Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Re: Making pbuilder just that little bit faster

It is true that making /var/cache/pbuilder/build a tmpfs makes a noticeable speed difference. But it seems you cannot cache the downloaded debs: ln: creating hard link ...: Invalid cross-device link.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Testing SMART status of my Toshiba USB harddrive

I recently bought an external USB harddrive, made by Toshiba. It's the HDDR500E03X model with 500GB space, internal shock sensor and ramp loading technology. Now yesterday I learned, that I can also cover its health status using the smartmontools. The usb* device types did not fit, but the sat did. It is as easy as running:

smartctl -d sat -c /dev/sdb
smartctl -d sat -t long /dev/sdb