Sunday 27 May 2007

Fedora - The Wrong Hat

I've come to realise that I've made a mistake in moving to Fedora after somebody posted on http://www.fedoraforum.org/ about the imminent release of Core 7 and I asked how people go on for upgrading/reinstalling on servers when they can't afford much down time. The bottom line is that I shouldn't be using Fedora on such a machine.

It was explained to me (heaven knows how I'd missed it) that the whole idea of Fedora is that it is where all the front line cutting edge development is taking place and that while it's great for those who want to be involved with that, it's not the right choice for somebody who want's an as stable as it's possible to be platform on which to host business websites.

I was even more surprised to find that the guys on the forum suggested that I'd be much better off using CentOS i.e. the very OS that I've just moved away from (because I've always found it difficult to get information about it). Once again however, I've been making a big mistake in that my previous server was set up with CentOS and Blue Quartz and I failed to differentiate between the two. It seems that I must have done my searching on Blue Quartz because the only resource of any significance that I was aware of was bluequartz.org which is pretty useless. Had I gone looking for CentOS instead I would have found centos.org and two minutes reading the FAQ would have told me that CentOS is almost exactly the same as Red Hat Enterprise Linux so any book on RHEL would have told me what I wanted to know IF it were not for the Blue Quartz interface. Doh! It seems therefore that what I should have done, rather than moving to Fedora, was to move to another server with CentOS but without Blue Quartz and bought myself a book on RHEL.

Now that I'm here, and tied into a 12 month lease, I guess I'll just have to live with it however this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Since moving to Fedora I've learned quite a bit about the command line and that should stand me in good stead for moving back to CentOS (or indeed any other flavour of Linux) at the end of the lease.

I have to say however that once again I find myself being a little bit miffed at the company from whom I hire the server because, given the nature of Fedora as I now understand it, I'm inclined to question whether or not it is appropriate for them to be offering it as an option.

Thursday 17 May 2007

Planning To Go Topless

It may seem premature to be thinking of taking the roof off my Beetle however I need to replace the heater channels and there would be a lot of mileage in installing carbiolet sill strengtheners at the same time. Of course there's absolutely no point in going to all that expense unless I'm pretty certain that I'll want to take the roof off at a later date. Obviously the idea has some appeal or I wouldn't even be considering it but while I like the idea of cruising around in the sunshine with the top off, our UK weather isn't all sunshine and my car has to spend most of it's time on the drive at the side of our house as we don't have a garage.

To be honest, the 'normal' cabriolet option doesn't appeal to me. I don't like the way the folded down hood perches on the back of the car making it look like a big pram and I don't think they have nothing at all going for them with the hood up. Clearly I've just blown my chances of ever being offered honorary membership of the Cabriolet Owners Club but I don't care. Each to his own and all that, I just don't like cabriolet bugs.

However there are other options. VW produced Beetles (referred to as 'ragtops') with a large cloth panel on the top and although it appears that some of the bits are no longer available, Paris Beetles do kits for some pretty huge 'sunroofs', the biggest of which is as huge 38" x 31" inches and ends up looking to all intents and purposes like a VW ragtop. Paris also do three smaller sizes and of course there are 'normal' type sunroofs available with 'glass' panels. Sunroof and ragtop options benefit over the full cabriolet conversion in that they are a heck of a lot simpler and cheaper to install, largely because you don't need all the strengthening. Thus, if I were planning to go down that route, I wouldn't need to be thinking about installing sill strengtheners.

There is however another option: the targa, which involves having a removable section of roof between the A and B posts i.e. the bit above the driver and front passenger seats. The tops of the door frames are also made removable too.

Apparently there are only about half a dozen of targa beetles in the UK, most of which are the work of a company called Thump Thump and although they are no longer doing conversions, their website at thumpthump.co.uk is dedicated to a number of rather splendid examples of this rare and somewhat love it or hate it style. Clearly I love it but something that wasn't immediately apparent until somebody told me and I did a bit of measuring to check, is that because of the bugs body shape, the removable panel will fit down behind the driver and passenger seats when it's not in use. Thus, if done right, and properly maintained such that the seals aren't allowed to become leaky with age, you have all the benefits of a top down head turner when the sun shines and all the benefits of a hard top when it rains. Of course there's a little more strengthening and other work required than just installing sill stengtheners but that's for later. The important thing for now is that the sill strengtheners ARE on my shopping list.

