Re: Email & Spam

[Bruce Dawson]

See injection below.

--Bruce

On 3/12/23 13:39, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
>   > On 3/10/23 12:43, Bruce Labitt wrote:
>   >> In email headers, are there any fields which are not spoof-able?  Or is 
> email simply a morass that is totally unsolvable and broken?  Simply 
> impossible to filter spam?  Now I am getting spam that is passing all the 
> dmarc, spf, and dkim checks.  Volume is relatively low at the
>   >> moment, 6 in 12 hours, but I am sure the bad guys are working on 
> increasing the volume.
>   >>
>   >> In particular, is
>   >>
>   >> X-Origin-Country reliable?  Or is this data field unsuitable for 
> filtering as well?
>   >>
>   >> Are there any mail client pre-filtering packages that can be added?  Or 
> is this a game best left to?
>
> On 3/10/23 17:02, Bruce Dawson wrote:
>> Essentially, no - all email headers are spoofable except the ones put on by 
>> your server. > Your server should insert a Received-by header that indicates 
>> who sent that message to you.
> Though in the case of the headers providing DKIM signatures, those are 
> "unspoofable" to the extent that they're used,
> since that's a cryptographic signature that you can verify.
>
> There are caveats there, basically that the DKIM signatures are only for 
> select _parts_ of the message...,
> but _generally_ if you have a valid DKIM signature then you at least know 
> where the message
> actually came from.
>
> And if you've got "spam that is passing all the dmarc, spf, and dkim checks", 
> then
> you know even more assuredly who's sending you spam.
>
> So, at least in theory, that gets you past the `detecting spoofs' point,
> so now you just have to worry about the spam coming in from new
> domains that you haven't blocked yet

Except when an intervening server deletes all the DKIM (and other) 
envelope information. Of course, that's a bad actor/server, but isn't 
that what most SPAM servers are?

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Re: Email & Spam

[Bruce Dawson]

Essentially, no - all email headers are spoofable except the ones put on 
by your server. Your server should insert a Received-by header that 
indicates who sent that message to you.


You can "generally" trust headers put on by the likes of Google (because 
your server can get the IP address of the server that connected to you) 
and Google IP addresses are moderately static. However, this is not 
always the case.


--Bruce

On 3/10/23 12:43, Bruce Labitt wrote:
In email headers, are there any fields which are not spoof-able?  Or 
is email simply a morass that is totally unsolvable and broken?  
Simply impossible to filter spam?  Now I am getting spam that is 
passing all the dmarc, spf, and dkim checks.  Volume is relatively low 
at the moment, 6 in 12 hours, but I am sure the bad guys are working 
on increasing the volume.


In particular, is

X-Origin-Country reliable?  Or is this data field unsuitable for 
filtering as well?


Are there any mail client pre-filtering packages that can be added?  
Or is this a game best left to?





On 3/9/23 2:44 PM, Bruce Labitt wrote:
Spoke too soon.  I am far from understanding this all, but why would 
my ISP send me mail that failed the following tests?
dmarc, spf or dkim?  The latest spam I received failed _all_ three 
tests.


It appears not everyone is consistent with using this stuff, I found 
an email from South West Airlines that apparently doesn't use dmarc, 
but at least it passed spf and dkim.  What a mess.


I tried to send this email and it was blocked when I included the 
dmarc text.


On 3/9/23 11:49 AM, Bruce Labitt wrote:

Crossing fingers, my spam storm has paused.  No spam since 3:27 EST
yesterday.

Cleaned out tons of old spam off my phone, which was tedious.  Found
some miss-classified spam that were legitimate emails, like from
attorneys and banks, that I never received.  Loads of stock tips, scams,
assorted pharmaceuticals, and of course, invitations to honeypots of the
female persuasion.  Some were quite amusing.

Need to get back to the email spam storm on my wife's account now.
Not sure if one her groups she belongs to was compromised and her email
account sold to spammers or not. Seems like it.

My kids, both on different ISP's had no increase in spam in the past
week.  I asked them last night, trying to figure out if this was a local
thing, or more wide spread.  Guess it was local, or their ISP's were
more on the ball.



On 3/8/23 5:59 PM, Bruce Labitt wrote:

I think that something has been going on for a bit now.

However, I did go through some ancient spam emails (don't ask me why
they were still around, I plumb forgot they were accumulating) and found
quite a few of them posing as family members and people I knew, but were
not legitimate.  Examining the headers showed they were trying to fool
me.  All of them wanted me to click on some link - hoping to do some
nefarious thing or another to me.  Many were from RU.

Oh, I have been using the filters!  I have filtered every domain ending
in xyz, .store and a few others.  It's not as easy to filter against
yourself...

Is it better to have these messages go to junk, or direct to trash?
Using Thunderbird if that matters.


On 3/8/23 5:22 PM, Ronald Smith wrote:

Hi all,

There is a coordinated attack happening right now on many forms of 
communication; email, social media, everything -- someone doesn't want people 
communicating right now. The increase in spam is just part of it.

Emails that I've sent to gmail have been bounced, maybe because gmail has 
tightened their filters, maybe it's a false flag. I'm not sure and I'm not 
going waste my time tracking it down right now. If someone wants to reach me, 
they can just call me on the phone.

To the guy who said you should block all the IP's in the header -- that's 
ABSOLUTELY WRONG! Whoever has launched this attack wants folks to do that -- 
they want folks to block stuff to further limit communication. Don't do that!

You can only trust the top "Received" notice in your email header. SMTP servers are 
supposed to tack on their info to the top of the message and send it along to the next server, but 
spammers or provocateurs will often falsify the tracking info below the most recent 
"Received" line, so you should just ignore that.

Just put up with the spam for now; don't over-react. Your email providers will 
know how to handle this if they have enough experience. Use the filters in your 
client if you need to.

Have fun...

Ronald Smith
r...@mrt4.com
603-360-1000

- - - -

On Wed, 8 Mar 2023 13:31:56 -0500
Bruce Labitt  wrote:


Seems to be an uptick in spam received lately.  Doesn't seem that my ISP
is on top of it.  In the past 48 hours have received at least three
dozen spams from similar parties.  Many seem to be coming from *.store
domains.  I haven't knowingly ever visited one of these domains.

I don't think I want to run my own email server - mostly because 1) I
really don't know how to set one up, and 2) it sounds like a bit o

Re: Need help with IAX2 on Asterisk using the voip.ms provider

[Bruce Dawson]

It turns out there's an undocumented (at least I could not find it) 
restriction on IAX accounts with voip.ms - you can have only one IAX 
account (i.e. DID) per IP address. (I found this out from voip.ms' 
technical support.) With SIP, you can have as many DIDs as you want. So 
I've converted two of my three IAX accounts to SIP. That got two 
account/DIDs working, but not the last one - but I think I have other 
problems with one that's not working.


I'm still working with voip.ms on the one DID that's not working.  Its 
sort-of an international number (US Virgin Islands) and I think there 
may be some tariff restrictions on it that no one knows about. But I 
could be wrong. It took many iterations with voip.ms support to find out 
about the IAX restriction.


I do like voip.ms's services, and they have a technical support staff 
that actually *tries* to answer the question. Its just frustrating until 
you find the right person.


--Bruce

On 3/3/22 09:39, Matt Minuti wrote:
I set up an Asterisk server running on FreeBSD for a company probably 
8-10 years ago, using Vitelity (back when they offered services for 
brick-and-mortar small businesses). I believe it used IAX2, and the 
actual phones were bottom-of-the-line Grandstream DECT cordless units 
that connected to the Asterisk box through SIP over SSL (probably with 
a self-signed cert knowing me). That knowledge is probably out of date 
now, unfortunately.


For my office, I'm using voip.ms <http://voip.ms> and having the 
phones directly connect to their servers via subaccounts. It's working 
great - I only have one DID hooked up, but depending on what the 
caller presses in the IVR (voice menu thing), it rings different 
sub-accounts in groups. I expected it to be a holdover solution until 
I had the time to set up a proper Asterisk install, but it's working 
well enough that I'm likely to keep it. That said, I initially had a 
lot of difficulty keeping the registration attached to the hardphones, 
while the softphones never had issues. Although it makes absolutely no 
sense, I want to say that there was a codec incompatibility, because 
once I turned off one of the codecs (forget which) on a hardphone, 
that hardphone has maintained registration forever.


Have you checked the guides on the voip.ms <http://voip.ms> wiki? I 
found them to be pretty helpful, particularly when I looked at the 
guides for hardware I don't actually have, so that I could 
cross-reference and get a sense as to what MUST be set versus what is 
flexible.


On Sun, Feb 20, 2022 at 6:47 PM Bruce Dawson  wrote:

Anyone have any experience with Asterisk (the VOIP PBX software)?

How about using IAX2 for communicating with a DID provider?

How about with using the 'VOIP.ms' DID provider?

I just have a few phones and Zoiper apps here, but lately, every
time I
change the dialplan, I seem to lose the IAX connection to the
voip.ms <http://voip.ms>
servers. (Not lose the network connection, but the registration
and the
ability to receive calls on my DIDs (I have about 4).

I'm at the point where I might pay someone to help solve some of the
problems.

--Bruce

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Re: ZFS vs btfrs

[Bruce Dawson]

Well, you're more concerned with files than large blocks of data, so I 
don't think either matter - other than standard filesystem performance. 
I've had some experience with ZFS, and practically none with btrfs. ZFS 
is nice, but resource intensive. I suspect btrfs is similar, but 
probably not in standard Linux development uses.

How about choosing btrfs so we (the community) can learn more about it?!

