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Partitioning drives from a Windows command prompt
I found myself needing to partition a LUN on one of the Windows servers I support, and was curious how to perform this operation from a shell prompt. After a bit of googling, I came across the diskpart utility. This nifty little utility allows you to view devices, create and destroy volumes, and modify partition tables. The syntax for the commands available to diskpart can be viewed by running the "help" subcommand: C:\Bin> To view the physical devices connected to a system, you can use the diskpart "list disk" subcommand: C:\Bin> To view a device's partition table, you can select a disk and run the "list partition" subcommand: C:\Bin> You can also list the volumes available to the system with the "list volume" subcommand: C:\Bin> Windows has some awesome utilities buried in the Windows folder, and the new shell should make automating tasks on Windows platforms a TON easier…
$ read more →USENIX 2006
I will be attending USENIX next week in Boston, and am contemplating putting together a SysAdmin BOF. If you are planning to attend the conference and are interested in a systems BOF, drop me a line.
$ read more →Understanding investing terminology
Over the past few months, I have been spending part of my free time listening to podcasts on investing. The vocabulary used on wall street is super interesting (I am a finance major, so I love this stuff), and includes fun words like LEAPS, DRIPs, oscillators, breakouts, resistance, support lines, asset classes, and a whole slew of other interesting terminology. To make sense of all this market speak, I have been referring to the Trader's Glossary A-Z. If you need to figure out wall street terminology, this is a great place to start.
$ read more →Reasons why people are switching from Solaris to Linux
I met up this week with one of my friends that I haven't seen in a while. We chatted about life, work and eventually started chatting about Linux and Solaris (we are both SysAdmins). My friend mentioned that his company had decided to quit buying Sun hardware in favor of Dell servers running Redhat Linux Advanced Server. I was shocked to hear this since my friend had actively pushed Solaris in the past, and was one of the folks I regularly got together with to discuss new technologies merged into Nevada…
$ read more →Video broadcast standards
I am currently building a MythTV server using Fedora Core 5, and have learned a good deal in the past week about A/V, encoding hardware and broadcast standards. There are currently three main broadcast standards in existence, and of course none of them are compatible. If you live in the USA, Canada, or Mexico, you are most likely using the NTSC standard. If you live in the United Kingdom, Asia, or Africa, you are probably using the PAL standard…
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