Sometimes the string never ends.
I was working on some code today; debugging a new set of functions I wrote this morning.
Off and on I’ve had issues with my development VM reaching one of the nodes, another VM, in my test environment. As I went to clear the state on that VM, the network stopped working.
I figured this was perhaps a bug in VMware Fusion 4, so I decided to upgrade to Fusion 6 Pro. I went to the VMware online store to buy it and got an error when trying to put the product into my shopping cart:
Error Number: SIT_000002
And an error again when I tried again.
I logged into my account, which remembered that I had put Fusion 6 Pro into my shopping cart before. So I went to check out and got an error that the cart was empty.
So I tried adding it again and it worked.
Then I got an error when I put in my credit card number:
PMT_000011 : vmware, en_US, There is money to authorize, But no Aurthorize delegated were applicable
Then I found a free trial of Fusion 6 Pro and downloaded that and installed it on a test Mac Mini.
I then started trying to copy the test VM to the Mac Mini and observed a 11.5 MB/s transfer rate, which is suspiciously close to the maximum speed of 100baseT. But I have GigE. What’s going on? I checked previous network traffic stats on both machines–they had both done 70-90 MB/s activities in the last day.
Wondering if it was an AFP issue, I tried SMB and noticed the network throughput stayed at 11.5ish. Multiple streams didn’t help.
I finally found that the negotiated speed was indeed 100mbps on the Mac Pro for some reason. Forcing it to GigE caused the interface go achieve and lose carrier rapidly after a few minutes of working.
I tried to login to my switch and couldn’t remember the password, but I did eventually.
Then I wondered which port the Mac Pro was on.
After many minutes, I tracked the problem to a specific cable, not a switch port, wall port, or a port on the Mac Pro. I’m not sure why; the cable had been working fine for years.
In part of all this I discovered I have very few spare Cat-6 cables.
I logged into Monoprice to order more cables and almost got charged $58 for international shipping–I might not have noticed, except at checkout, they said they only would accept PayPal for international orders. Apparently, Monoprice had decided I lived in the UK since my last order.
Much teeth gnashing to fix my country with their store.
Order placed.
Started to write this blog post and the battery was inexplicably dead in the laptop I sat down with, had to get a charger.
And don’t even get me started on Time Machine issues today.
I still don’t know if the network will work in that VM or not. I am confident my code doesn’t work yet.
I don’t know how anyone uses a computer. They are way too complicated.