--Bruce

On 2/23/22 11:25, Ben Scott wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> We haven't had a really good flamewar ^W discussion on here in far too long...
>
> SUMMARY
>
> Btfrs vs ZFS. I was wondering if others would like to share their
> opinions on either or both?  Or something else entirely?  (Maybe you
> just don't feel alive if you're not compiling your kernel from
> patches?)  Especially cool would be recent comparisons of two or more.
>
> I'll provide an info dump of my plans below, but I do so mainly as
> discussion-fodder.  Don't feel obligated to address my scenario in
> particular.  Of course, commentary on anything in particular that
> seems like a good/bad/cool idea is still welcome.
>
> RECEIVED WISDOM
>
> This is the stuff every article says.  I rarely find anything that goes 
> deeper.
>
> - ZFS has been around/stable/whatever longer
> - btfrs has been on Linux longer
> - btfrs is GPL, ZFS is CDDL or whatever
> - Licensing kept ZFS off Linux for a while
> - ZFS is available on major Linux distros now
> - People say one is faster, but disagree on which one
> - Oracle is a bag of dicks
> - ZFS is easier to pronounce
>
> For both, by coupling the filesystem layer and the block layer, we get
> a lot of advantages, especially for things like snapshots and
> deduplication.  The newcomers also get you things like checksums for
> every block, fault-tolerance over heterogenous physical devices, more
> encryption and compression options.  Faster, bigger, longer, lower,
> wider, etc., etc.  More superlatives than any other filesystem.
>
> MY SCENARIO
>
> I'm going to be building a new home server soon.  Historically I've
> used Linux RAID and LVM and EXT2/3/4/5/102, but all the cool kids are
> using smarter filesystems these days.  I should really get with the
> times.  They do seem to confer a lot of advantages, at least on paper.
>
> USE CASES
>
> User community is me and my girlfriend and a motley collection of
> computing devices from multiple millenia.  Administrator community is
> me.
>
> Mostly plain old network file storage.  Mixed use within that.  I'm a
> data hoarder.
>
> All sorts of stuff I've downloaded over the years, some not even from
> the Internet (ZMODEM baby!).  So large numbers of large write-once
> files.  "Large" has changed over the years, from something that fills
> a floppy diskette to something that fills a DVD, but they don't change
> once written.  ISO images, tarballs, music and photo collections
> (FLAC, MP3, JPEG).
>
> Also large numbers of small write-once files.  I've got 20 GB of mail
> archives in maildir format, one file per message, less than 4K per
> file for the old stuff (modern HTML mail is rather bloated).  These
> generally don't change once written either, but there are lots of
> them.  Some single directories have over 200 K files.
>
> Backups of my user systems.  Currently accomplished via rsnapshot and
> rsync (or ROBOCOPY for 'doze).  So small to medium-small files, but
> changing and updating and hardlinking and moving a lot.  With a
> smarter filesystem I can likely dispense with rsnapshot, but I doubt
> I'm going to move away from plain-old-files-as-backup-storage any time
> soon.  (rsync might conceivably be replaced with a smarter network
> filesystem someday, but likely not soon.)
>
> ANTI USE CASES
>
> Not a lot of mass-market videos -- the boob tube is one area where I
> let others do it for me.  (Roku, Netflix, Blu-ray, etc.)
>
> No plans to network mount home directories for my daily-driver PCs.
> For laptops especially that's problematic (and sorting apps
> (particularly browsers) that can copy with a distributed filesystem
> seems unlikely to pay off).
>
> Not planning on any serious hosting of VMs or containers or complex
> application software on this box.  I can't rule it out entirely for
> (especially as an experiment), but this is mainly intended to be a
> NAS-type server.  It will run NFS, Samba, SSH, rsync.  It might run
> some mail daemons (SMTP, IMAP) just to make accessing archives easier,
> but it won't be the public-facing MX for anything.
>
> It's unlikely to run any point-and-drool administration (web) GUIs.  I
> have a set of config files I've been carrying around with me since I
> kept them on floppy diskette, and they've served me well.  Those that
> like them, more power to you, but they're not for me.  I inevitably
> bump into their limitations and have to go outside them anyway.
>
> I've tried a few consumer NAS appliances and have generally been
> disappointed.  It's the same as the GUI thing above, except I hit the
> limits sooner and i

Need help with IAX2 on Asterisk using the voip.ms provider

[Bruce Dawson]

Anyone have any experience with Asterisk (the VOIP PBX software)?

How about using IAX2 for communicating with a DID provider?

How about with using the 'VOIP.ms' DID provider?

I just have a few phones and Zoiper apps here, but lately, every time I 
change the dialplan, I seem to lose the IAX connection to the voip.ms 
servers. (Not lose the network connection, but the registration and the 
ability to receive calls on my DIDs (I have about 4).

I'm at the point where I might pay someone to help solve some of the 
problems.

--Bruce

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Re: Permanently changing nameserver

[Bruce Dawson]

Then you may want to do

[main]

dns=none

in /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf

--Bruce

On 8/2/21 1:43 PM, Bruce Labitt wrote:
Think it is being overridden in /etc/network/interfaces as well.  
Tried enabling prepend domain-name-servers in dhclient.conf, but that 
didn't work.


On Mon, Aug 2, 2021 at 1:37 PM Bruce Dawson <mailto:j...@codemeta.com>> wrote:


This is being set by dhclient when it gets the DHCP info.

I believe you can "fix" this by removing the 'domain-name-servers'
from the 'request' stanza in /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf. You probably
want to do this ONLY on the machines that you don't want to get
the DNS servers from DHCP.

--Bruce

On 8/2/21 11:45 AM, Bruce Labitt wrote:

Due to some ISP snafus, and network reconfiguration, some of my
RPI's are pointing to the wrong nameserver.  I use a pihole for
DNS.  Anyways, I have a single RPI2 as a print server and it is
stubbornly pointing to the wrong IP address.  The RPI2 is running
on Raspberry Pi Debian Stretch.  I only use this node as the cups
printer.

If I do cat /etc/resolve.conf I get, # generated by resolvconf 
nameserver  192.168.1.xxx
I want to have it permanently point to 192.168.1.1, ie the
gateway so that I let the router redirect DNS traffic to pihole. 
Looking at resolvconf info, it says NOT to use it directly.  So
how does one do this?


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Re: Permanently changing nameserver

[Bruce Dawson]

This is being set by dhclient when it gets the DHCP info.

I believe you can "fix" this by removing the 'domain-name-servers' from 
the 'request' stanza in /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf. You probably want to do 
this ONLY on the machines that you don't want to get the DNS servers 
from DHCP.


--Bruce

On 8/2/21 11:45 AM, Bruce Labitt wrote:
Due to some ISP snafus, and network reconfiguration, some of my RPI's 
are pointing to the wrong nameserver.  I use a pihole for DNS.  
Anyways, I have a single RPI2 as a print server and it is stubbornly 
pointing to the wrong IP address.  The RPI2 is running on Raspberry Pi 
Debian Stretch.  I only use this node as the cups printer.


If I do cat /etc/resolve.conf I get, # generated by resolvconf  
nameserver  192.168.1.xxx
I want to have it permanently point to 192.168.1.1, ie the gateway so 
that I let the router redirect DNS traffic to pihole.  Looking at 
resolvconf info, it says NOT to use it directly.  So how does one do this?



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Re: Thunderbird treating links as RSS feed

[Bruce Dawson]

Check your add-ons/extensions.

--Bruce

On 4/9/21 5:49 PM, Don wrote:
> Once upon a time I attended meetings in Nashua (  - 2006 ).
>
> I am running SuSE Leap 15.2 although was also a problem in previous
> versions. I am using Thunderbird, currently 78.8.0 (64-bit).
> Email  links are treated as feeds. When I first click on a link I get
> "verifying the feed" ". Subsequent clicks give
> "You already have a subscription for this feed" . If I copy the link and
> paste into a new tab it works fine.
>
> I have tried searching for this problem but have not found anything.
>
> Donald Leslie
>
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Re: Reminder/RSVP -- meet *this Thursday* for chat & beer.

[Bruce Dawson]

I'm planning on being there.

--Bruce

On 2/19/20 1:53 PM, Ric Werme wrote:
> I'll be there.
>
> Note that we'll be there at date/time
> 2020 Feb 20 @ 20:02:02
> In odometer format, that's two days before the palindrome
> 2020000202
>
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Re: Job postings here or somewhere else? (IT/SysAdmin job in Lebanon, NH)

[Bruce Dawson]

Actually, a few went in there in the past month or two.

--Bruce

On 1/21/20 5:40 PM, Ben Scott wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 10:59 AM Alan Johnson  wrote:
>> Apologies, but I have lost track if there is still a separate list for 
>> posting jobs.
> There is a gnhlug-jobs mailing list, but I seriously question its
> contemporary vitality.  I suspect it may be something like the walking
> dead at this point.  It gets around 3 posts per year, almost all from
> one person.
>
> http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-jobs
>
> As I recall, this came about during the height of the Linux bubble,
> and there were fears of inundation here on -discuss.  At this point it
> would prolly make sense to take -jobs out back and shoot it.
>
> Other opinions?
>
> -- Ben
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Re: Computer racks and cabinets available

[Bruce Dawson]

These found a home. If something falls through, I'll post to the list again!

--Bruce

On 8/1/19 3:36 PM, Bruce Dawson wrote:


We don't need these anymore and are looking for a good home for them. 
Pictures are at:


  * https://www.milessmithfarm.com/items-for-sale

--Bruce


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Computer racks and cabinets available

[Bruce Dawson]

We don't need these anymore and are looking for a good home for them. 
Pictures are at:


 * https://www.milessmithfarm.com/items-for-sale

--Bruce

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Re: Need advice on domain management and transfer

[Bruce Dawson (Simon)]

I would move away from register.com - they're not very responsive or 
understanding of small domain holders.

I use OpenSRS at tucows.com, and I find them inexpensive, non-invasive, 
and they give one the ability to get in the "domain business" (which 
means they have a storefront you can use to let your "friends" 
manage/pay for their own domains.

--Bruce


On 08/09/2017 12:57 PM, Tyson Sawyer wrote:
> I hold a couple of domains.  One is my own that I registered in '96
> and the other belongs to a friend.  The "other" I registered for him
> in '01 to help his small race engineering business.  I have few
> issues.  Well, a few to discuss here, I won't bring up working with
> Bobby Casey at this time... ;-)
>
> - We'd like to transfer the 2nd domain to be owned by my friend
> - They are both registered with register.com.  Is that not the cool
> thing these days?
> - They ended up under two different accounts that I hold at
> register.com with some messed up naming.
>
> The domains are j3.org (mine, Bill Sconce would have understood the
> reference) and smallfortuneracing.com (my friend's).
>
> I'm asking for advice in part because I don't want to make any
> mistakes and lose control of the domains.
>
> - Who should my friend register with, if not register.com?
> - What are the steps to do the transfer?
>
> - Should I move my domain to a different registrar and if so, to whom?
> - If not, is there a way to change or delete the "Registrant
> Organization" and username of the account?
>
> I guess I should also ask about appropriate Tech contacts.  The person
> I have listed at one time hosted the web site on both, is still in my
> contacts list and could call, but someone I haven't contacted in
> years.  Is it reasonable list myself for Registrant, Admin and Tech?
>
> Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks!
> Ty
>

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Re: What's the strategy for bad guys guessing a few ssh passwords?

[Bruce Dawson]

I have to second this suggestion - changing the port did wonders for our 
servers. Of course, as Dan says, it works for script kiddies, not so 
much against a determined attack on your server.


--Bruce


On 06/12/2017 09:59 AM, Dan Garthwaite wrote:
If you can change the port number it does wonders against the script 
kiddies.


Just remember to add the new port, restart sshd, then remove the old 
port.  :)


On Sun, Jun 11, 2017 at 1:53 PM, Ted Roche <mailto:tedro...@gmail.com>> wrote:


Thanks, all for the recommendations. I hadn't seen sshguard before;
I'll give that a try.

I do have Fail2Ban in place, and have customized a number of scripts,
mostly for Apache (trying to invoke asp scripts on my LAMP server
results in instaban, for example) and it is what it reporting the ssh
login failures.

I have always seen them, in the 10 years I've had this server running,
but the frequency, periodicity and international variety (usually
they're all China, Russian, Romania) seemed like there might be
something else going on.

