Advogato blog for neuro

10 Jul 2005

Sun, 10 Jul 2005 20:54:49 GMT

start-stop-daemon stop and --exec harmful

So, many people agree that stopping daemons in the preinst and restarting them in the postinst is not ideal, because the services have to be offline for the entire length of the upgrade. One can then simply restart the service in the postinst. The problem is if one uses the --exec option of start-stop-daemon when stopping the process, as the inode numbers will no longer match, as the binary has been upgraded. The same problem happens with a system that has prelinked the binaries since the last time the server was restarted. The stop script will always say that nothing is running. This can be a big problem if a commonly used system library has a security hole (say zlib), and you want to restart all of your daemons so that the new, fixed version is being used. But the init scripts all claim that your daemons aren't running...

10 Jul 2005

Sun, 10 Jul 2005 03:29:22 GMT

wanna-build

On the way to rebuilding libgc for the C++ transition, I got sidetracked by optimizing wanna-build. First I tried replacing the manual regex and formatting that Wrap_DB uses with use of Storable's freeze and thaw on the hash instead. This resulted in a massive slowdown (almost twice as long to list the whole database). Then I tried replacing Wrap_DB with MLDBM using Storable, had to rewrite the code to minimize calls to FETCH and to correctly call STORE on MLDBM. This has resulted in a 3x performance improvement in all database access.

11 Mar 2002

Mon, 11 Mar 2002 06:29:50 GMT

I can't think of anything to write anymore, but wanted an entry from this year...

27 Aug 2001

Mon, 27 Aug 2001 07:42:14 GMT

Nethack

Whew! been a long time. Finally ascended the chaotic wizard, and now I'm thinking of which lawful class to give a try to. Then I might go for the tourist...

mips

Lots more has happened here -- the start of the mipsel auto builders, a change in the mips auto builders, boot floppies for mips, and coming soon for mipsel. The "fucking sysmips" problem should be fixed soon, hopefully improving things for people building a mips-1 userspace, but with mips-2 capable hardware...

misc

I just felt like posting something since the last one was a long time ago. I should go work on w-p now...

27 Jan 2001

Sat, 27 Jan 2001 20:36:35 GMT

Stormix

Well, it seems the word is out now that Stormix has filed under for bankruptcy protection in Vancouver under Canadian law. They call the document "Notice of Intention to make a Proposal", and it basically lists everyone who is owed money, and the amount they are owed. It gives the filer 30 days of protection from creditors to come up with a plan for payment or secure enough money to pay them.

There's a rather ominous entry on January 15th that sort of hints at something, and is when things started happening. Things are not over yet, however, and people may yet see Stormix continue to exist.

Oh, and yes, the real reason that ftp.stormix.com (AKA ftp.ca.debian.org) is down is the cost of bandwidth to keep it running. It's not a cheap investment to give back to the community, and just can't be afforded during this time. I wish it had not been said that it was waiting on hardware, but by the time people were asking, someone else had already answered...

So look for some more news on this in the near future. Unlike what the newsforge article says, the ftp server hasn't been up and down, just down since it was unplugged. Anything affecting the mailing lists in early January has nothing to do with any of this, it was actually a server shuffle/upgrade of things, and the resulting DNS changes taking time to propagate.

And yes, this is my diary, not any sort of statement on behalf of Stormix, of course...

mips

So, I've got this Indy, and a few weeks ago, there wasn't even a compiler in the Debian system I installed. Now, I have a build daemon running, and am building ~200 packages per day. It's been rather interesting building most of Debian -- you see what packages haven't been touched since the slink days, and how they don't compile anymore, a few bugs in the builder (sbuild), and lots of interesting build-depends that aren't correct. It's been quite fun, now I just have to sort out collisions with the other people working on it.

Games

Played settlers of Catan a few days ago with wheat. It was rather fun, and now I'm looking for people who might want to play gnocatan with. I still have to get the right bit of luck for my chaotic wizard, as I just seem to keep dying....oh well. I've also been playing Armagetron, and wonder if anyone knows where some network play servers might be hiding at?

