Which Home Control PC do you have?

Post by **Bwired** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 11:56 pm

Hi Robert,
Not only for my webserver I use this machine, It's also running my Home automation software. And I use it as my workstation as well, I just love fast machines. Can you elaborate on the hyper-treading, I have it on know and it seems to work nicely together with windows 2003 server. About the blackouts..... A couple of months ago at around 2 O'Clock in the night, the power company really had a problem. All my transformers where making a lot of zooming noise and it lasted for a couple of minutes. It looked like the voltage was heavily going up and down. Even my UPS was having problems with it. I think a lot of devices died that night.

Post by **MindBender** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:19 am

Ok, I normally wouldn't do this, but you've asked for it:
A Penium IV processor is build on a RISC, an insctucion- and a data-pipeline, a CISC intstruction translator and a cache. A RISC contains multiple processing units (eg. integer unit etc.) and a dispatcher. The dispatcher takes instructions from the instruction pipeline and feeds it to the proper and available processing unit. There are all kinds of clever things at play there; There are multiple integer unites, which are fast, but not always available. Some instructions can be executed out-of-sequence etc. So this is what happens:
1 A CISC x86 instrucion is fetched from the cache
2 It's broken down into multiple RISC instructions which a fed into the instrucion pipiline
3 The RISCs dispatcher distributes the RISC instrucions to the processing units
What HyperThreading basically is, is an extra CISC translator with an extra set of pipelines and an extra RISC dispatcher, but NO extra processing units. This set behaves like an 'extra processor' because it can execute code independantly, but it uses the same processing units. This doesn't cost Intel a lot of extra silicon, so they can add it cheaply and it makes sure the processing units are used more efficiently. But Intel has underestemated something: Both processors use the same cache. And both processes they're running use different memory. So the two processes running of on the two 'processors' are constantely pushing each others data and instructions out of the cache, resulting in a TLB miss, giving huge performance penalties. When processing large amounts of data performace with HT drops down do 65% of performance without HT. In normal operation performance varies between 90% and 110%. Nobody, including Intel, is using HT as a selling point anymore. DualCore is the way to go here. DualCore still takes a couple of shortcuts, but it's much closer to have two processors than HT is.

Post by **MindBender** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:23 am

An online UPS, also know as double converstion UPS, is the way to go if you want to protect your toys. It's always generation the output electronically, so it's always clean. But I'm afraid it adds too much to my power consumption...

By the way; I like powerful machines too, but I don't make up any other reason for buying them

Post by **Bwired** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:29 am

OK that makes sense, but it's logical that Intel is not using the therm HT anymore because Dual- and Quadcore came up. before that HT was the magic word for a long time. But you asked for it.... On next reboot I will turn Hyper-threading off and run a while without it

I had my doubts about if it really helps for a long time too.
Thanks Pieter

Post by **Snelvuur** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 1:19 am

Since we are still working offtopic.. i got my linksys wip330 to work on my asterisk server. I can now walk anywhere in the world, find a hotspot or wifi connection and i have my home number with me. Local costs, and local costs to be called.. since its all SIP. (and pieter, the 7960 has a SIP firmware, waiting for my POE injector since it doesn't come with power adapters) dont you happen to have those laying around or phones of those types? See http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Cisco+Phones for supported types. Bed time now, i'am getting really upset about this girl on sbs6 which is talking like a headless chicken.

Post by **Bwired** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 1:39 am

No Sorry cant help!

Post by **MindBender** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 9:57 am

Why not using a real PABX like SipX?

http://sipx-wiki.calivia.com/index.php/ ... h_Asterisk

Post by **Willem4ever** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 10:50 am

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by snelvuur
 Since we are still working offtopic.. i got my linksys wip330 to work on my asterisk server. I can now walk anywhere in the world, find a hotspot or wifi connection and i have my home number with me. Local costs, and local costs to be called.. since its all SIP. (and pieter, the 7960 has a SIP firmware, waiting for my POE injector since it doesn't come with power adapters) dont you happen to have those laying around or phones of those types? See http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Cisco+Phones for supported types. Bed time now, i'am getting really upset about this girl on sbs6 which is talking like a headless chicken.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

I have an AIR-PWRINJ which i don't use anymore ....