Be careful out there.

On Sun, Jun 11, 2017 at 11:19 AM, Mark Komarinski
mailto:mkomarin...@wayga.org>> wrote:
> sshguard is really good since it'll drop in a iptables rule to
block an IP
> address after a number of attemps (and prevent knocking on other
ports too).
>
> Yubikey as 2FA is pretty nice too.
>
    > ---- Original message 
> From: Bruce Dawson mailto:j...@codemeta.com>>
> Date: 6/11/17 10:58 AM (GMT-05:00)
> To: gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org
<mailto:gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org>
> Subject: Re: What's the strategy for bad guys guessing a few ssh
passwords?
>
> sshguard takes care of most of them (especially the high
bandwidth ones).
>
> The black hats don't care - they're looking for vulnerable
systems. If
> they find one, they'll exploit it (or not).
>
> Note that a while ago (more than a few years), comcast used to probe
> systems to see if they're vulnerable. Either they don't do that any
> more, or contract it out because I haven't see probes from any
of their
> systems in years. This probably holds true for other ISPs, and
various
> intelligence agencies in the world - both private and public, not to
> mention various disreputable enterprises.
>
> --Bruce
>
>
> On 06/11/2017 10:17 AM, Ted Roche wrote:
>> For 36 hours now, one of my clients' servers has been logging ssh
>> login attempts from around the world, low volume, persistent,
but more
>> frequent than usual. sshd is listening on a non-standard port,
just to
>> minimize the garbage in the logs.
>>
>> A couple of attempts is normal; we've seen that for years. But
this is
>> several each  hour, and each hour an IP from a different country:
>> Belgium, Korea, Switzerland, Bangladesh, France, China, Germany,
>> Dallas, Greece. Usernames vary: root, mythtv, rheal, etc.
>>
>> There's several levels of defense in use: firewalls, intrusion
>> detection, log monitoring, etc, so each script gets a few
guesses and
>> the IP is then rejected.
>>
>> In theory, the defenses should be sufficient, but I have a concern
>> that I'm missing their strategy here. It's not a DDOS, they are
very
>> low volume. It will take them several millennia to guess enough
>> dictionary attack guesses to get through, so what's the point?
>>
>
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--
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Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com
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Re: What's the strategy for bad guys guessing a few ssh passwords?

[Bruce Dawson]

sshguard takes care of most of them (especially the high bandwidth ones).

The black hats don't care - they're looking for vulnerable systems. If 
they find one, they'll exploit it (or not).

Note that a while ago (more than a few years), comcast used to probe 
systems to see if they're vulnerable. Either they don't do that any 
more, or contract it out because I haven't see probes from any of their 
systems in years. This probably holds true for other ISPs, and various 
intelligence agencies in the world - both private and public, not to 
mention various disreputable enterprises.

--Bruce


On 06/11/2017 10:17 AM, Ted Roche wrote:
> For 36 hours now, one of my clients' servers has been logging ssh
> login attempts from around the world, low volume, persistent, but more
> frequent than usual. sshd is listening on a non-standard port, just to
> minimize the garbage in the logs.
>
> A couple of attempts is normal; we've seen that for years. But this is
> several each  hour, and each hour an IP from a different country:
> Belgium, Korea, Switzerland, Bangladesh, France, China, Germany,
> Dallas, Greece. Usernames vary: root, mythtv, rheal, etc.
>
> There's several levels of defense in use: firewalls, intrusion
> detection, log monitoring, etc, so each script gets a few guesses and
> the IP is then rejected.
>
> In theory, the defenses should be sufficient, but I have a concern
> that I'm missing their strategy here. It's not a DDOS, they are very
> low volume. It will take them several millennia to guess enough
> dictionary attack guesses to get through, so what's the point?
>

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Re: KVM vs ZFS

[Bruce Dawson]

On 08/21/2015 05:30 PM, Tom Buskey wrote:



On Fri, Aug 21, 2015 at 3:33 PM, Bruce Dawson <mailto:j...@codemeta.com>> wrote:


For this rainy weekend, please consider the following:

I'm constructing a new server and want 2 KVM guest systems on it.
There are 3 4TB drives on it. At the moment, assume one 4TB drive
will be reserved for the KVM host. The server has 16GB of RAM.


I've been running ZFSonLinux for awhile.  Now on CentOS 7, but 
previously on Ubuntu.  And OpenSolaris before that.


I typically do a minimal OS with 2 smaller disks with RAID1 mdadm.  I 
like to make my OS disks independant of any driver or OS addons.  I 
don't know how good Linux booting on ZFS is either.  Actually, I don't 
even know if it's possible.  I think it is with BSD.


Ubuntu 14.04 will supposedly boot from a ZFS root.



I do ZFS on my data disks (no dedup!).  ZFS could do a RAIDZ of the 
unused space in a partition of the OS drive + the same partitions of 
the other drives, but it really prefers whole disks and works better.  
Plus, all drives should be the same size.


What are the advantages/disadvantages of:

 1. Putting all disks in a ZFS pool on the host and dividing the
pool between each guest. Or:

So you're going to use one drive for the OS w/o ZFS? Then 2 drives for 
ZFS & data?
Then using zfs commands to allocate space to the guests?  I do this 
all the time.


 1. Giving each guest its own disk. (At least one of the guests
will be running ZFS).

I wouldn't ever run ZFS on a single disk if I cared about the data.  
It's like running RAID0; get an error, you lose your all your data.  
Actually, you might recover data from a RAID0 non-ZFS.


Oh - but I thought ZFS will mirror "filesystems" within the pool 
(probably with much poorer performance)? At any rate, I'm thinking the 
first approach is the best.




You can use iSCSI on ZFS to give your KVMs a a raw block device 
instead of a zfs partition w/ a QCOW2 file.  I've only done the zfs 
partition & qcow2, not the iSCSI block.


I didn't know ZFS would provide that. Guess I've got more reading - I 
wonder if it'll be faster.




I'd do the 1st setup and get the benefits of ECC and on the fly 
partitioning.  I'd imagine the snapshots would be big for either qcow 
or an iSCSI block.  I think you'd have to benchmark qcow vs iSCSI 
block to see which is faster w/ various compressions (in qcow, in ZFS, 
etc)


ZFS will eat up unused RAM, but Linux does that for filesystems 
already so we're used to that.  I don't see any huge performance hits 
with modern multicore systems.


The guests will be:

   * Both guests will be running DNS servers
   * One guest will be running a Postfix/Dovecot mail server
(including mailman)
   * The other guest will be running a LAMP stack.

Hints:
   * I don't particularly like option 2 as I'll lose the benefits
of ZFS (snapshot backups, striping, ...)
   * I don't know if the performance benefits of ZFS will outweigh
the overhead of KVM/libvirt.

--Bruce


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Re: KVM vs ZFS

[Bruce Dawson]

Thanks for your reply!

Ah. Sigh.

Its on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. The "critical need" is for backups and 
failover. I know I can use LVM, but we have had more problems with LVM 
that we have had with bare disks (and tar backups); especially when it 
came to disk failures.


On 08/21/2015 04:23 PM, Alan Johnson wrote:
The host is some linux or other?  Running with that assumption, I 
don't expect you will get anything extra out of zfs if you are only 
using it for pooling vs. LVM.  As long as you are handing a block 
device to the guest, the IO overhead of the virtualization is pretty 
much nil.  Now, if you were using regular files to back your virtual 
drives instead of block devices, ZFS (not just zpool) on the host 
might get you something, but I depends on a lot of things, and I would 
never advocate putting a file system on a file system if you care at 
all about IO.  That's where your IO overhead comes in. Passing it to a 
KVM/libvirt guest does not introduce anything of concern on modern 
hardware (maybe an extra processor instruction or 2 here and there).


If you don't already know and love ZFS with all its beauty and risks, 
and you don't have a specific critical need for it, I recommend 
against it.  ext4 on LVM does a great job for 99.99% of use cases and 
the support and user community for it is second to none.  I found this 
not to be the case with FreeNAS/BSD/ZFS when I had a year long 
nightmare with it some time ago on what is admittedly now likely and 
aged version of ZFS.



On Fri, Aug 21, 2015 at 3:33 PM, Bruce Dawson <mailto:j...@codemeta.com>> wrote:


For this rainy weekend, please consider the following:

I'm constructing a new server and want 2 KVM guest systems on it.
There are 3 4TB drives on it. At the moment, assume one 4TB drive
will be reserved for the KVM host. The server has 16GB of RAM.

What are the advantages/disadvantages of:

 1. Putting all disks in a ZFS pool on the host and dividing the
pool between each guest. Or:
 2. Giving each guest its own disk. (At least one of the guests
will be running ZFS).

The guests will be:

   * Both guests will be running DNS servers
   * One guest will be running a Postfix/Dovecot mail server
(including mailman)
   * The other guest will be running a LAMP stack.

Hints:
   * I don't particularly like option 2 as I'll lose the benefits
of ZFS (snapshot backups, striping, ...)
   * I don't know if the performance benefits of ZFS will outweigh
the overhead of KVM/libvirt.

--Bruce


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--
Alan Johnson
a...@datdec.com <mailto:a...@datdec.com>
Date Format PSA <http://xkcd.com/1179/>


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KVM vs ZFS

[Bruce Dawson]

For this rainy weekend, please consider the following:

I'm constructing a new server and want 2 KVM guest systems on it. There 
are 3 4TB drives on it. At the moment, assume one 4TB drive will be 
reserved for the KVM host. The server has 16GB of RAM.


What are the advantages/disadvantages of:

1. Putting all disks in a ZFS pool on the host and dividing the pool
   between each guest. Or:
2. Giving each guest its own disk. (At least one of the guests will be
   running ZFS).

The guests will be:

   * Both guests will be running DNS servers
   * One guest will be running a Postfix/Dovecot mail server (including 
mailman)

   * The other guest will be running a LAMP stack.

Hints:
   * I don't particularly like option 2 as I'll lose the benefits of 
ZFS (snapshot backups, striping, ...)
   * I don't know if the performance benefits of ZFS will outweigh the 
overhead of KVM/libvirt.


--Bruce

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Re: Looking for an intern to play with a Linux-powered robot fleet

[Bruce Dawson]

Amen!

On 08/10/2015 01:00 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
> On 2015-07-31 18:04, Bill Freeman wrote:
> ...

