Humans: The Best Torturers
A divorce is never a nice thing. When you’re lucky, both parties are benevolent towards each other, but even then things can get out of control. In this case, the divorce is a real war, with several bombing runs.
Today, Hanneke learned that, against her wishes, her soon-to-be ex-husband decided to get rid of Hanneke’s dogs. They had an agreement about that, a friend of Hanneke was more than happy to take care of the dogs, if they were too much of a burden for Hanneke’s ex-husband. So, Hanneke called her lawyer, her lawyer called his lawyer and her lawyer called back. Again, Hanneke is upset. Probably just what her ex-husband wanted to achieve.
I’ll never get that. I can understand the resentment and the feeling of wantig to hurt the other, if only to get even for the hurt she caused him, but to actually act upon that feeling… Well, apparantly humans only act like they’re sophisticated, they’re real beasts underneath.
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Squirrelmail 1.4.4 is doing something wierd
I’m not sure what exactly. The thing is, I’ve got an email-message about 40k. The recipient can’t view the message, he’ll get a “Maximum execution time reached for mime.php” with a variable line number behind that. The line number is 824, 825 or 1453 or something like that, but it switches.
Now, one might assume something is wrong with the message. Since the message is quite long, it’s not time efficient to go through all of it. So as a test, I wanted the message in my own inbox, so I could test between which lines things would break. I opened up a telnet session with localhost on port 25, told it it was getting MAIL FROM: me and RCPT TO: was my address of the webmail server. Then I parsed the complete message.
I logged into Squirrelmail and tried the message… and it worked. Without any trouble, I got the message on my screen in less than a second. I thought I could simply diff the two mail-sources to see what’s wrong.
Since we’re using Cyrus IMAP, we could identify the messages and diff them. The diff didn’t produce anything spectacular, but for completeness, I’ll put them here, a bit anonymised.
1,2c1,15
< From bla@bla.com
< Return-Path: <original.sender@otherco.com>
---
> Return-Path: <tim@myco.com>
> Received: from mail.endhost.com ([unix socket])
> by endhost (Cyrus v2.1.18-IPv6-Debian-2.1.18-1) with LMTP; Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:20:34 +0200
> X-Sieve: CMU Sieve 2.2
> Received: from localhost (endhost [127.0.0.1])
> by mail.endhost.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 82D6BD000C
> for <tim@endhost.com>; Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:20:34 +0200 (CEST)
> Received: from mail.endhost.com ([127.0.0.1])
> by localhost (mail.endhost.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024)
> with LMTP id 08140-06 for <tim@endhost.com>;
> Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:20:28 +0200 (CEST)
> Received: from test (endhost [127.0.0.1])
> by mail.endhost.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C80C4D0004
> for <tim@endhost.com>; Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:19:20 +0200 (CEST)
> X-Mailbox-Line: From bla@bla.com
50c63,64
< X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.7 tagged_above=-99.0 required=5.0 tests=AWL,
---
> X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-20030616-p10 (Debian) at endhost.com, maintained by CIDEV v.o.f.
> X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.8 tagged_above=-99.0 required=5.0 tests=AWL,
1036a1051
>
If you’ve got any ideas why this works for me but not for the original recipient, please let me know!
Update The IRC channel helped me, I had to disable HTML viewing. The code for this is apparantly a bit buggy, but it’s being rewritten. The other account had HTML display standard but my own account didn’t have it, so that’s why it worked for me but not for him.
Shutdown on Dell PowerEdge 2850 and 750
Note to self
When you want a shutdown to work under Linux on a Dell PowerEdge 2850 or PowerEdge 750, make sure you modprobe the module “ac”. This is the ACPI module for controling the power supply. You need it for a correct power down.
Update 12:00 Apparantly, this only works for the 750 
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Postfix + saslauthd + SMTP AUTH + TLS
You know, I love Open Source, but sometimes it’s a real drag. But why am I complaining, since at least Open Source offers the oppertunity for nice security or hardly any security. I just got SMTP AUTH and SMTP STARTLS working on Postfix on a Debian Sarge machine. It takes a few steps, but in the end you at least have something worth while. It’s a bit tricky, but luckily most parts are very well documented on the Internet. The sources I used to get this stuff up and running are:
- Postfix/SASL/TLS HowTo for Debian Sid and Sarge
- Postfix SMTP AUTH with TLS on Debian GNU/Linux (mostly used for the saslauthd part)
Take especially good care of the copying of stuff to the Postfix chroot-dir. I considered disabling chroot, but decided against it. It’s just safer with the chroot in place. The hassle it takes is only a one time thing. Now it will work even through an upgrade, I think. Have fun with this.
