Categories
PC Nerding

Windows 8.1 on Dell XPS M1730

Before you ask: why one should waste 120€ and install Win 8.1 on a 2008 pc? My mom bought a cheap notebook with Win 8.1. By specs, that laptop should be a lot slower than mine’s, but Windows 8 seemed really fast. My huge notebook was still running heaviest OS ever Vista Ultimate (ugh!) and I thought it was worth a try.

Now if you are still using this old car and want to upgrade to Windows 8, don’t. I recently upgraded to 120GB SSD (on a SATA II controller) + 750GB 7200rpm disk, 8gb ram, those plus Windows 8 license were in the 350-400€ range and by shelling out 450-500€ you can buy a new laptop at least on par with M1730’s specs, with warranty, support, drivers already installed and all.

What I really liked was the Windows-ish feeling while installing. Really. Installing a new Windows 8 is still like installing the 15 years old Win 98.
First off, while the Microsoft site says you can’t upgrade from Vista, I purchased the download version thinking “easy, I’m gonna download it, put in a USB stick and install”, mostly because I didn’t want to wait for DVD shipment.
First problem. You can’t upgrade from Vista and that was clear, but the real problem was that the download tool won’t even allow you to download files from Vista. Great.
Unearthed I decided to download an ISO and we all know MS don’t have and official ISO download site. I found that MSDN users can download a RTM copy, so I looked for the hash to make sure I could get an untouched (=virus safe) ISO and I torrented it from TPB. Thumbs up for mandatory piracy.
Obliviously MS official DVD to USB tool wasn’t working with that ISO but using dd on Linux did the trick. I plugged my USB stick and rebooted.
Second problem. My CD key was not working during install, but fortunately the torrent came with a temporary one. Another thumb up for piracy.
Third problem. Windows 8 refused to install to my disk: “We couldn’t create a new partition or locate an existing one. For more information, see the Setup log files”. I tried all the methods I could google, using command line to format and repartition it, loading my controller drivers from another USB stick. Here comes the new Windows (9)8. Looks like Windows 8.1 does not install if there is an USB stick plugged in and the installation one counts. The most straightforward solution was to burn a DVD, but my drive doesn’t work anymore so I can’t boot from it. My solution was to build a PXE server then booting from NIC card.
From now the installation worked flawlessly. Before activating I switched to my legit activation key and Windows activated with no complains.

This is not Win 8.1’s fault, but there’s a fourth problem, caused by using an outdated system like my M1730: drivers. Windows 8 recognizes some stuff but you must manually install (take them from Vista 64 bit category): Chipset driver and Logitech LCD driver from Dell support , PhysX driver (see below), nVidia drivers (get them from nVidia site). You may want to install Dell Quickset for controlling LED colors without accessing bios.
Logitech LCD app you get from Dell website will only support 32 Bit applications. Last Logitech Gaming Software will NOT recognize it. I personally don’t care because I only use it as a clock.
If you have an “unknown PCI device” in your device manager, that’s PhysX. Because of M1730’s unique PhysX card model, PhysX card requires and old version (8.09.04, get it here) and it must be installed BEFORE nVidia drivers. It really doesn’t matter installing them tho because new nVidia drivers will not care about it and will use the second graphics card as PhysX processor.
Webcam will not work if you install drivers from Dell, let Win 8 use a generic driver and hide the Creative driver from Windows Update.

While my installation experience have been the worst in my life, until now my use experience with Windows 8 is ok, everything looks a lot faster than Vista, uses roughly 300MB less ram, the new interface is flat and ugly but I use it only as a big shortcut collection. I’m kinda happy with my new OS because it gave my old system some fresh air.

Categories
Personal Life

Warranty curse

Yes, I was hit once again by what I call “warranty curse”. My 32′ Samsung TV died less than a month after warranty expired. I’m so sad.

It’s time to convince my girlfriend to buy a new 46” or 50”. 😀

Update after a few hours:
Looks like leaving the tv’s plug unconnected a few hours reset tv to factory settings and made it work again. I’m more sad than before, say goodbye to my 50” dream.

Categories
PC Nerding

A passwordless NAS using a Rapsberry Pi and Samba 4

Being paranoid about my data, I find it’s always cool to have one more backup device on my LAN. I had a spare 2TB powered USB hard disk and a spare Raspberry PI. So, while I made one for myself, I wrote this guide. Today I want to show you how to get a fully working NAS using Samba, using a passwordless configuration that will allow all your pc to access it without prompts.
IMPORTANT NOTE: being passwordless means that ANYONE on your LAN can access this device. Don’t do such things on shared LANs and make sure your firewall does not allow incoming connections through TCP ports 139 and 445. If you don’t think your network is safe, don’t follow this guide.

I will be using Raspian image (on a 4GB card) for this particular guide because raspi-config utility makes a first steps a little faster, Arch linux should work the same but your mileage may vary. I did everything headless through SSH, you can use a keyboard and monitor, your choice. We do not need more than the command line.

Starting Up

Start by copying Raspbian image to your SD using your favorite method and powering it up.
Do the usual

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
raspi-config

Now in raspi-config use option 1 to expand filesystem, option 2 to change default password, option 3 to make Pi boot to text console, change PI’s hostname (8 Advanced Option -> A2 Hostname) to something catchy (mine’s called “rpi-backup”) and set GPU memory (8 Advanced Option -> A3 Memory Split) to 16 since we won’t use it. You may want to overclock, but for this setup I value stability over speed.

Hard Disk Setup

Now if you haven’t yet plugged your hard disk, do so now. If you have already formatted your disk continue. If not a little google search will help you.

First thing to do is to create a mount point and change its owner to pi user. Then we will mount our disk in this newly created mount point.

sudo mkdir /media/backup
sudo chown -R pi /media/backup
mount /dev/sda1 /media/backup

Now, to make sure Raspberry does this automatically each boot we must edit the filesystems table file.

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add this line at the bottom: (NOTE: mine’s filesystem is ext4, if your disk use another filesystem change that value. “auto” will work in most cases)

/dev/sda1   /media/backup    ext4    defaults,user   0   1

Samba Setup

Start this part by installing the required packages

sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin

Delete the default configuration file and make a new one

sudo rm /etc/samba/smb.conf
sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

pasting in it those lines:

[global]
   workgroup = WORKGROUP
   guest account = pi
   map to guest = bad user

[storage]
   path = /media/backup
   guest ok = yes
   read only = no

Remember to change workgroup to the one you use.

Now restart your samba server using

sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

and you are ready to copy/access your files from your Windows, Mac and Linux machines.

Final Notes

I get roughly 10MB/s write and 7MB/s read speed, it could be a little faster while reading but I’m fairly ok with this setup.
As I said in the first lines, this passwordless device is accessible, and writable, by anyone in your LAN. Make sure your LAN is safe before storing critical data.