Deon's World

Solving the PS3's restoring file system loop with Linux

Deon Spengler — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 19:05:22 +0000

This is a story and tutorial about how Linux saved my PS3. I had a problem with my PS3 when I switched it on one morning. It gave me the following message saying that "The hard disk's file system is corrupted and will be restored." I confirmed to start the restore process which took hours to completed. After it completed, the system restarted and displayed the same error message again.

Understanding and using htop to monitor system resources

Deon Spengler — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 20:12:17 +0000

Every so often there will be something that slows a system down. There are a few tools that can help to identify which process is the cause of this slow down. One such tool is htop. Htop is an interactive and real time process monitoring application for Linux which will show you your usage per cpu/core, as well as a meaningful text graph of your memory and swap usage.

Working with Linux software RAID

Deon Spengler — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 10:12:03 +0000

RAID (an acronym for redundant array of independent disks) is a method whereby information is spread across several disks in one of several ways called "RAID levels". Depending on what level of redundancy and/ or performance is required. Most RAID levels will allow you to keep systems up and running, in case of common hardware problems (disk failure). It is not in itself a complete data safety solution. This is very important to realize.