Although we have the source code for the original version our version has been heavily patched due to the need to provide interfaces to new hardware and fix integration problems with other software also running on the same system.

Our previous developer is unresponsive said something about a holiday in the Cayman Islands last time we tried calling and the only response we get from the original vendor is that everything “should work fine” and anything adverse that is happening is due to us running on our unique hardware. We suspect they either don’t know how to fix it or are too proud to admit their code is buggy.

Also we have no backups or any way of making them, as the hardware is so specialised, being the only hardware with this much capacity in existence.

Any modifications to the software will have to be done on the live system but we do have extensive debug variables and logs in place so we should hopefully be able to catch any regressions in functionality before they do too much damage. Anyone attempting to modify the system should keep in mind that the system data is very valuable and needs to be preserved and protected.

The Current System

The current software was forked from the original codebase a while back and we’ve been applying bug fixes to it as necessary workarounds to patch severe side effects including interference with other software running alongside it.

We can’t access the admin controls

We used to have access to a control panel that allowed us to tweak certain aspects of the software manually. Access to that was lost shortly after the previous developer became uncontactable, we suspect they did something to lock us out despite promising to fix all the problems if we paid the latest invoice. We also suspect that someone’s installed a backdoor and botnet in the system after we found some unusual operations in the network logs (the IP addresses resolved to various ISPs well known for providing hosting for dodgy businesses).

The problem is that the tweaks the sysadmins were making in the admin area were allowing the system to run mostly reliably even if incredibly resource-hungry. Partial crashes used to be unfortunate but manageable events due to this manual input but are now becoming more and more severe and frequent.

Resource Usage

Ever since the original software that we purchased it has always had the tendency to increase it’s resource usage over time. At first we thought that this was an issue that would fix itself while the software was bedding in and was nothing to be worried about since we had lots of spare capacity but recently our sysadmins tell us that the resource usage is increasing exponentially. They predict that when it uses up all the capacity it will cause major system instability and will probably wreck the hardware.

We are unable to upgrade our hardware, if the current trend continues we predict we will run out of memory, processing capacity and disk space very soon.

Memory leak

Some of the threads are taking up large amounts of memory without doing much processing. We suspect that the particular pieces of code are bottlenecks and that these need to be resolved. Either that or we need to find a way to release the memory back into the available pool because the lack of memory is affecting the ability of other threads to execute.

The system has always done this, I can’t believe that the coder that originally wrote it would leave in such a glaringly obvious memory leak.

More Info

Several of our developers have been examining the outputs of the system in detail and even managed to get hold of the original source code but this is of no help because the old source code is incompatible with some of our peripherals.

One of the maintainers suggested that we rewrite the system from scratch but I know the company will go bankrupt if we have any downtime due to the way our support contracts work.

Another one suggested limit on the amount of memory a thread is allowed to use but the original developer complained that that it would “ruin the code” and lead to a horrible unmaintainable mess but at this stage I’m willing to try almost anything to get it fixed.

We putting out this call for developers as we need new ideas. If you feel like you can help please contact us.

Regards,
Planet Earth Human Resources department

These are the pins:

• Black – GND
• Yellow – RX
• White – TX

Looking from the end of the Boarduino at the connector the pins go: Ground, CTS, Vcc, RX, TX, RTS

In order to provide the power to the Boarduino I desoldered the red wire from the board (as the Boarduino worked fine without it) and soldered it straight onto the 5V pin of the USB connection on the cable’s PCB then I took the other end of the red wire and connected it to the Vcc of the Boarduino.

Also I had no molex connectors so I stole some off a CD audio cable, these were only 4 pins wide but I glued two together.

These may not look like particularly difficult tasks but I they are things I suck at so they need fixing.

Finish projects

I want to have finished at least 3 personal projects by the end of 2011 year.

I have a bad habit of starting personal projects and then forgetting about them when I get bored.

I will shortly be publishing a list of projects I have contemplated.

To my friends, if you would like you help me achieve my goal please ask me about my projects when you see me.

Blog more often

Write at least one blog post a month.