with its own screen, mouse and keyboard. And it's a pain moving from one PC to the other (even though they are one foot away from each other). So, it's time to change to different approach: KVM switches. What would you recommend for a setup like mine? I dont need to change monitors since they are both in front of me. I just need a way to change mouse and keyboard. I use Windows on both PCs and money is not an issue if it worth it. What would be the best option for a seamless integration of the two PCs? Edit: What about other software similar to Synergy, like Input Director? What's more convenient in your experience?

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  • Can different drive speeds and sizes be used in a hardware RAID configuration w/o affecting performance?

    - by R. Dill
    Specifically, I have a RAID 1 array configuration with two 500gb 7200rpm SATA drives mirrored as logical drive 1 (a) and two of the same mirrored as logical drive 2 (b). I'd like to add two 1tb 5400rpm drives in the same mirrored fashion as logical drive 3 (c). These drives will only serve as file storage with occasional but necessary access, and therefore, space is more important than speed. In researching whether this configuration is doable, I've been told and have read that the array will only see the smallest drive size and slowest speed. However, my understanding is that as long as the pairs themselves aren't mixed (and in this case, they aren't) that the array should view and use all drives at their actual speed and size. I'd like to be sure before purchasing the additional drives. Insight anyone?

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  • Is hardware accelerated CSS3 in Safari 4 & 5 broken, or my CSS and JS?

    - by Dan Forys
    Hi all, I've created a somewhat silly site that shows you the expected weather forecast for any city in the World. On webkit based browsers, when the weather is sunny a sun with CSS3 animated rotated sunbeams appears. This works fine on Chrome. An example (sunny, at the moment) page is: http://willitraintoday.co.uk/iceland/reykjavik/ However, when viewed in Safari 4 or 5 on Mac Snow Leopard, when the sun appears the sky background appears over it. Weirder still, as the cloud containing the advert moves across the sky, it squashes the main text. When the cloud reaches the left edge, the text appears wider than normal and starts squashing down again. I've tried: - Disabling the CSS3 animation; it works fine in Safari - Juggling the z-index of various elements; to no avail Is there something up with my Javascript or CSS, or is the hardware accelerated snow leopard Safari broken in this case? It seems not to happen in Safari 4 on Leopard, but I don't have Leopard any more to test myself. Grateful for any opinions!

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  • Using off-the-shelf hardware for brand-name servers; Possible? Good idea?

    - by threecheeseopera
    Is it possible or advisable to use 'regular' not-sanctioned-by-the-server-manufacturer hardware in high end servers? Often these manufacturer-supplied parts have a very high price markup, and I wonder if it's always necessary (understanding that they probably apply more rigorous requirements to this hardware). For example, Dell sells 300GB 15,000rpm serial-attached scsi drives for a certain server family for almost $600 each, while newegg sells a drive with the same specs for almost half the price http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822116059. Do we really need to pay these high markups, especially for disks that are likely RAID-ed and so guarded against catastrophic failure?

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  • JD Edwards Apps in a Box - Update

    - by Hartmut Wiese
    Summary and clarification JD Edwards Apps in a box is a Partner offering to the customer. We as Oracle have a huge interest in getting a successful offering to the market and we help the Partner building their offering. We provide components like JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and the Hardware. The Business Partner adds the installation services and position this as a solution to the market for a single price. As you know JD Edwards EnterpriseOne can run on multiple hardware platforms. Linux/X-86 version As you all know we do have JD Edwards VM Templates available from Oracle for the X-86 architecture. Each Partner should or is already able to install JD Edwards EnterpriseOne using these images from our software delivery cloud. We built a master bill of material for a X3-2 Hardware configuration now. It has been uploaded on the Community Workspace now. This is a SUGGESTION and limited to 50 Users MAX. However I strongly recommend you to do a sizing as usual and verify the configuration for each opportunity individually. T4-1/X3-2 version Oracle is not providing similar images for the T4-1 SPARC / SOLARIS architecture. There is an Optimized Solution Team inside Oracle who has created an Optimized Solution for JD Edwards some time ago. They created a whitepaper which is still available to download. This whitepaper was used as a starting point however we decided to build a new version of it using the latest Software and Hardware available. This has now been finalized and we are happy to provide this to our partners. This image is more a service we provide for each partner which they can reuse and extend based on their individual offerings. It is not an official supported Oracle Product and cannot be used to deploy to customers immediately. You cannot resell “JDE in a box”. You can use these images to save time while building your own Go-to-Market offering. You might want to add functionality like Mobility. It is also not complete as also the Deployment Server needs to be configured individually at the customer site. We will create some documentation about: what this images contains (and what not)? what final installation activities needs to be provided by each VAD/Partner in this process?  I will send an email to the community once we are ready to share it. You find these assets than in the Community Workspace. The Business Model with Oracle Hardware For those who have not done any Hardware business with Oracle yet: Usually a HW reseller orders the hardware through a Value Add Distributors (VAD) and not from Oracle directly. Each Partner needs to have Hardware Resell rights to do so. The VAD is assembling the boxes according to the needs of each customer. It is easily possible for them to prepare the boxes with the images we/you provide. However the final configuration is something a reseller/implementer needs to do at the customer site. This process is not the same in the EMEA region. Sometimes a VAD are taking the order but they do not see the Hardware at all. In those cases a VAD cannot provide any help with the pre-loading of any images and the reseller/implementer needs to do that. In some countries we do not have VADs at all.

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  • How to Force Graphics Options in PC Games with NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel Graphics