> While I'm often amazed that candidates for engineering jobs will show 
> up with _no portfolio_ (especially when we're talking about software 
> jobs: mechanical engineers, for example, may have a legitimate case 
> that it's hard to get personal access to the tools they'd need to 
> build a personal portfolio; but the tools required to develop 
> software?); I'm even more amazed that people on the other side of the 
> interview-process often have no idea what to do when a candidate does 
> have a portfolio of work available for review.
>> Before that, unless you're in a field where you can publish while doing
>> graduate work (it's own form of internship), you have to take low paying,
>> crummy jobs.  In some fields they're called interships.
>> It's the non-paying ones that are real scams.
> That was one of the things that soured me on college: not only was the 
> experience
> non-paying, they were actually _charging me_; and the `experience' part of the
> experience wasn't all that great, either. And I had to buy my own books.
> And I had to buy my own equipment. And the amount of _time_ that it seemed
> to require if I actually wanted to be good at `being a student' was crazy.
>
> ...
>
> (I retrospect, the last time I was talking to a recruiter
>   who said I'd have to move to CA even if I was going to  end up
>   in the company's Boston office, I guess I should tried proposing:
>   "how about I just stay in NH, I do CA software work on the CA schedule,
>   and you get to pay me like I work in MA?").
And just to show you how ego-centric the field was/is, most recruiters 
will actually ding you for "taking that attitude"!

--Bruce
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Re: FYI: Comcast Metro ethernet to the home

[Bruce Dawson]

I've read in several places (but can't remember where) that those 
numbers were more than a little inflated... Largely by including 
phone-modem users.

Use of the word "broadband" yields more reasonable numbers, but even the 
broadband survey was taken back when "broadband" was defined as 1MB or 
better (which, if Alzheimers hasn't taken over fully, was early to mid- 
2000's.)

--Bruce

On 07/18/2015 08:47 AM, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
> On July 17, 2015 5:53:44 PM EDT, Joshua Judson Rosen  
> wrote:
>> (but, really--how come fiber is available in places like Wilton and
>> Chichester
>> before it's available in here? Is it normal for cities to be the
>> cyber-boonies?)
> Hmm...:
>
> 
>
> "In the United States, billions of dollars has been invested in efforts to 
> narrow the digital divide and bring Internet access to more people in 
> low-income and rural areas of the United States. Internet availability varies 
> widely state by state in the U.S. In 2011 for example, 87.1% of all New 
> Hampshire residents lived in a household where Internet was available, 
> ranking first in the nation."
>

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Re: lowering hits to processor

[Bruce Dawson]

You can run strace/ltrace to see which system/library calls wine/Dragon
is making. That should give you an idea as to which resources its
pulling on. (I suspect it is memory extents or semaphores, but I could
be way off.)

Once you have it running, you may want to do a "ps auxw" and send it to
the list - some others may have ideas.

--Bruce

On Fri, 2014-12-12 at 16:06 -0500, Susan Cragin wrote:
> Hello, 
> I don't have a problem, really, but am looking for suggestions or comments. 
> I have two programs running: EMACS, and Dragon NaturallySpeaking (under 
> wine). And that's all.  
> NatSpeak has a high resource consumption, and then of course there's wine 
> sigh... which sometimes seems to compete for resources with running Linux 
> programs, sometimes just stalls on its own. 
> This is probably mostly a wine problem. But I do what I can to help out: I 
> have a fast machine with a solid-state drive and plenty of RAM, I have 
> installed Lubuntu with the low-latency kernel, and disabled the zeitgeist 
> logger. I don't open any programs I don't need. 
> Any suggestions? Any other daemons I can axe? I need pulseaudio, sadly. 
> Susan Cragin
> 
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Re: Historical note about two prominent GNHLUG members

[Bruce Dawson]

Gadzooks! Have we known each other that long?! Wow.

Thanks Dave!

--Bruce

On Thu, 2014-10-30 at 21:27 -0400, David Marston wrote:
> On October 29th, 1984, the Northern New England UNIX User Group
> held a meeting at what was then the Manchester branch of Daniel
> Webster College. My archives are missing some of the exact
> details, but it seems that Bruce Dawson and Carole Soule were
> both at that meeting. As best I can tell, that was the night
> they met.
> 
> Over the subsequent thirty years, separately and together, they
> have been greatly supportive of the UNIX/Linux community in New
> Hampshire, while also making radical career changes. May you
> live long and prosper!
> .David Marston   (Facilitator)
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Re: Managing patches against upstream?

[Bruce Dawson]

I can offer some probabilities of what those status would mean to a
tracking system. But I don't know their precise meaning in Patchwork.
These are pretty obvious, I don't mean to offend - just thought I'd
include them rather than go through another email transaction. 

New
Its a new patch.
>  Under Review
The patch is under review. Typically awaiting testing.
>  Accepted
The patch is accepted and waiting to go through the release process.
>  Rejected
The patch is rejected - the reason should be in a separate field. 
>  RFC
The RFC's associated with the patch - typically compliance. Sometimes 
clarification in the RFC is needed.
>  Not Applicable
The patch does not apply to the series of patches (typically for 
distributions or H/W configs)
>  Changes Requested
Changes to the patch have been requested (typically by vetted community 
members)
>  Awaiting Upstream
The patch can't be accepted until something happens in the upstream 
code. (The "something" is typically described in another field.)
>  Superseded
The patch has been superseded by another patch. Meaning: This patch 
won't be distributed.
>  Deferred
The patch is being delayed - the reason *should* be explained in a 
separate field.

--Bruce

On Fri, 2014-07-18 at 15:56 -0400, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
> Have any of you ever used Patchwork 
> or other patch-tracking systems?
> 
> I can't seem to find documentation on what the various patch-states
> that it uses are actually supposed to mean; can you perhaps offer
> some interpretation of these?
> 
>  New
>  Under Review
>  Accepted
>  Rejected
>  RFC
>  Not Applicable
>  Changes Requested
>  Awaiting Upstream
>  Superseded
>  Deferred
> 
> ?
> 
> 
> Some background...:
> 
> I've been thinking a lot about patch-tracking at work, recently:
> we're doing embedded Linux projects, and we've got a fair amount
> of technical debt on our backlog in the form of patches that have
> yet to be merged or released upstream, and I'm basically trying
> to get that under control--the first issue being to just find an
> effective way of keeping track of the patches and what state
> they're in with regard to upstream acceptance (and how close we are
> to being able to drop the patches and `clear the debt from our ledger'--
> since one of the most fundamental mistakes one can make when dealing
> with any kind of debt is to lose track of it).
> 
> The options that I'm mulling over right now are basically to implement
> a "Patch" tracker (with appropriate Statuses) in our local Redmine
> system, and/or deploy something like Patchwork to sit between the
> internal team and the various upstream mailing lists. I can go into
> more detail on that if anyone's interested, but I'm really just
> trying to come up with a list of statuses and what they mean right now.
> 
> I'm really only barely familiar with Patchwork right now, and it
> seems like probably I should start by trying to apply its stock
> set of statuses (apparently they work for other people, like
> OpenEmbedded and OpenWrt), but I'm just not finding any documentation
> and the meanings of some of the status-names are just... not clear
> to me.
> 
> Guidance?
> 


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Re: Device Tree vs. Device drivers

[Bruce Dawson]

Thanks again Thomas! I'll look at that in a bit more detail... But I
didn't see how it interfaced with the device tables logic. (To know
interrupt/addresses assigned to the port.)

--Bruce

On Fri, 2014-07-18 at 16:13 -0400, Thomas Charron wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 4:01 PM, Bruce Dawson 
> wrote:
> Thanks for replying Thomas!
> 
> Basically, I need to store the time (to the sub-nanosecond) on
> the first
> serial interrupt. (Don't need it for every byte, just the
> first in a
> stream.)
> 
> I'm not really interested in speeding up the UART code or
> serial
> transfer; I just need to know *exactly* when the first byte
> comes in (or
> goes out).
> 
> 
>   Oh, in that case, it's much easier.  The UART drivers allow for 'sub
> drivers'.
> 
> 
>   I actually had an example I used for such a thing bookmarked:
> 
> http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~baker/devices/lxr/http/source/linux/drivers/serial/uartlite.c
> 
> 
>   I don't know if you'll find it helpfull, but it's a functioning
> example which is relatively strait forward.
> 


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Re: Device Tree vs. Device drivers

[Bruce Dawson]

Thanks for replying Thomas!

Basically, I need to store the time (to the sub-nanosecond) on the first
serial interrupt. (Don't need it for every byte, just the first in a
stream.)

I'm not really interested in speeding up the UART code or serial
transfer; I just need to know *exactly* when the first byte comes in (or
goes out).

--Bruce

On Fri, 2014-07-18 at 13:05 -0400, Thomas Charron wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 11:45 AM, Bruce Dawson 
> wrote:
> Does anyone have experience with device drivers and how they
> interact
> with the new Device Tree methodology?
> 
> I've got a project using a BeagleBoneBlack and need to modify
> the serial
> driver (6530/16550A) for some *very* time critical
> applications. Plus, I
> haven't played with the serial driver (or many others) since
> Linux 0.92
> and 1.2.xx.
> 
> Things have changed a lot, and I'm just looking for some
> guidance/mentor.
> 
> 
>   I'm not sure you're going to get any speed improvements into the
> uart drivers since Intel revamped them to handle DMA and the such..
> 
> 
>   What kind of changes are you talking about?
> 
> 
> -- 
> -- Thomas
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Device Tree vs. Device drivers

[Bruce Dawson]

Does anyone have experience with device drivers and how they interact
with the new Device Tree methodology? 

I've got a project using a BeagleBoneBlack and need to modify the serial
driver (6530/16550A) for some *very* time critical applications. Plus, I
haven't played with the serial driver (or many others) since Linux 0.92
and 1.2.xx. 

Things have changed a lot, and I'm just looking for some
guidance/mentor.

--Bruce

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Re: Current call for topics response

[Bruce Dawson]

On Fri, 2014-06-27 at 20:24 -0400, Paul Beaudet wrote:
...
> 
> Think this was enough of a ramble... though there is more to say,
> Paul

What?! And you didn't say it? Are you sure you're a GNHLUG'er!? :-)

But seriously Paul... You put a lot of good time and effort into this,
so if no one else nominates you to be the group's Fearless Leader, I am
doing so now.

My $0.02: I'm working on a kernel device driver project (for BeagleBone
Black), and am interested in talking to others that have delved into the
3.8.* kernel... It has changed *a lot* since I last played with it in
the 0.9* and 1.2 days, and my eyes are rolling.

This would, of course, fall into the embedded camp.

Also to presuppose an upcoming survey, I nominate The Farm, in
Manchester, for a meeting place.

--Bruce


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Re: su: cannot set user id: Resource temporarily unavailable

[Bruce Dawson]

Check shared memory and semaphores. Its probable that some other
application is swallowing the resource sudo needs. This is a common
method of DOS attacks and 'bot nets.

