EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy, say so, I will respect that. If I don't know that you want your email address published, then I won't. Be aware, though, that I am (usually) human and make mistakes.

Happy Monday. Football is over. Oh, well, there's the Pro Bowl - I always like watching the players put out their 110% at that one, at least in betwee Mai Tai's. Besides, when you are running fast, you can use the little umbrellas like windbrakes, better in corners. -G-

Not much going on at the moment - been working on playing at being a Technical Reviewer, spending a lot of time in the windows environment, and down in the depths of configuration dialogs. One hint - follow Farquhar's advice and don't overclock - Nathan and I tried it again this weekend, and Grinch *seriously* doesn't like running faster than 600 megawiggles.

The report on VMware 2.0 for Linux (Beta) is drawing a lot of visitors - I know, I find it interesting too, that's why I keep playing with it. I want to see how the beta does with a Debian load. Someday soon. Also need to experiment with ways to more firmly disable Supermount and Automount, so that VMware doesn't have to battle for resources.

TTFN.

Good news, bad news. Or at least sad news. An Alaska Airlines plane is down in the Pacific off Los Angeles, about 16:00 hours PST today. There don't appear to be any survivors, as of this writing. My condolences to the families and friends of those lost. Bummer.

By comparison, my good news isn't all that great, but it is all I have. First, Mr. Cellphone is still operating properly as a profit center - I won tickets to see Los Lobos at the Fillmore on February 27, courtesy of my favorite, nay, only radio station, KFOG. Thank you, Annalisa (midday DJ, great voice, great music - my favorite). The second piece of good news is related to last-week's loss of software for the brand-new CD burner - HP customer service wins again. I sent in a report on the lost disk (clearly my fault), asking how I might go about acquiring a replacement. I got an email this afternoon, letting me know that the replacement software is ordered and into shipping. Cindy at HP gave me an 800 # to call and check on status and tracking number. Very quick, very professional. Once again, customer service wins mean something. Bravo.

On the gripping hand, the following came in from UPS, regarding the email I sent them last week about the destroyed package they delivered.

Dear Mr. Bilbrey:

Thank you for your inquiry. We sincerely apologize for the condition in which
your merchandise arrived. We will be happy to enter a Damage Inspection
Report. Please forward the following information in addition to that which you
have already provided:

- shipper's name, business name, address, ZIP Code and phone number
- receiver's name, business name, address, ZIP Code and phone number
- shipper's UPS account number
- tracking number
- ship date
- weight of package
- invoice number, purchase order number, package ID number (if applicable)
- value of damaged merchandise
- a detailed description of the damaged item (including model number, color,
size, etc.)
- discovery date
- disposition of the package (whether it is with the shipper or the receiver)


Please retain the original box and packaging for 5 business days until either
a claim number has been issued or the merchandise has been inspected by UPS.

Please include all original message text with your response.

Thank you for using UPS Internet Services.

XXXXXXXXXX
01/31/00 S-9
http://www.ups.com/

Good Morning. Unfortunately, no new news from LA. Oddly, what was initially reported on my local news as a Boeing 737 has transformed itself into an MD-83. Of course, when things get serious, I can generally count on our local people to begin to babble.

Late last night yielded a grand total of 128 messages, composed of 4 copies each of messages which have been sent over the last week, some of which I hadn't seen... hmmm. Then only 4 new ones this am, all non-repeaters, all actually from overnight. No guarantees that this is the end though. Many box admins are in NYC right now for Linux World.

I have been becoming a Junior member of the Learn More about LookOut! Outlook Than You Ever Wanted To Know club. It may pay off for me in the near future, as ETS migrates up to O2K. Catch you later today. Happy February.

Lot's of things going on, some of which I am at liberty to discuss. This morning I received by e-Post a notice from CDT. This notice was regarding the action currently going against DoubleClick and their marketing partners. Should you have missed it somehow, there are details here, but in essence, DoubleClick has managed to tie your browsing habits (which it has always tracked) with your (and MY) identity through a recent corporate acquisition. This is elective behaviour on the part of DoubleClick and it's partners. Then, slightly later this morning this came in.