Suicide
About ten years ago, when I was 15, I met a friend whom I hadn’t seen for years. When we were about 10, we played a lot together. He heard about my computer-’addiction’ at that time and we talked during a whole period at school. It was a Monday and we planned on meeting up that next weekend. I was thrilled to have talked to him again, since we were quite good friend when we were younger.
That next Wednesday, I had my birthday. And school too. After two period, we had Geography. I can still remember it very well. The teacher walked in like a zombie. I knew her well, since I talked to her a few times in private about the way things were going at home. My mother left my father that year in February and we had a really rough time. She sat down and didn’t even try to stop the noise. Seeing her lack of authority as an excuse, my fellow-classmates started making more noise. I sat right there in the front and I could see the distress radiating from her. She sat there, quietly, with her hands in front of her mouth. After a few minutes, the class noticed her behaviour and became all attention. Questions were being raised, “what’s wrong, misses?” The class went dead-quiet.
She started to speak. “I heard some really bad news during the break. Really, really bad news.” Still all attention, we tried to make her tell us the news. She told us she wasn’t allowed to, but that it shook her very much. It was quiet again. Then we heard a few screams of anguish from down the hall. I mean, not like children playing and hurting each other, real cries of pain. At night, sometimes, when I’m in a brooding mood, I can still hear those screams. She turned to us and said “Well, seems like they told his class. Now I can tell you.” I could feel the whole classroom not breathing anymore. She started to talk, paused, and then started anew. “Someone died yesterday.”
We looked at each other, not understanding what she meant. When we asked after it, at first she couldn’t talk. Then she said “It’s someone from this school, he was here a year before you, about a year older than most of you.” I have always been one of the oldest of the class, because I’m born in November. I had a lot of friend in that class she was talking about, probably most of my friend were in that class. We finally pried the name from her. It was the old friend I spoke to last Monday.
I think I just sat there, staring at a point far in front of me. I remember the teacher asking me if I knew him. I told her that I hadn’t spoken to him in several years, but that we met again last Monday. She gave me leave to leave the classroom for some water, but I didn’t want to. The class was full of noise again, but not as loud as earlier. I remember not really believing her, thinking about waking up that morning and if it was real.
Later, we heard that he had committed suicide by accident. He heard about some sexual game on tv, something to do with a rope around the neck, and he tried it out. Alas, he had asthma and when the rope was tied, he got one of his attacks. His mother found him, naked and suffocated. My parents knew his parents and my father told me she never went back to being her old self. Not that I can blame her. It was a very sad accident.
A few years later, an uncle of mine committed suicide. He was very deep in gambling debts and apparantly didn’t see a way out anymore. It was the start of summer and he married again not six months earlier. He left a widow with major debts and four children. I don’t know what became of her and I’m not brave enough to ask my dad.
His daughter, a girl from a previous marriage, my full niece, a few years older than me, found him, locked in his car with a tube from the exhaust wedged between the window and the motor running. He too was all blue and puffed. I can’t imagine what the sight most have done with my niece, but I can’t imagine her ever sleeping soundly anymore.
Yesterday, a friend of Hanneke was here. She was supposed to spent the night. During dinner, she got a phone call. A boy in the street where she lives, a friend of her daughter, tried to commit suicide. The children were gossiping about it and she was quite shaken. She gave her husband some instructions (it’s always kinda sweet to see how a mother always takes charge when something affects her children) and continued eating. We talked about children’s suicide (the boy was 13 years old) and she told us that the last six months had been terrible, with two suicides and one attempted suicide from kids in about the same neighbourhood. I’ve been reading about that a bit online and in some magazines and it appears to be some kind of morbid hype, children talking to each other and glamourizing suicide.
I had a birthday to visit yesterday evening and a movie to see with Monique (Miss Congeniality 2, don’t waste your money on this one, it’s complete crap). Since I was on my cellphone for about an hour and a half yesterday, the batteries were about empty and I turned it off early. When I came home, at about 2.45am, all the lights were on. That’s very strange, since my dad always turns out the lights when he’s going to bed. Not seldom does he turn of the light when I’m still in the room, just because it’s a habit of him. Also, I noticed his car was gone. I turned on my cellphone to see if he left me a message. He had. In the message he told me that Hanneke’s friend had had another phonecall telling her the attempted suicide wasn’t just an attempt, the boy had died. So my father and Hanneke were taking her back home (that’s my dad, fuck the 3 hour drive, she needs to be home, I really love my dad).