Monday 14 May 2007

Engine Oil For Beetles

For me, oil changes used to be something that happened at the garage when I took a car in for service. Why, how, and what oil was used was none of my concern. Given that the whole point of the Beetle is that I want to maintain it myself, I had some learning to do. Before you read on please note that what follows are my own conclusions based one what I found out. I wrote it down to help me make a decision and so that I can refer back to it at a later date when I've forgotten why I made it. I'm making no promises that I've come to the right decision so don't come hammering on my door if you decide to apply my thinking to your own car and it turns out I got it all wrong okay?

As far as a 'modern' car is concerned you can look in the owner manual, a Haynes manual, or ask a retailer and get the same answer; although the retailers will of course want to sell you whatever brand they happen to stock (but we'll return to the the subject of brands later). With an old car like a Beetle it seems that everybody has a different opinion. For starters, the owner manual will be at least 30 years old and quite a bit has changed since then. The main problem however is that most folks are just not used to dealing with vehicles that are more than 10 or 20 years old. For example, I asked the guy I bought mine from what oil he was using and he didn't know because the garage put it in at the last service. He assured me however that it was being done properly as the car had a 'new' engine 7000 miles ago and he showed me the guarantee/service booklet which showed that it had an oil change at 500, another at 5000, and was due another at 10000. Now you don't have to read much about Beetles to know that everybody, but EVERYBODY, says that they should have the oil changed every 3000 miles. Clearly neither the previous owner nor the garage he was using knew much about Beetles.

Incidentally, while we're on the subject of "how ofen?", as I've come to understand it, the reason for this increased frequency (apparently 3000 miles was failrly standard for most cars before the development of modern lubricants and filters) is that: a) the oil plays a bigger part in cooling a bugs air-cooled engine than it does in a water-cooled engine and 'wears out' faster and b) the bug has an oil strainer as opposed to the type of filter that you get in more modern cars and it's better for this to be removed and cleaned out more regularly.

Thus I began to ask around (a lot) and although at first it seemed that everybody had a different answer I eventually saw that they fell into three groups regarding the specification of the oil.

The first group, and these are generally people who are into Beetles, suggest SAE 30 mono-grade. This seems to be largely because VW originally specified SAE 30 for "general driving" but my research indicates that VW said this at a time when multi-grade oils (recommended for pretty much every modern engine) were in their infancy and (apparently) not very good. However, when you consider that some of the guys who swear by mono-grade have been running their dubs for donkeys years then you have to wonder if they might have a point. It also occurred to me however, that for many people, their bug is a summertime play thing that'll rarely suffer the indignity of being rained on never mind being used to haul groceries back from Tesco in the depths of winter.

The reason that climate and season are important is because an engine oil needs to be 'runny' enough to be pumped through the system when the engine is cold and 'sticky' enough to adhere to the parts when it's hot. The two extremes occur when you're starting up on a cold winter's morning and when you're on a long journey on a hot summer's day; so how cold it gets in winter and how hot it gets in summer in the climate where the engine is being run are factors in choosing engine oil.

This is why VW specified SAE 30 for "general driving" because they also suggested other 'weights' for hot and cold climates. In fact in the days when mono-grade oils were standard it was fairly common practice to use one grade in the summer and another in the winter. The engine oil FAQ over at Morris Lubricants says that "it used to be the practice to put a thin monograde, such as a SAE 30, in the engine during the winter and a heavier monograde, such as a SAE 50". So I guess SAE 30 should be just fine for use in the UK.

The second group of people you will encounter suggest the use of a multi-grade oil. Multi-grade oils are specified with two numbers e.g. SAE 10w/40 (the w means "winter") and what it means is that the oil behaves like a 10 weight oil at the cold temperature and like a 40 weight oil would at the hot temperature. Aparently they define 'cold' as 0° Fahrenheit (-18°C), while 'hot' is 212° Fahrenheit (100°C). "They", just in case you are wondering are the Society of Automotive Engineers which is what the "SAE" bit means.

Now this is where it starts to look really complicated because what you need to do is to figure out which of the myriad variations are right for your engine and climate. Life would be a lot simpler if a single product covered the whole range however it seems that multi-grade oils are made possible by the addition of polymers and to get a range that would suit all possibilities you'd end up with more polymers than oil (and it's the oil that does the actual lubricating).

Just about the best way to get yourself really confused is to ask or look on the Internet because you'll be asking people from lots of different climates so what is right for them will not necessarly be right for you (something that may or may not occur to them when they answer). It's also important to realise that even if you ask around UK forums, not everybody will be wise to the need to consider climate and may well have based their own decision upon information gleaned from inappropriate sources. (See my previous post about tyre pressures for an illustration of people on forums thinking they know their stuff when in fact they don't.)