Post by **Snelvuur** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:16 pm

Hmm didn't know about SipX, i have to check it.. it looks nice. I thought that asterisk was the thing to have

i ordered 2 poe injectors, i have to make some cable adjustments then, but it will work. If you have more good tips willem, dont forget to mention them

since we all have the same intrest more or less.

Post by **Willem4ever** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:24 pm

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by snelvuur
 Hmm didn't know about SipX, i have to check it.. it looks nice. I thought that asterisk was the thing to have

i ordered 2 poe injectors, i have to make some cable adjustments then, but it will work. If you have more good tips willem, dont forget to mention them

since we all have the same intrest more or less.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

MindBender mentioned SipX, I offered a POE ....

Post by **beanz** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 11:13 pm

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by Digit
 <blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by snelvuur
 
and a question, if your using mysql. Is it not possible to put the whole database in memory.. (should speed things up)
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">I agree with niknik; never had performance issues before either.

Memory, in theory, is not an option. Using queries that run bad 'on disk' will run bad 'in memory' also, right? So you'll never get the performance you could get. You're faking good performance this way, actually. It's all about optimizing. Compare the queries niknik and i use to the one you (have to) use. That's the problem.

I think....[:I] just don't know enough about xpl and the tables you query to give a really good answer.

Maybe it's time to create another thread about this single issue..

Robert
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">The real problem with the data that snelvuur is trying to use to do his charts is that it's just dumps of generic xPL messages (to a database. Because these messages can contain all kinds of information - such as sensor readings, IR triggered messages, X10 triggered messages, commands, etc. (See http://wiki.xplproject.org.uk/index.php ... age_Schema ) They are dumped into the database as text and only the standard message fields are placed in corresponding fields in the database. The real solution (if you must use SQL - I don't I use RRD data files instead) is to create optimised tables for just the sensor messages.

Time permitting I'll release more of my xPL code soon and this should support these kind of specialized tables. Then you should be able to make these queries much faster.

Regards,
Mark.

Post by **Snelvuur** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:45 am

@willem: I allready ordered 2 simple poe's which only need a small cable adjustment (cisco too)

@mindbender: i played now with sipx, it took me over an hour to get it to work (debian) , its pretty bad documentated for that o.s. i would think. I got it to start created users but none of my phones can connect to the sip and i do see port 5060 open for connections. Nothing in the logs either.. so for my first try its a pretty dull experience, asterisk might not be nice.. but at least you can get it to work much faster then sipx (for the moment now)

@beanz: all effort is nice to have, you allready did alot. If i have problems i should first upgrade, that would save alot.n (its not that i have 100 hits a seconds)

Post by **TeleFragger** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 1:10 am

my main dedicated server is
Hardware

HP Proliant ML570G2
4 x P4 2.5 Xeon MP CPUS
3gb ram
3 x 73gb ultra320 raid 5 on a hp array 642 controller (128mb cache)
3 x 146gb ultra320 raid 5 on a hp array 642 controller (128mb cache)
gigabit nic x2 teamed
hobby boards master hub

Software
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise
SQL Server 2000
HomeSeer 2.0
xapmcs1wire

that is it for now...

Post by **MindBender** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 4:40 pm

TeleFragger, how much power does it consume?

(No really, I'd like to know)

Post by **TeleFragger** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 5:39 pm

well it has 2x480w power supplies... has 3 but I took one out...
I bought a kill a watt - http://the-gadgeteer.com/review/kill_a_ ... tor_review

and the following:

Cable Modem
Linksys wireless router
dell powerconnect 24port gig switch
all in 1 printer
17" crt monitor
server
runs me about $50 a month....

I had a different server dl380g2 and it worked great.. 2xpiii 1.4 but I had an oppertunity to get this off of ebay CHEAP.... so I went for it.. but not sure if it was a good choice...

I like the server.. however it is loud.. I can hear it from my bedroom at night.... my bedroom is above it on the second floor and the server is in the basement..... I have to dampen the room to get the noise down some!!!!!