Once, I thought suicide was something I could try myself. I was very depressed and didn’t think my worries would ever be solved. I took on the whole world, thought that all the wars of the world were somehow my doing. Or at least something that would come back to haunt me. I couldn’t do a thing about those things, but still they made me feel very, very depressed. Then I noticed what happened to the people closest to someone who commits suicide. They never get over it. Never ever. It’s a large scar on their life and a thing never forgotten. Then I realised, committing suicide is the most egotistical thing you can do. It’s not a solution, it’s not a way out. It’s running away from your fears, not taking responsibility for your own life and the lifes for the people who love you. Loving someone is a weak spot and something to be cherished. It’s the worst hurt, if someone uses that weak spot to hurt you. By commiting suicide, you’re hurting the people that love you. Suicide is not problem-solving. And problem solving is what you need when you really consider suicide. It’ll come back to hunt you in Hell (since people who commit suicide don’t go to Heaven) or your next life (due to the negative karma) or whatever you believe in. And just think of the pain you’d leave behind!
When you’re young, at times you can feel very depressed about life. But what helped me the most, was probably the insight that you can’t have happiness without pain. If you didn’t know pain, you wouldn’t recognise happiness if it hit you in the face. Pain and happiness are relative terms, not absolutes. If you know very, very deep pain, you can be sure life will treat you to the other end of the spectrum eventually, supreme happiness. I’m convined of that.
Can you truly be happy when you’re feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders? Yes. When you find the first piece of happiness (trust in yourself), the weight gets lighter. Will the pain ever go away? No. I can still be very depressed when I watched the news and saw yet another family destroyed because of some madman. Or the tsunami that hit South Asia last christmas. That still hurts. That’s what makes me a compasionate person. I’m proud of that. But I can share the pain with someone I love and the happiness she gives me in return balances out the pain. It does, truly.
I’m glad I never committed suicide.
Living together
I’m so much looking forward to living together with Monique. It’s still some months in the future, I guess, but we’re already making the plans together. Which furniture we want, how big Fluffy’s cage will be (I’m planning on making one myself), which appliances we’ll need to buy and which ones we can loan from family and friends, how our days will be filled (working, mostly, but after work we’ll be together), who will cook and who will do the dishes, if we want a wooden floor or carpet (wood, of course, since Fluffy’s ‘accidents’ will be easier to remove), curtains, tv, grass or stone in the backyard, wallpaper or paint, gas or electric, wooden, metal or plastic cutlery, lots of plants or lots of flowers, waterbed or not (not, probably), where I will stash my books, my plates or her plates, large fridge or not, normal lights or LEDs, will I buy her car so she can buy a new one, how much will we fight, who can come over for the house warming party, …
I know I sound like a love-sick puppy, but you know, I still am one. Very much in love with Monique.
New layout
Went dancing tonight with Monique again. I always feel full of energy when I get home after dancing. So instead of sleeping, I decided to do some work on the layout of my blog. Let me know if you like it. It supposed to be a little ‘busy’, since, I reckoned, these are my random thoughts and all, so it should be a little bit messy. But not eye-sore-like 
So let me know. Leave a comment 
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cvs2svn and binary files
Note to self:
When using cvs2svn (link seemed dead at time of this writing) to migrate a repository from CVS to Subversion (link seemed dead at time of this writing) on a repository that contains a lot of binaries (in particular, OpenOffice.org files and PDF’s and the like, give the --no-default-eol option to have Subversion treat the binaries correctly.
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Evolution gives a CORBA error
If Evolution won’t start correctly and gives you error messages ending in:
CORBA error: IDL:omg.org/CORBA/COMM_FAILURE:1.0
Do a search on your whole harddisk for orbit-<username> and delete these directories. Took me 40 minutes to find out.
Review: Mandriva Linux 2005 Limited Edition
I’ve been using MandrakeLinux for several years now. It’s my personal, favourite desktop. Not because it’s “So Bleeding Edge” or “Damn Good” or anything, but because for me, it always just worked. I’m a tinkerer and a technogeek, but I want my workplace to work without any fuss. So that’s why I’ve been using Mandrake since version 8.1. Time to check the latest, MandrivaLinux 2005 Limited Edition. And since I’m a Club-member, I got them early!
Okay, so I downloaded the 6 CD iso’s and the DVD iso. I’m going to do a full new install. I backupped all my sensitive data (most of it is on the server anyhow) and try to install from the DVD first. If that doesn’t work, I’ll do the 6 CD install and I’ll play disc jockey for a while.
First, the hardware:
- Intel Celeron 1GHz
- 512MB RAM
- 1x NEC DVD+RW
- SB Live!
