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Table of Contents
Part 1
Entries
Entry 1: January Day 31, 2012
Virtual Machine install.
As an aid, feel free to use the following questions to help you generate content for your entries:
- I Learned the concept of what a virtual machine is.
- I proceeded to install a virtual machine and gain an understanding of how a virtual machine works on the basic level
- I dealt with a concept of virtual reality…. actually jsut logging in to the VM server remotely
- It was difficult in that I kept getting an errorand had no idea why. Turns out punctuation is very important when installing packages.
Entry 2: January Day, 2012
This is a sample format for a dated entry. Please substitute the actual date for “Month Day, Year”, and duplicate the level 4 heading to make additional entries.
As an aid, feel free to use the following questions to help you generate content for your entries:
- What action or concept of significance, as related to the course, did you experience on this date?
- Why was this significant?
- What concepts are you dealing with that may not make perfect sense?
- What challenges are you facing with respect to the course?
Remember that 4 is just the minimum number of entries. Feel free to have more.
Entry 3: January Day, 2012
This is a sample format for a dated entry. Please substitute the actual date for “Month Day, Year”, and duplicate the level 4 heading to make additional entries.
As an aid, feel free to use the following questions to help you generate content for your entries:
- What action or concept of significance, as related to the course, did you experience on this date?
- Why was this significant?
- What concepts are you dealing with that may not make perfect sense?
- What challenges are you facing with respect to the course?
Remember that 4 is just the minimum number of entries. Feel free to have more.
Entry 4: January Day, 2012
This is a sample format for a dated entry. Please substitute the actual date for “Month Day, Year”, and duplicate the level 4 heading to make additional entries.
As an aid, feel free to use the following questions to help you generate content for your entries:
- What action or concept of significance, as related to the course, did you experience on this date?
- Why was this significant?
- What concepts are you dealing with that may not make perfect sense?
- What challenges are you facing with respect to the course?
Remember that 4 is just the minimum number of entries. Feel free to have more.
Keywords
hpc0 Keywords
Supercomputers
Definition
These are devices that use electronic processing that at that given time is the fastest processing available. High performance computing utilizes these machines as their main tool for calculations.
Demonstration
In modern times they are used for calculations that involve very extensive computing. IE: Quantum physics, molecular modeling, gas exploration
System Administrator
Definition
Simply put this is a person that is in charge of a computer or a network of computers. Their duties range in software and in hardware. If a server or computer needs the software updated they are in charge of doing it. Also if there are service outages they are on top of repairing these services.
Demonstration
The software on a server is out of date, the system admin comes and updates the software to the server.
Computer cluster
Definition
A network of computing devices designed to act as one single unit.
Demonstration
A very good use of this is linking several 'slower' machines together to work together in order to compute your desired software. This is much more efficient than going out and buying a new system or upgrading your system every time you need more processing power or speed for your calculations.
FLOPS (floating-point operations per second)
Definition
This is a tool used to calculate how many operations the processor is calculating per second. It's a very useful tool in HPC if you need a calculations per second and are unsure of the machines or clusters speed.
Demonstration
It can be primarly used to calculate the processing speed of a super computer.
Virtual Machine
Definition
Demonstration
Para-Virtualization
Definition
This let's on operating system emulate several other operating systems while making the best use of the systems resources and hardware. The entire system is not emulated. This is not always the best solution as it may be more lenient on resources, the operating system must be worked on in order to let it work with this.
Demonstration
I.E. I am going to run a virtual machine on a desktop with very low resources available (very outdated computer.) So in this situation I decide to run a para-virtualization setup as it is more resource friendly even though it requires a little more work and has a few more restrictions on it compared to full virtualization.
Root User
Definition
A Unix account that has privelages to edit, save or open any files in the filesystem. It is used for system administration.
Demonstration
Someone is trying to do a VM install but they cannot download and install packages as they are not a root user. They then log in as root and they are now allowed to download and install the packages.
Formatting/Reformatting a Drive.
Definition
Completely erasing a memory allocation to ground zero and then beginning it a new with a new file system (usually the same as before).
Demonstration
At the beginning of a VM install you would usually reformat the drive and do a frech install of the OS. There isn't anything on the drive that is of any real use, so you have no use in keeping anything on the drive intact. Therefore, erase it and start fresh.
hpc0 Objective
hpc0 Objective
State the course objective
Definition
In your own words, define what that objective entails.