Subject: Back in Action!
   Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2000 15:31:29 -0500 (EST)
   From: [email protected]
     To: [email protected]

The response from the activist alert was overwhelming. Before the message 
was received in all activist districts, 200 of you sent messages to 
DoubleClick's members. As a result, the companies badgered our ISP to shut 
down the page.  We've talked to them and now its back up and running. 

If you were unable to send a message to DoubleClick or its members earlier, 
please come back and try now: 

http://www.cdt.org/action/doubleclick.shtml

You're making a difference!

Thanks! Ari

Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
   Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2000 15:40:49 -0500 (EST)
   From: [email protected] (Mail Delivery System)
     To: [email protected]

This is the Postfix program at host mail1.panix.com.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned
below could not be delivered to one or more destinations.

For further assistance, please contact 

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the message returned below.

                        The Postfix program

: host smtp.AuctionWatch.com[216.32.245.130] said:
    550 panix.com mail blocked due to spammer at cdt.org

***********

 Subject: My information is not yours to sell.
    Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 15:40:29 -0500 (EST)
    From: [email protected], [email protected]
      To: [email protected]

To whom it may concern:
I understand that you are a member of the Doubleclick
network.  This means that you allow Doubleclick to collect
information about what I do at your Web site.  I believe
that this practice is objectionable and should not occur
without my explicit permission.
To make matters worse, I understand that at least ten
Doubleclick members -- perhaps you -- have decided
to disclose to DoubleClick personally identifying
information that individuals provide you during registration
to Doubleclick.  By doing so, they provide Doubleclick the
final piece of an Internet surveillance infrastructure that
allows them to know who I am and what I do at
approximately 1,500 other Web sites.
This is not what I bargained for.  If I registered at your
site, I did not give you permission to sell my identity --
and I  certainly haven't consented to have my
experience of the  Internet turned into a data collection
free-for-all.
If you are disclosing subscriber identities to DoubleClick
stop now. If you are a Doubleclick member and haven't
taken part in this practice, don't start.  Enrolling your
subscribers in an online surveillance program isn't
good for privacy or business.

Picked up a flatbed USB scanner today for about $100. The Epson you-feed-it beast had seen better days, and we are doing some scanning for the Spoelhof site. The model - A Visioneer OneTouch 7600. Plug it in, pop in the CDROM, start scanning. It's just that easy. Under Linux, methinks we shall be waiting for the 2.4 kernel, which has some USB support built in. The immediate impetus behind this is I needed to scan some photos taken at the BICSI show in Orlando, for inclusion in a show report at ETS.

Subject: Mandrake/Air - Installation URL
   Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2000 16:04:32 -0800
   From: "J.H. Ricketson"
     To: [email protected]

.b -

Came across this site  HERE  in my 
wanderings. It is a step-by-step, well-documented (with lots of screen 
shots) of the reviewer's successful installation of Mandrake v.7.0. It is 
probably where I will go when I have to face my first Linux installation - 
then to you for the fine tuning, or if I get lost in the process. Might be 
handy for you to point people to, rather than reinvent the wheel. I cannot 
critique it, as I have NO idea what it should be, or how accurate it is. 
You would have to decide that for yourself. Seems prety knowledgeable to 
me, though.

Regards,

JHR
--
[J.H. Ricketson in San Pablo]
       [email protected] 

Track I did. A good pass through an install of Mandrake 7.0 Air. If you are considering Mandrake as your entry point for Linux, you could do a good deal worse than to read that 7 page review. The only comment I can make is that the behaviour (and quality) of the installer *strongly* depends on which installation path you take. Blew my mind when, following a successful FTP install, the installer rewrote the gateway and nameserver information to defaults that made sense to someone else. Fine if you aren't running a home network, and in fact their defaults would have worked fine on Grendel. But not on Grinch, since Grendel is the gateway, located at 192.168.0.1, not 192.168.0.254. Overall, I am VERY happy with Mandrake Air. Should help ease a few more tired users into the fold.

Subject: Re: My information is not yours to sell.
   Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2000 16:45:56 -0800
   From: Tiffany Perea 
     To: Brian Bilbrey 

Brian,

There really was supposed to be a message attached to the email that I had
sent to you.  I have received over 1000 emails this afternoon in regards to
this information and I am trying to reply to them as soon as possible.
Following you will find the answer that we are sending to all concerned
consumers:

Thank you for your concern regarding DoubleClick and CarSmart.com
Please be assured that DoubleClick has nothing to do with CarSmart.com,
or its information.