- Some on-board soundcard I never use
- Netgear MA311 Wifi NIC
- nVidia GeForce 2 GTS (I believe…)
- 1x 18GB Western Digital hard disk
- 1x 111GB Western Digital hard disk
- Logitech M-BD58 Optical Mouse
- Compaq Presario MA700 monitor
- Compaq Presario Internet keyboard
- Logitech Skype-approved USB headset
And that’s about it, I believe.
I’ll be doing a specific setup where I want the bootable part and my /home on a software raid 1, divided over the two discs. The rest, which will be about 18GB on the smaller disc an about 95GB on the large disc, I want in an LVM array for my storage needs. Preferably, I want my /home encrypted, but that’s not really all that necessary.
Let’s get started with the DVD.
DVD install
Well, the machine boots from the DVD and I’m getting a nice splash screen. The graphic is cute, but not really impressive (somehow I always want those graphics to be impressive). I press Enter and I get to see the splash screen again. No annoying text messages running over the screen, a major improvement for a distribution that wants to be n00b-friendly.
I’m getting the familiar Mandrake Installation screen in which I can select my language. Since I prefer English on the desktop, but do like to have spellchecking and the like for Dutch (my native tongue) available, I choose both. As usual, the list of available languages is very, very long. Even Limburgs, my local dialect, is represented. Although I doubt it if packages are actually translated in Limburgs
Next I accept the license, which is normal enough.
The following screen asks me if I want to update or install. I’ve had a few very bad experiences with updating Mandrake, so I prefer to reinstall. Besides, I want to change my disc layout, so I’ll have to reinstall anyway. I choose Install and a US keyboard in the next screen.
Security is always an important thing in Linuxland. Most distribution (alas not all of them) implement good enough security. Mandrake always had draksec and it’s implemented in Mandriva too. For other desktops I install (like my dad’s) I choose Standard security. For my own machine, which will be online 24/7, I choose high. And I enter my own email-address as “Security Administrator”.
Then starts the partitioning. I select “Custom disk partitioning”, because of the special stuff I wanted. Let’s see how it works.
First I clear all partitions. That’s easy to do. The tabs on top switch between hda and hdb, my two drives. Let’s think about this a bit. I’ll be needing a large enough / partition, but 1GB is more than enough. Then I’ll need seperate /usr and /var partition. Let’s make /usr 5GB, since I usually install a lot of programs, since I like to test those often. And I think 1GB is enough for /var, since I won’t be using this machine as a server of any kind. It’ll mostly contain logfiles. Since I’ll be using a /large directory for storage of big files, my /home will have enough space with just 10GB. That makes a software RAID 1 device of 17GB in all. But let’s not forget a swap partition. I want my computer to survive a harddisk failure, so I’m putting 1GB of swap in, too. Which makes a grand total of 18GB. Exactly the size of the first disk. I’m not going to use RAID on my /tmp or /large, since those aren’t all that important and it leaves more space for actually storing stuff.
First, I toggle to Expert mode. Then I select the partition of hda (the 18GB disk). “Create” will create the partition. I set “Size in MB” to the maximum (in this case, 19092) and for Filesystem type I choose “Linux RAID”. I leave the rest as it is. Ok makes the partition. I switch to hdb and make exactly the same partition there (exact same size in MB and filesystem type Linux RAID). Then I go back to hda, select the red-colored partition and select “Add to RAID” in the menu underneath. The next menu is simple, I want device md0 and RAID level 1. I leave the chunk size in KiB as it is, 64. Ok. I do the same for the partition on hdb. When I select “Add to RAID”, I get a menu asking me if I want to add it to md0 or to another, new device. I want to add it to md0, so that’s easy, the default choice. Ok.
I noticed another, new tab when I first added the partition on hda. It’s called “raid”. I select the tab to see that the installation program automagically created one large ext3 partition on this new device. I don’t want it, so I delete it. Damn, that was stupid, I deleted to complete RAID device. Let’s see what’s going on here. I repeat the process of adding the partitions to the RAID and again, there’s a large ext3 partition on the raid device. Not exactly what I want… I’m checking what I can do with this partition.
Apparantly, Mandriva did something wierd, because when I say I want it mounted as /, Mandriva gives me a message that I should have a /boot, because no bootmanager kan boot from a RAID partition… That’s strange. I’m not sure if this is normal behaviour for Linux software RAID and at the moment I’m not in the mood to search the ‘Net for the answer. So I decide to make several RAID devices and add a /boot.
