Concern

It seems like there’s a subtle bug in GNU Classpath CVS, which manifests when running Azureus: downloading torrents works great, and fast, but when the file’s completely downloaded, the torrent starts over again, so it starts downloading from 0% again! Something done at the end of the download seems to fail, and the download has to start over.

This happens on both Linux and OS X, so it’s pretty fundamental. There’s little doubt that I’ve introduced this, in the NIO changes.

Edit: It’s failing because “Piece #3 failed final re-check. Re-downloading…” So, something screwy is going on with how file checks are done. This could be anything from a crypto problem to a file IO problem, to even a collections issue (unlikely, but maybe).

And, since Azureus looks like it was written by a horde of monkeys on crack and LSD, debugging this is going to be interesting.

Edit: dear lazyweb, do you know of a small file that is distributed (legally) over Bittorrent? Ideally, there should be a seed or two, as well. Downloading an Ubuntu CD image over and over isn’t very productive.

Edit: I’ve been able to confirm, at least, that it isn’t a problem with downloading files — if I turn off the final piece check, the download completes, and the file gets downloaded completely (verified with MD5). I’m still not sure why this failure happens, though, because even after fixing some issues with EINTR and file IO, it still happens.

I got my Dell PowerEdge server today, and installed Ubuntu 6.06 server. Its name is “castor.”

The configuration is:

• Pentium D 820, 2.8GHz, 800MHz front side bus.
• 1GB DDR2 RAM, 533MHz (two 512 sticks).
• Two 80GB, 7.2K SATA hard disks.
• 48X CD-ROM.
• And nothing else.

Total cost was around $750, including tax and shipping.

I’ll Flickr some photos tonight, just because.

Edit: screen shot of the GNOME desktop. This is just running Xvnc as the X server, so it should never need a keyboard, display, and mouse hooked up. I’m doing this (instead of just using X forwarding through SSH) to try and get more of a “feel” for how things run on the Linux desktop. And, I can try any resolution I want.

Looks sharp. Not nearly as clean as OS X, but still very good.

Also, it’s neat that distributions are providing Eclipse’s Java compiler, compiled natively with GCJ. The integration of Free Java into the Linux desktop isn’t complete, yet, but it’s progressing nicely.

Edit: bad photos of a boring computer.

I’m concerned, I realize suddenly — like I had realized when writing or speaking that the passive voice, or weak qualifiers such as “probably” or “maybe,” appear too often in my words — that I am, in thought and speech, far too cynical. It seems just like brief examples of negative or pessimistic thinking, like I will highlight negatives as the basis of my speech, even if I’m saying something positive, but strung together the whole forms a truly negative outlook.

This surprises me, because I didn’t always act this way; in fact, I seem to remember being much the opposite. Not that I was a shiny, happy optimist, but I believed in things that felt good to believe in: I believed in science, for one, which is kind of boring, but I did have a wonderful enthusiasm about space science, and dreamed about space missions and watched NASA intently. It is just pragmatic, to a point, to be skeptical about science, especially if it solves no immediate problem that people are dealing with today.

But I also believed in poetry; I believed in art; I believed — corny as it sounds — in love. All of this feels like it’s gone, now, and I feel lessened because of it. Beauty used to be a big part of my life, but I don’t have it anymore, and I don’t know where it went. I’m fairly certain that it’s because of this lack of belief in, or love of, any of these things that I’m single, and have been for so damn long. It’s at least half of that answer, and the other half is probably just my personal demeanor of shyness mixed with narcissism.

I’ve got a decent enough job, that pays really well, and I enjoy working with those people. I’m doing well in my slow, steady pace towards a master’s degree. I’m pretty good at writing free software, and there is a project that I love contributing to. But this isn’t enough to make me happy; true, I may just be lonely, but it feels like it’s bigger than that — that I’m lonely because of something a lot bigger that’s missing.

Maybe it is just that I’m getting more mature, and shiny objects no longer captivate me. But it is, I can only assume, like losing faith, and that you can lose it in many different ways, some of which hurt worse. Losing faith can be liberating for some — you can feel free of the burden of there needing to be a higher purpose to the universe, and can concentrate on the real, true things of your life — but for others it can be devastating, and you can wind up missing the space you occupied before, sometimes dreadfully much.

I don’t suppose there’s much of an answer, not that this is a question, and I doubt you my dear lazyweb would provide much of one. But there it is, and it’s in your court now, until next time.

I’ve checked in some nice fixes to the kqueue selector, and Azureus is more stable now. Before, while I would initially get a nice fat download rate, all downloads would eventually halt, and the selector would go into a loop of returning an error over and over. I think I’ve fixed this.

I’m obliged to post a screenshot, of course.

I think we still have some more work to do before the 0.93 release, which will likely be in a few weeks. But I really think that this release will be a great step forward for Classpath’s networking and IO; the JNI calls have all been minimized to the point where they do as little as possible in C, and call almost no JNI methods, which are often extremely slow.

I’ll also be fixing the epoll selector, as soon as I get my new Linux server delivered. I got a Dell PowerEdge SC430, with no OS installed. I’ll blog about it more when I get it and set it up.

My class this quarter consists of:

• Reading academic papers on operating systems.
• Talking about these in class.
• Writing a project and a paper related to systems.

Homework? Exams? A Jedi needs not these things.