I Built an outdoor shelter to make puppy training a little easier.

Is there anything cuter than bringing home a new puppy?

In the last year with many people at home more, many decided to add a pet to their family.

 I mean after all puppies are so cute, life is just full of fun with a new puppy or maybe a second puppy to play with your first dog .

One thing I've learned though to properly train a dog you need to take it outside a lot and that means  in good weather or bad.

Getting a puppy in the Autumn in much of North America means that Critical potty training requires  frequent outside visits. Training a new puppy means often going out even in the middle of the night regardless of the weather. 

Sometimes puppies are very timid and afraid of new things so if you suddenly find yourself outside in a heavy rain storm or a snowstorm holding up an umbrella might make it even more scared.

Then he won't be inclined to do his business and  you just want to get out of there get done and get back inside.

Puppies sometimes have other ideas. It Takes a lot of patience patience is hard to have when it's pouring outside or it's cold or snowing right in your face.

To see how view my YouTube video.
See how on YouTube

 YouTube Videos - Repairing a shed 14,000 views.

I'm not a frequent blogger so I don't make any money from this, but I do like to share things that I've learned .

 It's my way of paying it forward via the Internet that has given me so much. 

 I'm doing this both through the blog and through YouTube videos on occasion.

My work takes most of my time so I'm not able to share a lot of what I do at work.

Security concerns work policies with the Internet etc.

Although I don't work in any skilled trade now, I consider the training that I got very valuable. My father was not just skilled in his trade, he was a "Jack of all trades". I try to use the skills that I learned then throughout my life in very practical ways such as doing my own handyman work. I attempt DIY (do it yourself) tasks and record videos in case it seems helpful.

I'm currently on work leave due to a health issue, so I'm looking through videos of things that I've done that may be helpful.

Right now I'm dictating this blog using voice recognition because it's difficult to use my right arm.

Here is a link to the video I created on repairing a shed hinge which seems to have gotten 14,000 views already.

When I couldn't find parts I came up with a way to repair it myself and I thought I would share it.

YouTube link

Plastic Keter Shed Door Hinge repair - Quick fix

Hoping to do more soon.

Dave

Living the PI Life - Raspberry Pi startup

First time experience with Raspberry Pi.
For those who may not have heard about The Raspberry Pi - It is a tiny computer on a board that about 1/3 the size of my Iphone 6 +.

These run a variety of operating systems mostly based on Linux varieties.

Here is my experience with the Kit I got from massdrop.com  It looks like most buyers have had problems. I will let you know what I have done to work around them.
The kit included

• Raspberry PI 3 Model B
• 8 GB SD card
• Plastic Pi case
• Power adapter 
• 7 inch LED touch screen with controller (HDMI, VGA, Composite)
• HDMI cable

Not included was

• 5-12 V power supply for the LCD screen.
• Useful documentation like pinout for Display wiring

Starting the Raspberry Pi

The Kit box appears to have been provided by Sainsmart.com which is lacking documentation.

My first experience getting the base Pi working I ran into a problem.
The 8Gb SD card did not seem to be formatted even though it seemed to have been opened.
I followed instructions at RaspberryPi.org to  format the provided SD card.
Even after several tries I was unable to produce a working Pi and card. In each case I got only a black screen. I lost a chunk of a day here
For this initial test I was using only the provided power adapter and the HDMI cable connected .

Troubleshooting
After several google searches the best troubleshooting information led me to search for a new SD card to use. I went to Walmart and saw SD cards in the $10 - $16 price range that seemed suitable.
I picked up a SanDisk 16GB (Max Size listed for Pi)
Following the instructions for Noobs install worked perfectly first time.
This got me going and I plugged in my USB keyboard and Mouse.
I did experience a few unexpected resets So I switched the power supply to a Blackberry phone charger I had available.  This make it stable.

LCD screen
I may write more detail on the LCD touchscreen later.
For quick reference: I had to find a surplus AC adapter for this. It used a 5Volt DC 2.5Amp adapter used for a D-Link USB hub. You might find one at in a clearance bin at a electronics or computer store or online.
There was a useful video for this on Sainsmart.com linked to YouTube. My photo below may help.
For the display adapter board I found this documentation It's very limited but may help you get started.
I was able to use this display for Rasberry Pi and also the NES classic SNES classic as a spare display when the TV is busy.

In Summary
This kit was failing in these respects
- Poor quality or defective SD card
- Poor quality power supply
- No power supply provided for the LCD display screen.
The Raspberry Pi itself seems good and the display itself works. I look forward to exploring more.
Here's my photos :

Kit Box

Box open

Contents

Pi in case with HDMI and power connected (sitting on my laptop)

On TV - setting up Raspian from NOOBS

Supplied SD card (left and replacement SD card (right)

Replacement power adapters (Left) Blackberry charger for Pi. (Right) D-Link 5V adapter used to power the screen.

Screen Wiring - Note the orientation of red Wires

Pi with screen wrapped in corrugated plastic for a quick package (and Apple Pie to celebrate)

MegaRaid  Problems - Can't recreate a Logical disk containing a single physical disk after failure.