I delete the partition I already have and start anew. First, I make a small /boot partition, 50MB in size. It’s going to be ext3, nothing fancy. Then I create a RAID partition for my /, 1GB in size. I do the same on hdb, exactly the same size, and I add both to the same RAID device, md0. There’s that “raid” tab again. I choose it and select Mount Point /, Type ReiserFS (a lot of people bitch about Reiser, but it has served me well these last few years). That’s all I change. I go back to hda and create the RAID partition for the swap, 1024MB. The same on hdb. No new tab, but when I go to the “raid” tab, I can see two partitions on there. The first one is /, so the second one will be my swap. I select it and change it to become my swap. Back to hda. I do this several times for the rest of the partitions. I get:
- a /, 1019MB (rounding error, I presume)
- a swap, 1019MB (same rounding error)
- a /var, 1019MB
- a /usr, 4.8GB (close enough)
- and a /home, 10GB
As I told you before, I prefer to have my /home encrypted so I choose that from Options. I select “encrypted” and get a new screen. It asks me for an encryption key twice (as in, a passphrase) and the encryption algorithm. The algorithm goes from AES128 to AES2048. Although AES128 would be more than enough, I choose to use AES256. And no, I’m not giving you my passphrase 
I still have 93GB on hdb, I’ll format it as XFS and mount it under /large.
Then I choose “Done and the partitions are written to the disk and formatted. In the meantime I asked Bart about the partitioning and he tells me that it’s indeed normal for a software RAID device to only contain one partition. He solves it by putting a LVM partition on it, so he can distribute that one again. And he tells me booting should be possible too, with lilo and even grub. Ah well, let’s stick with the Mandriva tales for the moment.
Now it’s getting interesting: Package selection. Let’s go crazy, let’s choose everything except LSB, servers and Gnome/Other desktop. It wants to install 3GB. That’s okay, go ahead.
I’m not sure how long the installation took, since I went walking with Aagje for about 50 minutes, when I arrived back here, it was waiting for me to enter the root password. Of course I’m using a secure root password because, even though I’m using an encrypted partittion, the partition is still being mounted when I start the computer, which makes it easy for intruders to see the contents.
The next thing is making the first user, which will of course be me. I fill in some values and choose a cool penguin as my icon. I accept the user and go on. After that it seems to be installing some stuff and ends with the preperation of the bootmanager. I want it in the MBR and choose next. Again, it seems to be installing stuff, but it’s not telling me what it is installing, unless I press “Details”. Apparantly, it’s the kernel 2.6 source. I’m not sure why it is installing that, since a normal desktop doesn’t need the kernel source. Ah well.
On a positive note, it seems to be installing the nVidia drivers, which is a Good Thing©. Next, I see the summary. In it, I get the option to configure the network. Since I’m using Wifi, I need to do this by hand. It detects the RTL8139 card without a problem and here I see something that’s new: The possibility to use ndiswrapper to load a windows driver in Linux. Nice. Not something I’ll ever use (I rather spend money supporting vendors who sell hardware that’s usable under Linux), but still nice to at least have the option available. Most of the options are obvious, I’m using DHCP, I don’t need to track the netword card id, I want to start the network at boot, I’m not using WPA and I want to use the network with ESSID “stoop”. Everything else I’m leaving empty.
After the network is up, I want to detect the printer that’s running on my dad’s computer. I’m not running a local cups server, since my dad’s pc is running one. Next, the firewall. I often want to connect to my desktop machine from the internet. So I check if the firewall let’s me connect to port 22. It doesn’t, so I tell it to allow it.
Last but not least, let’s tell the computer I’m not living in the United States, but in The Netherlands. Timezone is set automatically to “Europe/Amsterdam”. Now, to check the services that are started by default. I don’t have any bluetooth stuff in the machine, so I disable that. I don’t use the Zeroconf networking option, so I can disable mDNSResponder and nifd. Also, I’m not using NFS, so I can disable netfs and nfslock. All done.
It asks me if I would want to install the updates. Yes, I want that. The installation program automagically brings up the network connection and contact the Mandriva website for the mirrors. Apparantly there aren’t any updates, since nothing is installed. I get the option to reboot… Let’s do so. It doesn’t automagically eject the DVD, so I do that manually.
First boot
A new splash! Although it’s the same one as you see when you start the installation. When it get’s to mounting the encrypted partition, the boot process disables the splash screen and asks me if I want to mount the encrypted partition. I’ll have to enter the password and all looks well.
Some things are going wrong, though. Since the boot process doesn’t go back to the splash screen, I’m seeing everything that’s going wrong. The first thing I see is something with the nVidia drivers. It’s trying to install something, but doesn’t mention what. But when the display manager is loaded later on, it starts with the nVidia logo, so I guess everything worked out alright.
Another thing that’s going wrong (although it isn’t really a biggy) is the network. The boot process is bringing up eth0 nicely, but wlan0, the device I configured during the installation, wasn’t found. Not sure what went wrong here. I’m definitely not happy with this.