--Bruce

On Mon, 2014-03-10 at 10:05 -0400, Brian Chabot wrote:
> I'm trying to su to a user on a CentOS 6.4 x86_64 box and get the
> error in the subject:
> 
> [user1@cent6.4box ~]$ sudo su - user2
> su: cannot set user id: Resource temporarily unavailable
> [user1@cent6.4box ~]$
> 
> The limits.conf file has the following entries:
> * soft   nofile  10
> * hard   nofile  10
> * soft   nproc   8192
> * hard   nproc   32767
> 
> The current usage for pengine is:
> [user1@cent6.4box ~]$ ps -eLF | grep user2 | wc -l
> 1108
> [user1@cent6.4box ~]$ lsof | grep user2  | wc -l
> 1558
> [user1@cent6.4box ~]$
> 
> While these are the majority of the processes and files in use on the
> system, they are nowhere near the limits.
> 
> I even increased the limits 10-fold and that has not worked.
> 
> I'm kind of lost here.  Usually the error indicates files or processes
> over the limit but here... not so much.
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> 
> 
> Brian Chabot
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Re: Dev Ops - architecture (local not cloud)

[Bruce Dawson]

A long time ago in a distant quantum universe, there was at least one
company that did it like this:

  * Everyone had a "home directory" on the share (at the time, NFS V3 -
beta!)
  * Everyone had a local disk on their workstation.
  * All utilities (compilers, OS utilities, ...) were on a "ghost" drive
that was effectively read-only to most developers, and was
(sometimes) updated nightly with the latest patches from the OS vendors.
  * The source control system (at the time, RCS!) was on a separate
system, and the ci/co commands transferred files to that system.
  * If people wanted stuff backed up, they put it on their home
directory on the share.
  * If people wanted speed, they used their local disk. This was usually
done for "unit builds" and unit testing.
  * "Assembly builds" and all other builds were done by release
engineering, and they pulled from the (at the time) RCS repository.
If your stuff didn't get into the repository, it didn't get built.
(And you didn't get the automatic bug report mailings).

--Bruce


On 12/06/2013 08:35 AM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) wrote:
...
What does your (software development) IT infrastructure look like?
...

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Re: *sigh* I guess I'm going mobile

[Bruce Dawson]

It is a "new thing" - I'm running a Nexus 4 with 4.2.2; kernel 3.4.0-...

When I plug in the USB, I'm given two "Connect As" choices:

 1. Media Device (MTP)
 2. Camera (PTP)

The PTP is supposedly for "older systems".

Unfortunately, my Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid) system needs non-default software
to use either method. And the bluetooth method only lets me send files
to the device!

Rather frustrating - I'm pretty sure the average user would not be able
to figure this stuff out unless they were using a windows system or a Mac.

--Bruce

On 06/14/2013 07:57 AM, Curt Howland wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 7:14 AM, Bruce Dawson  wrote:
>> The latest Androids seem to require MTP(?) to transfer files between it
>> and a remote system. Some do the connection only over bluetooth, some
>> over the USB cable.
> Must be a new thing.
>
> I got an Android last year, version says "4.0.4". When I plug in USB
> it asks "Charge only, Mass Storage, Transfer Files".
>
> When I pick "Mass Storage", the memory card shows up as an external drive.
>
> Your mileage may vary, I guess.
>
> Curt-

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Re: *sigh* I guess I'm going mobile

[Bruce Dawson]

The latest Androids seem to require MTP(?) to transfer files between it
and a remote system. Some do the connection only over bluetooth, some
over the USB cable.

Not all Linux systems support the MTP protocol version required by Android.

I do know that some of the older Linux MTP versions DO NOT work with
Android! (Which can be very frustrating if you don't update frequently.)

--Bruce
PS: I seem to remember reading that MTP is a Microsoft derived product.

On 06/14/2013 06:32 AM, David Rysdam wrote:
> Twice in the last week we've had incidents where I needed to contact my
> wife and couldn't. We have cheap crappy cellphones but they are so old
> that they don't work well (e.g. won't hold a charge, terrible coverage,
> etc) so we don't ever take them with us.
>
> I'm afraid I'm going to have to get something modern. It's possible
> we'll still get dumbphones, but I'm looking at the smartphone options as
> well, thus the *sigh*.
>
> Here's my Linux-related question: What smartphones will I have the least
> amount of trouble with if I need/want to connect them with my Linux
> computer? Presumably Android, but maybe not. Or possibly certain
> versions are better or worse than others.
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Re: FYI (large devices = looooonnngg processing times)

[Bruce Dawson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

I remember back when the Digital TurboLaser systems came out. At the
time they were enormous, and my job was to develop testing tools for
them. Management just about fell off their chairs when I told them it
would take a *week* (running 24x7) just to create a 1 TB file with
random data (as in RND(0)) for testing. And a little under 2 weeks to
create 1 million 1K files with random data for testing.

- --Bruce

On 04/27/2013 08:06 PM, Curt Howland wrote:
> On Saturday 27 April 2013, Michael ODonnell was heard to say:
> > Even on just a silly little RAID1 mirror on a multi-Tb
> > array I dread seeing the various messages announcing
> > "routine" maintenance and diagnostic operations as
> > they take forever and don't come for free, resource-wise...
>
> When I bought a 1TB external drive and decided to encrypt it, I wanted
> to randomize if first, dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sdb or whatever it
> was, USB3.
>
> 6 days later I made the mistake of playing a SpaceRip youtube video in
> full screen, and Flash locked up the box. The randomizing still
> wasn't done, but I gave up on that and encrypted the drive anyway.
>
> Yes, TerraByte drives are, as was said to Cyrano DeBergerac, "Rather
> Large."
>


-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/

iEYEARECAAYFAlF8bgIACgkQ/TBScWXa5Ijf0gCcDXqYQIpizOYUg+02cB/a5xk0
u8sAoKiiOaqDv/qPeIgM/p3BDPk5JX5p
=vvE1
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

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Re: Any Octave users? What is this code snippet actually doing?

[Bruce Dawson]

Write a review of the book and indicate that the code therein has bugs!

You're the eyeball + 1. Strengthen your power by reporting the bug in a
public forum! Help prevent others from falling into the same hole.

--Bruce

On 04/07/2013 10:35 AM, Bruce Labitt wrote:
> On 04/06/2013 04:58 PM, Michael ODonnell wrote:
>>> kmax=1;
>>> kfactor=(kmax-1.0)/delta/(orderbc+1.0)/delbc^orderbc;
>>> Unless matlab treats floats and ints differently than most other
>>> languages, I'd say its a bug because zero over anything is always zero.
>> Shame on anybody who'd intentionally code something like
>> that without also providing a comment about such a seemingly
>> counterintuitive approach.  >-/ Let's hope it's simply a bug...
>>
>> Out of morbid curiosity, how does Octave report the value of
>> kfactor after
>>
>> kmax=1
>> kfactor=(kmax-1.0)
>>
>>??
>>   
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>>
>>
> kfactor = 0 is reported by octave in debug mode.
>
> That's a long bit of code
>
> kfactor=(kmax-1.0)/delta/(orderbc+1.0)/delbc^orderbc;
>
> just to set it to zero.  Clearly a bug, or just plain wrong and not 
> thought through.  Drives me nuts, since this construct was used for the 
> x, y, and z axes.
>
> Guess I'll have to contact one of the authors of the book.  The graduate 
> student that wrote the code has since graduated.  (Got her PhD int 
> 2010.)  Humph, you'd think the code samples for something this 
> complicated would be better.
>
> \rant on
> The level of commenting in the code sample is not up to teaching 
> standards, IMHO.  If you are doing something tricky, write a descriptive 
> comment on it!  (I can't even remember tricky stuff I did last week 
> without good comments.)  Please, everyone, don't write ultra dense code 
> like this, spaces are your friend!
>
> dx(:,2:je_tot,2:ke_tot)=C1ex(:,2:je_tot,2:ke_tot).* 
> dx(:,2:je_tot,2:ke_tot)+ 
> C2ex(:,2:je_tot,2:ke_tot).*((hz(:,2:je_tot,2:ke_tot)-hz(:,1:je_tot-1,2:ke_tot))-
> (hy(:,2:je_tot,2:ke_tot)-hy(:,2:je_tot,1:ke_tot-1)))./delta;
>
> Especially if there are 5 more lines just like it, with slightly 
> differing indices, with no spaces in between!
> \rant off
>
> As you were.  :)
>
>
>
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Re: Any Octave users? What is this code snippet actually doing?

[Bruce Dawson]

Unless matlab treats floats and ints differently than most other
languages, I'd say its a bug because zero over anything is always zero.

But, I have no clue as to what context its running in, so it may be
deliberate.

--Bruce

On 04/06/2013 02:03 PM, Bruce Labitt wrote:
> I'm trying to understand a chunk of 3D FDTD code that I downloaded
> from the publisher of the book, "Computational Electrodynamics".  It
> is in matlab, so I tried to run it in Octave.  Something is not quite
> right, so it doesn't execute.  That doesn't matter to me right now. 
> The piece of code is:
>
> //start snippet
> %   x-varying material properties
> delbc=upml*delta;
> sigmam=-log(rmax)*(orderbc+1.0)/(2.0*eta*delbc); 
> sigfactor=sigmam/(delta*(delbc^orderbc)*(orderbc+1.0));
> kmax=1;
> kfactor=(kmax-1.0)/delta/(orderbc+1.0)/delbc^orderbc;
> //end snippet
>
> It would seem to me that kfactor is always zero, since kmax is set to
> 1 in the line above.  That probably is not the intent, I think. 
> kfactor does not seem to be updated later in the code.
>
> Is this just a bug?  Or what does the last line do?  The author of the
> code is a long graduated PhD student from UWisc.  Just contact UW? 
>
> URL of actual code: 
> http://www.artechhouse.com/static/downloads/fdtd3D_UPML.zip
>
> It doesn't matter if it executes in octave.  (It would be nice, though
> - it currently runs, plots a little, then seg faults) 
>
> octave:1> fdtd3D_UPML
> error: base_graphics_object::get_properties: invalid graphics object
> panic: Segmentation fault -- stopping myself...
> attempting to save variables to `octave-core'...
> save to `octave-core' complete
> Segmentation fault
>
> I tested the code in Matlab, and it executes.  Can't really say if the
> code is doing everything right, but it runs and vaguely does things
> sort of ok. The simulation is kind of coarse, but one can see an
> electric field starting to radiate from a dipole.
>
> I'm porting it to python/scipy and maybe later to pycuda, once I get
> it working.  Then maybe I can do some cool stuff with it.
>
> Thanks in Advance
> -Bruce
>
>
>
>
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Re: Printer recommendations

[Bruce Dawson]

We have a

HP_LaserJet_300_colorMFP_M375nw

Works OK with Linux as a network printer. Doesn't do duplex printing
(not that I've tried very hard). Note that I'm using the Linux HPLIP
drivers.

It strikes me as a rather cheaply made device (lots of plastic - I'm not
sure it would survive a cat landing on it). But it works. And it is *heavy*.

Its about $600 MSRP, but you can probably find one for $500. Its
consumables are expensive, but not overly. But then again, we tend to
buy them from HP. Seems to work fine with normal copier paper too.

Works on Linux, Windows, and Apple as a network printer. Sane/hp-scan
recognizes it as a scanner. And I can use Libreoffice (haven't tried
OpenOffice recently) to fax via its fax modem.

