Older blog entries for logic (starting at number 13)

Whew, it's been a while.

Research: Put on hold for a while, as real life is getting busier by the day. Eventually, I'm going to need to take a break, which luckily enough is already on it's way; a Carribean cruise in December. We're already counting the days...

Inventory control: I've put together what I think is a reasonable schema so far for a basic inventory control scheme, although it's got a lot of stuff that's specific to my environment in it. Once I've generalized it a bit more, I'll post the results.

Other stuff: In a fit of unbridled annoyance at the lack of functionality rlytest provides (it provides a reasonable basic test, but nowhere near the level of testing provided by the mail-abuse.org "telnet" test), I've begun working on a "work-alike" for the mail-abuse.org relay test, that an administrator can use themselves for the testing of hosts on their own network, either in an automated fashion, or with a quick command-line test. When I have something usable, I'll do the usual Freshmeat announcement thing.

Random: The IP-over-DNS article over at /. caught my eye. Interesting idea, but it seems to me that it's no more than just an academic pursuit. The only real application of it would be for circumventing the security of a particular network (presumably, since you can't create an IP tunnel using a different mechanism due to local policy, you're stuck doing so with this). Cool hack, nonetheless.

As always, more later.

Fun with M17: I'm impressed. This is looking like it will be the first milestone release that I'll be able to use for day-to-day work; sub-windows are now opening properly for the web interface to exchange, and the classic theme (even though it's obviously a work-in-progress) makes actual use much easier on the eyes. Sorry guys, the default theme is hard to look at for any length of time. The only things really missing are decent Java support, and a new PSM module (which I'm expecting soon). Nice work, overall.

Back to school, sorta: Research is going to be my new middle name for the next little while; I've decided to start seriously pursuing a new business avenue, which means I need to be an expert on DSL, campus networking, and all the fun stuff that they entail. Anyone have any literature recommendations for someone who's relatively adept at networking, but just needs to fill in the gaps?

Inventory control: Before I start implementing my own inventory management system, does anyone have a free software recommendation? I need something that will track both physical assets (hardware, serial numbers, etc), and intangibles (software with versions and licenses, etc). If I end up doing this myself, it'll probably be a relatively generic database schema with a PHP frontend or some such. It's not that complicated, I'm sure a quick search on Freshmeat will turn something up...

More later.

Red Hat "Pinstripe" impressions: While the average user isn't going to notice much new (other than a few new apps to make desktop use more attractive), Red Hat has been very busy under the hood; the filesystem layout is much closer to it's other Linux brethren, package layouts have been standardized a bit, they've moved to xinetd instead of the traditional inetd, and XFree86 4.0.1 ships as the default. The new version of RPM is going to give people migranes, however (since packages created are no longer backwards-compatible with older releases; RPM 3.0.5, a "middle-ground" release, has never seen the light of day as part of an OS release yet, and it looks like Red Hat 7.0 will ship with RPM 4.0). I'm seeing semi-random X crashes during screensaver use, but that could be an artifact of the way I did the upgrade. The distribution is spread over two disks now, which is probably going to result in some moaning about how people have to lug around two whole CDs now to do a system install, but I'm fine with it. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the results. Nice work, Red Hat.

More fun with BSD/OS 4.1: I'd never have this much trouble with FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or any Linux distribution. All I want is a working build of binutils 2.10 and gcc 2.95.2...it looks like I may finally have a reasonable build of binutils, but I'm still running into problems with GCC...of course, egcs 2.95.1 (which shipped with the OS) has a series of patches to it which BSDI apparently never folded back into the GCC mainline releases. Fuckers. I don't see any way to get at those patches without owning a copy of BSD/OS either, which might be a potential GPL violation, although I don't have the energy to call them on it just now (mind you, anyone can get a developer's copy of the BSD/OS 4.1 release for free from their website, so maybe it's not an issue?). Once I've got everything building, I'll have to see about cleaning up the patches for the binutils and GCC developers.

On handhelds: Daaaaamn, I gotta get me one of those iPAQ units that Jim Gettys is working on (see handhelds.org for details). I've been looking for a good PDA, and those look pretty reasonable for what I'd want to do with it. Although, Handspring still makes a damn cool little PalmPilot clone...

Today's slogan: "Go away, or I shall replace you with a very small shell script." (Thanks, ThinkGeek.)

Fun with old Linux systems: I've spent the last two days working on getting GCC 2.95.2 built on a Cobalt RaQ1. What a pain in the ass; it's running a special blend of linkers and libraries which requires the builder to explicitly link against libc. Bleh. I'm finding all kinds of problems coming out relating to this.

