One of the main picking points is that it happens to be 120 Hz.  For some reason, it just looks so much better to me! The slim profile as well was a good option. I hate the TVs with the huge black border just to make their size look bigger. Well now that I have a good TV, I need other fun devices for it! I already had a blue ray player thanks to Service Center of the Year party at my old job, so no extra money there. Not something I would have picked, but hey, its free! I tried to get my Moxi DVR to work but for some god awful reason Charter felt the need to disable the DVI port. WTF??!!1?one! So I have to settle with the rat’s nest of component wires behind it. At least it does 1080i. Since I have an HD package and my 6 months are almost up, perhaps I’ll call to get a new one. I also had my old Dell Latitude D800 running as a little movie relay for my old TV since it had an s-video port. It worked very nice, did the job just fine. When I hooked it up to the new TV I was quite shocked it actually did 1920×1080, great considering its blazing fast GeForce4 Go! But upon finding that YouTube struggles to play any video, I figured an HTPC is in order.

Ah the Home Theater Personal Computer! Every AV nerds dream! I decided to head over to NewEgg.com and pick out some parts. First and foremost was the case. I have a TV stand I would like it to fit into, but I’m limited on height, so I found this:

This is the Thermaltake Mozart Sx VC7001SNS! At only 90mm high and 442mm wide, this baby is perfect! It also supports full ATX motherboards as well with 2 80mm fans. The key for the low height is the 2 PCI and 1 PCIe x16 riser card. This will be great for the possible future tuner card. Since space was small I decited, for the first time in my life, to settle with the on-board video. So a riser card is not that important now. Next up is the motherboard:

So this is the revamped ASUS P5Q-EM. Now its a Micro ATX, but its one of the few ASUS boards that have an HDMI port on the connections! Just so you know I am quite biased when it comes to motherboards. I always have used ASUS boards and I will continue to do so. They have served me very well in the past and their replacement program is phenomenal! Connections:The specs for this board are as follows: CPU: LGA775, FSB: 1600(o.c.)/1333MHz, North Bridge: Intel G45, South Bridge: Intel ICH10R, Memory: 4 Dual Channel DDR2 1066(O.C)/800 Max 16GB, 1 PCI, 2 PCIe x1, 1 PCIe x16 2.0, 1 PATA, 6 SATA 3.0Gbps RAID 0/1/5/10, Video: Intel GMA X4500HD, Audio: Realtek ALC1200 8 Channel, 3 x USB connectors support additional 6 USB ports, 1 internal firewire, INIC: Realtek 8111C 10/100/1000 Mbps, PLUS an HDMI port! I had to decide between this and the ASUS P5N7A-VM. The reason for picking this one is the FSB as well as the older PCIe port. Given, the latter board runs NVIDIA chips, but still not worth the FSB difference. The processor I went with was the Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz FSB 1333Mhz. Not the best I could get, but reasonable with the price. Plus, I can always upgrade in the future! Here is the memory I picked for it:

This is the OCZ Fatal1ty Edition 4GB (2x2GB) Dual Channel DDR2, PC2 6400 Memory. I did not get the 16o0Mhz because with this motherboard, you have to overclock it to get that speed. Since space, and cooling options are limited I will stick with this memory. OCZ is good, I have used them before and never a problem. The timing on this ram is decent at 5-4-4-18. Next up, CPU cooler:

This is the Thermaltake CL-P0257 Blue orb II. This is probably one of the only good coolers that would work with this case. Thermaltake recommended it in the manual for the case and from what I found, this is the only one that would work well. Thermaltake recommends a cooler no more than 70mm high, and this one sits right at 66mm. Perfect! I used one of these in my old P4 machine and it was very quite and kept the CPU very cool! Storage:

This is the Western Digital RE3 7200RPM 1TB hard drive. Plenty of space for DVDs and what not. This is the Raid Edition 3 which means it should run good and long as well as semi cool. The case only has slots for 2 so perhaps I will get another in the future. And finally, Power:

This bad boy, the Ultra X3 600-Watt Power Supply is fantastic, super powerful and modular! It is definitely overkill so this power supply may change in the future, but the modular quality is very important in this very small case. It will definitely help with the clutter and help keep things cool.

Now all I need is money….

Unfortunately this seems to be the new trend in Internet service. Rather than upgrading their networks to support the mass amounts of data, they would rather stuff their lovely pockets full of cash. Another popular motive is to reduce your speed at high points during the day. This would infuriate me just for the reason that I signed up and pay for it, why not let me have what I pay for?! What next? PAGE limiting?! Someone help us!