The good news for those of us in the UK however is that we don't have to deal with the really hot or really cold weather. The lower figure stated for a multi-grade will be 0, 5, 10, 15 or 20 but when you consider that this figure describes the viscocity at -18°C it's probably not something that we need worry about too much here in the UK. The higher figure on the multi-grade spec is generally 30, 40 or 50 and again, here in the UK it's not something that we need to worry about as much as somebody in the Mediterranean.

Having said that, we still have to use something and rather than just closing my eyes and reaching towards the shelf I made the following observations:

Rick Higgins of Bug Me Video (as you already know I'm something of a fan and have a high regard for his opinion) generally reaches for a can of 20w/50 but he's in Florida and as he said when I got the opportunity to ask him: "20w50 works good here since it is never very cold and real hot in the afternoon". He suggested that "In the heat of summer in UK you could likely use 20w50 there." He didn't comment on the UK winter and I didn't feel inclined to press him as he'd already said that "I am not really an authority on oil so what I can share is just my experience and what I have learned from others", but the implcation is clear that something thinner may be more appropriate in the winter.

My Haynes manual also suggests 20w/50 but makes no mention of climate and although it's printed on the UK the nice picture of a left hand drive Beetle on the front cover makes me wonder. VWHeritage, Volkspares, Halfords and a number of other suppliers in whom I have some faith suggest 15w/40 and from what I've seen the 15w/40 will be better at lower temperatures than the 20w/50 making this sound like the answer to my needs. However the 15w/40 is generally to be found sitting on the shelf right next to the 10w/40 which presumably would be even better?

In his "Rap On Oil" in "How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive", John Muir says that "the multi-grade oil's ability to lubricate is not as good as the mono-grade oil's ability at the high temperatures at which an air-cooled engine runs." Rick Higgins also told me that "I like to stay as thick (sticky) as reasonable so the cylinders retain some lube after the motor is shut down." In both cases they're talking about the behaviour of the oil when hot i.e. the difference between the 40 and the 50 bit of the spec as opposed to the 10, 15, or 20 bit.

John Muir is actually an advocate of SAE 30 and also states a strong bias towards the Castrol brand when he says that it "lays a load on my back to carry my own oil wherever I go because this oil is found only in racing and hotrod stores" This raises the question of availability and I figure, given that our mild UK climate appears to give me some flexibility on the weight of the oil, it probably makes sense to consider some of the other factors before I opt for something that's a swine to get hold of for the sake of what may well be a negligible difference in oil's weight.


If the weight of the oil is the most confusing issue, then the brand name is surely the most controversial with those who believe that the well know brands are a rip off facing off against those who believe that you get what you pay for (and arguing amongst themselves about which of those name brands is the best).

The argument in favour of the well know brands is that you're paying extra for the superior quality of the addititives that they put in to make the oil do its job better. Of course you're also going to be paying more for the name but consider this: it's a name they want to protect so they're unlikely to use it to sell product that would get them a bad reputation are they? We'll discuss a few of those additives in a minute but as far as the brand name versus cheap stuff debate is concerned, the bottom line for me is that the price difference generally works out to be less than five quid on the cost of an oil change. Given the amount that I anticipate spending on petrol and other car related expenses I figure that if I can't afford an extra twenty quid a year to err on the side of caution I ought to sell the car and get a bus pass.

As for which brand then: John Muir has (as we've already seen) a very strong bias towards Castrol. Rick Higgins also told me that he "started using Castrol when I had a friend that worked on these million dollar racing boats here. He said that the Castrol would handle whatever beating they gave it and he swore by it."

Other things that we need to condsider are the differences between mineral oils and those with synthetics, and the difference between oils with and without detergents.

When I asked around, the consensus of opinion was that bug engines are better running on mineral oils but very few people had any idea why and even when an explanation was offered it didn't always make a much sense. Along the way it was suggested that the whole point of synthetics was to make the oil keep working for longer but as you should change a bug's oil every 3000 miles (because of the filter if not the oil itself), then there isn't a whole lot of point paying extra for a longer lasting oil. I've also been told that the heat transfer characteristics of mineral and synthetic oils are different and the bug engine, with it's increased reliance on the oil for cooling, needs mineral oil.

Regarding detergents, John Muir says that the VW community was originally dubious about detergents but now favours them. The point of the detergents is that help keep the engine clean by carrying the 'soot' in suspension. If you use an oil with detergents then the old thinking about brown oil being due for a change whereas black oil needs changing, goes right out the window because the oil will go black due to the soot long before it's in desperate need of a change.