Fun with Apache: If you ever have the pleasure of installing Apache on Solaris (the version of GCC (2.95.2) and binutils (2.10) I'm using may have something to do with it) using shared modules, be sure to add the configure flag "--enable-rule=SHARED_CORE", or you'll be greeted with fun linking errors at runtime.

Fun with BSDI 4.1: Still don't have a working build of binutils 2.10 on this ass-backwards platform. Anyone have any success stories to share? (It's looking like a libtool-related problem, since ltmain.sh doesn't seem to like BSDI 4.1's "file" command.)

Today's slogan: "I am not here to make you feel better about yourself." (In reference to a work environment.)

Very quick random update, just because I'm in a good mood: my N600 application (for those who don't know INS-speak, it's an application for a Certificate of Citizenship in the U.S.) just got approved, and I should finally have proof of my U.S. citizenship in my hands by the end of August. THREE YEARS to process one little piece of paper. Crazy.

Also, went back to messing around with Python again today, got a basic multi-user chat server working with about 20 lines of code (telnet in, then "quit", "shutdown", or talk to everyone else there). Should be fun fleshing that out a bit; damn, I like that language.

More later when I'm not so busy.

To Iain: You might want to take a peek at Jabber (and it's GTK-based client implementation, Gabber) and Everybuddy. Both of these provide views of multiple instant messaging and chat networks at the same time, and might save you some duplicated effort. I'm sure they could use the help.

In my life: spent the day working with the rest of IS practically ripping our NOC apart moving a dozen machines or so after a rather serious water leak from a frozen (not anymore!) A/C unit mounted directly above the #&*@ing equipment room. Bah. Plus, there's a batch of machines coming in next week that need building and configuring as a "last minute support emergency". Hope the new rack arrives before they do...;-)

Been playing with Jabber lately. Damn, that thing is cool. I have some issues with the security model (you're required to implicitly trust your Jabber server administrator with your other-network passwords, as far as I can tell), but as long as you run your own server, all is good. I'd like to see a Win32 client bundled with a local server for people who don't like that problem, but still want to play without having a real...er...I mean, UNIX system handy.

Hamstrung. Hurts like ever#&*@ing hell. Yay.

That's it for today. More later.

Bah, Advogato really needs an "Edit previous articles" button. As originally submitted, the article didn't have that ugly carriage return in the lead section, but that's how it ended up being posted. Ah well.

Other than ranting about DNS issues, I've been quietly chugging away at the new place of employment. Nothing really new to report (unless you really want to know about the new Trek 4500 bike I picked up a few weeks ago). Life is wonderfully calm for the first time in a few years.

rblcheck is still without a release. I'll stop promising a new release, but I do have plans to do some further work on it this weekend based on a few emails I've received recently. There's a few bugs that will need to be worked out and some documentation to be written before I'll put out a full update.

Whew. What a month.

Celebrating my temporary stint of unemployment, I spent last week with someone special in South Dakota, in the Badlands/Black Hills area. Hiking, caving, swimming, and plenty of rest does a good job of revitalizing a person. I must do that again.

Which brings me to today, my second day at my new job with Mercantec as UNIX Administrator. No more 1.5 hour commute each way, nice desk, nicer desktop, Linux as my primary OS again, and a good feeling about this place. We'll see how things go.

Now that I have a bit more time, I'll hopefully be packaging up a release of rblcheck soon. Plus, I need to find out where people are still getting the XNet URL for the package; it hasn't been there for quite a while now.

More later...

The past eight days could possibly rank as one of the busiest weeks of my life.

Spent all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday moving into the new place. I can't believe I've accumulated that much crap. Just a few more changes of address, and I'm pretty much done.

In the midst of all that, attended a suit-n-tie interview with a national software house for a UNIX administration position. Nailed it, but I'll be turning it down; two acquisitions within the last six months have left most people a little too bitter and stand-offish than I'd prefer to deal with.

Received an offer from another software house which produces a small-business e-commerce package. Accepted a position as a system/network administrator, and should be resigning from my current employer today.

I've been calling people all day getting my contact information changed...hopefully, I'll only lose bills and nothing important. ;-)

Spent an incredible week with my girlfriend, while she studied for her A+ certification and helped with the moving. Helped keep me sane.

Geek-wise, I've got a network to reassemble when I get home tonight. Yeesh, you wouldn't think four machines would require so much effort to move. Work on rblcheck and the mod_virgule to-do list stuff should commence again as soon as I get back online.

That's it for now. More later, I'm sure. :-)

The SourceForge folks took care of the rblcheck CVS repository, so I'm now in a position to start working on it again. Woo!

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