While working on a disk replacement on an older Oracle (SUN) X4170 M2 we ran into trouble.
In this config there was a raid controller configured with 4 physical hard disks used as 4 logical disks.
No redundancy was configured here. Redundancy was configure using Solaris 10 ZFS layer in zpools.

Here is where it got ugly. When a disk died the MegaRaid logical disk disappeared (No redundancy so that;s expected.)

After disk replacement you need to recreate the logical disk (again expected). MegaRaid however refused to recreate the logical disk. Try as we might it only spit out a generic exit code and Failure message:

# ./MegaCli -CfgLdAdd -r0  [252:1] -a0
                                   
Adapter 0: Configure Adapter Failed
Exit Code: 0x54

Solution is below however a little background on this config.

Normal MegaRaid config:

Logical disks:

 # ./MegaCli -LDInfo -Lall -aALL |egrep 'Virtual|size|State'
Adapter 0 -- Virtual Drive Information:
Virtual Drive: 0 (Target Id: 0)
State               : Optimal
Virtual Drive: 1 (Target Id: 1)
State               : Optimal
Virtual Drive: 2 (Target Id: 2)
State               : Optimal
Virtual Drive: 3 (Target Id: 3)
State               : Optimal

Physical disks:

# ./MegaCli -PDList -aALL |egrep 'Slot|state|Inq'                
Slot Number: 0
Firmware state: Online, Spun Up
Inquiry Data: SEAGATE ST930005SSUN300G06061201Q1ABC        
Slot Number: 1
Firmware state: Online, Spun Up
Inquiry Data: SEAGATE ST930003SSUN300G0E71101471DEF        
Slot Number: 2
Firmware state: Online, Spun Up
Inquiry Data: SEAGATE ST930005SSUN300G06061201Q1LGHI        
Slot Number: 3
Firmware state: Online, Spun Up
Inquiry Data: SEAGATE ST930005SSUN300G06061201Q1LJKL  


So in this case we saw

Logical disks

 # ./MegaCli -LDInfo -Lall -aALL |egrep 'Virtual|State'
Adapter 0 -- Virtual Drive Information:
Virtual Drive: 0 (Target Id: 0)
State               : Optimal
Virtual Drive: 1 (Target Id: 1)
State               : Optimal

Virtual Drive: 3 (Target Id: 3)
State               : Optimal

# ./MegaCli -LDInfo -L2 -aALL

                                     

Adapter 0 -- Virtual Drive Information:

Adapter 0: Virtual Drive 2 Does not Exist.

Replaced disk was now available in Physical disk list

# ./MegaCli -PDList -aALL |egrep 'Slot|state|Inq|Enc'

Enclosure Device ID: 252

Slot Number: 0

Enclosure position: N/A

Firmware state: Online, Spun Up

Inquiry Data: SEAGATE ST930005SSUN300G06061201Q1ABC          

Enclosure Device ID: 252

Slot Number: 1

Enclosure position: N/A

Firmware state: Unconfigured(good), Spun Up

Inquiry Data: SEAGATE ST930003SSUN300G0E71101471ZDEF          

Enclosure Device ID: 252

Slot Number: 2

Enclosure position: N/A

Firmware state: Online, Spun Up

Inquiry Data: SEAGATE ST930005SSUN300G06061201Q1LGHI         

Enclosure Device ID: 252

Slot Number: 3

Enclosure position: N/A

Firmware state: Online, Spun Up

Inquiry Data: SEAGATE ST930005SSUN300G06061201Q1LJKL   

So we should be able to add the new disk back into a logical disk array but it fails:

# ./MegaCli -CfgLdAdd -r0  [252:1] -a0
                                   
Adapter 0: Configure Adapter Failed
Exit Code: 0x54

So after trying a few things with the field engineer replacing the disk. reinserting different slots etc. came my new favorite quote:

                " Friends don't let friends MegaRaid"

But here is the solution:

Any Logical disk with caching enabled retains data that was being written at fail time. So Logical disk 2 cache data was retained. 
Logical disk (LD2) and in fact any new LD could not be recreated when cache was being preserved.

Confirm :

# ./MegaCli -GetPreservedCacheList -a0
                                   
Adapter #0
Virtual Drive(Target ID 02): Missing.
Exit Code: 0x00

Dump cache

# ./MegaCli -DiscardPreservedCache -L2 -a0                                

Adapter #0
Virtual Drive(Target ID 02): Preserved Cache Data Cleared.

Exit Code: 0x00

Try again to recreate LD

# ./MegaCli -CfgLdAdd -r0[252:1] -a0
                                     
Adapter 0: Created VD 2
Adapter 0: Configured the Adapter!!
Exit Code: 0x00

SUCCESS.
Now you can move on to any software configured mirroring etc.

In this case we were able to do a zpool replace command.

