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GRAFFITI -- November 29, 2004 thru December 05, 2004>> Link to the Current Week <<Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message. |
 
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November 29, 2004
1922 - Good evening. Just another Monday. Traffic was a little lighter than usual, and I had a bit of an unusual task placed before me today. A coworker of the less-than-technical persuasion has a new computer. During the holiday, while we were out of town, he was trying to get data off of his old machine and onto the new one. The old machine isn't networked, runs Windows 98, and is a low-memory, slowboat to forever. Oh, the downside: 2.8 G of data to be transferred. I connected a USB DVD writer, but without connectivity, had no place to go...
Enter Knoppix, the admin's friend. I booted the Knoppix CD (current version - 3.6). That recognized the USB-based DVD writer just fine. With a swap file on the Windows partition, I used the K3B burning application to write all of that data to a single disc. Between all the swapping and thrashing, the write and verify took just over two hours, but the end result is exactly what the doctor ordered.
In today's mail, I got my OpenBSD 3.6 discs (thanks, Austin!), as well as the double disc KFOG's Live from the Archives. Some great tunes on there, just as soon as I get them ripped and into my music directory... I guess I want to get to that, so I'll be seeing you. Ciao!
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November 30, 2004
2027 - Good evening. End of the month, and close to end of the year. No snow here yet, and one of the main metro area weather liars seems to think that we'll have a warmer than usual December, likely no snow until January, then slightly above snow averages for the area thereafter. Hmmm. As good as tea leaves, you betcha. Nothing else exciting to report, fighting with SP2 upgrades, but that's surprising news to nobody 'round these parts. So I'll let you go, have a great evening.
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December 1, 2004
1942 - Good evening. It's been an eventful day. First thing I learned today is that when logging into a Solaris box (explicitly Solaris 7 in this case, but evidently this applies more widely), it really helps if the root user has a home directory specified in the correct spot in the /etc/passwd file. If not you see something like this:
Sysytem-name login: root Cannot chdir to , errno = 2 System-name login:
Our initial experiments didn't lead in the right direction because we believed that the login process wasn't going to try to chdir to a user's home directory except after authentication, a step we clearly never reached in the above process. Secondly, it was happening for regular users as well as root, identically. After a couple of passes through single user mode, we finally found that solution:
root:x:0:0:root:/:/bin/sh
By finally noticing the missing '/' between those last two colons, we fixed the problem. Of course, a quick Google trip on the question, after the fact, lead in a round-about way to the same solution, but now it's fixed, and the firewall is a machine I can access for diagnostics and upgrades.
Then, after a nice lunch out with some County friends who I worked with while at the NERDS, I built and brought a new workstation online. Upon arriving home, however, I found that the windstorm knocked out power for a while (perhaps 20 minutes or so), long enough to take down two workstations and the internal DNS/file server. The wind also had more fun! It took the vent cap off of the bathroom fan vent on the roof, and frisbee'd it around for a bit before flinging it headlong into one of our bathroom windows. The outer pane was shattered and glass went everywhere over the back patio, a bit of the porch, and worst luck, into the lawn over a couple of hundred square feet. That'll be a pain in the ass to clean up further (Marcia found it and got most of it before the light went this evening). I'll probably just screw and caulk a piece of plexiglass onto the window (it's the plastic-framed fixed upper portion) until we get around to doing the windows in a year or so. These are starting to fail, both in the inter-pane seals and the plastic is getting pretty brittle.
So that was today in a nutshell. Oh, apparently there's an iframe vulnerability patch that MS has made available through Windows update, you should probably do that pretty soon. Have a great evening.
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December 2, 2004
2213 - Good evening. Whoops? Where did the time go? I setup a network printer running via CUPS on the Debian file server, then shared it via both CUPS and Samba so that I can print to it easily from just about any machine around here. Then I fired up VMware, popped into Windows and did the bill-pay thing via Quicken. Thereafter, I started surveying books about OpenBSD and about Packet Filter. I'll be making rather more extensive use of both tools in my work going forward, and good books on the subject are indicated. But now the time's gone and I've nothing else I want to say tonight, except ...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Barbara! We called Barbara and wished her well earlier this evening.
There's one more working day in the week, and I'm looking to finish up cut number two on the network design revision that we're heading towards at a breakneck pace. Then the weekend promises work around the house, veterinary appointments for both dogs, possible pulling down the Christmas decorations from the garage attic, and A BROADWAY CHRISTMAS CAROL on Sunday afternoon, featuring our friend Linda Rose Payne. By the time all that's done, it'll be Monday and time to start all over again. Wheee, it's fun as long as you don't fall off the ride! Have a great evening.
