🏷️ linux

After going without a personal computer for two weeks, I'm finally back up and running. I really miss not having a computer - work ones don't feel like home.

I replaced my LCD screen in my 5 year old Dell when it got cracked in November. Unfortunately it started to flicker and die in the two weeks ago.

So I returned the old one, and tried to order a new one from Amazon reseller Techorbits. I wanted to upgrade from 1600p to 1080, and one with a better color gamut, contrast and brightness. The screen I ordered was this - - pretty much the highest quality 17.3 display my video card could support (only a 40pin connector)

Despite paying for the better screen, they sent me a terrible Chi Mei panel with even worse viewing angles and colors than I had before. The resolution is better but that is all. I called the company, and their rep insisted the panel was just as good and that's why they could send it. Nowhere was this mentionedd and it's obviously not true just looking at the spec sheets.

Resolution | Response Time | Contrast | Brightness | VIewing Angles | NTSC Color Gamut | Backlight
AUOptronics
B173HW01 V4
1920x1080    8ms    600:1    300    140/120    262k (6-bit)    90%    B+RG LED

Chi Mei
N173FGE-L21
1600x900    8ms    650:1    220    90/65    262k (6-bit)        W-LED

I'm using it for the time being and not reassembling the computer because I want to this up with Amazon - completely false advertising. Techorbits of Aliso Viejo, CA, what a shitty way to run a business.



In the mean time, I also needed to replace my wifi card, as it had died, and the LCD LVDS cable as it was starting to lose contact. So now everything works fine again, besides the old battery. Maybe one day I'll buy a new computer but with an SSD this does everything I need.

I also finally got around to upgrading to Fedora 21 via FedUp- look, transparent terminal windows!! I never knew how much I needed them. Not too many obvious changes but I haven't poked around too much.

I've been working on the redeveloping the Squeaky Wheel website and coming up with a brand new member management and equipment app for them. Most of the project is not that interesting but I have learned something new - Docker.

Basically there are containers that use parts of the host machines kernel, that then combines them with other services you want to run isolated from the rest of the machine. You can build images of different configurations and version control them with git. Everything configuration can be described by docker files. Its basically a more lightweight and flexible virtual machine. I felt behind for not having used this before but it's pretty awesome.

In my set up, I wanted to have a virtual machine running the member app, and a front end running WordPress. @paul didn't want to use two IPs and I don't want to run a frequently exploited app like WordPress on the host, so docker was a good solution to isolate it.

In the end I based an container off of a prebuilt CentOS image, with PHP, MySQL and Apache installed and went through the configuration. I could pull the MySQL data store out into its own persistant data container by running

docker run -v  /etc/mysql centos mysql-data

. This lets the data be reused across multiple containers.

Next I set up a WordPress directory on the host VM, so that I could version control changes with git. After this, the WordPress container can be spun up by mounting the data container and mapping with MySQL, mapping the host wordpress directory into the Apache's root document folder and forwarding another port on the host machine to port 80 and 443 to the container. I will post the command once I'm on the computer.

All I needed to do after that was set a VirtualHost proxy to the container. The best part after this was how easy it was to spin up a second Dev environment for someone else - I just cloned the Wordprsss directory and ran the command another time with a different port and name.

Now that I have done this I think spinning up apps will be so much easier. Maybe I can pick start doing more server admin work like Paul.