A little more background on LSI logic RAID controllers  Using Megaraid, Megacli, Storcli

For comparison sake we have seen similar config issues on Both IBM and Cisco UCS servers. In the case of non redundant (raid0 )logical disks this preserved cache issue can also arise. In the case of Cisco UCS we have seen a more meaningful error appear leading to the solution much quicker:

No doubt the vendor or OS package has a more updated of Megaraid i.e. Megacli64 or storcli.

# ./MegaCli64 -CfgLdAdd -r0[8:13] -a0

                                     

Adapter 0: Configure Adapter Failed

FW error description: 
 The current operation is not allowed because the controller has data in cache for offline 

 or missing virtual disks.  

Exit Code: 0x54

The solution is using the same option -DiscardPreservedCache 

Battery killer - Outlook App on Samsung Galaxy S4 Android

Suddenly one my Galaxy S4 Android phone battery began dying halfway through the day. I charge it every night.
I was thinking it was a hardware problem after owning the phone just under a year.
Then I discovered the problem.
I went to :

• Settings
• More
• Battery

Then you see Battery use by application.

Here I saw the culprit. Microsoft outlook had used  55% of the battery. I had never noticed this behaviour before. I had installed Outlook to access my old Email that My provider Bell had given me years ago. Recently I had cancelled my home DSL internet with them. (switched to a CABLE based Provider) It seems they cancelled my Email accounts tied to the account (name@bell.net , name @sympatico.ca.) So the app was not even working. Looking at the settings I saw  I had configured push notifications. I had not received any new emails in over a week. When i selected SYNC it seemed to contuously try to connect to the mail server unsuccessfully.  So the issue was likely the app was trying to continously access the server and failing and retrying every 10 minutes. This not only drained my battery but also drained my wireless data plan. (since I had turned off wifi to save battery when away from home.)

THE FIX

In my case the fix was simply to uninstall Outlook since I now longer needed it.

If you encounter this problem you may be able to disable push notifications, Change how often it does push notification, or troubleshoot any service connection issues.

 

Insulating a cold bedroom over the Garage - "Heated space"

We recently moved our bedroom to a larger one at the front of the house. This was a concern because it was notoriously the coldest room in the house. Its always several degrees colder.
This is a common problem in Canada and there are many service companies do it yourself solutions.
I of course hate paying anyone to do something I can do myself.
So with unused vacation time I had to take before the end of the year I was determined to solve it as inexpensively as I could.
Inspection:
To start I cut some holes in the garage ceiling drywall large enough to stand on a ladder and look around with a bright light.

Then I cut out sections of drywall between the studs.

I was happy to see there was already considerable thickness of pink insulation, however what I saw next changed my whole plan.
I knew I would see the two heating ducts and figured I would need to wrap them with insulation, however there was a third duct just blowing into the space. 
Seeing this I wondered why the space was so cold.


Change of plan
I was thinking of purchasing a spray foam kit and apply it directly to the underside of the floor. Now I realized if I did that I would loose the benefit of the heated space.
So I needed to find the cold areas and improve the insulation.

I could see the insulation on the side walls was not as thick and I could see the builder has not put vapor barrier over them .
So, this was enough to send me off to my nearby Home Depot to buy insulation. I selected Roxul R22 16 inch wide.

Three bats fit nicely in the back of a 2003 Honda CRV. They also come bundled in 3's.  I later went back and go one more.

Also notable, the plastic used to tie 3 bundles together is heavy enough to use for extra vapor barrier.

I slid down the short stubs of insulation and added more insulation above in the outside walls.

Then I added vapor barrier plastic. 

Then I placed more new insulation on the warm side.

Back in the garage ...Outside of the front of the house has a steel I-beam.

After cutting some more access holes I got a better look.
From inside I could see the I beam exposed in the corners, so clearly not enough insulation inside,




I ran a new full thickness wall of new batting along the outside walls.

In the most interior wall I saw plumbing so I had to ensure i didn't cover it. it had to stay on the warm side of the insulation.

As a final layer of warmth I split several bats of insulation to half thickness and layered over top of the  original pink insulation.

The end result is that I feel much of the house is warmer and I expect a better heating bill this year.

RedHat Linux KVM Virtual Machine in a Linux VM in Oracle Virtualbox inside Windows XP -Whew!

That sounds as confusing as it is.
I am working through a guide to becoming certified on Redhat Enterprise Linux RCSA. To do this I need practise installing RHEL. Since I dont have several 64 bit systems I needed to find a way to do this with a single Windows XP laptop.
To create a lab environment I installed a current version of Oracle VM Virtualbox on my 32bit version of Windows XP. (My laptop is a 64 bit Core i7- XP is required by my employer.)
 Withing this environment I can create a (64bit) Virtual machine and install Redhat Linux (RHEL) no problem.
Then I get to the chapter on using  RHEL to create virtual machines. I thought this should be interesting VM's nested inside VM's

So heres how it looks. Windows XP > Start Oracle Virtualbox > Start RHEL VM.> Start KVM virt-manager > Create and Boot another RHEL instance.
Seems to be working ok. Ill let you know if there are any complications.. Should be interesting when I get to the network setup.