Double Click only serves banners for us, and has no control of,  or access
to, any of the information
CarSmart collects on behalf of its users and dealers. Also be assured that
we do not sell any of the information we
have obtained though our users filling out a price request.  Any and all
information you have placed on a
CarSmart site is confidential.

I have attached the link to our Privacy statement, which an be easily found
on the CarSmart.com site as
well as on our Network sites.  I hope it will put your mind at ease.

http://carsmart.com/privacy.htm

If you should have any questions, please feel free to contact me at:
800-733-2461, ext. 503

Best regards,

Tiffany Perea
Dealer Services Manager
CarSmart.com

Subject: LA Air Crash
   Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2000 22:04:46 -0800
   From: "J.H. Ricketson" 
     To: [email protected]

.b -

More on Alaska Airlines' Flight 261 in Larry Magid's column 
at:  http://www.upside.com/texis/mvm/larry_magid?id=3897316b0

Regards,

JHR
--
[J.H. Ricketson in San Pablo]
       [email protected]

I am really hungry this morning. I have no clue as to why. I rarely eat much before noon - usually a cup of coffee (on the drive to work), a piece of fruit, a hunk of cheese, perhaps a bagel, that's it until lunch. Not today, clearly. Now there are choices to make. Hmmm.

The highlight topic is passwords. Why? Tonight is SVLUG meeting time, with VP Marc Merlin speaking on the topic of good passwords and bad, cracking, MD5 passwords and more. Should be a small meeting, since many people are at Linux World, but a good meeting, all the same. Of course the SVLUG site is down right now. Sigh. Meeting is at one of the Cisco buildings, they are gracious enough to host. Thanks.

Time to head out, have a great day. See you later.

Many jokes have crossed in front of these eyes over the years, but for some reason, this one appears to have evaded me. I got a good chuckle out of it, hope you do too...

Just after I got married, I was invited out for a night with "the boys."
I told the missus that I would be home by midnight ... promise!
Well, the hours passed and the beer was going down way too easy.

At around 3 AM, drunk as a skunk, I headed for home.
Just as I got in the door, the cuckoo clock in the hall started up,
and cuckooed 3 times.  Quickly I realized she'd probably wake up, so I
cuckooed another 9 times.  I was really proud of myself, having a quick
witty solution, even when smashed, to escape a possible conflict.
Next morning my wife asked me what time I got in and I told her 12 o'clock.

She didn't seem disturbed at all.
Whew! Got away with that one!
She then told me that we needed a new cuckoo clock.

When I asked her why, she said "Well, it cuckoed 3 times, said 'oh crap,'
cuckooed 4 more times, cleared it's throat, cuckooed another 3 times, 
giggled, cuckooed twice more and then farted."

Dan Seto has a new email address - [email protected], thanks to Matt and the good folk at iTool (or is that the good Matt and the folk at iTool - is this Tuesday?). One too many bounced mails turned the trick. There are always odd interactions between mailservers. Some servers block domains, some use just the ORBS Blacklist, some additionally use the Whitelist - all of these things and more interact to sometimes make mail inaccessible. I have a Yahoo account I use for some things, a HotMail for others.

Now I have to get into my Geekwear (the DVD CCA t-shirt from Copyleft, and scarf down some supper before tonight's meeting. SVLUG's site is back up. HP came through with software and the user manual for the CDR/RW drive. Very nice. Oh. Lovely. The mail server at Pacbell - sims1.snfc21.pbi.net - is down again. Sigh. I really need to put up a Pop or Imap server here, and dispense entirely with PBI.


Orb Home  /  Top (& search)  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

Very calm morning here, with the mailserver down once again. The meeting last night at Cisco was illuminating. As a sys admin responsible for a variety of networking and security issues, Marc gave an interesting talk based upon his experiences in locating easily broken passwords.

We are not talking about Windows system passwords here, since the security model which has to be followed for legacy purposes is that used by LanMan (a repeat of the information provided by Jeremy Allison of the Samba team, in a talk last year. Homogenous NT networks (and one presumes NT / Win2K networks may be able to use the more robust security model available for NT. But it is trivial to crack passwords that can be culled from a network with a sniffer, if you have Win95 and Win98 clients. Hmmm.