15 Jan 2001

Mon, 15 Jan 2001 16:21:53 GMT

Nethack

I finally did finish that nethack game, with my first ascension. Yah! Now I'm working on a chaotic wizard....

I'm finally moved in and almost fully unpacked. Mostly the boxes of stuff that would just sit on a shelf mostly, anyways. I may just leave them where they are now until I actually need something from one of them....

D-Day

1 Nov 2000

Wed, 1 Nov 2000 08:42:01 GMT

I managed to recover MagicBane and the Orb of Fate with relative ease. Then I went and blew up my back of holding with all the nice items in it, after a nasty demon decided to curse it. I got it back to blessed status with only a handful of items lost, then I put the wrong wand in the bag, and BOOM! I lost all the candles I had found thusfar in the game, so now I have to bide my time and get some more. I just got a wand of polymorph, tho, so I may be able to recover....

Looking at the diaries, it seems that the current game of nethack has now spanned three months. It's definately the longest I've ever had....

I've also got the whole moving thing mostly worked out. I found out that the cable company doesn't set up any sort of appointment until you've moved in, if you only want bandwidth, and don't care for the television. Since I don't have a TV (and was looking forward to not having one), I don't really want the cable television. ADSL in the same area costs more for about the same or slightly less, and you have to fight for it on the waiting list. :(

So now I have everything ready for the big move, except for the bandwidth, which I've always said is the first thing to get sorted before moving. Oh well.

Does any other place out there have "running red light" cameras? These wonderful things take your picture if you are in the intersection when the light turns red. On a smoky Halloween night when it is hard enough to see in front of you, I feel that hitting the gas on the yellow light, and making it through the intersection, is a much better choice than hitting the brakes and risking the person behind you slamming into the back of you. I watched the camera flash in the rear view as I was going up the hill past the intersection, so maybe it is that it took a picture of nothing. If I end up getting a picture of my car, this is one I'll fight.

Why can't they get some decent code to factor things in like visibility? It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to do, really.

3 Oct 2000

Tue, 3 Oct 2000 18:33:44 GMT

I dropped MagicBane and the Orb of Fate in Jubilex's lair. I have no way to get them back -- yet.

I visited a rather nice place on Sunday, only to find out that it was a Microwave. It had glass all along the outer wall, and a solarium. Since the whole place was a big solarium, I don't understand why there was a seperate room (which was large enough for a chair) as well.

Sunday night, Trakker lets me know of a vacancy in his building. I go by the next day, and now I've got the place part of moving solved. Now for the rest of it....

29 Sep 2000

Fri, 29 Sep 2000 19:46:30 GMT

I updated this:

-----BEGIN NETHACK CODE BLOCK-----
NH 3.3.1L D rmurray-VF HP:180 Pw:62 AC:-25 N
[++ )+ P S+ D+ p+ $ t- s++ W+ E- PS PP G+ C-- I+++ !@W N b--
B Y+ X-- So++
Sp++ !sb wb-
-----END NETHACK CODE BLOCK-----

I got my name in the food-331.txt spoiler file, fixing up strength from giants. I guess I have a complaint that there is no nethack code for that!

Busy time lately, but I'm going to try to post a bit more often. I still need to move soon, and plan to do a lot of looking tomorrow, after I wake up from the ActiveState party tonight...

17 Jun 2000

Sat, 17 Jun 2000 09:40:09 GMT

I've had a few good nethack games since the end of May. The last one ended abruptly with a trickery, because I somehow managed to get two nethacks running at once, and quit one. I've got a better game going now, however, and most of the office now has a new addiction...:)

CDs are coming along well, it actually installs something, and you can reboot into it. Soon I hope it will be done...

This diary entry is so late because I haven't had time lately, and I haven't had a weekend, either. I need to really look for a new place to live this weekend, so I'll be having one of them.

Big Blue Room is getting annoying, and causing allergies to appear yet again. I liked it better when you couldn't see the big yellow thing. :)