Anyways, some more info:
AT&T will gamble with monthly bandwidth caps in Nevada
AT&T To Test Bandwidth Caps For Reno, NV. Customers
AT&T Monthly Bandwidth Caps Are Here
AT&T Experimenting with 150-GB Bandwidth Cap
Frontier’s Explanation – FREE 5GB of Internet Usage

EDIT:
Apparently Charter has it too… But from what I can tell they don’t charge, they just drop you! You are safe, however, if you buy their $140/month 60Mbps plan. Looks like Reno is screwed! What is a boy with his server to do?! GAH!  Thanks to Derek for that one!
More info:
Charter’s Acceptable Use FAQs

From testing this device, I found that 1. The wireless sucks, 2. This modem will not bridge and do PPPoE at the same time. So the first thing to do would be to get a client that can do PPPoE. I used my server, but any router, whether it is wireless or not, should do the job just fine.  I will explain how to setup Linux below as well.

This is with Frontier Communications personalized firmware:

1.  Attach your computer directly to a LAN port on the modem and log in as admin to the modem interface.
2. Click on ‘ISP Connection.’
3. Click ‘Advanced Settings’, then click ‘Configure the ATM Virtual Circuit.’
4. Click ‘Add a New VC.’
5. Set the VPI to 0 and the VCI to 35 (These could be different, check with the previously used VC to confirm). Click ‘Next.’
6. Select ‘RFC-2684 Bridged’ and Click Next.
7. Enter a name for the connection (or just leave the default) and click Next then click Finish.
8. Delete all of the VCs except the one you just created. (you can always restore defaults)
9. Make sure the new VC is Enabled and Reboot the modem.

You now have a basic modem with no more annoying second NAT. Another reason is if you have a server, it is good to get your outside IP address directly to your computer and have your beefy firewall take care of everything.   At this point, acquire a router and plug it into the modem. Set it up for PPPoE and enter your credentials. You should be connected to the Internet!

Now to make this work on Linux, you need a package called rp-pppoe. For Fedora 9 as root you can install it as follows:

yum install rp-pppoe

This will install the proper package. From then, there are 2 ways to setup the PPPoE connection. Graphically or through the command prompt. I did this graphically and that is what I will explain, but I know that there is a script at /sbin/pppoe-setup that is a good starting point.
To setup the PPPoE connection go to ‘System” -> ‘Administration’ -> ‘Network’. From there, edit the Ethernet card that the DSL modem is connected to (typically eth0). Set the card to ‘Staticly Set Ip Addresses’ and leave all of the fields blank. Click Ok, then ‘Deactivate’ and ‘Activate’ the device, saving all changes.
To insert the PPPoE connection:

1. Click ‘New’, Select xDSL connection, Forward.
2. Select the blanked out Ethernet device from earlier, Enter provider name (Frontier), Account type Normal, and your credentials, Forward
3. Then click Apply

After that, this is all you need for a simple PPPoE connection. To further configure it, open up the configuration on the xDSL connection and head over to the advanced tab. In this tab, make sure ‘Restart if connection dies’ and ‘Make this connection the default route’ are checked. You may also check ‘Use synchronous PPP’ but not all providers support this so I would test for this function later. After this, go back to the General tab and check ‘Activate device when computer starts’ only if you want to. And if you run your own DNS, uncheck ‘Automatically obtain DNS information from provider’.

There! Now watch your messages log when you first connect to make sure no errors pop up. You can do this by running this command in terminal:

tail -f /var/log/messages

This will give you live updates of your messages log. If you have problems, you may want to check to see if you bridged the modem correctly. To do this, issue this command in terminal:

pppoe -I eth0 -A

Of course, replace eth0 with whatever Ethernet port is connected to your Modem. What this command will do is query your service providers servers for a connection route. You should get an output as such:

Access-Concentrator: SERVER.SERVER.AC
Got a cookie: xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx
AC-Ethernet-Address: 00:00:00:00:00:00
--------------------------------------------------

Of course, yours will be different. If you do not get anything like this, or you get a “pppoe: Timeout waiting for PADO packets” error, then it may be wise to go back and check the configuration of your modem.

Enjoy and happy PPPoE’ing! =)

Sources:
Siemens Gigaset SE567 Port Forward Problems
PPPOE setup on Fedora Linux

First, you want to make a backup of your data, THIS IS IMPORTANT! Any time you mess with a partition it can become a nightmare…. I am not responsible if you screw up your computer!

Important stuff aside, we can move on! This stuff needs to be done as root.

