Something Random

[LunarMist]

Do the acceleration thing, then do the self-driving thing. Other than that it is just a really nice car appliance. It does all the things non-car-people care about really well. I switched from the Model S to the Model 3 when we came to the EU because the roads are so much narrower here.

 

[CougTek]

Thanks Mooner for the explanation about DDrueding... I was more looking for post #18526 and #18532 of this thread, but your "unconventional" links motivated me to search for the correct source.

 

[LunarMist]

This forum never works right for me and worse after the edits. It boggles the minds.

 

[CougTek]

It was comical and reminded me that you had the same issues many years ago. I didn't mind.

 

[Mercutio]

It looks like the latest of the Marvells has bombed. I'm curious how you compared that to the others.

It's a fun movie that leans heavily on the Pakistani-American Ms. Marvel character and her family . Ms. Marvel had a TV mini-series explaining the character and it was clearly intended for younger viewers; the actress playing the character actually writes the comics about her as well, but as the character is a newer creation, she doesn't have a huge fan base.

The Marvels relies on two less-known characters that were both introduced in Disney+ Shows, The other is (currently) Captain Rambeau, who in comics has also had the name Captain Marvel, who first appeared in the WandaVision series. These two characters require someone to have seen two D+ shows to fully understand, although the movie does a fine job of introducing them to new audiences.

Brie Larson tried to fight back against misogynist internet trolls, and thus is not well liked by those same trolls. There's been a lot of reflexive hate against her specifically for that reason, which definitely has had an impact on her career. I attribute this largely to misogyny; Warner Brothers and Paramount both have a similar problem with some creative projects as well, but Disney has it the worst. Kathleen Kennedy (functionally the woman in charge of Star Wars) and Victoria Alonso (Co-Producer of Marvel Projects up to Eternals) both see massive amounts of online hate. The troll brigade does not like 'woke' casting in particular and Disney is seen as a poster child for this in general.

All that said, the movie is light, colorful and above all fun. There's a Bollywood dance number. There are friendly alien cats. Ms. Marvel's Pakistani family brings a lot of heart and realism to the movie. The bad guy isn't terribly memorable but does further the overall plot of the last three years of Marvel projects. The end credits sequences pay off two massive ongoing elements of Marvel comics lore. It's easily the most enjoyable Marvel movie since No Way Home.

 

[LunarMist]

I saw the Guardians of Galaxies Phase III and it was by far worse than the others. It's more of a kid's movie than the first one which was decent for adults. The second version was weaker, but palatable. The third had such a disgustingly mawking ending I wish the other teams had won the battles. I suspect many involved with that project were atomoxetine candidates.

 

[CougTek]

Atomoxetine; I've learned a new word! Thanks.

 

[sedrosken]

Doing some upgrades to my network again. I bought a cheap 4-port 2.5GbE switch with dual 10Gb SFP ports and a couple of copper transceivers that should be able to do 10Gb over CAT5e under very short runs (the longest I'll be doing is around the room to my main desktop, which will be ~15ft or ~5m). I nabbed a couple of Intel X540-based 10Gb cards off AliExpress as well. I plan to put the smaller switch in-line between my main switch and my router -- it shouldn't matter that the LAN interface on the router is only 1Gb for what I've got planned.

I'm swapping my motherboard and CPU between the server and my main desktop as well since I need more slots on the server -- I'm condensing a little bit, I'm putting my VGA capture card in the server and passing it through to a Windows VM. The 5700X will get more of a workout running my server needs, the 5500 was absolutely fine in my main. I only upgraded when I did because the 5700X was so cheap and I needed a Zen3 memory controller so I could run the RAM I had at native speed.

 

[sedrosken]

Hmm. 10Gb copper transceivers definitely don't run cool. Even linked at only 1Gbps (I don't have the 10Gb cards in yet) they're producing enough heat to burn me when I pull them from the switch. They do work fairly well though, even if the switch is a bit more finicky than I'd like -- usually just putting the cable in until the clip clicks into place works fine. Here, that's a one way ticket to frustration -- just do yourself a favor and shove them in as far as you can get them so they make good contact.

I don't have the wherewithal to test 2.5 or 10Gb operation right this minute but at 1Gbps it looks to be working fine.

 

[Handruin]

That's a common complaint I've read about using those RJ45 to SFP+ adapters and why I've avoided them entirely. They can overheat the switch port or draw too much current.