The argument against detergents is that the oil strainer in the bug isn't good enough to filer out all the small particles of crud that get cleaned out of the engine. Thus they will circulate causing damage. I don't like the sound of that however the other side of the coin i.e. if the detergents are not putting that crud into suspension, is that they stay stuck in the engine. Is that really a better option?

From what I've learned I think the most important thing about detergents is probably that you shouldn't suddenly switch from non-detergent to detergent oil. In his book John Muir tells of an occasion when he bought a bus from a guy who had been running on non-detergent oil so he had to stick with it until the next engine rebuild. Had he changed suddently, the detergents would have immediately set about cleaning up what was probably a relatively dirty engine thus putting a whole heap of crud into suspension all at once.

Given that my engine is only 7000 miles since the last rebuild I figure that I'm probably safe to use detergent even though the previous owner couldn't tell me what was in there.


Now, I did say way back at the start that the folks I asked fell into three groups and thus far I've only covered two. That's because the third groups are the ones who will direct you to this weeks special offer or whatever they happen to stock. If they are way too cocky and you're in the mood for listening to some bullshit, try asking them how often you should change it and use some of the information given above to see how long they're prepared to carry on talking through their arses before they finally admit that they haven't a clue; otherwise just feel sorry for them for having such a crap job and walk away.


So what did I buy? Well, availability had quite a lot to do with it but by the time I started checking out what I could get my hands on without too much trouble I'd concluded that I wanted a name brand multi-grade mineral oil but I was still wavering between 15w/40 (because of the 15w bit) and 20w/50 (because of the 50 bit).

The local garage (5 mins walk) have Castol GTX High Mileage 15w40 (£16.96/4l) and Duckhams Q Classic Engine Oil 20w50 (£10.99/4.5l). VWHeritage (somebody I can see myself ordering stuff from on a fairly regular basis) have VW Quantum 15w/40 (£16.95/5l) but as it'd have to be posted, and they calculate postage according to order value, I'd have to add a couple of quid onto the cost of that for postage. The only VW specialist within reasonable travelling distance is GSF - who sell Fuchs Titan HD 15w40 (£11.95/5l) - but they're in a town that I rarely visit and I'd have to go past Halfords and my local garage to get there. The Halford's candidate were Halfords own brand 15w/40 Enhanced Mineral Oil (£12.99/5l) or the Castrol GTX High Mileage 15w40 (£16.99/5l).

In the end I went for the Duckhams Q 20w50 for three reasons:

1. I like to support local businesses where I can (use them or lose them). I already buy my petrol from the guy around the corner even though I could get it a couple of pence a litre cheaper if I went to the one 5 miles away. I figure that if I don't I'll have no right to complain if he shuts down and I'm forced to travel 5 miles for petrol. Thus I wanted to buy from him if he had something suitable.

2. I decided in the end that I was more concened about the oil's performance when it's hot that when it's cold. Health problems mean that I'm forced to sponge off the state rather than work for a living so I'm never obliged to go out when the weather is bad. I decided therefore to go for a 20w50 as opposed to a 15w40. I will however be monitoring it when the weather gets cold and if it starts to look a bit thick, I'll let you know.

3. The Duckhams Oil is a pretty green colour like my car. Only kidding. ;-)


So there we have it, Duckhams Q 20w50 is my oil of choice but as I said at the start, these are my conclusions based on what I found out and I make no promises about them. If you want to read more then check out http://www.carbibles.com/engineoil_bible.html which was one of the more comprehensive documents that I found on the subject of car engine oil, while perhaps the best (my opinion again) summarisation of oil issues relating to VW Beetles that I found was in the Vehicle & Part Information section at VW Heritage.

Sunday 13 May 2007

Tyre Pressures & Karma

Although I haven't posted about it before, one of the first things I wanted to do when I got my Beetle was to check the tyre pressure.

Strangely, neither John Muir's book nor my Haynes manual seems to contain the necessary information. In the end I asked on the VZi forum and the results were rather surprising, not just because of the numbers (a mere 18psi on the front and 27psi on the rear) but because of the number of other VZi members who responded to the information with posts along the lines of "Really? Are you sure?"

Laurence Fletcher, the guy who posted the info, said it came "straight out of VW's own dealer service manual" and indeed I've since found some stickers over at VWHeritage (click here to see them) that are reproductions of a sticker that VW (apparently) used to stick inside the glovebox. The sticker says 19psi and 27psi but either way it's a lot lower, especially on the front, than a lot of the folks over at VZi had been using. Indeed my own bug was at about 30psi all round and after dropping them down to what they should be, the ride is quite a bit smoother.

