Nobody Cares about Tech Support

[Argent Stonecutter]

FreeNAS is heavily targeted at the Enterprise sector, while OMV is more geared towards SME and private house holds.

I have been both a software developer and a system and network administrator in the enterprise sector for about 40 years now. I am completely comfortable with ZFS. I have no need for anything but NFS and CIFS and maybe iSCSI for file sharing, so all the media features of OMV are irrelevant.

What I am tired of is the hardware side of OPS. Perticularly without an OPS-scale budget and support contracts. I actively don't want to build a system again. Particularly not with the CM4 where I'll have to pick a PCI expansion and a SATA card and a carrier, that's too much frigging research for a way too Heath-Robinson result, and too much chance of the hardware not being available when (not if) one element of the chain fails. It was nice having budget for spare everything and 4 hour guarantee on-site support, but I don't have that any more and don't want to wish I did.

My current FreeNAS system is a refurb HP z series box: I didn't have to buy any extra controllers because it's got plenty of SAS/SATA ports built in, the only hardware wrangling I needed was a passive hotswap SATA shelf. If I was going to build my own open source based NAS on ARM I would go with something like this. But really, I'd rather leave that for someone else.

 

[Noodles]

I have a Lenovo Chromebook Duet. I run mobile grid viewer on it, but I would like a more full viewer, and I don't trust the versions of Lumiya that are floating around.

Just a somewhat related note. There may be some learning curve with Lumiya if you used it. It's been a while but years ago, I loaded Lumiya on a Remix Mini, which is a sort of mini Android device designed to be used as a sort of Desktop. It runs Android.

I remeber the controls felt really weird, because it LOOKS sort of like a regular viewer, but it still had all the "Android Quirks". It was just....bigger on a TV instead of a phone.

 

[Clara D.]

And again with the Window's "install random crap with an update," this time "NEWS AND OTHER BULLSHIT ON YER TASKBAR!"

This time it's not installed as an app, so harder to get rid of.

Here's how to get rid of it.

https://www.askvg.com/tip-completely-disable-and-remove-news-and-interests-feature-in-windows-10/

 

[Monica Dream]

For the last few days, the fan on my video card only runs when I run Firestorm...

[Edit To Add]:
This will be arriving Tuesday. Hopefully...

1. My video card doesn't melt before then
2. This video card doesn't melt the first time I run SL

Amazon.com: VisionTek Radeon 5450 2GB DDR3 (DVI-I, HDMI, VGA) Graphics Card - 900861,Black/Red: Computers & Accessories

 

[Veritable Quandry]

For the last few days, the fan on my video card only runs when I run Firestorm...

[Edit To Add]:
This will be arriving Tuesday. Hopefully...

1. My video card doesn't melt before then
2. This video card doesn't melt the first time I run SL

Amazon.com: VisionTek Radeon 5450 2GB DDR3 (DVI-I, HDMI, VGA) Graphics Card - 900861,Black/Red: Computers & Accessories

You can run HWMonitor to check temps and voltage to see if you have any problems. HWMONITOR | Softwares | CPUID

 

[Fionalein]

For the last few days, the fan on my video card only runs when I run Firestorm...

Did you update your drivers? My GPU is set to only start fans at 60°C. As I'm no big gamer they usually only turn on if I use high graphics settings in FS. So maybe some recent driver update changed your fan activation characteristics to something similar. To be save though better install one of those hardware monitoring docklets that show hardware temperatures in the task bar. There should be plenty of them available on Windows, MacOS and most Linuxes.

 

[Essence Lumin]

Amazon.com: VisionTek Radeon 5450 2GB DDR3 (DVI-I, HDMI, VGA) Graphics Card - 900861,Black/Red: Computers & Accessories

I guess the prices of even low end video cards are way up. That card cost $29.19 in Jan 2017.

https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B01CN1F1ZM

 

[Fionalein]

Amazon.com: VisionTek Radeon 5450 2GB DDR3 (DVI-I, HDMI, VGA) Graphics Card - 900861,Black/Red: Computers & Accessories

Oh dear, passive cooling. I started SL on one of those. Do yourself a favour and add a fan to your case that is directed to it's cooling block.
EDIT: on your fear of it melting. Nope it won't, it will happily throttle your performance though before reaching critical temps. And just forget about it going down once it reached the 70° mark. In my experience those things can take ages to drop in temperature without some help (afore mentioned extra fan for example)

 

[Monica Dream]

Oh dear, passive cooling. I started SL on one of those. Do yourself a favour and add a fan to your case that is directed to it's cooling block.