 

[LunarMist]

I use the SFP+ Direct Attach 10GbE copper cables. If you want RJ45, get an network card that supports it directly or use a switch with both kinds of ports.

 

[sedrosken]

That's a common complaint I've read about using those RJ45 to SFP+ adapters and why I've avoided them entirely. They can overheat the switch port or draw too much current.

See, I would have just done fiber (as much as I hate terminating it) or copper direct attach like Lunar, but the cards at the other end are RJ45 and for some ungodly reason SFP seems to ratchet the price up on the cards by about 2-3x. I don't think it's necessarily a huge issue the way I have them now, but we'll see. Perhaps I'll come to regret trying to make use of the copper I already have.

 

[Handruin]

See, I would have just done fiber (as much as I hate terminating it) or copper direct attach like Lunar, but the cards at the other end are RJ45 and for some ungodly reason SFP seems to ratchet the price up on the cards by about 2-3x. I don't think it's necessarily a huge issue the way I have them now, but we'll see. Perhaps I'll come to regret trying to make use of the copper I already have.

What SFP+ cards are you looking at where the price is so much higher than a 10Gb RJ45?

The Mellonox ConnectX-3 SFP+ cards have been my go-to for years and work great with DAC SFP+ cables. I don't bother with fiber. You can often get them for < $25 used on ebay and they're solid cards. I can max out port speed with iperf3 so they're very capable of hitting full 10Gb speeds.

 

[Handruin]

Also I use these twinax DAC cables that are cheap. You can get 3-4M in length of you don't want to deal with fiber.

Amazon.com

 

[sedrosken]

I need at least 5m, probably closer to 6 for one of my runs, and I'd like an Intel chipset if I can get that at all as I've had much better luck with them and drivers for them exist for everything under the sun. The cards I bought are Intel X540-based.

As I said, though, I've got what I got right now, and unless I have problems I won't be bothering sending anything back.

 

[Handruin]

I get that you already have your solution, I just want to mention that in a comparison between Mellanox vs Intel for enterprise class NICs at 10Gb or faster, Mellanox is the winner in terms of support, reliability, performance, compatibly. I would much rather their NICs vs Intel.

If your usecase can't get a Mellanox to work, it's got to be highly niche. I wouldn't discount them because you're less familiar.

 

[LunarMist]

I'd be using the X710 series if you want Intel.

 

[sedrosken]

If your usecase can't get a Mellanox to work, it's got to be highly niche. I wouldn't discount them because you're less familiar.

Oh, I'm sure I could get it to work, but I have literally never had an Intel NIC let me down, and I haven't even heard of Mellanox before you mentioned them. I'm sure it's perfectly fine, but I'm nothing if not a critter of habit. That said, were I to do this over again, I would likely give them a shot.

 

[Handruin]

No worries, just sharing that Mellanox are a legit and well known HBA company that's been around a long time (25 years). They're now owned by Nvidia

 

[LunarMist]

What are your thoughts about the Meelanox cards that are faster than 10GB/s? Is it feasible to use them, e.g., in my NAses?

 

[LunarMist]

I suppose this thread deserves a 20th birthday.
Next year it could drink.

 

[Handruin]

What are your thoughts about the Meelanox cards that are faster than 10GB/s? Is it feasible to use them, e.g., in my NAses?

It's technically possible and feasible if your NAS has the appropriate pcie lanes, memory bandwidth, and storage IO performance to match. The other part of the equation would be if you have all the other networking gear to connect the clients at the same speeds assuming you aren't doing a point to point connection.

You could get a pair of Mellanox 40Gb/50Gb NICs (or even 100Gb if you are really in need) that also support infiniband or RoCE and those cards will hit those speeds. The issue will be if your NAS storage devices can keep up with those speeds.

 

[Mercutio]

FWIW I use Mellanox QDR Infiniband adapters between my main desktop and file server. The ~8m twinax cable running between them was the most expensive component. As Handruin said, that interface is fast enough that the network connection between the systems isn't the bottleneck, but rather the disk interfaces in use.

 

[sedrosken]

Yeah, I personally don't expect to hit much more than 300-400MB/s to my array even over 10GbE, but it seemed better to leapfrog 2.5 and 5GbE interfaces and just go directly to 10Gb so I have some room to grow.

 

[Handruin]

I've felt the same and also that 10Gb is more ubiquitous and supported compared to 2.5Gb or even 5Gb. My array is capable of 700-800MB/sec and I've seen these data rates when I sync to my backup NAS. Also when I move large files from one of my VMs that's on a really fast SSD cuts down so much wait time.