--Bruce

On 03/07/2013 02:08 PM, David & Tina Ohlemacher wrote:
> I am in need of a printer and was wondering if the gnlug would have
> recommendations.  Even brands to look at or avoid would be helpful.
>
> Here is what we are looking for in order of importance:
>
>   * Works with Linux obviously. We currently run Ubuntu, Mint, and
> LMDE at the house. There will usually be no Windows machines on
> the network.
>   * Color laser
>   * Ethernet interface
>   * Not overly expensive to operate
>   * Cost under $500
>   * Size does not matter
>   * Bonus:
>   o Two sided printing
>   o All in one (functional Linux scanning)
>   o Wireless
>
> Thanks,
>
> David
>
>
>
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Re: I'm considering consulting out of state. What kind of incorperation?

[Bruce Dawson]

Subchapter S or LLC should be fine. Tax-wise, profit (income after
expenses) is rolled into your personal income. Just beware of the level
of duplication for paperwork (taxes, insurance, ...) for having  a
corporation.

Other things to be aware of when working out of state:

  * Licensing (especially medical field)
  * Increased insurance (esp vehicle) due to distance travelled
  * Increased expenses (parking fees, tolls, meals, room, ...)

Also, a lot of states still require quarterly taxes to be paid to them,
but refund it at year end (and expect each state to have a different
definition of "year end", and "refund").

But all-in-all, its manageable once you get all the ducks lined up.

Good luck and have fun!

--BRuce


On 01/28/2013 10:28 PM, Bill Freeman wrote:
> I have a potential gig on Long Island on a 1099, but will remain
> domiciled in NH.  I figure that I should become a LLC or sole
> proprietorship or something.  Suggestions?
>
> Bill

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Fwd: Re: Delayed mail from GNHLUG?

[Bruce Dawson]

The great part is that some users actually noticed that something got
fixed! (I've had systems where the users hadn't noticed that something
was wrong and simply ignored the fact they weren't getting email because
(almost literally) "the magic smoke quit working".

Now if only the users (and I'm one) would have noticed they weren't
getting the daily website updates and at least raised a flag!

Ben: I presume all you had to do was to restart the MTA? (Postfix,
sendmail, which ever...)

--Bruce

On 12/11/2012 10:22 AM, David Hardy wrote:
> With all due respect to other nerds on this list, from what I have
> seen of Ben's information and help over twelve years entitles him to
> endless nerd points.  He gets a permanent free pass.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 10:11 AM, Roger H. Goun  > wrote:
>
> Fortunately, the nerd points that Ben lost by committing an elementary
> sysadmin mistake he got back through the form of his apology.
>
> On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 8:58 AM, Ben Scott  > wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 8:04 AM, Kyle Smith  > wrote:
> >> Anyone else just get roughly a weeks worth of mail from the
> list at once?
> >
> >   There was an issue[1] with the GNHLUG Internet server.  Mail was
> > being queued for the list server to process, but wasn't going any
> > further.  Once the problem was cleared, all the accumulated mail let
> > lose at once.
> >
> > -- Ben
> >
> > [1] The log partition was full.[2]  This caused the list server
> to shut down.
> > [2] Turns out somebody[3] forgot to set-up log rotation for the web
> > sites it hosts.
> > [3] That would be me.[4]
> > [4] Sorry 'bout that.
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> >
>
>
>


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Re: sched_setscheduler(2)

[Bruce Dawson (VPN)]

On 11/8/2012 6:56 PM, Thomas Charron wrote:
On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 5:54 PM, Thomas Charron > wrote:


  On  2.6.31-11-rt (Ubuntu 10.04 realtime kernel)

./a.out starting...
My original scheduling policy is SCHED_OTHER (0)
The original minimum scheduling priority is 0, the maximum is 0
sched_get_priority_max(1) returned 99
sched_get_priority_min(1) returned 1
My target scheduling policy is SCHED_FIFO (1)
The target minimum scheduling priority is 1, the maximum is 99
params.sched_priority now set to 98
It worked - now running in high-priority mode
params.sched_priority now set to 98
Now running at original scheduler policy
My scheduling policy is SCHED_OTHER
The minimum scheduling priority is 0, the maximum is 0


  It should also be noted that my system has:

@video - rtprio 99
@video - memlock unlimited

  My user is in the video group.  You can probably guess what kind of 
development I'm doing on this box.  X-D


I have to admit that the whole /etc/security thing is new to me.  Wish I 
knew more about these things - I suspect I should reboot after modifying 
that directory, but another part of me says there should be a daemon 
that I need to restart. And I can't find any documentation on it - I 
can't even think of what to google for - "/etc/security" didn't bring up 
much useful (at least now within the first page or so).


--Bruce



--
-- Thomas


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Re: sched_setscheduler(2)

[Bruce Dawson (VPN)]

The (rather severely hacked) code is attached - I'm using a netbook with 
cygwin right now and can't seem to do a cut&paste from the window.


It was built with cc latencytest.c -o latencytest

The executable was SetUID and owned by root. I also tried sudo'ing it.

Output:

   jbd@beaglebone:~$ ./latencytest
   ./latencytest starting...
   My original scheduling policy is SCHED_OTHER (0)
   The original minimum scheduling priority is 0, the maximum is 0
   sched_get_priority_max(1) returned 99
   sched_get_priority_min(1) returned 1
   My target scheduling policy is SCHED_FIFO (1)
   The target minimum scheduling priority is 1, the maximum is 99
   params.sched_priority now set to 98
   sched_setscheduler (0, SCHED_FIFO (1), ...) failed: Operation not
   permitted
   My scheduling policy is SCHED_OTHER
   The minimum scheduling priority is 0, the maximum is 0

I also put the following in /etc/security/limits.d/99realtime.conf:

   @jbd - rtprio 99
   @jbd - memlock unlimited

Note that I don't have the mlock code in the above example - I wanted to 
get this working first.


--Bruce

On 11/8/2012 3:17 PM, Kevin D. Clark wrote:

Bruce Dawson writes:


Does anyone have any experience with this system call?

Can you give us some code with your exact setup for
sched_setscheduler()?

Using this call requires a bit of setup ; there are a quite a few
things that could go wrong or not be setup correctly, etc.  Being able
to look at a snippet of your code would be very helpful.

Also, could you run the snippet of code on your target machine and
provide us with the strace output?

Kind regards,

--kevin


/**
   latencytest.c - Measures how long it takes to get a character echoed
 back from a XBee (which should be on /dev/ttyS0).

 FYI: This needs to run as super-user because it uses the scheduling
 calls and locks itself in memory to reduce latency.

   $Header$
**/

static char * _version_ = "$Id$";

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

const char * PolicyToStr (int policy) {
  static char buf[BUFSIZ];
  switch (policy) {
  case SCHED_OTHER:
snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "SCHED_OTHER (%d)", policy);
break;
  case SCHED_IDLE:
snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "SCHED_IDLE (%d)", policy);
break;
  case SCHED_BATCH:
snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "SCHED_BATCH (%d)", policy);
break;
  case SCHED_FIFO:
snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "SCHED_FIFO (%d)", policy);
break;
  case SCHED_RR:
snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "SCHED_RR (%d)", policy);
break;
  default:
snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "Unknown!: %d", policy);
break;
  }
  return buf;
}

main(int argc, char ** argv) {
  int origpolicy;   /* Current process' scheduling
   priority */
  int origPolicyMaxPriority;/* Maximum priority for the original
   policy */
  int origPolicyMinPriority;/* Minimum priority for the original
   policy */
  int tempPolicyMaxPriority;/* Maximum priority for the wanted
   policy */
  int tempPolicyMinPriority;/* Minimum priority for the wanted
   policy */
  pid_t pid;/* My Process ID */
  int temppolicy = SCHED_FIFO;  /* Set to First-In scheduling */
  struct sched_param params; /* Scheduling parameters */
  int retval;   /* Return value from function calls */

  printf("%s starting...\n", argv[0]);
  pid = 0;  /* Use this process' ID */
  
  /* Get original max and min priorities. */
  if ((origpolicy = sched_getscheduler((pid_t) 0)) < 0) {
perror("sched_getscheduler(0) failed");
  };
  if ((origPolicyMaxPriority = sched_get_priority_max(origpolicy)) < 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "sched_get_priority_max(%d) failed: %s", origpolicy,
strerror(errno));
  };
  if ((origPolicyMinPriority = sched_get_priority_min(origpolicy)) < 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "sched_get_priority_min(%d) failed", origpolicy,
strerror(errno));
  };
  printf("My original scheduling policy is %s\n", PolicyToStr(origpolicy));
  printf ("The original minimum scheduling priority is %d, the maximum is %d\n",
  origPolicyMinPriority, origPolicyMaxPriority);

  /* Get max and min priorities of wanted scheduling policy. */
  if ((tempPolicyMaxPriority = sched_get_priority_max(temppolicy)) < 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "sched_get_priority_max(%d) failed: %s\n", temppolicy,
strerror(errno));
  } else {
fprintf (stderr, "sched_get_priority_max(%d) returned %d\n",
 temppolicy, tempPolicyMaxPriority);
  }
  if ((tempPolicyMinPriority = sched_get_priority_min(temppolicy)) < 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "sc

sched_setscheduler(2)

[Bruce Dawson]

Does anyone have any experience with this system call?

I'm trying to set to the FIFO scheduler policy (for a short time of 
course), and get an "Operation not permitted" error back - in spite of 
having the image SETUID and running it as root (a bit redundant - but 
I'm grasping at straws now).


Does anyone have any ideas what could cause that message to be thrown?

I'm running on:

   jbd@beaglebone:~$ uname -a
   Linux beaglebone 3.2.25 #1 Thu Aug 16 13:09:39 CEST 2012 armv7l
   GNU/Linux
   jbd@beaglebone:~$ lsb_release -a
   Distributor ID: Angstrom
   Description:Angstrom GNU/Linux v2012.05 (Core edition)
   Release:v2012.05
   Codename:   Core edition

--Bruce

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Re: grub issue

[Bruce Dawson]

The launcher bars may be hidden - just hover the mouse on those borders 
of the screen. If the launchers don't pop out, then there is some other 
problem.

--Bruce

On 11/7/2012 10:55 AM, michael miller wrote:
> I was beginning to think that posting the question to the group had
> actually fixed the problem.  It recurred this morning for the first time
> since the original post.  Your suggestion, run startx, did bring up the
> gui which looked normal except that the app launcher bars at the side
> and top of the screen were missing.
>
> Mike
>
> On Thu, 2012-10-25 at 21:48 -0400, Ben Scott wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 9:22 PM, michael miller  wrote:
>>> I get a normal command line login prompt and can log in.  Everything
>>> appears completely normal until booting halts at the command line login.
>>OK.  The next time that happens -- you get a text-only login prompt
>> -- login normally, and run the command
>>
>>  startx
>>
>>That will start the X GUI from a text-only command prompt session.
>> If that doesn't work, either, it's likely some problem with the video
>> card or driver.  If that works, it's prolly something to do with what
>> services/options the system is starting with.
>>
>>> The reason I thought that it might be a grub issue is that the grub menu
>>> lists as one option entering "c" to boot to a command line.
>>That "c" option refers to going to the GRUB command line, where you
>> can manually issue commands to prepare to boot Linux.
>>
>> -- Ben
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Re: [GNHLUG] GNHLUG and Drupal BBQ parties: Sept 8 and Aug 25

[Bruce Dawson]

Hmm. Interesting webapp.

