pitter patter on the keyboard

I recently purchased an LG blu-ray burner which was DOA.

I might just be an idiot, and things may have changed by now but I wasted a solid half hour of my life not finding anywhere to RMA the drive on their Canadian consumer products site.

For your benefit, so you do not end up on hold with consumer support for 20 minutes as I did, the location of the RMA portal:

https://www.lgrepairportal.com

This raw full disk image is a straight-up install of Ubuntu 12.04.1 Server LTS “Precise Pangolin” on EXT3. No packages were selected for installation other than OpenSSH Server. It will boot under full virtualization platforms (QEMU, VirtualBox, VMWare) without modification (except maybe disk image conversion) but the steps below are required to make it play nicely as a Xen Paravirtualized Guest.

db3fb8b154cb05ab704733bba1a6d70e ubuntu-12.04.1-x86_64.raw.hdd.lzma

The user account is “user”
The user password is “user”

The default network settings are: eth0 DHCP

Fortunately, the generic kernel has Xen PV guest support so the required buggery is mostly limited to making the console work. Unpack and mount the image:

# unlzma ubuntu-12.04.1-x86_64.raw.hdd.lzma
# mkdir /mnt/rawroot
# lomount -diskimage ubuntu-12.04.1-x86_64.raw.hdd -partition 1 /mnt/rawroot

The distributed /boot/grub/grub.cfg script will make pygrub throw up. We’ll drop this (/mnt/rawroot)/boot/grub/grub.conf file in to override it:

default 0
timeout 5
fallback 1

title Ubuntu, with Linux 3.2.0-29-generic
        root=(hd0,0)
        kernel   /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-29-generic root=UUID=a52e9498-44e8-4c0d-807e-903d4e19e204 ro console=hvc0
        initrd  /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-29-generic

title Ubuntu, with Linux 3.2.0-29-generic (recovery mode)
        root=(hd0,0)
        kernel   /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-29-generic root=UUID=a52e9498-44e8-4c0d-807e-903d4e19e204 ro recovery nomodeset
        initrd  /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-29-generic

Now we need to make a getty load on hvc0, create (/mnt/rawroot)/etc/init/hvc0.conf

# hvc0 - getty
#
# This service maintains a getty on hvc0 from the point the system is
# started until it is shut down again.

start on stopped rc or RUNLEVEL=[2345]
stop on runlevel [!2345]

respawn
exec /sbin/getty -L 115200 hvc0 vt102

We probably want to give our VM a static IP. Edit (/mnt/rawroot)/etc/network/interfaces to reflect:

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.100
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8

Now we are ready to boot up. Unmount /mnt/rawroot and create a configuration file that looks similar to:

name = "ubuntu"

vcpus = 1
memory = 256
vif = [ 'mac=00:16:3e:ff:00:01,bridge=extbr0' ]
disk = ['file:/xen/ubuntu/ubuntu.hdd,sda,w']

bootloader = "/usr/bin/pygrub"
extra = "xencons=hvc0 console=hvc0"

Ensure the MAC address does not conflict with any existing virtual machines. Assuming the configuration file is named ubuntu.conf run

# xm create ubuntu.conf -c

If everything went well you should be looking at a login prompt shortly after.

Note that if you use cp -ax to transfer the filesystem’s contents to a larger image in the future, references using UUIDs in fstab and grub.conf will have to be changed to either reflect the new UUID or the corresponding /dev node (probably xvda1) and GRUB must be re-installed to the MBR.

If you would like to move the contents to a filesystem-only image (no partition table, MBR, etc.) which is much easier to grow than a full disk image you can drop pygrub and externalize the kernel and initrd images then reference them in the configuration file.

I was considering CoreNetworks.net after my crummy experience with iWeb last week because I had a dedicated with them once upon a time and their support team was really fast and courteous. I know someone personally who has been with them for three years and the reviews around the web generally concur that the support is stellar. I’ve been given reason to have my doubts however; it generally helps to not put your bandwidth test files on a throttled web server. This would have been a neutral review if sales didn’t finish by saying they’d personally look into it then apparently not get anything done for at least three days.

Now, for your benefit – and because I want to have something to show for two hours of arguing and reverse tech supporting free – my complete, edited (for mutual privacy) correspondence with CoreNetworks.net sales April 6 2012:

Hello,

I am a past client of CoreNetworks and was very impressed with your technical support team, particularly their speed and competence.

I am interested in the Extreme Xeon X5625 dedicated server on a 100mbit/s port with hardware RAID.

I need assurance that I can actually get 100 meg, consistently, for up to several hours, at any given time.

Additionally, if I require more than the ~3T upgrade, can additional bandwidth be purchased in bulk?

Thanks

Hello,

My apologies for the delay in my response. Thank you for your interest in CoreNetworks! I’m pleased to read that you were satisfied with out support!

