Tom's Insights - Week of 10/15/01

Week of October 15th, 2001

Last Updated: October 26, 2001 19:30

Most Recent : October 17, 2001
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Monday October 15, 2001

I spent all weekend trying to compile a kernel. Life on the bleeding edge can be a tad frustrating at times. There must be a Zen Koan out there somewhere that says, "when applying multiple patches to a Linux kernel order is critical and patience is a virtue". Yeah, whatever...

I started with 2.4.12, then patched it to 2.4.13-pre2 to take advantage of a reworked wavelan_cs driver. Then I had to slip the ext3 patch in, as my filesystems are formatted for ext3. Then, just for fun, I thought I'd try out Robert Love's preemtible kernel patch (here). Trick one: getting all the right patch levels. The preemtible patch is only available for 2.4.13-pre1 or 2.4.12. I couldn't find a ext3 patch for 2.4.12 or 2.4.13-anything. So I dropped back to the least common denominator, which turned out to be Alan Cox's 2.4.12-ac-somethingoranother, which promptly blew up and scattered bytes and bytes all over the wall of my office. Bleh.

I think I'm going to have to go back to a Reiserfs filesystem. My testing of ext3 showed it to be every bit as reliable as Reiser; the problem is, it's not yet well supported or recognized as a viable alternative JFS. Mmm. Time for Caractacus Potts to return to his workshed...

Monday October 17, 2001

I lost my Exchange server yesterday (phoenix). And that indeed is a Grand Bother. After the power failure last week, I restarted the system and got an error message about "inadequate termination" on the bus. Given the machine hadn't been off for several months, I guess that it was a hot-to-cold cable shrink problem. I opened the case, pushed on all the SCSI cables, and re-tried. Off it went. Turns out I had a larger problem brewing.

Yesterday afternoon my connectivity to the machine became sporadic. I figured I again had a cable problem, so I shut down the system, again wiggled all the cables, and fired it up again. This time it would go -- the "termination" error arose and the SCSI BIOS wouldn't load. Mmm. So I tried another cable. Nope. I tried yet another cable. Nope. After about three hours of troubleshooting, it appears my controller is toast. Rats. Good SCSI controllers are not cheap. What really concerns me is that I think the controller may have damaged the HD. I've never heard of such a thing happening, but I suppose it's certainly possible. If the HD is toast as well, the fix is going to be very spendy indeed. Plus the inconvenience of being without a PDC until I can afford to replace the damaged part(s). Great way to start a week...

-oOo-

I suppose it was only a matter of time... Holden sent me the a URL this morning -- it would appear that Microsoft, in a partnership deal with Samsung, is getting in the hardware business. As Holden so aptly put it, "Isn't this the sort of "vertical integration" that is one of the primary characteristics of a monopoly?"

Monday October 19, 2001

We had an anthrax scare here in Saskatoon yesterday. Yep, here in little 'ole Saskatoon.

A Westjet flight was inbound from Winnipeg -- about an hour out of Saskatoon -- when a passenger opened an inflight magazine. Out spilled a bunch of white powder. Alerts went out to all the appropriate authorities. The plane landed here, and was quarantined away from the terminal. HAZMAT crews bordered the plane to investigate. An hour later, the passengers were removed and held at a local fire station until test results were confirmed. It was a hoax. Someone with a bad sense of humor. The whole episode -- and I'm guessing here -- probably cost in excess of $50,000. Emergency crews were dispatched. Tests were done. People were quarantined. The plane was delayed. People missed connecting flights.

Interesting times indeed.

Yes, it's still Monday. At least in my world. It's been a rocky week.

The news on the HD from phoenix is not looking good. I installed it in my workstation (janus) last night, and it booted without incident, but then gave me a "stop error" about half way through the initialization of Windows 2K. Mmmm. Guess I'll have to wait until I get another controller to know for sure...

No further Linux adventures this week; too busy chandelier swinging between other ventures. Maybe this weekend.

If you haven't seen Moes new site yet, go check it out. He's adopted a "Slashdot-style" layout. I like it, and have been considering something similar myself. More stuff for the To-Do list.

Sunday October 21, 2001

Yesterday it... are you ready?... drum roll please... snowed. Yep. Bleh. Oh well. We're overdue for some inclement weather; it didn't linger long, but it was certainly a harsh reminder that winter is around the corner. Amazing. We went from summer to winter in about two weeks.

I had a remarkably productive weekend on the Linux front. Saturday afternoon I installed a clean copy of Slack 8.0 on the rear of phaedrus (all filesystems ReiserFS for compatibility with patches and programs). I then build a new custom kernel using 2.4.12, added some custom scripts, and generally tweaked the base installation. Today I sucked down the latest CVS sources from GCC (3.0.2-pre) and Samba (2.2.3-pre; recommended as several "oplock" fixes were added after the official 2.2.2 release last week). In addition, I compiled QT 3.0.0-beta6, and a couple minor every-day utilities.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the result. In the past, I've spent days trying to get my Slack install to recognize/talk-to my wireless network. This time, it was a two-step waltz: Build the 2.4.12 kernel without PCMCIA support; compile and install the latest PCMCIA-CS drivers (3.1.29). Ta and Da. Love it when that happens. I also had great success in everything I built/compiled this weekend. Things that took me days to finger out in the past, just came together today. Practice does indeed make perfect. The weeks I spent poking, proding, and compiling different programs under RH 7.2 imparted me with a certain degree of wisdom. In short: if you want to understand Linux, nothing beats lots of wrong turns. Not the most efficient way to learn, but certainly -- at least for me -- the one with the deepest tentacles.

We enjoyed a marvelous evening with friends. Long overdue. One of those situations whereby we kept promising to get together, but never managed to get "aroundtuit" until today. The BBQ served up 2 gorgeous T-bones, 3 thick pork chops (marinated in mushroom soup; coated in bread crumbs), and a handful of Menonite sausage. Yum-Yum. Oh yes, and two bottles of home-made red wine. A good time was had by all.

Hope your Sunday was a peaceful and productive as mine...

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