Graphics come up with MandrakeFirstTime (I always hated that program), but the first thing I do is leave for the prompt with Alt+Ctrl+F1. I log in and check the network. Indeed, it’s not up. The RTL8139 I mentioned earlier isn’t my wireless card, I should’ve known that! The Netgear MA311 uses the orinoco chipset! Apparently, Mandriva doesn’t recognise it by itself, which is a real shame. I manually load the orinoco_pci driver and immediatly the network is up. I’ll have to file a bug report for that.
Back to the graphics, Alt+F7. Ah yes, MandrakeFirstTime. Did I mention already I always hated that wizard? Well, let’s see what it does exactly. It starts with a plug for the club. I don’t need that, I’m already a member, next. I’m being congratulated for choosing Mandrakelinux. Hehehe, they haven’t done a grep Mandrake * on their full codebase yet, so it seems. Next. Hm… that wasn’t DrakFirstTime. It was just a splash-ish screen. Ah well. I’m getting a login prompt now. Let’s log in with the user I created. There are options for choosing another Window manager and even rebooting or remote logins. Nice.
It starts KDE 3.3, all very “Mandriva”-ised, a bit too much for my taste. Hey, no DrakFirstTime! Great! Let’s see, what do we have here…
The desktop is very empty, with only a Home and Welcome icon in the top left corner and a Trash in the bottom right. The taskbar is quite full, though, with from left to right the menu-button, a link to the desktop, a link to Firefox, a link to Kontact, OpenOffice.org Writer, KDevelop, Emacs (which I delete immediatly *shiver*), Konsole and de Mandrake Control Center. There are two virtual desktops, but that’s easily changed by right clicking on the icons. The tray is quite full, too, with KwikDisk, KMix, MandrakeOnline, a network-is-up icon, a screen resize applet and the KOrganizer reminder deamon.
The desktop isn’t really all that different. Sure, the background image is different, the menu is a little different, apparently Mandriva thinks a “Game Station” needs only 8 games in total, programs are brought to their newest version, but hey, nothing special here.
Nope, I’m not all that impressed. But maybe that’s because almost everything just worked out of the box. Except for the network connection I had to setup myself, everything is looking good. Mandrake… Excuse me… Mandriva has a history of ease-of-use and they still live up to the image. But it’s nothing special either.
And maybe that’s why I like Mandriva, just because it works (most of the time). I’ll report back when I’ve worked with it some more.
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Photoalbum by Photopress
Today I installed Photopress, so I can easily put pictures online. The script isn’t perfect yet, but then again, what is? When I have some time soon, I’ll take a look at it and see if I can perfect it somehow. Should be a nice little patch. In the meantime, click the link to the photoalbum in the right-hand menu or just click here to see some pictures of Fluffy!
Fluffy running around
Yesterday I started with letting Fluffy run through my workroom, the same place where her cage is. At first, she was a bit scared, but now she’s running around happily. She’s sniffing and biting and climbing and running (especially running) and she has a great time. I really notice it, she’s much happier now than she was. She’s still very tame and want to be petted often (at times, she comes to my chair and nudges my feet and ankles with her nose, like saying “Hey, pet me!”) but not as long as before.
I draped all wires in the air (as good as possible), so she can’t get to them. Tonight I’ll post some pictures from her running around. It’s really cool.
SMC sucks (but alas, they’re not the only one)
Since Hanneke came to live here, she brought her own computer. And we have a wireless network here, so it would be only fair to buy her a wireless PCI card so she can join in on our network and share our Internet line. All fine and dandy. But of course, me being me, I had already installed Ubuntu Linux (the recently gone-out-of-date Warty Warthog) so I decided to make sure I got a card for Hanneke that was supported by Linux. You’d expect most cards to be supported already, in any case, but alas, reality differs here. So I checked out the Prism 54 project, to see which companies offered cards that were supported by Linux. They have a list of supported cards so I checked with my online supplier which ones were available.
On that list is the SMC2802W which was on my suppliers list too, so that’s the one I bought. You guessed it, it doesn’t work. And I could’ve known if I weren’t in such a hurry to buy the card in the first place. Because on the herefore mentioned supporterd cards-site, there’s a disclaimer just above the list of supported cards:
We have a problem. Manufacturers started buying the SoftMAC chipsets, which are not yet supported and may never be, as drop-in-replacements for the FullMAC chipsets without changing PCI IDs and apparantly sometimes not changing even the FCC ID. That said, you are better off first testing a card before buying it. If you can’t test a card and want linux support, I can recommend you just not buy a prism 802.11g based chipset for now.