    - by Chris Hoffman
    PC games usually have built-in graphics options you can change. But you’re not limited to the options built into games — the graphics control panels bundled with graphics drivers allow you to tweak options from outside PC games. For example, these tools allow you to force-enabling antialiasing to make old games look better, even if they don’t normally support it. You can also reduce graphics quality to get more performance on slow hardware. If You Don’t See These Options If you don’t have the NVIDIA Control Panel, AMD Catalyst Control Center, or Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel installed, you may need to install the appropriate graphics driver package for your hardware from the hardware manufacturer’s website. The drivers provided via Windows Update don’t include additional software like the NVIDIA Control Panel or AMD Catalyst Control Center. Drivers provided via Windows Update are also more out of date. If you’re playing PC games, you’ll want to have the latest graphics drivers installed on your system. NVIDIA Control Panel The NVIDIA Control Panel allows you to change these options if your computer has NVIDIA graphics hardware. To launch it, right-click your desktop background and select NVIDIA Control Panel. You can also find this tool by performing a Start menu (or Start screen) search for NVIDIA Control Panel or by right-clicking the NVIDIA icon in your system tray and selecting Open NVIDIA Control Panel. To quickly set a system-wide preference, you could use the Adjust image settings with preview option. For example, if you have old hardware that struggles to play the games you want to play, you may want to select “Use my preference emphasizing” and move the slider all the way to “Performance.” This trades graphics quality for an increased frame rate. By default, the “Use the advanced 3D image settings” option is selected. You can select Manage 3D settings and change advanced settings for all programs on your computer or just for specific games. NVIDIA keeps a database of the optimal settings for various games, but you’re free to tweak individual settings here. Just mouse-over an option for an explanation of what it does. If you have a laptop with NVIDIA Optimus technology — that is, both NVIDIA and Intel graphics — this is the same place you can choose which applications will use the NVIDIA hardware and which will use the Intel hardware. AMD Catalyst Control Center AMD’s Catalyst Control Center allows you to change these options on AMD graphics hardware. To open it, right-click your desktop background and select Catalyst Control Center. You can also right-click the Catalyst icon in your system tray and select Catalyst Control Center or perform a Start menu (or Start screen) search for Catalyst Control Center. Click the Gaming category at the left side of the Catalyst Control Center window and select 3D Application Settings to access the graphics settings you can change. The System Settings tab allows you to configure these options globally, for all games. Mouse over any option to see an explanation of what it does. You can also set per-application 3D settings and tweak your settings on a per-game basis. Click the Add option and browse to a game’s .exe file to change its options. Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel Intel integrated graphics is nowhere near as powerful as dedicated graphics hardware from NVIDIA and AMD, but it’s improving and comes included with most computers. Intel doesn’t provide anywhere near as many options in its graphics control panel, but you can still tweak some common settings. To open the Intel graphics control panel, locate the Intel graphics icon in your system tray, right-click it, and select Graphics Properties. You can also right-click the desktop and select Graphics Properties. Select either Basic Mode or Advanced Mode. When the Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel appears, select the 3D option. You’ll be able to set your Performance or Quality setting by moving the slider around or click the Custom Settings check box and customize your Anisotropic Filtering and Vertical Sync preference. Different Intel graphics hardware may have different options here. We also wouldn’t be surprised to see more advanced options appear in the future if Intel is serious about competing in the PC graphics market, as they say they are. These options are primarily useful to PC gamers, so don’t worry about them — or bother downloading updated graphics drivers — if you’re not a PC gamer and don’t use any intensive 3D applications on your computer. Image Credit: Dave Dugdale on Flickr     

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  • Licensing approach for .NET library that might be used desktop / web-service / cloud environment

    - by Bobrovsky
    I am looking for advice how to architect licensing for a .NET library. I am not asking for tool/service recommendations or something like that. My library can be used in a regular desktop application, in an ASP.NET solution. And now Azure services come into play. Currently, for desktop applications the library checks if the application and company names from the version history are the same as the names the key was generated for. In other cases the library compares hardware IDs. Now there are problems: an Azure-enabled web-application can be run on different hardware each time (AFAIK) sometimes the hardware ID for the same hardware changes unexpectedly checking the hardware ID or version info might not be allowed in some circumstances (shared hosting for example) So, I am thinking about what approach I can take to architect a licensing scheme that: is friendly to customers (I do not try to fight piracy, but I do want to warn the customer if he uses the library on more servers than he paid for) can be used when there is no internet connection can be used on shared hosting What would you recommend?

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  • sound stops working after a while in ubuntu 12.10

    - by clio
    i did a clean install on ubuntu 12.10. Everything seemed fine at first including sound but after a while it stopped working. To get is back i have to restart it, sometimes even more than once. Any idea on how to fix this? sudo aplay -L default Playback/recording through the PulseAudio sound server sysdefault:CARD=PCH HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Default Audio Device front:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Front speakers surround40:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog 4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers surround41:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog 4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers surround50:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog 5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers surround51:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog 5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers surround71:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog 7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers iec958:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output hdmi:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0 HDMI Audio Output dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Direct sample mixing device dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=1 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital Direct sample mixing device dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=3 HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0 Direct sample mixing device dsnoop:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Direct sample snooping device dsnoop:CARD=PCH,DEV=1 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital Direct sample snooping device dsnoop:CARD=PCH,DEV=3 HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0 Direct sample snooping device hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Direct hardware device without any conversions hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=1 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital Direct hardware device without any conversions hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=3 HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0 Direct hardware device without any conversions plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Hardware device with all software conversions plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=1 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital Hardware device with all software conversions plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=3 HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0 Hardware device with all software conversions

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  • You are invited! Quarterly Partner Sales Update Roadshow

    - by Giuseppe Facchetti
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Starting July this year, Oracle’s A&C, Partner Enablement and Hardware Teams will be organizing quarterly face-to-face sales training events to keep you up to date with Hardware sales news, latest products and solutions announcements, competitive positioning, sales tools -- all of this with an Oracle-on-Oracle approach.  We are pleased to invite you to attend the first Oracle EMEA Hardware Quarterly Partner Sales Update Roadshow running in 10 different cities across EMEA. The 3 hour, free of charge sales session will run in the afternoon in various locations.  Learn to Articulate the Oracle Hardware Business value proposition to your customers. Explain Oracle Hardware positioning versus the competition. Understand Oracle Hardware as best platform to run the complete Oracle-on-Oracle stack from Application to Disk Find all the details and register here! /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • Dell XPS 15 (L502x) sound problem

    - by lauramolenaar
    I have a problem with my sound on my Dell XPS 15. First, when I had Windows 7, my sound was pretty good (I have a JBL 2.1 speaker system with Waves Maxx audio), but since I installed Ubuntu 12.04 it sounded very cheap and as if I put my laptop in a tin can. I've already tried installing alsa-hda-dkms from the alsa-daily ppa (http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-audio-dev/alsa-daily) This is my audio controller: laura@laura-XPS-L502X:~$ lspci -v | grep -A7 -i audio 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05) Subsystem: Dell Device 04b6 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 51 Memory at f1c00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel I hope you can help me, and you can always ask me for more information. Result of aplay -l: **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC665 Analog [ALC665 Analog] Subdevices: 0/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: ALC665 Digital [ALC665 Digital] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 Result of aplay -L: default Playback/recording through the PulseAudio sound server sysdefault:CARD=PCH HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Default Audio Device front:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Front speakers surround40:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog 4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers surround41:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog 4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers surround50:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog 5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers surround51:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog 5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers surround71:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog 7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers iec958:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output hdmi:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0 HDMI Audio Output dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Direct sample mixing device dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=1 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital Direct sample mixing device dmix:CARD=PCH,DEV=3 HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0 Direct sample mixing device dsnoop:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Direct sample snooping device dsnoop:CARD=PCH,DEV=1 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital Direct sample snooping device dsnoop:CARD=PCH,DEV=3 HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0 Direct sample snooping device hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Direct hardware device without any conversions hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=1 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital Direct hardware device without any conversions hw:CARD=PCH,DEV=3 HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0 Direct hardware device without any conversions plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=0 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Analog Hardware device with all software conversions plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=1 HDA Intel PCH, ALC665 Digital Hardware device with all software conversions plughw:CARD=PCH,DEV=3 HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0 Hardware device with all software conversions

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  • Correct way to (re)launch a Java application with hardware-dependent VM parameters?