Method
State the method you will use for measuring successful academic/intellectual achievement of this objective.
Measurement
Follow your method and obtain a measurement. Document the results here.
Analysis
Reflect upon your results of the measurement to ascertain your achievement of the particular course objective.
- How did you do?
- Is there room for improvement?
- Could the measurement process be enhanced to be more effective?
- Do you think this enhancement would be efficient to employ?
- Could the course objective be altered to be more applicable? How would you alter it?
hpc2 Keywords
Disk Image
Definition
This is one single file that is a complete representation of a single storage device. A storage device could be a cd, dvd, harddrive, floppy disk or anything else.
Demonstration
I'm going to reformat my computer and my external hdd but I don't want to lose all the information on my external hdd. Now I use some software to create a disk image of every file on the hdd while I reformat everything.
Aptitude Search
Note: Aptituse itself is a high level-interface designed for the package manager.
Definition
This is a useful command in order to see what packages are installed on a system. After 'aptitude search' insert the name of a package you are looking for and it will display a list of every package available with that name. It also lists if they are currently installed or not which is marked by an 'i' next to the packages name.
Demonstration
vmserver01: aptitude search xen p linux-headers-2.6.26-2-common-xen - Common header files for Linux 2.6.26-2-xen p linux-headers-2.6.26-2-xen-686 - Header files for Linux 2.6.26-2-xen-686 p linux-image-2.6-xen-686 - Linux 2.6 image on i686, oldstyle Xen support p linux-image-2.6.26-1-xen-686 - Linux 2.6.26 image on i686, oldstyle Xen support i A linux-image-2.6.26-2-xen-686 - Linux 2.6.26 image on i686, oldstyle Xen support p linux-image-xen-686 - Linux image on i686, oldstyle Xen support v linux-latest-modules-2.6.26-2-xen-686 - p linux-modules-2.6-xen-686 - Linux 2.6 modules on i686
Aptitude Install
Definition
This is a tool that allows you to install available packages.
Demonstration
So you're doing a NM install with xen and you need a few xen packages. After seaching with aptitude you decide you need to install xen-tools. You input “aptitude install xen-tools” and there ya go, the screen spits out
vmserver01:~# aptitude install xen-tools Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Reading extended state information Initializing package states... Done Reading task descriptions... Done No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed. 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used. Writing extended state information... Done Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Reading extended state information Initializing package states... Done Reading task descriptions... Done
*NOTE: In this case it says 0 files altered or installed because Ialready have this package installed.*
Server
Definition
There are many forms but in general it is a resource that is used by clients. It is a piece of hardware with software on it that allows clients to use it for their benefit.
Demonstration
Few examples.
A printer server would allow clients to access the printer through a network and print from this server.
A storage server would allow clients to access a storage device through a network and save their data.
CLI Command Line Interface
Definition
Awesomeness. It is the interaction between the user of the computer and the computer itself that is not GUI. It is just a keyboard and text environment versus a visual point a click interface. You type out and tell the computer what to do instead of poking it with your mouse.
Demonstration
lab46:~$ cd stuff lab46:~/stuff$ ls 0x8 0x9 0xa lab46:~/stuff$
vim
Definition
Simply put this is the much gooder version of vi. It is a package that installs the goodness that comes with vi. As regular vi is very very hurtful to the brain wrinkles and make baby jesus cry.
Demonstration
I.E. vim allows you to search through a text file with simplicity. It allows you to cut and paste with a few commands. It allows you to 'jump' around the file with ease. This is all compared to my short experience with regular vi where I could not even understand how to insert text where I wanted it. (or maybe it was all the lead paint chips I ate as a child, who knows)
Database
Definition
In computery terms this is a digital space of memory where a large amount of like data is stored. It aims to organize large amounts of data. keyword organize.
Demonstration
I.E. At a bank there are (assuming) thousands of accounts that people have stored there. Let's say these accounts keep all the standard information of name, address, phone number and savings account. A database would store of of this information in files. The files would most likely be saved by the name of the individual of who the account belongs too. So instead of having all of this information strewn all over it's all neat and tidy tucked away in this database.
hpc2 Keyword 8
Identification of chosen keyword (unless you update the section heading above).
Definition
Definition (in your own words) of the chosen keyword.
Demonstration
Demonstration of the chosen keyword.