And the SMC I bought is, of course, a SoftMAC chipset. So it works on Windows XP (some obscure operating system that was already installed on Hanneke’s machine, looks a bit Teletubby-ish and doesn’t even have GNU utils, as far as I could see, let alone a decent development environment (I couldn’t even find the sources of the operating system, but then again, I didn’t search all that hard), so I think it’s still in development by some company or something), but not on Linux. And reading the disclaimer, it looks like a deliberate tactic to have working devices not work anymore. And it seems SMC isn’t even the only company using these tactics.
There’s a bug report about this in the Prism54 bugzilla. I hope they can fix this, I certainly don’t have the skills to fix it myself
Why do companies do this? I’m really frustrated. Mostly because it isn’t the first time this happened to me. I had the same trouble when buying a Wifi PCMCIA card for my laptop to use. Then it was a Linksys that just changed chipsets from one version to another, without changing the name of the product. I know use a Cisco Aironet 350 for my laptop, at least I could be sure that one worked. I’ll probably have to buy another card for Hanneke too
Chickens
Since Monday, we have chickens. Five of them, four hens and one rooster. They’ve already laid three eggs. Here are some pictures of them in our puppy kennel. Dad is building them a a henhouse in the back garden, with their night house inside a small stone shed we’ve standing there. I’ll post some pictures when dad is finished with it.
These are Barnevelders, a large breed with very nice plummage. They’re sitting on a night house for a dog, but they’re feeling quite alright there, it seems.
Update Foto’s removed. Sorry.
check_ldap with starttls for Nagios
Since we use Nagios to monitor services and hosts with customers and OpenLDAP for accounts, we’d like to check if LDAP is still active and working. But we had a problem here, because the check_ldap plugin that’s distributed in Debian’s nagios-plugins package doesn’t speak STARTTLS. So I modified the source-code of check_ldap and created check_ldap_starttls. Some might (and have) argue that using ldaps:// would be easier to implement, but that’s a non-argument, for as far as we’re concerned, since ldaps:// is deprecated.
As usual, you can find my files right here. I claim no copyright to the code whatsoever, since I only added about 8 lines and most of those were copied from some other programme. Use as you see fit.
- check_ldap_starttls (the programme)
- check_ldap_starttls.c (the code)
Enjoy!
Update Been fixed in the latest packages, I believe. Removed the links here.
A perfect rabbit cage
Yesterday, Hanneke showed me a newspaper article about a rabbit cage, which her mother (whom she went to visit last weekend) cut out for me. It’s really lovely, but I think Monique and I will try to make one ourselves. It’ll have three floors Just look at the thing, it’s a real bunny condo!
Can’t we all just get along?
There is an interesting read on Ian Murdock’s Weblog: Can’t we all just get along? It talks about the differences between Debian and Ubuntu, the latter being a derivative of the first. Although I can understand Ian’s problem, I do not share his views.
He’s correct in some respects, for example that Ubuntu’s packages often don’t work on Debian Sarge. But the question is, do we want them to? Debian Sarge is a very stable and secure platform, one we (as a company) prefer to use in a corporate environment. In fact, 45% of our deployments are Debian Woody and another 45% are Debian Sarge. (The rest are mostly different hardware routers and Cisco stuff.) I wouldn’t want those Ubuntu packages working on Sarge! As much as I love Debian, I never thought of it as a desktop distribution. It’s ideal for servers, because it’s stable and has slow update cycles. You know, when people say they choose for Red Hat because they can upgrade often, that’s just not logical. Servers we have are deployed and work without a glitch. They don’t need to be upgraded regularly, just patched for security holes! Why in the world would we want to upgrade a firewall/router? Patch the holes and give me those updates, that’s all I want. And that’s what Debian gives me. Sarge is due to be released very soon and the next version of Debian, Sid, will probably not be released for at least two years. And that’s the way I want it to be. Server protocols don’t change all that often.
On the other hand, a desktop is a machine that needs to be upgraded often. And when I take the time to upgrade, I want it to show. Not just some new buttons, but a nicer interface, new programmes, more features, better spam-detection, et cetera, et cetera. That’s what Ubuntu gives us. Fast release cycles that matter. Each six months we get improvements. Do we want those improvements on a server? Usually not. But when we do want them, it’s easier to backport an Ubuntu package than to build one from scratch.
Just my two cents.
Google bosses work for a buck. A year
Did you read this? I’ve got just one question… Why?