    - by LowLevelAbstraction
    EDIT I don't want to use Java Web Start I've got a Java application that I'd like to run with different VM parameters depending on the amount of memory the system it is launched on has. For example if the machine has 1 GB of memory or less I'd like to pass "-Xmx200m" and "-Xmx400m" if it has 2 GB and "-Xmx800m" if it has 8 GB (these are just examples). Is there a portable way to do this? I've tried having a first tiny Java app (hence portable) that determines the amount of memory available and then launches a new Java app but I don't think this is very clean. As of now I've written Bash shell scripts that invoke the Java app with the correct parameters depending on the config but it only works on Linux on OS X. What is the correct way to solve this? Would application packager package ;) help ?

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  • Is it possible to create an Android Service that listens for hardware key presses?

    - by VoteBrian
    I'd like to run an Android background service that will act as a keylistener from the home screen or when the phone is asleep. Is this possible? From semi-related examples online, I put together the following service, but get the error, "onKeyDown is undefined for the type Service". Does this mean it can't be done without rewriting Launcher, or is there something obvious I'm missing? public class ServiceName extends Service { @Override public void onCreate() { //Stuff } public IBinder onBind(Intent intent) { //Stuff return null; } @Override public boolean onKeyDown(int keyCode, KeyEvent event) { if(event.getAction() == KeyEvent.ACTION_DOWN) { switch(keyCode) { case KeyEvent.KEYCODE_A: //Stuff return true; case KeyEvent.KEYCODE_B: //Stuff return true; //etc. } } return super.onKeyDown(keyCode, event); } } I realize Android defaults to the search bar when you type from the home screen, but this really is just for a very particular use. I don't really expect anyone but me to want this. I just think it'd be nice, for example, to use the camera button to wake the phone.

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  • Is it possible to create a Service that listens for hardware key presses?

    - by VoteBrian
    I'd like to run an Android background service that will act as a keylistener from the home screen or when the phone is asleep. Is this possible? From semi-related examples online, I put together the following service, but get the error, "onKeyDown is undefined for the type Service" public class ServiceName extends Service { @Override public void onCreate() { //Stuff } public IBinder onBind(Intent intent) { //Stuff return null; } @Override public boolean onKeyDown(int keyCode, KeyEvent event) { if(event.getAction() == KeyEvent.ACTION_DOWN) { switch(keyCode) { case KeyEvent.KEYCODE_A: //Stuff return true; case KeyEvent.KEYCODE_B: //Stuff return true; //etc. } } return super.onKeyDown(keyCode, event); } } I realize Android defaults to the search bar when you type from the home screen, but this really is just for a very particular use. I don't really expect to distribute this. Also, it'd be nice to use the camera button to wake the phone.

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  • Why don't hardware failures show up at the programming language level?

    - by Julian Cienfuegos
    I am wondering if anyone can give my a good answer, or at least point me in the direction of a good reference to the following question: How come I have never heard of a computer breaking in a very fundamental way? How come when I declare x to be a double it stays as a double? How come there is never a short circuit that robs it of some bytes and makes it an integer? Why do we have faith that when we initialize x to 10, there will never be a power surge that will cause it to become 11, or something similar? I think I need a better understanding of memory. Thanks, and please don't bash me over the head for such a simple/abstract question.

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  • where on disk is space allocated for new files inside LVM lv with ext4 file system?

    - by Jost
    I run a multi-disk server with LVM2. Several large disks serve as LVM2 physical volumes for one volume group, containing one logical volume formatted with ext4. Nothing fancy, just your standard linear setup. Recently an additional, very small disk was added as physical volume to that volume group and I expanded both the logical volume, and the ext4 file system therein onto that disk. This lv is used to store incremental backups using rsync and is only about 30% full, there have rarely been any files deleted from it, only incremental writes. Now this new HDD I added to the pre-existing volume group has unexpectedly died on me, and the volume group won't come up because it is missing one physical volume. As fate will have it, this WAS the "in an event of catastrophic failure on the primary server"-backup, the event happened, the boss is not happy, so this kinda has to work... According to this (Part 3): http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/appnote/19386.html it is possible to trick LVM into starting anyway by creating a new pv with identical metadata to the failed disk, which will make the volume accessible, but of course leave giant holes in the file system. I have'n tried it yet, because it involves repairing (writing to) the file system which eliminates the possibility of trying other things if it fails. Now my question is: How does this setup actually allocate disk space for new data? Is it allocated linearly from beginning to end of PVs, in the order they were added to the vg? Is it striped somehow in order to increase performance/balance load? since this defective disk was added only later to an existing lvm2 vg and lv, containing a half-empty ext4, what are the chances that there was never any data written to the defective disk? In other words: what are the chances of recovering all my data, even without the defective disk, by just starting the volume group as-is? Am I about to go spend $1500 on having 250GB of empty space recovered when I send the defective disk in for repair? Is there a way to check without mounting the file system and opening the files, hoping they contain something other than zeros? (comparing addresses of used data blocks inside ext4 to address ranges that were on the missing pv, something like that, preferably easy to automate) I know bitwise-copying the entire lv into an image file before trying to repair the ext4 would probably be a good idea, but since this lv is very large and I just suffered major file system failure on several systems it is probably a luxury I don't have... Any suggestions?

