Re: hardware monitoring at the most basic level …
>> How do you get periodic snapshots of your running hardware?
>I don't usually bother, but a reboot and a glance at dmesg can be enough.
Sometimes they aren't, at least in my case most times they aren't ;-)
>> My box started to shutdown by itself and I doubt it is related to
>> overheating (in a random and plain physical way) so I changed it for
>> another one because I didn’t have time for troubleshooting/fixing at
>> this moment but then the same thing started to happen to the other box
>Have you got time now? Or will you move on to a third machine?
This is the third machine that just dies -exactly the same- in less
than two weeks. All of a sudden they stop booting up. I can not
entertain the illusion of moving on to a new box, because I may have
to spend money on a server + other matters ... So I must have
time/make sense instead of dealing with it with "money" ;-)
>> What I notice is that for no obvious apparent reason the CPU taxes to
>> the max and the box starts revving wildly
>Is overheating complelely ruled out?
Well, the "physics" of it is easy. I:
1) disconnected the machine from the Internet
2) took apart the CPU/heat sink to clean it thoroughly (scrubbed off
the old and glued them together with new thermal paste)
3) checked the mobo for anything abnormal, resetting the memory modules, ...
4) reset the CMOS (I had to because I was getting 5-beep CPU/memory
errors, even though everything seemed to be fine)
the box then booted nicely (almost totally silently)
5) I ran then memtest for hours (6 passes) and no memory errors were
detected whatsoever
6) SMART says disks are just fine and I don't hear any abnormal noises ...
but then once you connect your box to the Internet you start "having
problems" even if you use a live CD and do not mount any drives while
connected to the Internet
>> I use different live CDs based on linux debian and I am very careful
>> in order to avoid the regular bs out there
>bs?
with "regular bs" I meant script kiddies and such. I even run my
browser without javascript enabled, nor do I waste my time on "social
networking" places ... Basically all I do is my own research and
coding, but then I have constant arguments with my ISP because my
connection to the Internet is very slow or, like right now, I have
been without access to the Internet (my own I pay for) for 3 weeks!!!
and also the same thing "happens" with my telephone line, when I go to
use public Internet access in public libraries ... ;-)
I show to my ISP tcpdump logs which timing and protocol negotiation,
which unless you are God you can't possibly make up, as evidence that
it is not a hw or sw problem on my side ... but they start giving you
sh!t and things don't get solved
>> I would like to periodically test the underlying hardware as low as
>> possible to the bare metal, because if something is messing with your
>> OS it will be harder for you to notice anything
>Nothing messes with Debian.
Nothing, really? Well, the US has quietly become a police state and
they are monitoring pretty much everyone's movement (from a technical
point of view almost literally (most people don't know their cell
phones are tracking their geo locations with centimetric precision,
what they talk about, with whom ... and that what they talk/write
about is being staged in all encompassing snitching corpora real time
...))
Now if they think you need to get "normed" because you are saying
something they don't like, even if written as a poem,
http://hsymbolicus.wordpress.com/category/poems/ (lies ...)
mapping and tracking you is not enough (let alone knowing you are not
some criminal by any standard), they create a virtual prison around
you and start harassing you non-stop, without charges or anything (and
that includes sending letters to employers telling them you are some
bad nigger that has been black listed by the FBI).
A la Orson Wells 1984 you are not complying with newstalk so you need
to get "normed" ;-) ... It is not enough for them controlling/dumbing
down the masses with media cr@p. They want to actually play God and
control everything down to eveyone of us on an individual level ...
Now, how does all that cr@p relate to debian?
I have been thinking about developing a version of Debian live that
would make very easy for people to monitor on their own and document
when their telephones are being messed with, when the police is
creating noises in your apartment (including nasty high frequency ones
based on magnetic lobes) to sleep deprive you (which is a form of
torture) ... it is a "Quis-custodiet-ipsos-custodes?" thing
>> Any best practices and tips you would share?
>Install Debian.
In the version of Debian live I am fancying about, it would, as part
of booting, make sure that the BIOS hasn't been changed, it would boot
and configure itself to certain hardware profiles only (of machines
you have decided, otherwise it would warn you ...), it would have some
internal, vertical monitoring of processes with timing so that stack
sequences are kept in some Bayesian network, it would only mount
devices you own ...
the reason why I talk about this here (even though I know you may
find quite off-topic all of this and may feel foreign to "political"
issue (I do, too! but still ...)) is because that should be a cultured
development, not just something someone does for him/herself
thanks
lbrtcthx
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