|
|
|
Week of November 19th, 2001
Last Updated: November 26, 2001 19:28
Most Recent : November 25, 2001
Last Week
Next Week
Insights Index
Daynotes.com
Email: tom@syroidmanor.com
As a friend of mine would say, "And there is was, gone". Thursday. Friday. The weekend. Poof. Gone.
We had another fun and relaxing weekend. Once again, we had our friend Billy over and he wooped up a storm both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was Vietnamese. Soup and rolls. Delicous and lots of hands-on fun. Sunday was salmon filets in filo pastry. Rice. Laughter. And fun.
Nothing like laughter and friendship when it comes to living life to the fullest.
Lots of news overdue from last week. The one thing that I really hate about computers is that when things start to go for a shit, they really domino.
My Linksys RAIDserver stopped working on Thursday. Dunno. It just quit. An error light on the front panel is my only clue that something is amiss (well, other than the fact I can't connect to it). I opened it up and checked all wires and cables -- nada. Mmm. Rats and bother. Yet another thing to fix.
And hours after alerting the world to the TechSmith's new version of SnagIT, I installed said program under XP, and it promptly drove my CPU utilization to 100%. Uninstall and back to ye 'old drawing board.
For those who are wondering why I'm not saying much about Linux these days, it's because I'm not using Linux. Until nVidia come out with a relatively stable driver, the OS is of little use to me as far as a daily work environment. Hopefully soon.
I'm not going to try and catch up from last week -- we'll just start fresh this week. Onward and upward.
Heh-heh... Saw this in a sig today and had to post it:
rm -rf /bin/laden
Heh-heh-heh... I'll be back later tonight with a full update.
Snow's heading our way -- tomorrow or tomorrow night is the forecast. It's supposed to warm by the weekend, which will turn our back alley into another mire. Bleh. Oh well. Spring creeps ever closer. And to be honest, we really haven't experienced any weather of significance yet and it's already almost December...
I'm getting there. Again, computing's like that. You go on for days, sometimes weeks, without progress on any fronts. Sometimes it seems like you're going backwards, in a hurry (like my HW frustrations of late). Then the sun breaks out from behind the clouds, and suddenly everything just works.
I've been trying to get the latest Apache beta (2.0.28) to compile on Hydras for almost a week now. I've been going back and forth with one of the project developers who has a passing familiarity with AIX (most developers, when I tell them I run AIX 5L, run the other way and/or throw their hands up in the air). The compilation process was falling down. We looked at header files, talked about "sanitizing" the headers on my system, and generally chased our own tails until we became dizzy. Tonight I removed GCC 3.0.1 and re-installed 2.95.3. In less than an hour I had sucessfully built the latest CVS SAMBA_2_2 tree, and built and installed OpenSSH 3.0.1. Apache still won't build, but I'm getting closer. The problem now appears to lie in the libpthreads.a file, which -- I do believe -- has been fixed in the maintenance release that was released for 5L a few weeks ago. I've been holding off installing it as it needs a reboot after it's applied, and I don't like to reboot my server during the week; I typically do not install anything as major as a service update during the week. Waiting for the weekend means not only lighter loads, but it also means that if something goes south I can simply restore the root volume group from backup tape. Not something I'd want to be messsing with the phone ringing off the hook, or an important project due.
Anywhoo... here's the status of the program versions currently running on Hydras:
-oOo-
Overall, I'm pleased. I've been putting off upgrading any of the key programs running on Hydras as I was waiting for the product development cycle to mature and/or refine. I'm pleased with Samba -- the 2.2.2+ tree is noticeably faster and more responsive than 2.2.1. OpenSSH simply works. The 3.0.1 release fixes several bugs and tightens up some of the code. CommuniGate also just works
? ? ? WTF ? ? ?
Geez. What a messed up week. I just noticed tonight that my post of Wednesday disappeared, along with the last part of the last paragraph from Tuesday, along with my bottom matter... Bother, as Pooh would say.
So how the heck are ya'? I trust my American friends and neighbors had a wonderful turkey day, spent time with family, and ate way too much.
My XP installation went for a big poop on Thursday. I spent most of the day trying to fix it, but eventually gave up in disgust. I have no idea what happened. The whole system became sluggish, I suddenly started getting great long pauses between keystrokes and seeing the result on-screen (nothing more infuriating for a relatively fast typist like me), and my wireless card starting cutting out for long periods. I suspect this all had something to do with the fact I was running a driver (my Linksys wireless card) that was incompatible with XP, but why would it take two weeks to manifest? Oh well -- I stopped asking questions about Windows years ago...
