Category Archives: Aaaarghh!

Frustrating stuff and hopefully, their solutions.

VMware ESXi 5 and LSI1068E controller crap

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Had lots of problems using my IBM BR10i and Dell SAS 5I/r controllers; performance under ESXi 5 was terrible.
Just 3.5 MB/s on write. Under Linux, write performance was around 110-120 MB/s. So WTF ?

I thought that all this was needed (disable Interrupt Routing):

# esxcli system settings kernel list -o iovDisableIR
# esxcfg-advcfg -k TRUE iovDisableIR (just the above command wasn't enough)
# auto-backup.sh
# auto-backup.sh (yes, twice!)
# reboot

Check:

# esxcfg-advcfg -j iovDisableIR
# esxcli system settings kernel list -o iovDisableIR


But in the end, this wasn’t it. Seems that LSI1068E based controllers disable all disk caching built into the drives by default.

If the server has battery backup you can enable basic drive caching on the Logical Volumes without risk (or, without a battery, WITH risk).

Goto www.LSI.com (The controller is made by LSI) and download and install MegaRAID Storage Manager. In short, install the VIB on your ESXi machine, the Manager on a Windows or Linux machine, sync their host names and enable all ports on the ESXi firewall for incoming TCP traffic.

Highlight the Virtual Raid Volume, right click, properties. Enable Cache and save. You have to do this on every logical raid volume.

Your performance difference is incredible.

And I just lost a day of looking for the solution. Crap.

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[solved] OS X 10.7 Lion and mail search not working…

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I was stunned to find out that the search function on the Mail.app wasn’t working anymore since I’ve upgraded my Mac from Snow Leopard 10.6.8 to (the very cool) Lion 10.7. Thought it could be Spotlight not working, or something else.

Well, as it turns out, it’s a combination of 2 problems:

1) turn Spotlight indexing on: sudo mdutil -i on /
2) when using IMAP, configure your account to Keep a message for viewing offline

That’s it! Where Snow Leopard was able to search thru already downloaded mail (although the above option was enabled), Lion can’t.

Now the search is working great!

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Poste Italiane: International shipments price list 2011

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Seems to be it’s impossibile to find out how much the Italian Postal service is charging for a simple shipment of a box outside Italy. In fact, on their site they ONLY show you the more expensive ways (PaccoCelere Internazionale, QuickPak Europe, EMS) but these services have a starting price of € 28 ! There’s NO direct link on their site towards this page: http://www.poste.it/postali/ordinario/estero.shtml

So, if you’re in Italy and you need to ship something, ask for “pacco ordinario per l’estero’. They won’t have any documentation about it and the price will depend on weight, country and if you’ll be using air or ground services.

But how to know what it’ll cost… Well, see the attached image of an internal document of the Poste Italiane! Should be valid from 2011 but your mileage may vary: prices are always subject to change (mostly without notice).

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Aumento tariffe Paccocelere di Poste Italiane

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Eccomi qui a fare l’ennesimo post per annunciare l’aumento delle tariffe postali del “pacco celere” che è operativo dal 24 agosto scorso e che, ovviamente, è avvenuto in sordina, senza nessun avviso per gli utenti.

Per chi vende online o per chi partecipa a swap, baratti, scambi e simili (come me) è l’ennesimo salasso ingiustificato, ingiustificato perché essenzialmente la qualità dei servizi postali nazionali peggiora invece di migliorare, malgrado gli aumenti costanti e abbondanti!
Stessa cosa per chi ama comprare online (come me ancora una volta) che si vedrà addebitate spese di spedizione ancora più care.

Per calcolare l’aumento basta aggiungere il costo dell’IVA al 20% ai prezzi del paccocelere, quindi la postacelere 1 passa da 10 a 12,00 euro, mentre il pacco celere 3 passa da 9,50 a 11,40 euro (quasi quasi conviene di più il primo tanto per 60 centesimi di differenza…) e il pacco celere 1 (da 0 a 3kg.) passa da 13,00 a 15,60 euro!

Però una buona notizia c’è, sono venuta a conoscenza di un nuovo servizio privato, per spedire in Italia, che ha costi un po’ inferiori, devo solo provarlo e poi preparo una bella recensione a “blog unificati”… Si chiama www.spedireweb.it.

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