Meantime, the crypt function, which was the basis for the original Unix password scheme, is a 25X DES function, working with no more than 8 characters + 2 "random" salt characters. This yields a maximum potential keyspace of approximately 7.5x10^15. Not bad when the fastest PDP-11 box back then was capable of 1 crypt / second. Of course, now, a PIII Xeon with 2 meg of cache peaks at around 20,000 crypts / second. And there are people who have taken EVERY dictionary they can find, and pre-crypted all the words (Marc's dictionaries total 1.3 million words). With common permutations and spice (the odd punctuation mark in common locations), he has a 104G database of precrypted passwords. This represents many CPU years worth of effort, but there are many people who have access to rather large clusters - and not all of them where white hats. Oh, yeah, and there's a box that was available for about $250K a year or two ago that is a dedicated DES cracker - 90M crypt/second. It can brute force ANY crypt password in about 20 hours.

Recommended - NO DICTIONARY WORDS. A good way to generate a password that is hard to crack, is to think of a multiword phrase (that you can remember), then use the first one or two letters from each word. Salt with both numbers and punctuation. Don't bother with passwords longer than 8 characters, unless you are running on a system with PAM and MD5 passwords, then more is good. Please, not less than 8, as it reduces the size of the keyspace dramatically, making brute force attacks far easier.

Marc did some StarOffice slides to accompany the talk. He will shortly post them in HTML format off the SVLUG site, I will give you a holler when he does. Meantime, if you simply MUST reach me, send me email at work, [email protected]. Have a wonderful day!

Whereas California usually is blessed with weather that closely resembles 'climate', that is, generally mild temperatures, small temp. swings, overall what happens outside is fairly predictable here, at least in the larger scale (there are some VERY odd microclimates about the SF Bay Area). Today, however, our climate strongly resembled weather. From a slightly cloudy, but generally sunny and warmish morning, all of a sudden, in drove low, dark clouds and 50 mph + winds. By 10 past noon, *bink*. Off went the power. After a couple of meetings that we had been putting off (too busy to talk about what we're working on), I was outta there. When the power went, I shut down the servers elegantly, made another note to budget in some auto-shutdown, auto-power up software/hardware combo soon.

Did a bank run for accounting on my way home, got 4 loads of laundry in the machines, and here we are. A couple of interesting items in my inbasket (when I was finally able to get it open... sigh). First, although I don't have the ability to publish the source material, the IEEE IP committee membership is coming down strongly against the DVD CCA, the MPAA and the studios in the CSS stink. IEEE membership is also speaking out publicly (though not speaking for the IEEE, due to not having gotten draft documents and resolutions through vote prior to testimony time) against UCITA legislation, which is sweeping through the state legislatures like a storm. Very interesting stuff. Also got a link to the Memorandum Opinion of the Judge who ruled in favor of the Studios in their preliminary injunction request, in New York. Makes for an interesting read.

Subject: Re: My information is not yours to sell.
   Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2000 10:48:35 -0800
   From: Kelley Blue Book 
     To: [email protected]

Thank you for your e-mail.  Kelley Blue Book is sensitive to all security
issues.  In fact, Kelley Blue Book does not collect any names or other
personal  information from our visitors.  Please refer to our privacy policy
from our home page (www.kbb.com).

In addition, the following is a message from DoubleClick addressing your
security concerns.

"In the last week, some inaccurate articles have appeared in the press about
DoubleClick's business.  Those articles have conveyed the false impression
that DoubleClick links personally identifiable information without giving
consumers choice.  Those articles are simply wrong.

It is important for you to understand the following:

* DoubleClick has been a pioneer in setting standards for consumer privacy
online and we were the first to offer a universal opt-out for consumers.
DoubleClick always encourages consumers to make informed choices and
we encourage all consumers that are not interested in getting targeted
advertising to opt-out on our web site at
http://www.doubleclick.net/privacy_policy/privacy.htm.

* DoubleClick does not use highly sensitive information for profiling such as
health information, detailed financial information, information of a sexual
nature and information on children, are not appropriate for profiling.

* DoubleClick will not link personally identifiable information about a user
to online behavior without first giving that user notice and the choice not
to participate.

* DoubleClick does not and cannot know the identity of a user online unless
that user has provided that information to an Abacus Online participant who
has provided the user with the appropriate notice and choice.