Do we have a volunteer to set it up?

For the Aug 28 event: we only need RSVPs - but even that is being taken
care of at http://groups.drupal.org/node/243993/signups/list. Note that
there's only 6 RSVPs for this date.

The Sep 8 event will need it for potluck (what is needed and who is
bringing it), as well as RSVPs.

--Bruce

On 08/14/2012 05:52 PM, Bill McGonigle wrote:
> On 08/06/2012 01:43 PM, Ben Scott wrote:
>> What : GNHLUG party (with all others welcome)
>> Date : Saturday, September 8, 2012
>> Time : Afternoon/evening (exact time TBD)
> ...
>>Information on the GNHLUG event to follow Real Soon Now.
> Would it be useful to set up a Punchbowl to coordinate RSVP's, potluck, etc?
>
> http://www.punchbowl.com/learn/
>
> -Bill
>

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Re: [GNHLUG] What day should the GNHLUG BBQ be?

[Bruce Dawson]

On 08/05/2012 10:17 PM, Ben Scott wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 5, 2012 at 9:35 PM, Bruce Dawson  wrote:
>> I'm inclined to say "Let's do both dates".
>   Well, it's your place, Bruce.  :)  And at least some of your food.
> If you want to host two parties, I doubt you'll find people are really
> all *that* upset about it.  :)

Well, GNHLUG'ers can get upset over *anything*; but given that this
is a union of possible outcomes, there's not much probability they will.
Except for the exception-seekers.
>   I presume one could even come to both events, provided they bring
> some extra food/beer/etc?  :)

I don't see why not. But my next request will be a count of people
coming (and for the 8 Sep date, what they are bringing - I don't
want to get swamped with 40 dozen deserts.)
>
>   As an additional bit of confusion, Barbeque Poll: The Sequel is
> showing Sept 8 with a slight edge over all other dates, which is
> exactly the opposite of the first poll.  Aug 11 is also decidedly
> negative this time around.
>
> http://doodle.com/vqk7sb8evznp6x8y
>
>   FWIW, I plan on formally closing the poll tomorrow afternoon (Mon 6 Aug).
Good. Thanks. And "let the planning begin..."!

--Bruce
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Re: [GNHLUG] What day should the GNHLUG BBQ be?

[Bruce Dawson]

I'm inclined to say "Let's do both dates". For those of us that August
25 works, then come and join the Drupal crowd (GNHLUG was invited). 
What the hell... We're both Open Source anyway - we're used to breaking
the paradigm.

For those of us for which Aug 25 doesn't work, come on the Sept 8th
date. I'll let the Drupal folks know they can do the Sept 8th date if
they can't come on 25 Aug.

--Bruce

On 07/23/2012 08:08 AM, Ben Scott wrote:
> Who  : You!  Your fiends!  Everybody!
> What : GNHLUG Summer BBQ Party
> Date : That's the question!
> Time : Afternoon/evening (exact time TBD)
> Where: Miles Smith Farm, Loudon, NH
>
> Let's all get together and enjoy the company of friends and colleagues
> -- and some darn good food!
>
> Bruce Dawson and Carole Soule have once again offered to host a summer
> barbeque party for GNHLUG.  But we need to pick a date!  Please vote
> here:
>
> http://doodle.com/aymvdxbgbcq8ftde
>
> (If Doodle does not work for you, please reply to me via email
> directly, off-list, and we'll count you that way.)
>
> The potential dates are:
>
> * Saturday 11 August
> * Saturday  1 September
> * Saturday  8 September
>
>   Anyone associated or connected with GNHLUG, or interested in Linux,
> Unix, Free/Open Source Software, or anything related, is welcome.
> Everyone is encouraged to take this chance to meet and mingle with
> other Linux enthusiasts. While primarily a social event, tech talk is
> inevitable at these things, and useful tips and even business
> opportunities often pop up.
>
>   Bruce Dawson and Carole Soule have generously offered to be our
> hosts, at Miles Smith Farm in Loudon, NH (just East of Concord).  If
> you've never been there, it's a beautiful spot, with a rustic old farm
> house and barn, hilly fields, and an incredible view.  The "farm" part
> isn't just a name -- it's an actual, working farm, with cows and
> horses, and farm products for sale.  Don't let that scare you away,
> though -- Bruce is a certified geek, so electricity and WiFi Internet
> are readily available.
>
>   This will be a "pot-luck" BBQ.  Show off your culinary or shopping
> skills, and please bring some kind of edible item for the party.
> Children are welcome!  (But not as edible items.)  Bring your own
> beer, or even bring some to share -- and given this crowd, I expect to
> see some decent brews.  The farm will be supplying beef (hamburger and
> beef sausage), you supply the rest!
>
>   Driving directions are on the farm web site:
>
> http://www.milessmithfarm.com/ShowPage.php?PID=HOURS
>
>   Hope to see you all there!
>
> -- Ben
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Re: [GNHLUG] What day should the GNHLUG BBQ be?

[Bruce Dawson]

Whoops.

There are 2 (two) BBQ's - one for Drupal, and one for GNHLUG! And they
are on different dates.

--Bruce

On 07/29/2012 10:26 PM, Seth Cohn wrote:
> We discussed this at the recent "coworking friday" the Drupal user
> group held in Manchester, and we all felt that the more the merrier,
> so if Sat the 25th works for you folks, please come the more geeks
> and the more open source, and the more people to meet and hang out
> with, the better...
>
> The Drupal BBQ will be Saturday 25 Aug 2012 from 14:30 to 20:30 (or
> whenever everyone leaves) at the Miles Smith Farm. Bring Your Own
> Drink - Food provided by the NH Drupal Group and Bruce Dawson and
> Carole Soule of Miles Smith Farm. (This is a BBQ - think grilled meats
> and veggies.)
>
> If you are ok with co-bbqing with us, we'd be happy to share...
>
> If you want to signup to help calculate attendence,
> http://groups.drupal.org/node/243993
> or just let me know, and I'll make sure we have a good count...
>
> Seth
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Re: Options for hosting servers in my basement?

[Bruce Dawson]

I used to try this every few months, and just got frustrated. Comcast's
business rates are not reasonable for home servers, FiOS is not
available, and Fairpoint is useless. I ended up co-locating at a
favorable ISP (G4).

The only suggestion I can make is to beat on your
selectmen/alderpersons/ until you have some competition in
your area. However, the evidence I have makes me believe the local cable
companies are colluding and not competing. (Try to find a town in NH
that gives their residents the option of one or more cable/DSL providers.)

So until we get some good competition between the providers, NH will
remain a backwater in the internet arena.

--Bruce

On 07/02/2012 03:48 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
> I have a couple of web/mail/shell/etc. servers that are currently
> hosted `in the cloud', but which I'd really like to move
> to my basement if possible (with the caveat that I don't live/work
> at a college or an ISP...).
>
> Basically, I want:
>
> * 2 or 3 static IP addresses.
>
> * A fast enough *uplink* (consumer service is typically great
>   on download speeds but has lousy upload speeds);
>
> * A reliable enough link--service can't be interrupted
>   on a weekly or even monthly basis, and interruptions can't
>   last for hours at a time. The consumer DSL subscription
>   I have right now completely fails this criterion.
>
> * Something that won't empty my wallet (so far, I've made
>   one inquiry to an ISP about `business class' service,
>   and got a response of `what you really want is a T1
>   for $300/month'; that's a little heavy..., but
>   maybe someone here has a good story about becoming
>   their neighbours' ISP?).
>
> I neither need nor want mail hosting services, web hosting services,
> phone service, or anything like that.
>
> Assuming I have options other than `go live at a college or ISP',
> what are they? Or is home server-hosting a completely ridiculous idea
> in our modern world?
>
> My friends down in MA say, `get FIOS!'
>


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Re: gnhlug-discuss Digest, Vol 68, Issue 2

[Bruce Dawson]

I suspect powering off before logging out, or not doing a proper
shutdown is the root of most of the problems. Especially where cache is
involved.

Sounds like something isn't being cleaned up and it trips up the cache.
A lot of session logic depends on a coherent cache.

--Just my $0.02 --Bruce

On 05/15/2012 11:37 AM, Jon "maddog" Hall wrote:
> This sounds to me like a race condition that causes you to run out of
> some critical resource while the system is starting up.
>
> There are a lot of processes that are kicked off during start up and it
> takes an abnormal amount of resources.  After you are up and running
> these resources are freed up as the start-up processes die.
>
> The resource that comes to mind is virtual memory "swap" space, and it
> may be that you need to expand that, particularly on machines with
> smaller amounts of main memory.
>
> Other ideas?
>
> md
>
> On Tue, 2012-05-15 at 09:20 -0400, Michael Nolin wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue May 8 12:54 , David Ohlemacher sent:
>>
>> "I have LMDE xfce installed on several machines (two from
>> zareason).  I will warn you about some things that happen to
>> them once in a while.
>> 
>> 1. Rarely: When I boot up, my windows will all be missing
>> their title bars. They also all get piled up in the upper left
>> corner.  One cannot move them.  It happens once a month or so.
>> Rebooting or restarting X will not fix it.  The first symptom
>> is that I see the XFCE mouse splash screen much longer when X
>> starts.
>> 
>> The way I fix it:
>> - Press Cntrl-Alt-F2 to bring up another text tty.
>> - $ cd ~/.cache
>> - $ rm -rf sessions
>> - $ sudo service gdm3 restart"
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I have a similar problem with my SUSE 12.x xfce  the windows
>> manager will be lost on boot on occasion.  
>> 
>> The way I fix it:  xfwm4  in the single remaining xterm locked
>> at the top of the screen. 
>> it seems the windows manager gets dropped from the session
>> manager on occasion.  logging out through the session manager 
>> restores the window manager setting.  Until the next occasion
>> were it gets lost.  Perhaps when I shutdown with out logging
>> out?  
>> 
>> Michael Nolin 
>> Embedded Solutions Unlimited, LLC 
>> http://embedded-unlimited.com 
>> 
>>
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Re: mosh

[Bruce Dawson]

Just keep in mind the security risk inherent in sessions unused for a 
long time - like if the laptop was stolen. Or worse, someone found it 
(maybe while you were in a bathroom), sent an incriminating message/data 
from it - and it was attributed to you and your "secure" laptop - and it 
never left your possession.

Worse things have happened to good people.