 

[LunarMist]

I have too many different products and computers to connect with different interfaces, e.g., 1GbE, 2.5GbE, 10GbE SFP+, etc.
QNAPs have abandoned the SFP+ other than the X710 so most of my cards are useless. I could go with 10GBASE-T but would need to buy expensive new stuff.

 

[Handruin]

I have too many different products and computers to connect with different interfaces, e.g., 1GbE, 2.5GbE, 10GbE SFP+, etc.
QNAPs have abandoned the SFP+ other than the X710 so most of my cards are useless. I could go with 10GBASE-T but would need to buy expensive new stuff.

Could you get by with a switch that's 10GB Base-t with 2 x 10Gb SFP+ to uplink to your other switches?

 

[LunarMist]

I have no switches yet. I have two computers with 10GbE and three NAS with 10GbE. All five devices are using PCIe SFP+ cards.
Basically I need to copy from any of 3 NAS to each other at 10GbE speeds. Wouldn't one cable from a computer to the switch to the NASes slow everything down when copying/moving the data from one NAS to another? Can you connect two cables from one computer 10GbE to one switch to the NAS and they use separate paths?
I'm not as concerned about the two 2.5GbE computers (NUC and laptop) as they are not doing heavy lifting and I could have another switch.

 

[Handruin]

If you're concerned about the theoretical bandwidth constraints of a single 10Gb uplink, you can team multiple ports together using a standard known as LACP for link aggregation. Most switches that have SFP+ ports are likely enterprise class and will support this in hardware.

Unless your NAS arrays are loaded with nvme SSDs that have properly allocated pcie lanes per device, I doubt you'll come close to even saturating a single 10Gb link.

 

[LunarMist]

I was thinking that the goal would be to have most everything be the Base-T for compatibility and be able to get 2.5GbE from the same network.
Can I have the 2-port cards in the devices and have one port direct and one port through a switch instead?
I should probably draw a diagram of the mess I have now, or maybe both the East/Midwest-West messes. You know I did not go to CSI school and this is all a massive hassle.
I don't want any switch that is a noisy server thing and my powers are near the limits of a 1500VA UPS. It needs to be basic enough and unmanaged.

 

[sedrosken]

Welp, that was a harrowing procedure.

I:

- swapped drives/RAM/cards between the case/PSU/board/CPU of the main and server, giving the server much more workability, thermal headroom, and extra card space
- tried to swap CPUs to give the server moar coars but for some reason, Proxmox throws a fit booting with SVM enabled on the 5700X -- bizarrely, Windows works fine on that CPU with SVM enabled, so I'm guessing it's some kind of BIOS fuck-up on Gigabyte's end -- when it comes time that a 6 core really isn't enough for that thing, I suppose I'll be ready to move on to another platform entirely anyway. That'll be the excuse I need to finally overhaul my rack and get a couple blades or something.
- split the 64 GB of RAM between my main and server, each getting 2x16. I'll eventually need to buy a 2x32 kit for the server, I guess -- 4x16 in any combination wouldn't boot, but 2x16 was fine in any configuration so I know none of the DIMMs are bad. Bizarre considering I know all four slots work, I had 4x8 when it was powering the main, and I know the CPU can handle all four slots being driven as I did that with the B450 board. Strange. I guess from now on I'm better off ignoring the second set of DIMM slots in anything Ryzen and just pretending I have the two and that's it.
- moved my B450 board, 5700X and A770 along with the X540 card into the Fractal Design 1100 mATX case that used to hold my Sandy Bridge-era XP build. Jury's out on this, but the trusty, dusty 600BQ lives again and is plenty for this build anyway. It does get a bit hotter than I'd like. I might move to a bigger case at some point.

Throughput was initially rather disappointing until I realized I was going through an extra layer of virtualization by connecting through Samba. I installed the NFS client for Windows and after a couple of registry tweaks to set the Anonymous user UID and GID, got it hooked up that way. It's much faster and is definitely going quicker than 2.5, but as I figured it's still not coming anywhere close to saturating 10Gbps. I think the bottleneck is going to be the fact that my RAID is software and isn't being cached by anything except the Linux disk caching mechanism, and that VM only has 8GB to do that with.

Before:



After:



Pay no mind to exactly what I was copying, I just wanted to do a quick test and needed something of a convenient size.

