Windows detected a hard disk problem
Windows detected a hard disk problem ...
Well, I am using a software RAID0 on Vista and the stripped volume is built on 20 hard disks in pass-thru mode with 0 fault tolerance. I expect I will get some disk some day but not as early as now. All the dynamic volumes are still there and I didn't find any impact on the sequential read performance. So, I am suspecting one, or several of the following areas might go wrong:
1. physical disks
2. SATA RAID controller or its device driver
3. file system
4. OS (Vista) bug
A little google shows that SeaGate's SeaTools has got a good reputation for its diagnostic features. In the meantime, I am getting this annoying pop-up message saying "Windows detected a hard disk problem" every time I reboot the system. So, I decided to disable the error message for now since I have already known something in somewhere goes wrong ...
- run gpedit.msc
- glocal computer policy
- computer configuration
- administrative templates
- system
- troubleshooting and diagnostics
- disk diagnostic
- disk diagnostic: configure execution level
- DISABLED
OK. Now it is getting quiet ...
Remotely using Linux X Window from Windows XP
Remotely using X Window from Windows XP
This is a little piece of note I wrote for myself in case I forgot all the commands I have been using to remotely login to Linux X window systems.
Remotely running X window applications
Will need to firstly login to a Linux login server (local machine), and then from there redirect the remote Linux machine X window to my local machine.
- if I start from my windows machine, I will need either PUTTY or other SSH clients. First, I need to log on to xxx_local Linux machine
- check whether VNC server is running. If not, use “vncserver :1” to enable VNC service as virtual display 1.
- enter /jzhou/.vnc directory and uses “vncpasswd” to configure a simple password for VNC session
- then go back to my laptop or a windows machine to run VNC viewer to login to this xxx_local Linux machine through “xxx_local:1” string
- after logged in, I should be able to see the desktop of my login server. From there, I can remotely login to any of my Linux machine at work, and run X windows applications.
- for example, I can run the following command “echo $DISPLAY” to check my current virtual display and host name (assuming it is “xxx_local:1”).
- and then I can use “ssh –X root@xxx_remote” to remotely login to another Linux machine.
- from the remote machine, I can use “DISPLAY=xxx_local:1” to redirect X window to my local machine. Note that there is no space.
- now, I can go back to my local machine i.e. xxx_local, and use “xhost xxx_remote” to tell my local machine that it is OK for the remote machine to send X window to my local machine.
- then, I can run X window applications such as “xclock” from my remote machine, and then get the GUI window on my local machine.
Completely log on to the remote Linux and use the default desktop
To completely log on to the remote Linux machine, we can use VNC server. This requires the VNC server service running on the remote machine. Assuming we already have the VNC server installed on the remote machine, we only need to do the following configurations:
- run VNC service “service start vncserver”
- run “vncpasswd” to configure a simple password for VNC session
- run “vncserver”
- enter my home directory and enter ./vnc directory, and vi xstartup file
uncomment the following two lines
unset SESSION_MANAGER
exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc - change the last line to “startx &” (or “startkde &” for KDE)
- restart VNC service. Can use “vncserver –kill:1” to kill VNC
- under Linux Fedora, we can further configure VNC as a service and let it automatically start every time we start the computer. First, we need to edit /etc/sysconfig/vncservers file:
VNCSERVERS="1:root"
VNCSERVERARGS[1]="-geometry 1024x768" - run “vncserver –kill:all”
- run “service vncserver start”
- from my laptop or another Windows machine, now I can use VNC viewer to remotely login to this machine through “xxx:1” string.
Using Xilinx ISE 7.1 and 8.1 on the same computer
I have a project that can be built without any issues under Xilinx ISE 7.1. After I installed the newer version - Xilinx ISE 8.1, I found that my bit file does not work on my FPGA any more. I did not bother to debug the problem (honestly, I am not an FPGA engineer and I don’t know how). So I decided to use both ISE 7.1 and ISE 8.1 at the same time. It is interesting that just copying everything under the ISE 7.1 installation directory to anther machine works perfectly. There is one small change that needs to be done: i.e. to change the environment variable from
XILINX=c:\Xilinx_8_1
To
XILINX=c:\Xilinx_7_1
After that, I can go to the bin directory and run the 7.1 version of project navigation to open my old ISE projects.