* Again, DoubleClick is absolutely committed to protecting the privacy of
all Internet Users.  DoubleClick wants users to be informed and they leave
the decision up to you to decide whether or not to opt-out.

DoubleClick's goal is to deliver relevant advertising to consumers and keep
the Internet free."

I notice that Kelley carefully covers it's butt regarding the privacy of their information and that of their visitors. Interesting though, that they pass on the DoubleClick 'statement' without comment, criticism or praise - must be a revenue stream around here somewhere, my palm is itching. I am so grateful that DoubleClick allows me to opt out (and you can, too!) Part of the CDT action has been taken offline by CDT's ISP (twice), as a result of complaints from DoubleClick network members. Hmmm.

Here's a good article on Motley Fool about the DVD mess, with lots of interesting links at the bottom. Especially this parody. Heh heh heh.


Orb Home  /  Top (& search)  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

Well, I appear to have completed an entire (work) week of moving the current anchor from day to day in an appropriate fashion. A question for feedback please, if you enter through the redirector page, do you like/mind/dislike/? being sent to the current day's scribblings? Also, how do you like (or did you notice) the Update At links down into the day's work? Moving current is quite easy, but I am not sure I care for it personally. I certainly see the utility of the in-day pointers, but have no clue as to whether they are being used or not, since that doesn't show up in server logs. Interesting, though. Both traffic and mail (mail is way down, traffic is off by 20% or more from last month's averages) is down. Hmmm.

Good happy Friday morning. As promised, the presentation materials of Marc's talk on passwords have been posted, and for your intereest and eddification, I present you with this link. Also of potential interest are the materials used by Jeremy Allison of the Samba team in his talk: Windows NT - A Unix Perspective. Go to this page, near the bottom, on the September 1, 1999 row, and snag the gzip'd tarball of Jeremy's html-ized presentation. I found his chat to be very illuminating.

Command of the day - kibitz. Any takers? In other news, DoubleClick files for it's IPO. Talk about your basic bad timing model. My favorite headline of the morning, ripped straight from the World from Reuters section - Colombian Talks Said Going Well in Sweden. Of course they are. So many things go well in Sweden. Beautiful little country. Lastly, although I am enamoured of the install and the pre-set security models available in Mandrake 7.0, I am headed back to Debian on Grinch. Details later today, and you will understand my reasoning, I feel sure. Have a great day.

Sorry for the downtime - it would appear that the Alcatel 1000 ADSL external DSL modem really likes to be power-cycled every so infrequently. Not something I can do remotely . . . can I? From the looks of the logs, we were down from about 13:30 to 16:30. Unrelated to Pacbell service, just hardware glitching, since Marcia was able to cycle the box, and everything came up roses.

Subject: kibitz
   Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2000 11:06:39 -0500
   From: "Gary M. Berg" 
     To: Brian Bilbrey 

Oh, let me see, I think that comes with TCL.  Let's two (or probably more)
people share working on the same program at the same time.  Sort of like a
PC Anywhere type application, but it's likely to be command line only.

I ran into that one on our HP-UX system, and even tried it once or twice but
never did make much use of it.

 Subject: laundry and anchors
    Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2000 17:27:50 +0000
    From: Jan Swijsen 
Reply-To: [email protected]
      To: Brian Bilbrey 

> got 4 loads of laundry in the machines 

Poor Grendel and Grinch. I never pot laundry in my machines. :-)

I just love your jumping to the 'current' day. In my opinion that is the
way it should be done. For daynotes anyway. Jumping to the last hour is
a bit too fine grained.
I only visit your page once a day and that is typically in the morning.
My morning, so quite late in your evening (must be around midnight). So
for example on Friday morning I arrive at the top of your Thursday note.
I do a quick page-up/page-down to see if you added something to the
bottom of Wednesday note.

I don't claim your traffic is down because I am visiting less frequently
but it could be a factor. I have been too busy lately to get trough the
daynotes. So I pick up one or two sites and leave the others for the
following day. I am in "death line approaching" mode these days.

--
Svenson.