 

[Handruin]

I was thinking that the goal would be to have most everything be the Base-T for compatibility and be able to get 2.5GbE from the same network.
Can I have the 2-port cards in the devices and have one port direct and one port through a switch instead?
I should probably draw a diagram of the mess I have now, or maybe both the East/Midwest-West messes. You know I did not go to CSI school and this is all a massive hassle.
I don't want any switch that is a noisy server thing and my powers are near the limits of a 1500VA UPS. It needs to be basic enough and unmanaged.

I'm sure there's a reasonable solution to your networking needs. Even if you just list out each basic system, your preferred port speed, and port type, we could probably find you some way to get you there without a massive loud power hungry switch.

 

[ddrueding]

Happy New Years All!

Sorry for being gone again, but life gets complicated. I now find myself looking for a job in Denmark. The money isn't really needed, but the only visa option for us requires employment with a Danish company and a high salary. I have 6 months to find work before we're kicked out of the country, so it has my full attention.

20 years for this thread is wild. The Orange Chicken referenced in the OP was from a restaurant that not only doesn't exist anymore, but none of the owners/partners are even still alive.

 

[CougTek]

Happy New Year to you too David.

It is sad to learn that your original project didn't succeed. I'm confident you'll find another job soon. Best of luck.

 

[Handruin]

Happy New Years All!

Sorry for being gone again, but life gets complicated. I now find myself looking for a job in Denmark. The money isn't really needed, but the only visa option for us requires employment with a Danish company and a high salary. I have 6 months to find work before we're kicked out of the country, so it has my full attention.

20 years for this thread is wild. The Orange Chicken referenced in the OP was from a restaurant that not only doesn't exist anymore, but none of the owners/partners are even still alive.

Good luck with the job search and sorry that you're put into this position and stress. If there's anything I remember about you it's your tenacity and drive to get things done. Thanks for checking in and also starting this thread 20 years ago. Wild we're still here chatting in it.

 

[sedrosken]

Wishing you luck as well David, six months sounds like a lot of time but I know full well given the constraints on exactly what you can take to satisfy the requirements makes it much more stressful.

Happy new year everyone!

 

[LunarMist]

Happy New Years All!

20 years for this thread is wild. The Orange Chicken referenced in the OP was from a restaurant that not only doesn't exist anymore, but none of the owners/partners are even still alive.

Were the people all elderly or was there a weird reason they are all deceased?
My favorite local Chinese place lasted about 25 years until the late 2000s. The one I visit now but rarely managed to survive the pandemonicum.

 

[Mercutio]

Sorry for being gone again, but life gets complicated. I now find myself looking for a job in Denmark.

You could also potentially apply for a student visa. My older brother found a WFH job with a decent salary, moved to Prague and started taking classes at Charles University. He completed a BS, MS and PhD over the course of 13 years and since he now has a functional psychology practice, I believe he's qualified for the local equivalent of a green card.

I'm told that this is something pretty typical across most of all of Europe, and as a rule, higher education is free for anyone able to support themselves while they are in a degree program.

 

[ddrueding]

Merc, that is true of just about anywhere else. The nordic countries, Denmark in particular, have some of the best social support systems in the world, so are quite concerned about people coming here to leech off of it or mess with their culture of personal responsibility for the collective good. It is amazing, and I love it, but it is a fragile thing that they want to protect. So: no simple student visas, no starting your own company, no retiring with your own source of income. You work for a Danish company, with a salary high enough that you won't depress the salaries of Danes, and you learn Danish and participate in the society while you do it (be active in community groups, etc). If you do all these things for 4 years you get a permanent residence card, if you do all these things for 8 years you get citizenship. Even marrying a Dane has restrictions where they basically have to post a bond, and if the relationship doesn't work out, they forfeit the bond to the state to make sure you aren't a leech on the system.

Plan B is The Netherlands. The DAFT treaty means that Americans can basically show up, start a company with minimal (a few grand) investment, and stay for 2 years. I can do that while learning more Danish and applying for work here until I make that work, or (Plan C) just retire to the med off Croatia and Greece on a sailboat.

 

[ddrueding]

Were the people all elderly or was there a weird reason they are all deceased?
My favorite local Chinese place lasted about 25 years until the late 2000s. The one I visit now but rarely managed to survive the pandemonicum.

That place did last about 25 years, but the chef died of a heart attack brought on by rampant alcoholism and the owner died of complications of Covid. Both were in their 60s.