While we're on the subject of tyres, the Haynes manual suggests swapping the wheels around every 6000 miles such that they wear evenly however John Muir is quite emphatic, he even puts it on bold text, that you should not do this. Mr Muir says "it takes about 500 miles for a tire to get used to its position on a car, and changing it around just messes with its head. It will last as long or longer right where it is." I'm with Mr Muir on this one because I'd be pretty pissed if somebody swapped the soles of my shoes everytime I got them all worn in and comfy, and I don't need any bad karma for messing with my tyre's heads. ;-)

Wednesday 9 May 2007

php-gd - As Easy As Tea

I remember hearing a story about a guy who went to an airport in order to have a five minute conversation with another guy who was about to board a plane. Apparently the guy boarding the plane charged the first guy a hundred quid a minute for his time. A lot of dosh, especially twenty years ago when I heard this story, but according to the story the information was worth a lot more than that to the guy doing the asking.

Alas my endeavours with Fedora are not going quite so swimmingly as I had hoped. The whole point of switching to a server with Fedora was that it appeared to be much more widely documented than the CentOS Linux on my old server (see note [1]). Unfortunately, now that I'm trying to use that information I'm find it difficult to find the bits that I actually need amongst the masses of information that's out there. If you want a run through on how to install it you can take your pick but if you want to know something about a particular issue with regard to using it...

A good example is the fun I've had with the GD Library for PHP. Some of my scripts make use of functionality from the GD Library for manipulating images and while this was already set up on my old server it was not set up on the new one. The information on how to get it working was very difficult to track down. My books had nothing to say on the subject (or at least I couldn't find it) and the relevant websites (php.net, libgd.org and fedoraproject.org) assumed that I knew things about installing and configuring that I don't and in some instances made references to files and directories that are not on my server (presumably because the information relates to a differnent version of Linux).

In the end I put in a call to tech support at the company from whom I lease the server and was told to enter the following at the command line:

yum install php-gd
/etc/init.d/httpd restart

It was as simple as that. Yum installs the package and then you restart the apache server. Pretty obvious really, but things always are when you know. It also occurred to me this morning for example that there is nothing on the box of tea bags that says to put the bag into the cup and add boiling water as opposed to tearing open the bag and tipping the tea into the cup. Pretty much anything else would require us to empty out the contents from the 'sachet', but not the ol' tea bag. Obvious WHEN you know.

It seems therefore that until I become a lot more familiar with Fedora (and I'm only going to achieve that by using it) I'm destined to spend hours of my time digging through mountains of information in order to find the snippets that I need. I'm not saying that I could justify a hundred quid a minute but I'm very grateful to tech support right now.

Notes:
[1] See this post for why I've realised that this was a mistake.

Sunday 6 May 2007

10 Years Ago This Month

I said to Dee a couple of weeks ago that I wondered what the chances were of me spotting our bug in one of the back issues of Volks World magazine that I'd acquired, and then today it happened!



To add to the general weirdness, the advert comes from the May 1997 issue i.e. 10 years ago this month!

Judging from the asking price she was in better condition back then but she looks pretty much the same. The colour looks a little different to the previous picture I posted but I'm pretty sure that's down to the photo. She also has purple running boards and wing mirrors these days, and a different number plate. Same number, different place.

I've blanked out the area code of the guy who was selling her but I'm tempted to dial it and see if I can speak to him. Maybe find out a little of her history. I wouldn't want to weird the guy out though.

Tuesday 1 May 2007

A Blind Guy Goes Into A Bar.

Today is Blogging Against Disabilism Day so I'm going to stray from my usual subject matter in order to show my support.

I'm afraid however that I do not have an awful lot to say on the subject because quite honestly it's beyond me why people can't get it through their heads that the only thing we all have in common is that we're all different, learn to cut each other a little slack, hold our hands up and admit that we screwed up when the other person makes it apparent that we've done something to piss them off, and accept an apology gracefully when it's offered. So instead I'm going to tell you my favourite disability related joke:

A blind guy goes into a bar and orders a pint before offering to tell the barman a really great blonde joke.

"I feel that I should point out" says the barman, "that I'm an ex-marine. I'm six feet tall, weight two-hundred pounds, and I'm blonde. The guy standing to your left is a martial arts instructor. He's six foot one, weighs two-hundred and twenty pounds, and he's blonde. The guy to your right is a professional wrestler. He's six foot two, weights two-hundred and forty pounds and he's blonde too. Now are you sure you want to tell your blonde joke?"

"Hell no," says the blind guy. "I don't want to have to explain the punch line three times".