So, back to Debian, as previously noted. Each pass through an install, I learn something more. Why did I do this? The answer is two-fold. First, I find that there are bits of the Mandrake 7.0 that I just don't like, or that are a little broken. Fer instance, I configure the toolbar (in KDE) to my taste - it resets to default on re-login. Not major. Bunches of little stuff. A real kicker for me is that I find myself liking what is going on in the machinery, and too much GUI becomes bothersome. Second, Shawn was trying to install onto a laptop with 500M HD. How small can I make a reasonable system. By reasonable I mean that I do want a GUI, but not a feature-fat one. I want to be able to browse. I need to be able to work with C, C++, Perl. I need to edit. Very little else, actually. So what we are talking about here is a base distribution, with some development stuff, X, some apps, (ok, a couple of games), Mozilla 12-1 (fairly stable for just browsing), emacs (which is FAT, but extremely capable) ... The wm is IceWM - lite and functional. I may play with others, but this works.

The bottom line? 278M. Still fat. There are distributions that will run off a pair of floppies, but you can't do much. You can certainly put much of a server in far less than 100M, but that's not my goal there (Grendel here, Grinch there! That's EYEgore, not EEEgore <g>). Debian 2.2 is almost ready for primetime. The installer will be better than RH 5.2, not as pretty nor as work free as Mandrake 7.0, but there's the basic control vs. ease of use issue all over again. I currently am using the 2.2.4 disk set to install from - I tried to use the 2.2.5 installer from the end of January, and it is still a little broken, but then, it isn't released, either. 2.2.4 installer works, 5 disks, plus the base2_2.tgz file sitting on a partition you mount, rather than overwrite. Following that, a few simple (but ill-documented) steps later, you are up and running.


Orb Home  /  Top (& search)  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

The automatic transfer to the current day is fine. What's annoying is that the 
beginning of the current day ends up at the bottom of the screen instead of at 
the top. That is, only one line of the current entry shows up, with the screen 
above it filled with prior entries.
 
--
Robert Bruce Thompson
[email protected]
http://www.ttgnet.com

Sorry that it doesn't behave well for you. I had better close this and go read your page for today - I hear chuckling from the other room, indicating there are Malcolm pictures up. TTFN.

And that's the truth. After you get through Bob's thoroughly justified rant, you will find evidence of Malcolm. Heh. Ahem. Was that me talking bad about baby Harp Seals? Sorry. Oops. The funny thing, of course, is that Bob sent me that message yesterday morning. It just showed up in the mailbox today. Apparently we are still getting caught up from the mail backup of earlier in the week.

Subject: Your New Look
   Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2000 20:41:31 -0800
   From: "J.H. Ricketson"
     To: [email protected]

.b -

Sorry I haven't said this sooner. I really like your new website 
arrangement, even better than Bob Thompson's (His requires 2 clicks to get 
to now, yours only one click on your pos at the Daynotes Home page) Loads 
fast, too. I don't need to drill down through 3 or 4 or more confusing 
layers to get to the current Daynotes, as is necessary on one other 
Daynotes page that shall remain nameless. I like everything being there on 
the first page I arrive at, so I can easily connect to other aspects of 
your site Overall, your page is a good show. Don't tinker with it. Would 
that the rest of the Daynotes mob did as well. But then, that would be 
boring. In sum. I rather like the distinctive personality of each 
Daynoter's site - even if one is a PITA to navigate.

The "...the Update At links down into the day's work?" - You lost me on 
that one. Apparently I didn't notice it (them?), because I don't know what 
you are talking about. Elucidate?

If EMail is down, perhaps Bob Thompson could forward some of his. He seems 
to have a glut, and just at the wrong time. Just wait until you're about as 
busy as a one-armed paperhanger in a high wind. It will pick up then. 
Guaranteed. Axiomatic. Also guaranteed that your outgoing EMail will break 
down then. Count your blessings!

Regards,

JHR
--
[J.H. Ricketson in San Pablo]
       [email protected] 

Subject: RE: kibitz
   Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2000 23:30:51 -0500
   From: "Gary M. Berg" 
     To: [email protected]

> I think, however, that I could use this to ssh into a box, then kibitz
> with a local user to assist someone, as long as we could get ssh up on their
> box. 

Kibitz seems like a useful tool for certain kinds of things.  I've not heard
of the screen command; I don't remember it from HP-UX.  I wonder if it's a
Linux-ish thing.