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  • SQL IO and SAN troubles

    - by James
    We are running two servers with identical software setup but different hardware. The first one is a VM on VMWare on a normal tower server with dual core xeons, 16 GB RAM and a 7200 RPM drive. The second one is a VM on XenServer on a powerful brand new rack server, with 4 core xeons and shared storage. We are running Dynamics AX 2012 and SQL Server 2008 R2. When I insert 15 000 records into a table on the slow tower server (as a test), it does so in 13 seconds. On the fast server it takes 33 seconds. I re-ran these tests several times with the same results. I have a feeling it is some sort of IO bottleneck, so I ran SQLIO on both. Here are the results for the slow tower server: C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>test.bat C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS C:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 14318180 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file C:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: C:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 226.97 MBs/sec: 1.77 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 0 Avg_Latency(ms): 281 Max_Latency(ms): 467 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 99 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS C:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 14318180 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file C:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: C:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 91.34 MBs/sec: 0.71 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 14 Avg_Latency(ms): 699 Max_Latency(ms): 1124 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS C :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 14318180 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file C:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: C:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 1094.50 MBs/sec: 68.40 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 0 Avg_Latency(ms): 58 Max_Latency(ms): 467 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS C :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 14318180 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file C:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: C:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 1155.31 MBs/sec: 72.20 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 17 Avg_Latency(ms): 55 Max_Latency(ms): 205 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 Here are the results of the fast rack server: C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>test.bat C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS E:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file E:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) open_file: CreateFile (E:\TestFile.dat for write): The system cannot find the pa th specified. exiting C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS E:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file E:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) open_file: CreateFile (E:\TestFile.dat for read): The system cannot find the pat h specified. exiting C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS E :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file E:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) open_file: CreateFile (E:\TestFile.dat for write): The system cannot find the pa th specified. exiting C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS E :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file E:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) open_file: CreateFile (E:\TestFile.dat for read): The system cannot find the pat h specified. exiting C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>test.bat C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS c:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file c:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: c:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 2575.77 MBs/sec: 20.12 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 1 Avg_Latency(ms): 24 Max_Latency(ms): 655 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 5 8 9 9 9 8 5 3 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 37 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -frandom -b8 -BH -LS c:\Tes tFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file c:\TestFile.dat using 8KB random IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: c:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 1141.39 MBs/sec: 8.91 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 1 Avg_Latency(ms): 55 Max_Latency(ms): 652 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 91 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kW -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS c :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads writing for 120 secs to file c:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: c:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 341.37 MBs/sec: 21.33 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 5 Avg_Latency(ms): 186 Max_Latency(ms): 120037 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 C:\Program Files (x86)\SQLIO>sqlio -kR -t8 -s120 -o8 -fsequential -b64 -BH -LS c :\TestFile.dat sqlio v1.5.SG using system counter for latency timings, 62500000 counts per second 8 threads reading for 120 secs from file c:\TestFile.dat using 64KB sequential IOs enabling multiple I/Os per thread with 8 outstanding buffering set to use hardware disk cache (but not file cache) using current size: 5120 MB for file: c:\TestFile.dat initialization done CUMULATIVE DATA: throughput metrics: IOs/sec: 1024.07 MBs/sec: 64.00 latency metrics: Min_Latency(ms): 5 Avg_Latency(ms): 61 Max_Latency(ms): 81632 histogram: ms: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ %: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 Three of the four tests are, to my mind, within reasonable parameters for the rack server. However, the 64 write test is incredibly slow on the rack server. (68 mb/sec on the slow tower vs 21 mb/s on the rack). The read speed for 64k also seems slow. Is this enough to say there is some sort of bottleneck with the shared storage? I need to know if I can take this evidence and say we need to launch an investigation into this. Any help is appreciated.

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  • Lubuntu upgrade to 13.04 killed sound with ALSA. How to troubleshoot?

    - by Sven
    After upgrading to 13.04 from 12.10 Lubuntu lost audio playback after unplugging usb soundcard (Polycom) and plugging it back in. Volume control was gray and leading to pulseaudio mixer (not installed) so I uninstalled the pulseaudio package. I also removed and reinstalled the alsa-base package. After restart I have the alsamixer back everything seemingly as usual(volume 100%, unmute) but every sound program gets me errors no matter what device I select. aplay -L: null Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture) pulse PulseAudio Sound Server default:CARD=NVidia HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog Default Audio Device sysdefault:CARD=NVidia HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog Default Audio Device front:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog Front speakers surround40:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog 4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers surround41:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog 4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers surround50:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog 5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers surround51:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog 5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers surround71:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog 7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers iec958:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, HDMI 0 HDMI Audio Output dmix:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog Direct sample mixing device dmix:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital Direct sample mixing device dmix:CARD=NVidia,DEV=3 HDA NVidia, HDMI 0 Direct sample mixing device dsnoop:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog Direct sample snooping device dsnoop:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital Direct sample snooping device dsnoop:CARD=NVidia,DEV=3 HDA NVidia, HDMI 0 Direct sample snooping device hw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog Direct hardware device without any conversions hw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital Direct hardware device without any conversions hw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=3 HDA NVidia, HDMI 0 Direct hardware device without any conversions plughw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Analog Hardware device with all software conversions plughw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1 HDA NVidia, ALC662 rev1 Digital Hardware device with all software conversions plughw:CARD=NVidia,DEV=3 HDA NVidia, HDMI 0 Hardware device with all software conversions default:CARD=Communicator Default Audio Device sysdefault:CARD=Communicator Default Audio Device front:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio Front speakers surround40:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio 4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers surround41:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio 4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers surround50:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio 5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers surround51:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio 5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers surround71:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio 7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers iec958:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output dmix:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio Direct sample mixing device dsnoop:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio Direct sample snooping device hw:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio Direct hardware device without any conversions plughw:CARD=Communicator,DEV=0 Polycom Communicator, USB Audio Hardware device with all software conversions etc/asound.conf: defaults.ctl.card 1 defaults.pcm.card 1 defaults.pcm.device 1 Following gets same result with both devices. aplay -vv -D front:CARD=NVidia,DEV=0 "Release the Pressure.wav": Playing WAVE 'Release the Pressure.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Mono aplay: set_params:1087: Channels count non available Guayadeque mp3 playback: AL lib: alsa_open_playback: Could not open playback device 'default': No such file or directory 21:32:14: Error: Gstreamer error 'Configured audiosink playbackbin is not working.' Audacious: ALSA error: snd_mixer_attach failed: No such file or directory. ALSA error: snd_pcm_open failed: No such device. So How do I fix my audio? UPDATE: I removed the usb soundcard and got rid of all alsa config. Everything is working as before the install but it sure feels fragile.

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  • Critical Threads Optimization

