VirtualBox 2.1.0 has been released. New features include complete revamping of host interface networking – no more IP forwarding or bridging/tap interfaces required, vastly simplifying network setup, its even better than VMWare now, as it doesn’t even create a new interface on the host.

Unfortunately they seem to have completely broken Linux display support, with the X11 screen stuck at the framebuffer resolution of 640×480. Fullscreen and seemless mode don’t work either. Mouse integration works but not on Solaris.

I’ve been testing my network speed again, trying to figure out why I’m not really seeing gigabit speeds.

I’ve eliminated the switches from being the problem as using a bit of crossover between two PC’s made no difference at all.

I think its a either a limitation of the RTL8169 cards or the PCI bus, as I tried from the Pentium4’s built-in Intel Pro 1000CT and speeds from iperf went up from about 67MB/s to about 82MB/s – although that was still to another RTL8169 PCI card on the other end. I tried a combination of “pv < /dev/zero | nc -u 192.168.0.9 5000" and “nc -u -l 5000 > /dev/null” to create a client/server pair with no filesystem access, and was getting similar results to iperf.

I’ve just found my favourite piece of software (of the week, at least): Automounter or amd.

Basically it allows you to mount filesystems on demand, so I’ve got it setup on all my Linux boxes now to mount each other’s NFS shares. The extra good bit is that if the NFS server is offline it doesn’t hang your machine on boot (like putting it in /etc/fstab does).

All you need is to install autofs (“yum install autofs”, which i think sets it to start on boot) and create the following two files:

I’ve changed the theme of my blog, so that I can move the tag cloud to the right, as you were starting to have to scroll down a lot to see everything on the right-hand sidebar, now its a more newspaper-esque 3-column affaire.

The new look is based on a heavily-modified CognoBlue theme – I’ve removed most of their sidebar code (now just uses WordPress’ built-in sidebar widgets) and changed the stylesheet, header and footer templates, as well as adding the tag list back into the page templates and making the single post meta the same look as the other page types (i.e. with the tags and edit link included). I even had to fix a typo in one file: “Previose post”!

I’ve got a cold today, so taking it easy. I’ve watched some films as I don’t feel like doing much, but they’ve all been a bit naff.

Lakeview Terrace, about an arsehole cop who makes the lives of those who live around him a nightmare.

Transporter 3. Pretty good, but I really think its time they broke the mould, as the Transporter films seem to have a recipe:

• Someone’s daughter gets kidnapped and Frank has to transport her;
  • She’s a pain in the arse, but still falls for Frank;
    • Frank’s client tries to kill him;
      • Frank’s house gets destroyed;
        • Frank has a fight scene or two where he kicks the arses of a dozen or so guys;

          • Lots of fast driving scenes – although this time it was an Audi, not a Mercedes. At least it was better than Transporter 2 I guess, back to the Transporter 1 roots.