Virtual Server Linux Additions

I added the VM additions for linux to our CentOS 4.4 box today. The install was easy as the RPMs worked great. It did appear to help speed things up.

The speedy system clock was my main motivation for installing the additions, though. The system clock runs about 25% faster than it should on our server. My blog runs on Mephisto which grabs the create data from the system clock. Having to set the date from drop down menus is just a pain and I wanted it fixed (not to mention logging!).

Once I installed the additions It syncs every 1 minute to the hardware clock. In that one minute it gets off by about 15 seconds. It still doesn’t solve the problem, but it does help keep it in check.

[UPDATE: If you update your kernel, you can recompile the vm additions using the following:

cd /lib/modules/vmadd/module
make vmadd-build-module
make vmadd-install-module
depmod -a
/etc/init.d/vmadd start
/etc/init.d/vmadd-heartbeat start
/etc/init.d/vmadd-shutdown start
/etc/init.d/vmadd-timesync start

]

The Elusive Power Plug

Why is it when you go to a Panera or Starbucks that you can never find a place to plug in? I’m at a rather large Panera and there are only 2 places to plug in, both of which are in the same corner of the restaraunt. One is sandwiched between a chair and a sofa, the other about 10 feet away hidden behind a chair.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love the free wifi at Panera and it’s why I come here as much as I do (I have a t-mobile wifi account for $10/mo with my phone so Starbucks is covered). However, my MacBook Pro only lasts a few hours before it dries up. If there were ample power plugs, I know myself and several others who would visit more often, and also stay much longer.

Panera and Starbucks have great food, drink and atmosphere that bring you back for more. Why not go that extra step to keep people there once they arrive?

Playing with Mephisto

This has been a really intense afternoon. I got Mephisto up and running on a new CentOS 4.4 box I installed on our Virtual Server today. Well, sort of.

The admin tool worked great, no issues at all. But the front end did not have a default page. If I went to preview a post in the admin tool it would drop the content out, but the styles weren’t applied. After trying numerous different things, I changed the RailsENV from production to development. Boom. It worked. Huh?

I still can’t figure out why, but rails wasn’t handling the requests properly. It should have rerouted them to the theme directory, but it didn’t.

Has anyone seen this before?