    - by Rafael Vanoni
    Background One of the more common issues we've been seeing in the field is the growing difficulty in optimizing performance of multi-threaded applications. A good portion of this difficulty is due to the increasing complexity of modern processors that present various degrees of sharing relationships between hardware components. Take any current CMT processor and you'll find any number of CPUs sharing execution pipelines, floating point units, caches, etc. Consequently, applying the traditional recipe of one software thread for each CPU will have varying degrees of success, according to the layout of the underlying hardware. On top of this increasing complexity we've also seen processors with features that aim at dynamically resourcing software threads according to their utilization. Intel's Turbo Boost allows processors to increase their operating frequency if there is enough thermal headroom available and the processor isn't fully utilized. More recently, the SPARC T4 processor introduced dynamic threading, allowing each core to dynamically allocate more resources to its active CPUs. Both cases are in essence recognizing that current processors will be running a wide mix of workloads, some will be designed for throughput, others for low latency. The hardware is providing mechanisms to dynamically resource threads according to their runtime behavior. We're very aware of these challenges in Solaris, and have been working to provide the best out of box performance while providing mechanisms to further optimize applications when necessary. The Critical Threads Optimzation was introduced in Solaris 10 8/11 and Solaris 11 as one such mechanism that allows customers to both address issues caused by contention over shared hardware resources and explicitly take advantage of features such as T4's dynamic threading. What it is The basic idea is to allow performance critical threads to execute with more exclusive access to hardware resources. For example, when deploying an application that implements a producer/consumer model, it'll likely be advantageous to give the producer more exclusive access to the hardware instead of having it competing for resources with all the consumers. In the case of a T4 based system, we may want to have a producer running by itself on a single core and create one consumer for each of the remaining CPUs. With the Critical Threads Optimization we're extending the semantics of scheduling priorities (which thread should run first) to include priority over shared resources (which thread should have more "space"). Now the scheduler will not only run higher priority threads first: it will also provide them with more exclusive access to hardware resources if they are available. How does it work ? Using the previous example in Solaris 11, all you'd have to do would be to place the producer in the Fixed Priority (FX) scheduling class at priority 60, or in the Real Time (RT) class at any priority and Solaris will try to give it more "hardware space". On both Solaris 10 8/11 and Solaris 11 this can be achieved through the existing priocntl(1,2) and priocntlset(2) interfaces. If your application already assigns these priorities to performance critical threads, there's no additional step you need to take. One important aspect of this optimization is that it requires some level of idleness in the system, either as a result of sizing the application before hand or through periods of transient idleness during runtime. If the system is fully committed, the scheduler will put all the available CPUs to work.Best practices If you're an application developer, we encourage you to look into assigning the right priorities for the different threads in your application. Solaris provides different scheduling classes (Time Share, Interactive, Fair Share, Fixed Priority and Real Time) that offer different policies and behaviors. It is not always simple to figure out which set of threads are critical to the performance of a workload, and it may not always be feasible to take advantage of this optimization, but we believe that this can be correctly (and safely) done during development. Overall, the out of box performance in Solaris should meet your workload's requirements. If you are looking into that extra bit of performance, then the Critical Threads Optimization may be what you're looking for.

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  • Gaming on Cloud

    - by technomad
    Sometimes I wonder the pundits of cloud computing are way to consumed with the enterprise applications. With all the CAPEX / OPEX, ROI-talk taking the center stage, an opportunity to affect masses directly is getting overlooked. I am a self proclaimed die hard gamer. I come from the generation of gamers who started their journey in DOS games like Wolfenstein 3D and Allan Border Cricket (the latter is still a favorite pastime). In the late 90s, a revolution called accelerated graphics started in DirectX and OpenGL. Games got more advanced. Likes of Quake III and Unreal Tournament became the crown jewels of the industry. But with all these advancements, there started a race. A race of GFX giants ATI and NVIDIA to beat each other for better frame and image quality. Revisions to the graphics chipsets became frequent. Games became eye candies but at the cost of more GPU power / memory. Every eagerly awaited title started demanding more muscle power in graphics and PC hardware. Latest games and all the liquid smooth frame rates became the territory of the once with deep pockets who could spend lavishly on latest hardware. Enthusiasts like yours truly, who couldn’t afford this route, started exploring over-clocking, optimized hardware cooling... etc. to pursue the passion. Ever rising cost of hardware requirements lead to rampant piracy of PC games. Gamers were willing to spend on the latest titles, but the ones with tight budget prefer hardware upgrades against a legal copy of the game. It was also fueled by emergence of the P2P file sharing networks. Then came the era of Xbox and PS3s. It solved the major issue of hardware standardization and provided an alternative to ever increasing hardware costs. I have always admired these consoles, but being born and brought up in a keyboard/mouse environment, I still find it difficult to play first person shooters with a gamepad. I leave the topic of PC v/s Consol gaming for another day, but the bottom line is… PC gamers deserve an equally democratized solution. This is where I think Cloud Computing can come to rescue. It can minimize hardware requirements. Virtually end the software piracy and rationalize costs for gamers. Subscription based models like pay-as-you-play. In game rewards, like extended subscription credits for exceptional gamers (oh yes, I have beaten Xaero on nightmare in Quake III, time and again!) Easy deployment for patches and fixes. Better game AI. The list goes on and on… Fortunately, companies like OnLive are thinking in the same direction. Their gaming service is all set to launch on 17th June 2010 in E3 2010 expo in L.A. I wish them all the luck. I hope they will start a trend which will bring the smiles back on the face of budget gamers with the help of cloud computing.

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  • Interesting articles and blogs on SPARC T4