So I spent the day putting Windows 2000 back on my notebook. Took much longer than I anticipated; I guess I'm out of practice... It also took me awhile to get my wireless card working. I finally stumbled on the correct installation order by accident (spelled, much trial and error). It's hardly intuitive, but I want to talk to Linksys before bad-mouthing anyone. Could be I just didn't have my ducks correctly aligned.
Hydras is wearing new shoes. I updated AIX 5L to ML (Maintenance Level) 01. Everything went off without a hitch. I also learned how to add OpenSSH to the AIX System Resource Controller (SRC) subsystem — which means it starts automatically after a reboot, respawns itself if the process ever gets killed, and can be refreshed with a simple command (refresh -s sshd).
Samba 2.2.3-pre is running like a clock; so is CommuniGate 3.5 beta 9. Life is good.
The snow forecasters have been threatening all week has — so far — failed to materialized. It remains cold (well, cool; -3C) and grey, however. Only a matter of time now...
I have no idea what I'm going to get up to this weekend. For the first time since I-can't-remember-when, I have nothing pressing to attend to. The house is reasonably clean; we dabbled with this and that during the week. The laundry is current. My office could use a slight shuffle, but the paperwork pile on my desk is 2" instead of 2 feet.
I think now that I have the 5L-ML01 package installed on Hydras, and I know it's stable and working as advertised, I'll tackle some of the minor maintenance "To-Do"s I've been shuffling onto the back-burner for two or three months. I want to compile the latest prngd code (Pseudo Random Number Generator Daemon — used by OpenSSL and other cryptographic programs) and install it as a SRC process as I did with OpenSSH. I also have some startup scripts to rewrite to reflect some of the knowledge and insights I've picked up over the past six months. It's also probably about time for a "file flush"; I noticed several old program versions in my /stor directory when I was shuffling files the other day. There's always something to do.
I remain impressed with HomeSite 5; so much so, I ordered a copy yesterday. My trial period is almost done, and the product provides me everything I need for all my XML/HTML chores — and then some. Time to put my money where my mouth is.
Oh yeah... there's a new version of Mulberry out (2.2.1). It's mostly a collection of bug fixes, but it's worth installing. It fixed several annoying little gotcha's I've experienced under Win2K.
-oOo-
While scouring my Inbox this afternoon I stumbled across an excellent article on Journalling Filesystems (ext3 versus ReiserFS). I always thought the difference between ext3 and RFS was akin to the difference between a Chev and a Ford. Not so. Recommended reading.
It's snowing tonight. Sorta. It's a light snow, and while it's falling from the sky here, thanks to the wind it's probably actually landing on the ground somewhere down in Wyoming. Rather inhospitable out tonight; I'm glad I don't have to go anywhere.
A productive weekend, all things considered. I took a big bite out of my planned "file flush", dumped a pile of old versions, copied a bunch of material off to CD-R for backup and/or archive, and downloaded a handful of new stuff to fill the hole left by my cleaning efforts... heh-heh-heh.
WinZip (a trusty favorite of mine) has a new beta out. Version 8.1 has some slick new context menus that are enormously useful. If you use WinZip, you'll want this update. OutBack Plus has a new bug fix release out, 3.0.3. Can't say I stumbled across any problems in the last release, but obviously someone did and they're fixed. I also downloaded Sun's latest Java SDK, 1.4 beta 3. The XML parser I use requires a Java SDK. Version 1.4 addresses some annoying bugs I've been playing hopscotch with for several months -- we'll see how well tomorrow.
I didn't get any tinkering done on my AIX system files; instead I spent the day re-installing Linux on my notebook (removed it when I was messing around with XP a few weeks back). It went far smoother than I anticipated. In the past I've configured the built-in NIC only during installation, then configured my wireless card after-the-fact. This time I left the wireless in, and did both at once. And this time around, I had no problems whatsoever getting wireless to work. Go figure. I used RH 7.2 simply because it was handy, and because it was one of the most current distros on my shelf. I then applied all of RH's current security and bug fix patches, which included a new kernel (2.4.9-13). I then pulled down and compiled kernel 2.4.15. That didn't go so good. I used the config file from 2.4.9, and changed the processor type and toggled the new "Dell Inspiron 8000" support option. Which caused to me loose my wireless card. Bleh. I didn't spend a lot of time fiddling -- I'll leave that as an exercise for next week. X is configured (I'm running the latest nVidia drivers), and KDE has been updated to 2.2.2-1. Mulberry 2.2.1 for Linux is installed and running. Not a bad afternoon's work...
Dinner was homemade beef and barley soup. Just the thing to warm the body and fill the tummy. Hope your weekend was a good one. I'm off to get the kids into bed.
Send questions or comments about this site to
webmaster@syroidmanor.com.
Copyright © 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 Tom Syroid. All Rights Reserved
Last modified:
October 26, 2001