Switched On Tech Design

Author: sotech

  • Windows 8 or 8.1 – how to change default program for opening files

     

    Another Windows 8/8.1 question from someone who wanted to stop their OS opening PDFs with the default Win8 app and instead use SumatraPDF.

     

    Hit the Windows key to bring up the Start screen and type “defaults”. Then select Default App Settings and you’ll be presented with a screen showing a few common file types. Chances are the one you want won’t be there, so at the bottom there’s an option “Choose default applications by file type”, which will bring up a huge list. Navigate to your desired extension, click on the icon to change it and you’re done.

  • Pre-format checklist!

     

    Formatting your system to reinstall or upgrade your OS, or to try a new one? Here’s a few things worth checking before you do…

     

    1. Export browser bookmarks
    2. Deactivate programs (e.g. Adobe CS*)
    3. Download updated drivers
    4. Check your Downloads folder for anything you might want to save
    5. Check your Documents folder for the same
    6. Check your Pictures/Music/Movies folders
    7. Lightroom user? Make sure you have copies of your catalogues
    8. Make note of your Windows/Office/other product keys (a program like Produkey can make this very easy for Windows/Office)
    9. Unix users – copy your crontab and other setup files (e.g. ssmtp, networking config) if they have changed
    10. Check for BIOS updates for your system
    11. Make note of your email client settings – can save you a lot of headaches trying to access emails post-reinstall
    12. Mine coins? Don’t forget to copy your wallet elsewhere. If you don’t have a backup, make one!
    13. Check your programs for data files which you may want to keep – e.g. Netmeter’s .txt file for logging traffic
    14. If you’re virtualising, check that you have copies of your VM HDDs! (e.g. Virtualbox)
    15. Check which programs you have installed (e.g. in Windows through Add/Remove Programs) – make a list if you might forget some
    16. Upgrading or changing OS? Check that anything important is compatible with the new OS before you start!

     

     

    We will be updating this over the course of the next week or so as we get ideas and feedback about what people typically forget about! Our own list of reinstalled programs looks something like:

     

    • CS6 suite
    • LR5
    • Nik Collection
    • Notepad++/Sublime
    • Firefox/Chrome
    • Thunderbird
    • Open Office
    • XenCenter
    • Virtualbox
    • iTunes
    • MakeMKV
    • Handbrake
    • Audials
    • Antivirus
    • Microsoft Camera Codec Pack
    • Datacolor Spyder colour management
    • Net Meter
    • SD Formatter
    • SumatraPDF
    • ISODisk
    • HD Tune Pro

  • Asus ASMB7-iKVM IPMI card review coming soon!

     

    We finally have an ASMB7-iKVM card in-house for the new Haswell server boards:

     

    asus-asmb7-ikvm-ipmi-bmc-remote-management-card-chip-plugin

    Expect a review soon!

  • Gigabyte Brix: Which way up does the base plate attach?

     

    If you’ve taken off the Brix base plate and can’t remember which way was up originally (it attaches with the arrow pointing in two opposite directions…) here’s a picture which should help:

     

    gigabyte-brix-haswell-i5-4200-small-form-factor-which-way-does-the-lid-go-back-on

    The handle in the base should be on the rear side (the one with the most connections)!

  • Gigabyte Brix i5-4200 Haswell Review (BRIX GB-BXi5-4200)

     

    Gigabyte recently updated their line of Brix mini-computers to Intel’s Haswell architecture (from Ivy Bridge). Today we have the i5-4200 model (BRIX GB-BXi5-4200) in for testing.

     

    gigabyte-brix-haswell-i5-4200-small-form-factor-birds-eye-view

    Click through to read the review!

     

    (more…)

  • Mediawiki 403 forbidden errors after upgrading to Ubuntu 13.10

     

    A customer upgraded from 13.04 to 13.10 and their internal wiki was broken afterwards; for a simple Apache install where the wiki was installed at the web root and all access was via the LAN (thus they were happy with not restricting the access), the fix was to add:

     

    <Location />

    Require all granted

    </Location>

     

    towards the bottom of:

     

    /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf

     

    …just above the last line, which should be </VirtualHost>.

    Restart apache with:

     

    service apache2 restart

     

    After that you should be able to refresh and see your wiki as before.

  • In-Win H-Frame Mini-ITX chassis review

     

    In-Win’s H-frame ITX chassis caught people’s attention in early 2013 for it’s striking looks, and today we got our hands on one to review.

     


    in-win-h-frame-mini-itx-chassis-standing-tall
    (more…)

  • ZFS on Linux (Ubuntu) – arcstat.py is now available! How do you run it?

    UPDATE: This information is now out of date, see new post here.

     

    One very handy ZFS-related command which has been missing from the standard ZFS on Linux implementation has been arcstat.py. This script provides a great deal of useful information about how effective your adaptive read cache (ARC) is.

     

    ZFSoL 0.6.2 includes it, which you can now update to in Ubuntu with apt-get upgrade. But how do you actually use it when you upgrade? Easy. Assuming you have python installed, run the following (this works for 13.04 at least – we will check the others and update when we do):

     

    /usr/src/zfs-0.6.2/cmd/arcstat/arcstat.py

     

    This will provide you with the default readout, e.g. for our system which just rebooted:

     

        time  read  miss  miss%  dmis  dm%  pmis  pm%  mmis  mm%  arcsz     c

    21:33:13     3     1         33          1       33        0        0           1        33       2.5G   15G

     

    As you can see, since the system has just rebooted and hasn’t started caching requests the ARC size is quite small – 2.5G.

    This is an extremely useful tool to get an idea of how your ARC is performing – we will do a piece on interpreting the results soon!