I have a 2016/2017 budget hp desktop so I'm not sure I can even fit a fan in there -I'll probably have to figure that out.

I have a Radeon R9 M360 in there now, with updated drivers. The fan (when it runs) stutters and makes grinding sounds which is why was planning on replacing it -even before I noticed that the fan was stopping.

The temperature went up to 107c when I just tried out firestorm (on high, with shadows) just now.

 

[Fionalein]

I have a 2016/2017 budget hp desktop so I'm not sure I can even fit a fan in there -I'll probably have to figure that out.

I have a Radeon R9 M360 in there now, with updated drivers. The fan (when it runs) stutters and makes grinding sounds which is why was planning on replacing it -even before I noticed that the fan was stopping.

The temperature went up to 107c when I just tried out firestorm (on high, with shadows) just now.

OK, 102° is definatelly not healthy. Your fans might have gone old and the higher voltage at full use would still be enough to make them move. You could try switching the GPU fans but that can be quite tricky.

If you have the room in your case there is stuff like this:
Amazon.com: TITAN- 12V DC Adjustable Dual X Houlder with Two Fans for PCI Slot VGA Cooling or DIY Mounting Ventilation Fan: Computers & Accessories (no particular reccomendation just the first expansion slot cooler I found)

While I ran my old passive GPU I mounted a fan sideways using some leftover repurposed struts. I had to leave my case open but hey it kept the temperature down.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

Have you tried using compressed air to clean the fan? As far as I can tell, max recommended temp for that chipset is 96C, so it is definitely running hot.

 

[Monica Dream]

OK, 102° is definatelly not healthy. Your fans might have gone old and the higher voltage at full use would still be enough to make them move. You could try switching the GPU fans but that can be quite tricky.

If you have the room in your case there is stuff like this:
Amazon.com: TITAN- 12V DC Adjustable Dual X Houlder with Two Fans for PCI Slot VGA Cooling or DIY Mounting Ventilation Fan: Computers & Accessories (no particular reccomendation just the first expansion slot cooler I found)

While I ran my old passive GPU I mounted a fan sideways using some leftover repurposed struts. I had to leave my case open but hey it kept the temperature down.

Weirdly enough, the motherboard only has one slot, which I'm using for the video card. Right now I'm leaving my case open (also to watch what it's doing) and hoping for the best.

They were moving when the GPU heated up, and are still going. But I think they are old / need cleaning so I'm not sure how effective they are.

Have you tried using compressed air to clean the fan? As far as I can tell, max recommended temp for that chipset is 96C, so it is definitely running hot.

Not yet, getting some compressed air is on my to-do list, though.

 

[Monica Dream]

I tried the new card -my fps is in the single digits on an empty sim with no one around. I'll probably replace it next month and I'm looking around for a replacement card (and I'll keep this one as a backup).

 

[Fionalein]

you could try a PCIe riser cable to mount a fat GPU outside your case, just be carefull with cheap cables there

 

[Monica Dream]

you could try a PCIe riser cable to mount a fat GPU outside your case, just be carefull with cheap cables there

That's an awesome idea that never would have occurred to me -thank you!

 

[Fionalein]

That's an awesome idea that never would have occurred to me -thank you!

Just occured to me as well, should have ocurred to me earlier but I'm getting old. Modern GPUs eat way more power though, even if your old PSU nominally would suffice it might not habe enough juice on the PCIe lane... I had to get a new one after upgrading to an RX570 despite a 650W supply nominally being enough.

Also... a good riser cable costs as much as a low budget case.... (~ 30 $) so there's that too

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

I stopped taking people at their word when they report a computer issue and they claim to have restarted their computer when I ask. This after one time where I spent over an hour troubleshooting one particular issue, and I finally bring up the task manager to check something, and see that the computer uptime was nearly a month.

 

[Stora]

I stopped taking people at their word when they report a computer issue and they claim to have restarted their computer when I ask. This after one time where I spent over an hour troubleshooting one particular issue, and I finally bring up the task manager to check something, and see that the computer uptime was nearly a month.

I've stood at the side of some users and watched them switch the display off when I've asked them to shut their computer down.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

It's even worse with Windows 10, because many people say they shut their computers down every night and power it on again in the morning, not realizing that, in Windows 10, "Shut down" is functionally the same as hibernation!