All of this needs to be done from the terminal, so open one up and open up /etc/fstab and have a look at your partitions:

nano /etc/fstab

Of course you can use any txt editor you would like, I just prefer nano.

fstab stores the information about your partitions and how to mount them. Be careful as you can mess things up! It should look similar to this:

#
# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Wed Apr  1 01:21:11 2009
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk'
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or vol_id(8) for more info
#
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00  /                    ext3     defaults,usrquota,grpquota 1 1
/dev/md0                  /boot                ext3     defaults        1 2
tmpfs                     /dev/shm             tmpfs    defaults        0 0
devpts                    /dev/pts             devpts   gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs                     /sys                 sysfs    defaults        0 0
proc                      /proc                proc     defaults        0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01  swap                 swap     defaults        0 0

Looking above, each line has these columns: Drive, mount point, file system type, mount options, dump options, file system check options. We would like to change the file system type. So change the third column on the line that corrisponds to your root partiton (/) to ext4

/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext4 defaults,usrquota,grpquota 1 1

Once this is done, exit and save the file. At this point, if the computer is rebooted it should still mount and boot. But a few commands will be confused. The mount command will report it as ext4 while the system-config-lvm command will correctly display the file system as ext3. Now we must remake initrd, or the /boot files, so that they include the ext4 driver. Do this step now as you may not be able to boot if you convert the drive before. First lets make sure the proper tools are updated:

yum upgrade mkinitrd e2fsprogs

Updating initrd works as follows:
mv /boot/initrd-`uname -r`.img /boot/initrd-`uname -r`.img.old
Then:
mkinitrd -v --with=ext4 /boot/initrd-`uname -r`.img `uname -r`
At this point, if you wish to maintain backwards compatibility with ext3, it is a good place to stop. Even though it is not fully converted, you still will have benefits such as delayed allocation which improves performance and reduces fragmentation and multiblock allocation which also improves performance, especially for older/slower hardware. If you wish to maintain backwards compatibility, all you need to do is restart the computer. If you wish to fully convert, continue below. If you fully convert, you will not have backwards compatibility!

Now, in order to continue, I would HIGHLY recommend that you boot up into the Fedora Live, or Fedora Install CD/DVD. I did not do this because It was a live system and I did not have a CD/DVD ROM drive at the time. So this does work without booting up into the Install/Live CD/DVDs but I do not recommend it. From the Install DVD select “Rescue Installed System” from the boot menu and select your language and keyboard layout. Also, select No to starting the network interfaces as we do not need them. Next, at the “Find Linux Installation” dialog select Read Only. Press Ok and continue.

Good practice is not to mount the partition, but in this case, we need to be able to see the partitions easily, hence the read only. Do not differ from these instructions once you start. Just let the system do its work. We don’t need any partition failures.

Since you are in the shell at this point, go ahead and run the mount command. You should get something like this at the top:

/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 on /mnt/sysimage type ext4 (ro,barrier=1,noextents,data=ordered

This line shows that the drive would like to use the ext4 file system driver [ext4], is read only [ro], has barriers enabled [barriers=1], doesn’t use extents [noextents] and that data is being stored using the ordered method [data=ordered]. Once converted, some of these properties will change. But at this point, the drive is ext3 in an ext4 disguise. Next we will initiate the command that will preform the conversion:

/mnt/sysimage/sbin/tune2fs -I 256 -O has_journal,extents,huge_file,flex_bg,uninit_bg,dir_nlink,extra_isize /dev/mapper/Volgroup00-LogVol00

If this command does not tell you to run fsck and to reboot, then it did not do its job. What will probably happen is it will say that inodes are already 256, If so, just remove the -I 256 section. Do this for other sections that it has a problem about as well. This is just to make sure that the default options are applied. Next we run e2fsck to update the system.

e2fsck -pf /dev/mapper/Volgroup00-LogVol00

Once this is done (and it may take a while depending on the size of your drive) go ahead a reboot! If it gives you crap about having to run the program manually, just remove the -p option and fix the problems manually. After the system has rebooted, issue this command below to check to see that it worked:

as root:
tune2fs -l /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 | grep extent

Example output:

Filesystem features:      has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype needs_recovery extent flex_bg sparse_super large_file huge_file uninit_bg dir_nlink extra_isize

This conversion does not convert files that were previously ext3, but newly created files become full ext4. This is not that important, but until a defragmentation program is finished, this will be the case. But there is one in the works, its called e4defrag and you may be able to download and compile it. I have not because I would rather wait till it is fully operational on the repositories. Once it does, I will be sure to inform of its awesomeness.

You can find more information on the e4defrag here:
Ext4 defragmentation with e4defrag

Sources:
Converting an ext3 root partition to ext4 in Fedora 10
How to edit and understand /etc/fstab

Everyone needs a first post, right?