30 August 2012

failed to start

I would first like to apologize for my tardiness on this entry. I've been a bit busy at work and when I get home I have often been collapsing into a chair and watching old episodes of Top Gear UK. And now without further ado, my entry...

/TECH

"Failed to start"
This is an error that SharePoint workflows give sometimes. But unless you dive into some deeply buried log file, it gives you nothing else. Absolutely nothing. So we've developed a list of things to check when we receive this wonderfully informative error: check all referenced fields to make sure they're being published; confirm email addresses; make sure it gets some kind of data; clear your SharePoint Designer website cache (hate doing this); and confirm your username has been changed on that site. It was this last one for me on the most recent failure. You see, in May I went from being a student worker here to a regular employee. This meant that a lot about my account changed.

Speaking of changes and failures, another recent change caused some problems on Doppelganger. As stated last time, one of Serenity's hard drives gave up the ghost and took several of Andy's services with it. So he kindly setup backups on Doppelganger for me. I was quite grateful. The morning after the first backup ran I noticed a problem: only my Mumble server was running. Apparently I wasn't diligent enough with getting my startup scripts working properly and thus TeamSpeak and both Minecraft servers never started up properly. These have since been remedied.

I've also been trying to remedy Phoenix's performance issues. My poor personal computer is having a terrible time keeping up with the things I throw at it lately. It isn't that the hardware is going bad, or that Windows needs to be cleared, it's that my demands of performance have been increasing. One of those performance demands is actually with Minecraft. For what ever reason, the incredibly simple looking Minecraft requires a ton of resources. But the old Athlon 64 X2 with its paltry 6GB of RAM (not that paltry actually) just doesn't like running it. Then there's the games that actually justifies the need of high performance hardware.

So after having run Doppelganger on my newer, beefier hardware for a while, I've noticed something: it benefits greatly from the greater amount of RAM but not as much with the CPU. I could better utilize the CPU if I ran more process intensive servers. But the fact is I'm quite content with TeamSpeak and one Minecraft server. If I just rein it back to just the two services. I think I'll keep Proxmox, but I think consolidating services is a good idea.

It now comes down to, where do I want my hardware? I could purchase new hardware leaving Doppelganger as it is, but I'd rather purchase a tablet next. In fact in addition to wanting the tablet, I want to run a media server so that I can then stream my personal media to the device along with being able to use my various subscriptions. Having a tablet would also allow me to leave my computer and PS3 off too, thus reducing my power consumption and heat production.

Well, I'll have to consider those things while I'm on vacation and perhaps I'll have some things done in this vein by September 10.

Until next time:
Work hard. Play harder.

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