Currently we have 1 Extreme Xeon X5625 Server available! Please note that if you’d like the 100/Mbps it’s going to be an additional $10/month. Additionally, the cost for hardware RAID is an extra $45/month

In regards to our speeds and being able to sustain 100Mbps I can confirm that we are able to sustain the full connection speed but as soon as the bandwidth leaves our network we are unable to confirm weather or not there will be any form of throttling or bandwidth shaping. You can test this before-hand if you’d like by downloading our test files located here:

https://corenetworks.net/network/

If you’d like to upgrade to a 3,000GB bandwidth package this would be an additional $100/month to upgrade from the 2,000GB package that comes with the Extreme Xeon package.

If you have any other questions please let me know!

Hello,

I’m only able to pull the 100 meg test file from my home connection (84mbit/s) and my current datacentre (100mbit/s) at a sustained 6.4mbit/s, though I’m able to do this from both locations at the same time. Do you have throttling on the test file’s server or upstream router preventing one from determining its full potential?

Thanks

Hello,

We do not have any limitations on the download itself. The server providing the download is running a 100Mbps connection so if you’re downloading the file from both this would explain the slower speeds on your current datacenter.

In regards to the throttling, I can confirm that we do not have form of blocks in place further upstream once the data leaves our network.

If you run a traceroute you can see what connections are in between us and your server or home location.

If you have any other questions please let me know!

I’ve tried with one connection alone and two connections at the same time, I get the same speed for both. It maxes out at 800KB/s.

Hello,

If possible, can you attempt a multi-threaded download? If you’re using windows I would recommend using WxDownload. This can sometimes bypass the throttling on a connection.

I don’t do windows. I’m able to pull the download at least four times from the top concurrently at 800KB/s. This indicates that some sort of connection-based throttling is being implemented through your test server’s httpd. While my question has been answered I’m sure you can see how throttling your test files the same way you would regular web traffic can needlessly reflect poorly on your network – giving potential clients who would test first before contacting your sales department an inaccurate gauge of your capacity. This might be something worth bringing up with the technicians, or at least marketing.

Thanks

Hello,

Can you please provide a traceroute from your server to 64.85.160.4?

Gladlly.

From home:

…[traceroute output]…

From the server:

…[traceroute output]…

Hello,

From what you provided it appears there could be any number of hops along the way that would be causing the limited connection.

Please note that the download test is being done to speedtest.net isn’t completely accurate as it’s software based. This is why we encourage using our test files to get a better idea of connection speeds.

From the traceroute you provided, there are 12 total hops made on the connection before reaching our network. As this is the case, there are quite a few possibilities as to what would be causing the connection limitation.

Considering I’m using two different sources that go through two different routes and do not behave this way with any other provider I find this more than unlikely. Further, the fact that either my server or home machine can run MULTIPLE 800KB/s downloads at the SAME time is indicative of throttling.

I’m well aware that speedtest.net results are not entirely accurate nor indicative of what I can expect from everyone else, I’m merely passing along that datum so you can see I have more than enough download capacity and no web-traffic specific throttling on my end of the equation.

Interestingly, when I pull the test file from my servers at work I am able to reach 1.2Mbit/s consistently. It takes this route:

…[traceroute output]…

As you can see, it takes almost the same route through nlayer.net as my connection from home.

12 hops is generally not considered a long way to go in the telecommunications industry.

Conversely, when I enlisted outside help from an American:

<admin> how fast can you guys pull https://corenetworks.net/100MB-testfile.zip
<admin> does it max out at 800k?
<admin> KB/s or 6.4mbit/s
<user> maxed out at 700 kb/s
<admin> tx
<user> throttled.
<user> i can pull 4.4 Mb/s

This user’s address is [deleted]

You may be seeing the right speed when you test from a remote server but allow me to pose that the problem may be selective. At the worst it could be a problem with your immediately upstream peers – I can’t see a Verizon, Rogers and iWeb connection that go over three completely different routes encountering the same problem upwind from them.

Please try testing from a selection of different locations – I assure you I am not mental and the fact that it might be selective means this could be a bigger problem than I even thought at first.

Thanks for your consideration.

Hello,

I want to apologize for the confusion on my end. I reached out to the tech who manages our test download and he stated that the system the file is hosted on is not reliable for full connection speeds.

An alternative link you can use to get a better idea of speeds is by downloading from our mirros. Below is a link to CentOS which should give a much better understanding of our download speeds.

http://centos.corenetworks.net/6.2/isos/x86_64/CentOS-6.2-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso

I would still encourage using a multi-threaded download if the option is available.

BINGO! 80 megabits per second.

Now you can surely see where I’m coming from about this being BAD for marketing. Easy solution would be to simply host the test files on the mirror server and link to them from there.

Thanks.

Hello,

Glad to hear that cleared it up! It came as news to myself so I will be personally getting this addressed.

Thank you for your patience and understanding!

If you have any other questions please let me know.

Still waiting buddy…

UPDATE 30 days later and nothing has changed. I was going to order with them anyway until this happened.