I try to avoid doing any more than possible with our HP box; since it is
used solely for our business system most users could be set up with a
captive account.  So most of the scripts I write are for running batch
reports overnight - and a little bit of custom modifications to the business
system.  I do it enough that I set up DOS-like commands on HP-UX (like
"copy", "dir", etc) and set up Unix-like commands on my PC (like ls, la,
etc).  I use 4DOS/4NT on my desktop machines for a command processor.  If
people like the command line they should definitely know about 4DOS/4NT from
JP Software.

There's more mail to deal with, but we are off to Orchard Supply to get some spring planting and planter supplies. Marcia is/will post picture(s) of last year's 'farm' over on her site. So - I will catch you later.

Fighting fires - the KVM switch is dead - I am fighting a Voodoo3 3000 AGP installation into Windows the hard way (with a re-install . . . of Windows, Linux liked it right from the start. Windows wouldn't give me a working display mode. Sigh. Still battling, so I will see you tomorrow.


Orb Home  /  Top (& search)  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey

Headless Grendel and Voodoo - sounds like a cool combination, eh? After many trials and tribulations, culminating in the re-installation of Windows on Grinch - I have a Voodoo3 3000 AGP card up and running. Very, very nice gaming board. Quake ]I[ Arena Linux yields a night and day difference in fragging, and the only game I have installed on the Windows boot for Grinch is Motocross Madness, which came with the Sidewinder Freestyle Pro - and the resolution and updating, overall graphics quality just screams. Not top of the line, but very very nice.

Not without oddity and pain however. I carefully followed the instructions (an unusual event in the life of Brian), and when I was all done, windows would only boot into a mode that the monitor wouldn't display. I went in and out of safe mode several times, trying to fix things up. By contrast, the Linux boot came up and used the board just fine, first pass. I was then able to upgrade the server, add the Glide libs, then rock-n-roll, baby. After that, I just gave in, scraped everything off of the Windows partition, and started from scratch - conflicted drivers that I couldn't ID or remove somehow. With a clean install, everything was both hunky and dory.

Oops. Not quite. It transpires that in the midst of the madness the KVM switch has died. Dunno why yet - appears to be a no-power problem, but I don't have a voltmeter here, and swapped . I can (and am) just running Grendel headless for now. I got and set up ssh here on Grinch, then logged into Grendel. I have X11 forwarding enabled, so can use the X-applications directly, and when I have a Linux box set up at work, I will be able to do the same thing there, running X across the encrypted channel. I do like being able to work with both machines. Also there are times when I need to be working in Windows, and I will not be able to access Grendel while in a Windows partition (or can I open a X-session in Windows - don't think so, but ???).

The great email backup. I am *still* getting email from last Wednesday. This is unrelated to the looping email problem which appears to be just about wound down on the SVLUG list. But the PBI email box being down put them so far behind ... I am just now getting response from Dan Seto on an e-mail link question I sent him. Wheehoooo.

Subject: yikes
   Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2000 13:19:11 +0100
   From: Bo Leuf 
     To: [email protected]

"Jeremy Allison of the Samba team in his talk: Windows NT - A Unix 
Perspective. ... snag the gzip'd tarball of Jeremy's..."

Yikes! Who would have thought the html'ized would be be over 10 Mb 
worth, tarballed. Even with ISDN, that's a 20 minute dl. Oh well...

Great links.

"So many things go well in Sweden. Beautiful little country." Yeah, 
great place to visit (thus the many talks and conferences), but I 
wouldn't wanna -- argh, what am I saying??? -- I do live here. (Never 
mind, it's only for the duration -- ) Duration of what? 
(Duration of the duration -- )

/ Bo
-- 
"Bo Leuf" {[email protected]}
Leuf fc3 Consultancy
http://www.leuf.com/

Mark Smith chimed in with support for Bob's notice that the current day link off the redirect page kicks him to the correct link, but with the top of the linked section at the bottom of the page. I was inclined to blame Exploder, since both Mark and Bob were using 5.01, and I couldn't make the error happen in NS on either OS, nor in IE 5.0 ... but now I have found that the closing '</a>' was missing from the current anchor, so perhaps it is fixed now. You tell me.

J.H. wrote Dave a longish letter, and copied me on it. I leave it to Dave to publish, but here's my response ...