All Dali
Yesterday I went with Monique to All Dalí in Rotterdam, an exposition about Salvador Dalí. We had to get up early so, as is quite usual when I have to get up early, I overslept and we had to take the train half an hour later. Which wasn’t a really big deal, since we planned to arrive there at 13u and now we would arrive at 13.30u, which was still okay. The trainride took a little longer than usual, since ProRail was working on the tracks between Eindhoven and Tilburg. So we had to travel via Utrecht. Not a big deal.
We arrived in Rotterdam and it was very cold, there. We’d never have expected the temperature differences to be so large, since in Limburg, we had enough protection with just our summer coats on. In Rotterdam we felt like we were freezing. Since the museum where the exposition was being held, was close to the trainstation, we decided to walk there. The wind was blowing quite cold and we were happy when we finally, after no more than fifteen minutes, arrived in the museum. It started raining when we were buying our tickets, so we were glad to get inside. Also, since it was Museumweekend (which we only found out when we were buying our ticket), the prices were quite a bit lower than expected, just 5 euro’s instead of 12. Since we already payed almost 50 euro’s for the train, this reduction was very welcome.
The exposition was about everything I expected from it. Monique didn’t really appreciate all the crazy stuff Dalí created in his life, but I knew that from the start. Monique went along because I often do stuff with her that she likes a lot more than I do (like visiting her friends or family or stuff). Although she never forces me to join her, I always go with her just because I like to. Therefor she decided she wanted to come with me to this exposition, just for the company and the nice time we’d be having together.
Although I liked the exposition, some things were a bit strange. For example, usually in a large advertised exposition as this seems to be (every trainstation has posters hanging around about All Dalí) the works of arts are organised in a chronological order. That’s because it’s easier to see progression in his style and form when the pieces are chronologicaly organised. And I personally think the progression of an artist in his life is what makes an exposition like this very interesting. Instead, the works are organised by theme. So it starts with some movies, some paintings, some fashion, and a Walt Disney movie. Which is all very entertaining, but I for one failed to see the progression he made in his years.
And, as I read a bit about Dalí, progressions is what I would find most interesting about all his work. Since he started as a surrealist and was influenced by all the major styles at that time, like Cubism and Dadaism. Still, I had a nice hour-and-a-half walking through the exposition and looking at the stuff the museum had on display. Since several movies were shown, it was quite entertaining, although I have to admit, you should like surrealism first, before going there. Or else you’ll most likely be bored. Monique doesn’t really like surrealism, but she went looking for pieces she could like. So we both had a nice time.
Then came the journey home, which was almost a complete disaster. When we wanted to leave the museum, it was still raining. And it was raining cats and dogs. Since we knew we would already be cold walking all the way to the trainstation, we started with waiting until the rain would stop, since if we were wet, the cold would only be worse. It wasn’t meant to be. After three-quarters of and hour waiting on the chilly hall of the museum and even starting our first argument together, we were fed up with waiting and decided to start walking to the nearest metrostation. The rain wasn’t really bad, I’ve walked through worse, so we were still reasonably dry when we arrived at the metrostation. Although it was still very cold.
Inside the metrostation, we had no luck either. It was the wrong track and we had to switch if we wanted to go to the trainstation. Besides, since neither of us are regular metro users, we didn’t understand how we could calculate our ticket. And since there was nobody there to help us, we decided we’d better start walking in the rain back to the trainstation. Through the cold. And so we did. Luckily, the rain didn’t get really bad anymore, but it was still very very cold.
Once inside the trainstation, we figured out which train to take to Utrecht (since the track between Tilburg and Eindhoven was closed) and bought ourselves some pizza to have something warm in our stomachs. Out on the platforms, the wind was almost howling and chilling us through the bones. It was broadcasted that a lot of trains were retarded, because an accident happened nearby. Through all the broadcasts and the cold waiting, I decided to check about our train. Apparantly, the information at the entrance of the trainstation was off, too! We waited for thirty minutes and apparantly we could have taken a train twice! And the next train would go twenty minutes later. We cursed the Dutch Railways and went inside again for some snacks. Finally, we were on the right track and the train was already waiting, which saved us another five minutes of cold waiting. The train was blissfully warm and our moods, which turned very sour earlier, lifted.
The journey back in the train was nice. We had nice talks and appreciated each others company. So all went well from then on. But Monique did vow to never undertake such a journey by train again. Driving herself would have solved a lot of the problems we had today. And I agree, public transportation is nice, but only when the weather is nice, too.
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Cyrus deletemailbox (dm) gives permission denied
NOTE TO SELF
When deleting a mailbox from within cyradm, give the cyrus admin first the acl “c” on the mailbox, like so:
localhost.localdomain> sam user.username cyrus c
That gives the user cyrus the right to delete the mailbox.