    - by mv
    Interesting articles and blogs on SPARC T4 processor   I have consolidated all the interesting information I could get on SPARC T4 processor and its hardware cryptographic capabilities.  Hope its useful. 1. Advantages of SPARC T4 processor  Most important points in this T4 announcement are : "The SPARC T4 processor was designed from the ground up for high speed security and has a cryptographic stream processing unit (SPU) integrated directly into each processor core. These accelerators support 16 industry standard security ciphers and enable high speed encryption at rates 3 to 5 times that of competing processors. By integrating encryption capabilities directly inside the instruction pipeline, the SPARC T4 processor eliminates the performance and cost barriers typically associated with secure computing and makes it possible to deliver high security levels without impacting the user experience." Data Sheet has more details on these  : "New on-chip Encryption Instruction Accelerators with direct non-privileged support for 16 industry-standard cryptographic algorithms plus random number generation in each of the eight cores: AES, Camellia, CRC32c, DES, 3DES, DH, DSA, ECC, Kasumi, MD5, RSA, SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512" I ran "isainfo -v" command on Solaris 11 Sparc T4-1 system. It shows the new instructions as expected  : $ isainfo -v 64-bit sparcv9 applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc 32-bit sparc applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc v8plus div32 mul32  2.  Dan Anderson's Blog have some interesting points about how these can be used : "New T4 crypto instructions include: aes_kexpand0, aes_kexpand1, aes_kexpand2,         aes_eround01, aes_eround23, aes_eround01_l, aes_eround_23_l, aes_dround01, aes_dround23, aes_dround01_l, aes_dround_23_l.       Having SPARC T4 hardware crypto instructions is all well and good, but how do we access it ?      The software is available with Solaris 11 and is used automatically if you are running Solaris a SPARC T4.  It is used internally in the kernel through kernel crypto modules.  It is available in user space through the PKCS#11 library." 3.   Dans' Blog on Where's the Crypto Libraries? Although this was written in 2009 but still is very useful  "Here's a brief tour of the major crypto libraries shown in the digraph:   The libpkcs11 library contains the PKCS#11 API (C_\*() functions, such as C_Initialize()). That in turn calls library pkcs11_softtoken or pkcs11_kernel, for userland or kernel crypto providers. The latter is used mostly for hardware-assisted cryptography (such as n2cp for Niagara2 SPARC processors), as that is performed more efficiently in kernel space with the "kCF" module (Kernel Crypto Framework). Additionally, for Solaris 10, strong crypto algorithms were split off in separate libraries, pkcs11_softtoken_extra libcryptoutil contains low-level utility functions to help implement cryptography. libsoftcrypto (OpenSolaris and Solaris Nevada only) implements several symmetric-key crypto algorithms in software, such as AES, RC4, and DES3, and the bignum library (used for RSA). libmd implements MD5, SHA, and SHA2 message digest algorithms" 4. Difference in T3 and T4 Diagram in this blog is good and self explanatory. Jeff's blog also highlights the differences  "The T4 servers have improved crypto acceleration, described at https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/sparc_t4_openssl_engine. It is "just built in" so administrators no longer have to assign crypto accelerator units to domains - it "just happens". Every physical or virtual CPU on a SPARC-T4 has full access to hardware based crypto acceleration at all times. .... For completeness sake, it's worth noting that the T4 adds more crypto algorithms, and accelerates Camelia, CRC32c, and more SHA-x." 5. About performance counters In this blog, performance counters are explained : "Note that unlike T3 and before, T4 crypto doesn't require kernel modules like ncp or n2cp, there is no visibility of crypto hardware with kstats or cryptoadm. T4 does provide hardware counters for crypto operations.  You can see these using cpustat: cpustat -c pic0=Instr_FGU_crypto 5 You can check the general crypto support of the hardware and OS with the command "isainfo -v". Since T4 crypto's implementation now allows direct userland access, there are no "crypto units" visible to cryptoadm.  " For more details refer Martin's blog as well. 6. How to turn off  SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration  I found this interesting blog from Darren about how to turn off  SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration. "One of the new Solaris 11 features of the linker/loader is the ability to have a single ELF object that has multiple different implementations of the same functions that are selected at runtime based on the capabilities of the machine.   The alternate to this is having the application coded to call getisax(2) system call and make the choice itself.  We use this functionality of the linker/loader when we build the userland libraries for the Solaris Cryptographic Framework (specifically libmd.so and libsoftcrypto.so) The Solaris linker/loader allows control of a lot of its functionality via environment variables, we can use that to control the version of the cryptographic functions we run.  To do this we simply export the LD_HWCAP environment variable with values that tell ld.so.1 to not select the HWCAP section matching certain features even if isainfo says they are present.  This will work for consumers of the Solaris Cryptographic Framework that use the Solaris PKCS#11 libraries or use libmd.so interfaces directly.  For SPARC T4 : export LD_HWCAP="-aes -des -md5 -sha256 -sha512 -mont -mpul" .. For Intel systems with AES-NI support: export LD_HWCAP="-aes"" Note that LD_HWCAP is explained in  http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23823_01/html/816-5165/ld.so.1-1.html "LD_HWCAP, LD_HWCAP_32, and LD_HWCAP_64 -  Identifies an alternative hardware capabilities value... A “-” prefix results in the capabilities that follow being removed from the alternative capabilities." 7. Whitepaper on SPARC T4 Servers—Optimized for End-to-End Data Center Computing This Whitepaper on SPARC T4 Servers—Optimized for End-to-End Data Center Computing explains more details.  It has DTrace scripts which may come in handy : "To ensure the hardware-assisted cryptographic acceleration is configured to use and working with the security scenarios, it is recommended to use the following Solaris DTrace script. #!/usr/sbin/dtrace -s pid$1:libsoftcrypto:yf*:entry, pid$target:libsoftcrypto:rsa*:entry, pid$1:libmd:yf*:entry { @[probefunc] = count(); } tick-1sec { printa(@ops); trunc(@ops); }" Note that I have slightly modified the D Script to have RSA "libsoftcrypto:rsa*:entry" as well as per recommendations from Chi-Chang Lin. 8. References http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/sparc-t4-announcement-494846.html http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/t-series/sparc-t4-1-ds-487858.pdf https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/sparc_t4_openssl_engine https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/where_s_the_crypto_libraries https://blogs.oracle.com/darren/entry/howto_turn_off_sparc_t4 http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23823_01/html/816-5165/ld.so.1-1.html   https://blogs.oracle.com/hardware/entry/unleash_the_power_of_cryptography https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/entry/t4_crypto_cheat_sheet https://blogs.oracle.com/martinm/entry/t4_performance_counters_explained  https://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/no_mau_required_on_a http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/t-series/sparc-t4-business-wp-524472.pdf

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  • Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine

    - by danx
    Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine Cryptography is a major component of secure e-commerce. Since cryptography is compute intensive and adds a significant load to applications, such as SSL web servers (https), crypto performance is an important factor. Providing accelerated crypto hardware greatly helps these applications and will help lead to a wider adoption of cryptography, and lower cost, in e-commerce and other applications. The Intel Westmere microprocessor has six new instructions to acclerate AES encryption. They are called "AESNI" for "AES New Instructions". These are unprivileged instructions, so no "root", other elevated access, or context switch is required to execute these instructions. These instructions are used in a new built-in OpenSSL 1.0 engine available in Solaris 11, the aesni engine. Previous Work Previously, AESNI instructions were introduced into the Solaris x86 kernel and libraries. That is, the "aes" kernel module (used by IPsec and other kernel modules) and the Solaris pkcs11 library (for user applications). These are available in Solaris 10 10/09 (update 8) and above, and Solaris 11. The work here is to add the aesni engine to OpenSSL. X86 AESNI Instructions Intel's Xeon 5600 is one of the processors that support AESNI. This processor is used in the Sun Fire X4170 M2 As mentioned above, six new instructions acclerate AES encryption in processor silicon. The new instructions are: aesenc performs one round of AES encryption. One encryption round is composed of these steps: substitute bytes, shift rows, mix columns, and xor the round key. aesenclast performs the final encryption round, which is the same as above, except omitting the mix columns (which is only needed for the next encryption round). aesdec performs one round of AES decryption aesdeclast performs the final AES decryption round aeskeygenassist Helps expand the user-provided key into a "key schedule" of keys, one per round aesimc performs an "inverse mixed columns" operation to convert the encryption key schedule into a decryption key schedule pclmulqdq Not a AESNI instruction, but performs "carryless multiply" operations to acclerate AES GCM mode. Since the AESNI instructions are implemented in hardware, they take a constant number of cycles and are not vulnerable to side-channel timing attacks that attempt to discern some bits of data from the time taken to encrypt or decrypt the data. Solaris x86 and OpenSSL Software Optimizations Having X86 AESNI hardware crypto instructions is all well and good, but how do we access it? The software is available with Solaris 11 and is used automatically if you are running Solaris x86 on a AESNI-capable processor. AESNI is used internally in the kernel through kernel crypto modules and is available in user space through the PKCS#11 library. For OpenSSL on Solaris 11, AESNI crypto is available directly with a new built-in OpenSSL 1.0 engine, called the "aesni engine." This is in lieu of the extra overhead of going through the Solaris OpenSSL pkcs11 engine, which accesses Solaris crypto and digest operations. Instead, AESNI assembly is included directly in the new aesni engine. Instead of including the aesni engine in a separate library in /lib/openssl/engines/, the aesni engine is "built-in", meaning it is included directly in OpenSSL's libcrypto.so.1.0.0 library. This reduces overhead and the need to manually specify the aesni engine. Since the engine is built-in (that is, in libcrypto.so.1.0.0), the openssl -engine command line flag or API call is not needed to access the engine—the aesni engine is used automatically on AESNI hardware. Ciphers and Digests supported by OpenSSL aesni engine The Openssl aesni engine auto-detects if it's running on AESNI hardware and uses AESNI encryption instructions for these ciphers: AES-128-CBC, AES-192-CBC, AES-256-CBC, AES-128-CFB128, AES-192-CFB128, AES-256-CFB128, AES-128-CTR, AES-192-CTR, AES-256-CTR, AES-128-ECB, AES-192-ECB, AES-256-ECB, AES-128-OFB, AES-192-OFB, and AES-256-OFB. Implementation of the OpenSSL aesni engine The AESNI assembly language routines are not a part of the regular Openssl 1.0.0 release. AESNI is a part of the "HEAD" ("development" or "unstable") branch of OpenSSL, for future release. But AESNI is also available as a separate patch provided by Intel to the OpenSSL project for OpenSSL 1.0.0. A minimal amount of "glue" code in the aesni engine works between the OpenSSL libcrypto.so.1.0.0 library and the assembly functions. The aesni engine code is separate from the base OpenSSL code and requires patching only a few source files to use it. That means OpenSSL can be more easily updated to future versions without losing the performance from the built-in aesni engine. OpenSSL aesni engine Performance Here's some graphs of aesni engine performance I measured by running openssl speed -evp $algorithm where $algorithm is aes-128-cbc, aes-192-cbc, and aes-256-cbc. These are using the 64-bit version of openssl on the same AESNI hardware, a Sun Fire X4170 M2 with a Intel Xeon E5620 @2.40GHz, running Solaris 11 FCS. "Before" is openssl without the aesni engine and "after" is openssl with the aesni engine. The numbers are MBytes/second. OpenSSL aesni engine performance on Sun Fire X4170 M2 (Xeon E5620 @2.40GHz) (Higher is better; "before"=OpenSSL on AESNI without AESNI engine software, "after"=OpenSSL AESNI engine) As you can see the speedup is dramatic for all 3 key lengths and for data sizes from 16 bytes to 8 Kbytes—AESNI is about 7.5-8x faster over hand-coded amd64 assembly (without aesni instructions). Verifying the OpenSSL aesni engine is present The easiest way to determine if you are running the aesni engine is to type "openssl engine" on the command line. No configuration, API, or command line options are needed to use the OpenSSL aesni engine. If you are running on Intel AESNI hardware with Solaris 11 FCS, you'll see this output indicating you are using the aesni engine: intel-westmere $ openssl engine (aesni) Intel AES-NI engine (no-aesni) (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support (pkcs11) PKCS #11 engine support If you are running on Intel without AESNI hardware you'll see this output indicating the hardware can't support the aesni engine: intel-nehalem $ openssl engine (aesni) Intel AES-NI engine (no-aesni) (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support (pkcs11) PKCS #11 engine support For Solaris on SPARC or older Solaris OpenSSL software, you won't see any aesni engine line at all. Third-party OpenSSL software (built yourself or from outside Oracle) will not have the aesni engine either. Solaris 11 FCS comes with OpenSSL version 1.0.0e. The output of typing "openssl version" should be "OpenSSL 1.0.0e 6 Sep 2011". 64- and 32-bit OpenSSL OpenSSL comes in both 32- and 64-bit binaries. 64-bit executable is now the default, at /usr/bin/openssl, and OpenSSL 64-bit libraries at /lib/amd64/libcrypto.so.1.0.0 and libssl.so.1.0.0 The 32-bit executable is at /usr/bin/i86/openssl and the libraries are at /lib/libcrytpo.so.1.0.0 and libssl.so.1.0.0. Availability The OpenSSL AESNI engine is available in Solaris 11 x86 for both the 64- and 32-bit versions of OpenSSL. It is not available with Solaris 10. You must have a processor that supports AESNI instructions, otherwise OpenSSL will fallback to the older, slower AES implementation without AESNI. Processors that support AESNI include most Westmere and Sandy Bridge class processor architectures. Some low-end processors (such as for mobile/laptop platforms) do not support AESNI. The easiest way to determine if the processor supports AESNI is with the isainfo -v command—look for "amd64" and "aes" in the output: $ isainfo -v 64-bit amd64 applications pclmulqdq aes sse4.2 sse4.1 ssse3 popcnt tscp ahf cx16 sse3 sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov amd_sysc cx8 tsc fpu Conclusion The Solaris 11 OpenSSL aesni engine provides easy access to powerful Intel AESNI hardware cryptography, in addition to Solaris userland PKCS#11 libraries and Solaris crypto kernel modules.

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  • Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine

    - by danx
    Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine Cryptography is a major component of secure e-commerce. Since cryptography is compute intensive and adds a significant load to applications, such as SSL web servers (https), crypto performance is an important factor. Providing accelerated crypto hardware greatly helps these applications and will help lead to a wider adoption of cryptography, and lower cost, in e-commerce and other applications. The Intel Westmere microprocessor has six new instructions to acclerate AES encryption. They are called "AESNI" for "AES New Instructions". These are unprivileged instructions, so no "root", other elevated access, or context switch is required to execute these instructions. These instructions are used in a new built-in OpenSSL 1.0 engine available in Solaris 11, the aesni engine. Previous Work Previously, AESNI instructions were introduced into the Solaris x86 kernel and libraries. That is, the "aes" kernel module (used by IPsec and other kernel modules) and the Solaris pkcs11 library (for user applications). These are available in Solaris 10 10/09 (update 8) and above, and Solaris 11. The work here is to add the aesni engine to OpenSSL. X86 AESNI Instructions Intel's Xeon 5600 is one of the processors that support AESNI. This processor is used in the Sun Fire X4170 M2 As mentioned above, six new instructions acclerate AES encryption in processor silicon. The new instructions are: aesenc performs one round of AES encryption. One encryption round is composed of these steps: substitute bytes, shift rows, mix columns, and xor the round key. aesenclast performs the final encryption round, which is the same as above, except omitting the mix columns (which is only needed for the next encryption round). aesdec performs one round of AES decryption aesdeclast performs the final AES decryption round aeskeygenassist Helps expand the user-provided key into a "key schedule" of keys, one per round aesimc performs an "inverse mixed columns" operation to convert the encryption key schedule into a decryption key schedule pclmulqdq Not a AESNI instruction, but performs "carryless multiply" operations to acclerate AES GCM mode. Since the AESNI instructions are implemented in hardware, they take a constant number of cycles and are not vulnerable to side-channel timing attacks that attempt to discern some bits of data from the time taken to encrypt or decrypt the data. Solaris x86 and OpenSSL Software Optimizations Having X86 AESNI hardware crypto instructions is all well and good, but how do we access it? The software is available with Solaris 11 and is used automatically if you are running Solaris x86 on a AESNI-capable processor. AESNI is used internally in the kernel through kernel crypto modules and is available in user space through the PKCS#11 library. For OpenSSL on Solaris 11, AESNI crypto is available directly with a new built-in OpenSSL 1.0 engine, called the "aesni engine." This is in lieu of the extra overhead of going through the Solaris OpenSSL pkcs11 engine, which accesses Solaris crypto and digest operations. Instead, AESNI assembly is included directly in the new aesni engine. Instead of including the aesni engine in a separate library in /lib/openssl/engines/, the aesni engine is "built-in", meaning it is included directly in OpenSSL's libcrypto.so.1.0.0 library. This reduces overhead and the need to manually specify the aesni engine. Since the engine is built-in (that is, in libcrypto.so.1.0.0), the openssl -engine command line flag or API call is not needed to access the engine—the aesni engine is used automatically on AESNI hardware. Ciphers and Digests supported by OpenSSL aesni engine The Openssl aesni engine auto-detects if it's running on AESNI hardware and uses AESNI encryption instructions for these ciphers: AES-128-CBC, AES-192-CBC, AES-256-CBC, AES-128-CFB128, AES-192-CFB128, AES-256-CFB128, AES-128-CTR, AES-192-CTR, AES-256-CTR, AES-128-ECB, AES-192-ECB, AES-256-ECB, AES-128-OFB, AES-192-OFB, and AES-256-OFB. Implementation of the OpenSSL aesni engine The AESNI assembly language routines are not a part of the regular Openssl 1.0.0 release. AESNI is a part of the "HEAD" ("development" or "unstable") branch of OpenSSL, for future release. But AESNI is also available as a separate patch provided by Intel to the OpenSSL project for OpenSSL 1.0.0. A minimal amount of "glue" code in the aesni engine works between the OpenSSL libcrypto.so.1.0.0 library and the assembly functions. The aesni engine code is separate from the base OpenSSL code and requires patching only a few source files to use it. That means OpenSSL can be more easily updated to future versions without losing the performance from the built-in aesni engine. OpenSSL aesni engine Performance Here's some graphs of aesni engine performance I measured by running openssl speed -evp $algorithm where $algorithm is aes-128-cbc, aes-192-cbc, and aes-256-cbc. These are using the 64-bit version of openssl on the same AESNI hardware, a Sun Fire X4170 M2 with a Intel Xeon E5620 @2.40GHz, running Solaris 11 FCS. "Before" is openssl without the aesni engine and "after" is openssl with the aesni engine. The numbers are MBytes/second. OpenSSL aesni engine performance on Sun Fire X4170 M2 (Xeon E5620 @2.40GHz) (Higher is better; "before"=OpenSSL on AESNI without AESNI engine software, "after"=OpenSSL AESNI engine) As you can see the speedup is dramatic for all 3 key lengths and for data sizes from 16 bytes to 8 Kbytes—AESNI is about 7.5-8x faster over hand-coded amd64 assembly (without aesni instructions). Verifying the OpenSSL aesni engine is present The easiest way to determine if you are running the aesni engine is to type "openssl engine" on the command line. No configuration, API, or command line options are needed to use the OpenSSL aesni engine. If you are running on Intel AESNI hardware with Solaris 11 FCS, you'll see this output indicating you are using the aesni engine: intel-westmere $ openssl engine (aesni) Intel AES-NI engine (no-aesni) (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support (pkcs11) PKCS #11 engine support If you are running on Intel without AESNI hardware you'll see this output indicating the hardware can't support the aesni engine: intel-nehalem $ openssl engine (aesni) Intel AES-NI engine (no-aesni) (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support (pkcs11) PKCS #11 engine support For Solaris on SPARC or older Solaris OpenSSL software, you won't see any aesni engine line at all. Third-party OpenSSL software (built yourself or from outside Oracle) will not have the aesni engine either. Solaris 11 FCS comes with OpenSSL version 1.0.0e. The output of typing "openssl version" should be "OpenSSL 1.0.0e 6 Sep 2011". 64- and 32-bit OpenSSL OpenSSL comes in both 32- and 64-bit binaries. 64-bit executable is now the default, at /usr/bin/openssl, and OpenSSL 64-bit libraries at /lib/amd64/libcrypto.so.1.0.0 and libssl.so.1.0.0 The 32-bit executable is at /usr/bin/i86/openssl and the libraries are at /lib/libcrytpo.so.1.0.0 and libssl.so.1.0.0. Availability The OpenSSL AESNI engine is available in Solaris 11 x86 for both the 64- and 32-bit versions of OpenSSL. It is not available with Solaris 10. You must have a processor that supports AESNI instructions, otherwise OpenSSL will fallback to the older, slower AES implementation without AESNI. Processors that support AESNI include most Westmere and Sandy Bridge class processor architectures. Some low-end processors (such as for mobile/laptop platforms) do not support AESNI. The easiest way to determine if the processor supports AESNI is with the isainfo -v command—look for "amd64" and "aes" in the output: $ isainfo -v 64-bit amd64 applications pclmulqdq aes sse4.2 sse4.1 ssse3 popcnt tscp ahf cx16 sse3 sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov amd_sysc cx8 tsc fpu Conclusion The Solaris 11 OpenSSL aesni engine provides easy access to powerful Intel AESNI hardware cryptography, in addition to Solaris userland PKCS#11 libraries and Solaris crypto kernel modules.

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  • My hardware MAC address is always 00:00:00:00:00:00 until I manually update 'eth0'. How can I fix this?

    - by user57184
    I am using Ubuntu 12.04. I use a wired connection. My network MAC address shows as 00:00:00:00:00:00. When I enter the commands below into a terminal window, it starts working again. sudo ifconfig eth0 down sudo ifconfig eth0 hw ether my mac address sudo ifconfig eth0 up I have to enter these commands every time I want to use the Internet. How can I fix this? Update copied from comment The contents of my /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf file is: [main] plugins=ifupdown,keyfile dns=dnsmasq no-auto-default=00:00:00:00:00:00, [ifupdown] managed=false

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