If you wish to aid your definition with a code sample, you can do so by using a wiki code block, an example follows:
/* * Sample code block */ #include <stdio.h> int main() { return(0); }
Alternatively (or additionally), if you want to demonstrate something on the command-line, you can do so as follows:
lab46:~$ cd src lab46:~/src$ gcc -o hello hello.c lab46:~/src$ ./hello Hello, World! lab46:~/src$
hpc2 Objective
hpc2 Objective
State the course objective
Definition
In your own words, define what that objective entails.
Method
State the method you will use for measuring successful academic/intellectual achievement of this objective.
Measurement
Follow your method and obtain a measurement. Document the results here.
Analysis
Reflect upon your results of the measurement to ascertain your achievement of the particular course objective.
- How did you do?
- Is there room for improvement?
- Could the measurement process be enhanced to be more effective?
- Do you think this enhancement would be efficient to employ?
- Could the course objective be altered to be more applicable? How would you alter it?
Experiments
Experiment 1: ALienware LEDs
Question
Is the cause of my laptops lights not working software or hardware related?
Resources
Collect information and resources (such as URLs of web resources), and comment on knowledge obtained that you think will provide useful background information to aid in performing the experiment.
Hypothesis
It will be software related.
The lights are still physically turning on but the color of the LEDs are stuck on white. The software provided from DELL does not have any effect on the color, just repeated errors.
Experiment
I'm going to reinstall the software from DELL that directly controls the color the LEDs. If that doesnt work I will completely reinstall the entire OS returning the laptop to it's factory state. Also there is a 'soft' reset I read where you take the battery out and hold in the power button. If that doesn't work then the only option left is that it is hardware related and I will have to call DELL. FML
Data
I went online to the DELL website and downloaded the software specifically for my machine that controls the LEDs. Then I uninstalled the previous software (just to be safe) and reinstalled with the DELL download.. still no luck. Took the battery out and held in the power button for a soft reset and still no luck. Now I try the factory reset which wipes the hdd and does a complete reinstall of the OS and all the pre-installed software. Guess what?! Totally worked. Didn't have to call DELL and deal with their foreign call center.
Analysis
Based on the data collected:
- Was your hypothesis correct? Duh!
- Is there more going on than you originally thought? Yes! If the original reinstall of the DELL software didn't work but the full software reinstall worked that means there was something wrong in the software but it wasn't related to the controlling software. Possibly a registry key?
- What shortcomings might there be in your experiment?None 1'm the g00d3st
- What shortcomings might there be in your data? r34d 4b0v
Conclusions
There was definitely something software related with the laptop. It was no hardware related. The factory reset resets all the software on the system and does nothing tot he hardware so it was certainly software related.
Karl's Laptop
Question
Why won't Karl's laptop stop overheating and crashing
Resources
Karl and his laptop.
Hypothesis
It is overheating and crashing because.. bad heat sink?
Experiment
Karl and I tear apart his laptop and see what we can find.
Data
It did not take long before we noticed a wad of hair sticking out of the fan. So we plugged it in and looked at it.. the fan was not moving what so ever. So either bad fun or it is plugged solid. Upon further tear down of the laptop even bigger wads of dust and hair were found inside the fan that we quickly and swiftly removoved. And there you have it
Analysis
Based on the data collected:
- Was your hypothesis correct?NO
- Was your hypothesis not applicable?NO
- Is there more going on than you originally thought? (shortcomings in hypothesis) Yes, there was hair in the fan
- What shortcomings might there be in your experiment? Maybe we didn't explaore far enough and there was something else contributing
- What shortcomings might there be in your data? Maybe there was more data or in this case cat hair to find.
Conclusions
What can you ascertain based on the experiment performed and data collected? Karl had one dirty laptop
Experiment 3
Question
Was Chris Houlihan really in a Nintendo Power ad that won him a secret room in a Link to the Past
Resources
I used many forums but they led me in every direction such as it being Nintendo Power, some random translation guy a hoax etc..
Hypothesis
I believe it really was Nintendo Power because of how many online resources point to it. However, with my passion of ALTTP I must discover for
Experiment
I will go through every Nintendo Power till I find some proof.
Data
Analysis
Beyond a reasonable doubt the above image shows it without mentioning his name.
Conclusions
It's safe to assume that this is the real deal. I spent many hours in forums and trying to decipher all of the jibberish of the interwebs. So finally (with my passion for the game) decided to go through Nintendo Power and look for ads. (With a tip in a forum that it would probably be in this issue, but that was after 10 posts about other issues)
