networkArchitect

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "remove the PCB?" Do you mean to remove the metal case from the power supply, and just have the bare PCB exposed while it's running? If that is what you mean, I would recommend you not do this, ever, unless you are sure you know what you are doing. There are quite a lot of points on the inner-workings of a power supply that will be energized at line voltage whenever the power supply is plugged in. For example, the solder joints on the bottom of the PCB will be live. The heat sinks that have the main switching transistor on them will be live! I repeat, touching the bare heatsinks when the power supply is plugged in will cause a fatal electric shock. This is overall a very bad idea. The casing is there to protect you, and any space savings you might get will be extremely small.

A vulnerability in CPUID CPU-Z has been reported under CVE-2017-15302. This vulnerability allows for arbitrary reading/writing of locations in memory without proper permissions. At the time of writing (10/15/2017) there is currently no fix available. IMO this isn't anything to panic over quite yet, though if you're super paranoid uninstalling and waiting for a fix to be released might be a good idea. CVE Report: http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2017-15302 Slightly more info: https://github.com/akayn/Bugs/tree/master/CVE-2017-15302

If you're good with writing your own scripts, I'd recommend taking a look at rsync (man page here); it's a network file transfer command that works great for backups. It supports things like compressing files to minimize the amount you need to transfer, then decompressing them on receive, an incremental option that only copies over files that have changed, and the ability to set it up with SSH keys so you don't have to enter in a password manually. Personally I have a script that uses rsync to copy between my local and remote servers, which is run by cron every night.

First off, what OSes are your servers running? Answers will vary wildly for different OSes. Also, to avoid the problem @enderman stated, you can run automated backups at ridiculously late hours of the night (personally my local and remote storage servers sync between 3AM and 6AM). Secondly, how fast is your internet connection, specifically the upload rate on the location of your dedicated server, and the download rate of the location where the backup server will be located? The slower of the two speeds will be how fast you will be able to transfer data. Thirdly, how much will the data be changing inbetween backups? If @JCH uses incremental backups (which only upload the changes to files since the last backup), and their internet connection is relatively modern (>=30mb/s symmetrical), and they set the transfer to only occur at night, this shouldn't be nearly as big of an issue is you make it out to be.

Is it underclocking itself when under full load? CPUs will often downclock themselves when idle. How are you confirming that it is not overheating? Are you using a program to monitor the temperature, because it is possible the thermal paste between the heat sink and the CPU is cracked or not working as efficiently.

After you reformat the drive, you may have a few more issues, especially with the locked-down-ness of school networks. Most likely your school network has a Domain Controller (DC), which connects all computers to a central authentication server, as well as pushing out security updates and group policies (GP) (which is what actually locks down the OS). The reformatted school laptop will behave just like a personal laptop: it will not be able to connect to class-computer-only wireless networks, as the username/password/key is configured by GPs. Shared network drives will also be inaccessible as they are configured by GP. Another thing, the school's site tech(s) will *not* be happy when they discover you have reformatted one of their laptops. Some DCs will log if a certain computer has not connected to the school network in awhile, and most likely the laptop in question has some form of asset tagging. Just so you know, you may be in a world of trouble if you do end up getting caught. While I'm here, I might as well give you a few tips on getting that SSD to boot. You will most likely be locked out of that computer's BIOS (thanks again to site and district IT knowing how to do their job). There is a program called Rufus that will let you load an ISO image onto any drive (including the SSD from the laptop). You can try putting the windows install ISO onto the SSD, installing windows to a separate partition on the drive, and then deleting the partition left over from the install ISO. There are some more complicated things you could do, using a bootable version of linux, unmounting the SSD so the OS is only running out of RAM (some distros let you do this on live-boot media), and then using the dd command to do a bit-for-bit copy of an existing windows install onto the SSD.

I would like to win the Excalibur v2 Mechanical Keyboard, as I have never actually had a mechanical keyboard on my system (been writing software for around 6 6 years on a cruddy membrane keyboard...*shudder*), and I have never been graced with the joys (or so I hear, never actually tried one out) of mechanical switches. I've been working to save up for one, but money for computer parts and electronics projects is hard to come by before you're even old enough to work.

IP address allocation is something to consider as well. A single subnet on a /24 mask can only support 254 simultaneous devices, since in an example subnet of 10.42.0.x, the broadcast address (10.42.0.255), as well as the network address (10.42.0.0) are reserved.

I've gotten it to work really well, by using a TAP interface, over UDP, with a high MTU. ~40FPS ingame, though input latency is a slight issue, although maybe a lot less for me as both locations are connected via an ISP with Fiber-to-the-Premises.

The dice program looks quite good, for a start! As a challenge, try using a 'for' loop to roll the dice instead of having a bunch of the same randint calls. For a rather comprehensive tutorial on python, the official documentation has a nice (if a bit dry) tutorial available at (https://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/). If you've only been working with python through websites, it may be a bit of a jump from that to the python interpreter. Learning by practice is often a good way to start, so if you have an idea, start with it and keep coding! If you get stuck on something, a good resource is Stack Overflow. Someone else has most likely already come across what you're stuck on, so you can often find code examples and help there. Good Luck!

Winning an SSD would be amazing, as the boot SSD I have is the cheapest ever and I don't suspect it to be very reliable long-term. It barely has enough storage for an OS alongside the development tools I use (IntelliJ, Visual Studio), in addition to games. In this day and age, Everyone should have an SSD because mechanical hard disks are the main bottleneck in even mid-range systems, when it comes to boot and program launch times. I've only had a SSD in my rig for a few months, but it's made so much of a difference. It actually makes sleeping the system viable instead of having it on 24/7!

Try using a can of compressed air to blow out the CPU fan and the heatsink on the other end of the heat pipe.

Backups to my network server (RAID5 array) from my SSD take around 2-3 hours to complete (don't have a gigabit switch yet), for ~200gb of files. If you have a large number of files, or if you aren't doing a differential backup it might explain why your backup is taking so long.

LTT: Serving you a daily dose of tech you wish you could afford

So, I've been messing around with getting Steam Streaming to work over a VPN connection, and I've gotten it to work, some of the time. When the client computer is connected to our guest wi-fi network (it's subnetted infront of the LAN running the stream server and OpenVPN server), the streaming works quite well. But, when the client is in a separate physical location, (aka a different building with different ext. IP), and connected through the VPN, the game launches, audio works fine, mouse and keyboard movements are sent over, but the video is completely black. The F6 key that should give network diagnostic information does not work as well. This seems to be a very common problem, and a lot of people seem to think it's video drivers and newer versions of DirectX causing the problem, though as the same software configurations work on the guest wi-fi but not on a more distant connection it seems safe to rule out the software configurations. Both client and server locations have fiber to the premises, and at least 50/50mbit up/down, so the speeds shouldn't be an issue. The only thing I can think of that could be causing everything else to work, but the video to fail is if the video packets are too large to go between sites? the MTU of the VPN is set to 9000, so jumbo packets should work. Anyone have any ideas on what could be done to help further diagnose it? Has anyone got steam streaming to successfully work over a VPN?