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December 3, 2004
2135 - Good evening. Happy Friday. I came up here a while ago with good intentions for putting a post up toot-sweet. However, I got trapped in configuring and testing remote work email access via both Thunderbird running locally, and by setting up Pine on an SSH landing zone box. The latter was interesting because I'd not done anything with pine in a really, really long time. Fortunately, it's a relative snap to configure, and after looking up the right entries for setting up the SSL-ness of it all, life was good again ... and bang, between that and a spot of email and web browsing, better than two hours had flown by.
Today went relatively well, for a day that went entirely not to plan. I provisioned a 2U server from spares laying about, tested the hardware firmly, then installed Debian to build a new LAMP server. Before the day was done, that was pressed into service as the initial iteration of a replacement CMS staging server. Life is good. Well, pretty good. You know how, when you're playing cards, the dealer can keep pitching you aces, up to four (hopefully not more)? Well, unlike cards, in life, you can't always take all the aces you're dealt. I was in receipt this evening of an email from the chief of a rocket science firm over at Goddard, about 5 miles and no freeway from here - he's looking for a *NIX admin. As Marcia said, "You know there are people who would go and talk to this guy, even though you just accepted your current job."
Yeah, but that's not who I am. I don't job hop. I took the NERDS gig for good reasons when we moved out here, and I enjoyed it. I wasn't looking for work when the NFR opportunity came along. There was considerable soul searching before I chose to move on from NERDS after being with the company for a little over two years. In this case, even though I'd love to work in a rocket science company, just because, there's no soul searching going on now. I don't take a full-time position then bail on it at the first chance. I am really enjoying my gig and have a lot to learn and accomplish while I'm at NFR, so the time's not right.
But still, is it OK to throw matches and gasoline on the dealer that sends you great cards you can't pick up? How about that winning lottery ticket Ace, buster???
Have a great evening. See you back here tomorrow.
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December 4, 2004
2203 - Good evening. I got almost everything done that I planned on today. I started with the problem window. It turns out that the plastic cover that Marcia found wasn't, in fact, a vent cover, and it started down at yard level so likely wasn't the culprit in this breakage.
But whatever whacked the window did it lightly enough to at least crack the window enough that the wind-driven pressure fluctuations finished the job, but not so heavily as to penetrate and break through the inner pane, which would have made for an entirely different night's rest (or lack thereof). Anyway, I climbed the ladder with the shop vac and took care of the broken glass, both in the pane, then on the roof, in the gutter, and a few more remnants on the ground. I took some measurements and headed out to the store. I had them cut me a .100" thick piece of Lexan, then caulked and screwed it into place.
With that job done, I dragged the holiday supply boxes down from the garage overhead storage area, and staged them into the front Library for doing up this evening. Then Marcia and I headed over to the veterinarian for a bit of ear and toenail work on Molly, while Lucy got the works: Samples front, aft and blood, shots from here to eternity, and an admonition to eat less on Thanksgiving weekend when she can steal the boys' food. I blew itinerant leaves out of the garage, and cleaned up a bit. Then, before supper, I started setting up the tree. After supper, Marcia joined me and we setup the rest of the works...
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So the tree is done, the decorations strewn about the house like a trailer park after a tornado dropped in for a cup of tea and a double wide or two, and I'm whacked. Oh, somewhere in there I dredged up an hour or two to help out Mark Huth in working up the solutions to a couple of his remaining Linux server problems. I guess that I'd best get a shower and head to bed, as there's lots more to be done tomorrow, and we've got that show in the afternoon. See you then...
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December 5, 2004
1950 - Good evening. Not much to be said, really. A lovely matinee at the Silver Spring RoundHouse Theater, Linda Rose Payne was wonderful as always, and the other folks in the show held up their end just fine. Hilarious and fun. Then dinner with Linda and Nigel afterwards. We're trying to put together an evening with those two, but theatre folks are tough to schedule for a social life. One day, one day.
The shopping got done, and little else. Oh, I paid a couple of bills, and then got ready for the show. Thank goodness I got through half my chores yesterday. That means that only half remains undone. Sigh. No more for me tonight, though. I've several magazines and a bunch of novels piled up, as well as other fun things I'd like to do and/or work on. I guess I'll head on into one of those... have a great evening.
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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
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