My $0.02 (in devalued cents) -

For the purposes of playing with (oops, I mean testing and gaining comfort with) Linux, I can do no better than to recommend Mandrake 7.0. For many purposes it is a VERY strong distribution, and near the end of the installation process will assist you in setting up the LILO boot loader so that you can boot into your Windows partition as well (by default if you desire). Bear in mind that I think the best way to do this is to add another physical disk to a running Win9X system, and load Mandrake on that. The co-existence works much better with Win9x than with the NT (and I presume 2K) bootloaders. Doesn't mean that it can't be done, it's just trickier. I would *not* attempt to put Linux on as YABOS (Yet Another Booting OS) on your current multiboot system that has every MS OS running on it. Might be able to make it work, but you might trash things. The only 'safe' mode of running Linux (as a first step into Linux) on that one would be separate hard disk, and floppy boot into Linux, skip the MBR LILO configuration.

Subject: Today's update
   Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2000 16:34:53 -0800
   From: "James T. Crider" {[email protected]}
     To: "Brian & Marcia Bilbrey (E-mail)" 

Just a side-note, Marcia says that you and she are corresponding regarding
watching and/or shooting whales - If you have been to Delanae Crider's site,
you will have seen her 'Seal of Approval' - I don't know *her* well enough
to say, "You know, when I see that cute little furry thing, I think to
myself . . . BASEBALL BAT!" She might find my odd sense of humor somewhat
offensive


Don't know if Delanae has seen this yet, but she does have a sense of humor
which can be somewhat warped in a nice way, usually.  I will send her your
way and see what she thinks.  I know she put up the "Seal of Approval"
because she thought it was cute and cuddly so baseball bat may not be the
first thing to come to her mind.  Consider yourself lucky you do not live
within easy driving distance of us. <g>

Consider yourself warned.

Jim

The backup failed last night (at least the over the network part) and so I am re-running that right now. Also, now that the new porch table is up, I have to do the hook and chain thing for the new hanging pots for herbs. More when I get a chance. TTFN.

Well, for Bob, the current redirect now puts the current tag about halfway up the screen (a paragraph and a half - 1/3?). Mark writes back to let me know that the behaviour has remained the same for him, and wishes me luck. Unless anyone is greatly troubled by this, I will stop worrying about it. Bo also writes in to ask the question, does IIS 2K still support HTML 1.0 (the rumor being no)? Hmmm. That would kill lynx, I think. Wouldn't be the first time that MS had done an exclusionary implementation, if true. Gaming is so much better with the new video card. heh heh heh.

Looking for someone with way too many toys to read - check out Ben Rota's Diary of a Geek, hung off of the Ars Technica site. Ben plays with some very cool toys. I have real trouble reading white text on a black background - it is very goth-stylin, but hard on my eyes at the small text sizes I use on my screens. I suppose I could bump the font size up, but would prefer not to. Hmmm. Problem, since he writes about things I want to read about. Ben? I suppose that his content is driven by fitting in with the Ars theming. But check him out - he may be gunning for a slot amongst the daynotes, although he isn't keeping up with the grueling pace that Chris W-J sets for the rest of us. "...travel, wine, writing and technology." Harumph. Call that a job? 'cause I don't (though I sure wish I did, three out of four, anyway).

Howdy. Gardening took up some of the day. You want to see some patio gardening, check out my lovely Marcia's Musings page. You will see the table I assembled from scratch, the hand thrown and glazed pots I made, and ooohhhh, yeah, the buildings I build are all in the background. Yeeeeaahhhh, thaat's da ticket! Wha? Oh, OK. I build the table. I did the bit with the chains. (Don't say it, don't even think it!). Then there was this -

Subject: A question
   Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2000 19:27:51 -0800
   From: Dan Bowman
     To: 'Brian Bilbrey' 

Not of balance (name that tune); but of Linux/Unix:
 
I was going to mention the freebieness (or nearly so) of Sun Solaris 8 on my site 
and to my head geek along the lines of "Pointy-haired ones who don't think anything 
free/opensource/not-produced-by-an-established-firm can possibly work in the 
corporate environment" and I would like your opinion (minus the open source 
issue (although the source code is available also)). 

thanks, dan

http://www.opensource.org/for-suits.html <g>


Orb Home  /  Top (& search)  /  Index & Links  /  Email Bilbrey