--Bruce

On 04/18/2012 04:25 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
> Chip Marshall  writes:
>> Thought I'd share this: http://mosh.mit.edu/
>>
>> It's a remote terminal program (like SSH or telnet) but designed
>> to allow for mobility. Rather than sending the whole stream
>> across the network, it maintains a screen state on the remote
>> server (like screen) and syncs up the local display as needed.
>>
>> I've been using it for a few days now, and have been pretty
>> impressed, roaming seamlessly between wired and wireless
>> networks, between home and work, without losing my session has
>> been pretty nice.
> This all sounds very familiar
>
> You cited the `SSH + Screen' parts; but even the `roaming without
> losing your session' bit..., that reminds me that there used to be
> a project called "rocks" (as in `solid as a', but the name also
> standing for `Reliable SOCKets'). I think it was supposed to provide
> a posix-compatibility wrapper of some sort. A friend of mine
> decided to test it by:
>
>  * SSH'ing over rocks from his laptop in MA to a server in the sky;
>  * Putting the laptop to sleep;
>  * driving from MA to CT;
>  * unsleeping the laptop and connecting to a network in CT.
>
> He said that he was impressed that his session was still live,
> after all of that.
>
> And, if I'm remembering correctly, it should have been possible to use
> rocks with other applications than SSH+Screen.
>
> Oh, here it is:
>
>  http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~zandy/rocks/
>
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Slashdot: NH Passes Open-Source bill

[Bruce Dawson]

Kudos to Seth...

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/02/04/2259227/new-hampshire-passes-open-source-bill
 

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Re: Accessing partitions in drive images

[Bruce Dawson]

On 01/30/2012 11:02 AM, OK? Im Deluxe! wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 08:53:37PM -0500, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
>>>(I think 2.88 MB is the biggest floppy disk size defined by IBM-PC
>>> conventions.  But if there are others, they're around that size.)
>> What about `flopticals', LS-120s, etc.?
>>
>> Were they partitioned like HDDs?
> Typically, no.  Neither were any of the various tape devices that
> used the PC floppy drive controller interface.
>
Sigh. I have to say: "Typically, yes". I did use a Bernoulli and IOMega 
"flopticals" that acted like AT-style hard drives. I may still have a 
few floating about in the barn. (But doubt if I have a working computer 
that they'll connect to.)

Also, recent DVD-RAM drives look like hard drives. The older ones 
usually needed different drivers because of their speed.

--Bruce
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Re: Terminology: FOSS vs. `Legacy Software'?

[Bruce Dawson]

In contrast - I like the term "legacy software" for the likes of
proprietary software.

We're talking about changing mindsets here - not the mindsets of those
who read mailing lists like this one, but the PHBs who justify the
purchase of proprietary software.

This is a good way of letting them know that Windows and the like is
"old hat".

And the more people (especially their peers) who says this, the more
they'll believe it!

--Bruce

On 08/06/2011 08:34 PM, Lori Nagel wrote:
> I actually kind of liked the term legacy software, well, at least at
> first. Then I thought about it a bit more and realized that legacy
> software could easily be confusingly applied to things like the old
> Athena Widget set, and X11 user interface being used currently in the
> Wograld project. (I could never get the basics of SDL to work or
> figure it out, plus SDL is upgrading to a new broke version from what
> I read on the SDL list.)
> But if Legacy software was used like this, then I guess my old Athena
> Widget set and X11 user interface for Wograld is "New, trendy and up
> to date" okay, I'm a hardcore dork and proud of it.
>
> Conversely, there is unfortunately new proprietary software being
> written everyday, including new versions of things like Skype and
> Flash. I think it's going to take a while to convince all the
> programmers not to write proprietary software anymore, part of it is
> being paid to write proprietary software, and the other half is
> companies making the decisions that the business model relies
> on closing the source up.
>
> I think what has to change is some of the business models and the ways
> people think about making money. I think people are already being
> forced to change some business models whether they like it or not. If
> proprietary software isn't a viable business model anymore, people
> will probably stop making it (with the exception of some crazy
> paranoid hobbyist who doesn't want anyone to see his code, but then
> who would care about using it anyway if everyone considers proprietary
> software a bad thing.)
>
> 
> *From:* Joshua Judson Rosen 
> *To:* Greater New Hampshire 
> *Sent:* Friday, August 5, 2011 7:42 PM
> *Subject:* Terminology: FOSS vs. `Legacy Software'?
>
> I originally wrote this as a private e-mail, but I figured I'd send it
> along to greater GNHLUG--because I realised that I would actually like
> to engage you all...:
>
> 
>
> maddog has written a blog-post proposing that the terms "closed-source"
> and "proprietary" be replaced by the term "legacy software":
>
>
> http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/Blogs/Paw-Prints-Writings-of-the-maddog/Do-not-say-Closed-Source-or-Proprietary-Software-instead-say-Legacy-Software
>
> I've been thinking a lot about this, myself--following mainly from
> a couple of recent conversations with friends and family:
> one that came out of the `cobbled whole-home audio' thing, and another
> that took place upon someone seeing my NanoNote (sayng, `More Linux?
> Really, what can Linux do that Windows or Mac OS X can't?');
> and, actually, now I remember that there was another relevant one--
> with the owner of the local pharmacy down on Main St., about
> their digital signature-pads; and another with my wife (the nurse)
> about software-based medical devices and the modern `medical science'
> (or lack thereof) behind them
>
> I agree with the idea that maddog's expressed, but I'm not so sure
> about the specific choice of terminology.
>
> I should, perhaps, apologise for the length of this, up front
> (there's a pile of other suggested terms toward the end--actually,
> more toward the middle--with context between here and there...).
>
> I've been thinking about what terms would best help to articulate to
> `the typical uncaring luddite', which required me examine the terms
> in which *I* actually think about the issues; and I think it's,
> basically, mainly along two lines
>
> One way that I think about these issues is, as a maker, something like:
>
> I have a project to do, and my choices of collaborators are
> either a cooperative community, or a hostile corporation
> that's going to fight me at every step (and charge me a premium
> for it!). Which would you pick? I don't really care for
> the `Nerd Fight-Club' thing
>
> I guess that's in the same vein as `my favourite paintings are bought
> as blank canvases, et idem for books' And maybe it's telling that
> I really wanted to remember my friend's question as "What can YOU do
> WITH Linux that YOU can't do WITH Windows or Mac OS X?", when I'm
> pretty sure that's not how he asked it.
>
> The second line of thought, which probably makes for more generally-
> applicable conversation, could be classed as the decison between
> `permanent vs. disposable' systems. Like, with the home-audio thing
> A friend and colleague remark

Re: Label-printers for CUPS/Linux?

[Bruce Dawson]

Maybe a decade or so ago, I wrote a driver for a label printer, then
re-wrote it a year later because the original printer died and I had to
replace it with that year's model, which died about 2 years later. I
would hope things have stabilized a bit since then.

BTW: from experience, sticky labels on sweating drink glasses aren't
reliable. I hope you're using paper or non-glossy plastic.

--Bruce

On 07/14/2011 03:00 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
> I'm looking at possibly getting a label-printer
> to hook up to one of my Debian machines, and hoping
> that maybe someone here can give me some guidance
> because (1) I've never had a PC-driven label-printer
> and (2) I might be doing something unusual...:
>
> I want to use libvisualid to generate tags to keep my
> party-guests' drink-cups straight. If I can just print
> the glyphs directly onto smallish, sticky paper labels,
> then then the whole thing is straightforward.
>
> So, I'm looking for a label-printer that will work with
> my Linux machine, and that can print arbitrary graphics
> rather than just text or bar-codes.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
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Re: Colo

[Bruce Dawson]

Thanks for the reminder Drew...

As part of MV's demise, I moved my servers to G4. They have been there
for about 1 month now. No problems so far, and I don't anticipate any in
the near term. They seem real professional and eager to please.

--Bruce


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Re: [FOSS] How does one respond to this line of questioning?

[Bruce Dawson]

On 04/08/2011 08:41 AM, Bruce Labitt wrote:
>
> Makes me be more productive *is* the point.  Why would anyone want to
> be less productive ? 
>

If *your* high productivity makes the *team* less productive! But this
is frequently a management excuse.

Sorry, I just couldn't help but inject some real-life factors into this
conversation.

Re: Bone-headed responses to the efficiency of using OSS: some people
are just bone headed stubborn and refuse to change until it becomes
"their idea" to change. (Real World excuse: I don't have time to relearn
and adjust my values paradigm to open source.)

This whole conversation reminds me of the contention that existed
between Cobol and Fortran programmers. Put one or more of either into a
team with the others, and you're got a recipe for instant gray haired
managers - especially when reviewing each other's code!

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Re: Computer hardware for sale, cheap

[Bruce Dawson]

Just keep in mind Comcast's 250 GB cap, which we ran up against in
November. Nearly got shut down until we bought another internet-only
line (and modem) and divided our traffic between the two. Unfortunately,
even with a 2nd line we still don't have enough bandwidth to do
everything we want.

How much bandwidth does Netflix/Hulu/... consume? Just to get useful
data, how much is, say, a typical Mythbuster's show and a 90 minute movie?

--Bruce

> On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 10:30 AM, Mark E. Mallett  wrote:
>> And interested in any other comments, of course, which is why I'm not
>> replying off-list ..
>   I canceled cable TV and watch all my TV via Netflix and Hulu now.  I
> save $60+/month and have fewer commercials (none on Netflix).
>
>   YMMV.
>
> -- Ben
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[meta] Re: Open Government Data bill (for comments)

[Bruce Dawson]

Does it make sense to set up a separate list (or mailman topic) for
these conversations? If so, I would propose gnhlug-lobby.

I'm not suggesting that it is inappropriate for GNHLUG consideration,
but I would like to keep "tech" conversations separate from governance
(either internal as in gnhlug-org, or external as in these messages).

(Actually, I find these conversations very appropriate for GNHLUG
consideration.)

Or maybe this message is inappropriate if GNHLUG is a 501(c)3 instead of
a 501(c)4. (I couldn't determine what type of organization GNHLUG was
from the Wiki - at least not by searching for '501'.)

--Bruce

On 01/10/2011 04:23 PM, Seth Cohn wrote:
> This isn't quite on topic for the list, but it's certainly within reason...
> think what you would do with RSS feeds, XML, and other useful things
> like that being generated from the data at the State level...
>
> The principles are based on the 2007 summit that set up the basic ideas:
> http://resource.org/8_principles.html
> http://www.opengovdata.org/home/8principles
>
> yours,
> Rep. Seth Cohn
> ...
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Re: Inkjets, was: Android printer recommendations

[Bruce Dawson]

On 12/17/2010 03:12 PM, Benjamin Scott wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 1:08 PM, Ted Roche  wrote:
>> The sum of anecdotal experiences indicate we
>> should just give up on the entire computing field.
>   Best advice I've heard all week.
>
> -- Ben

I tried to retire from the field. But it keeps coming back - sorta like
a bad dream. Now I know how the old-time country doctors felt - they
just could not let things be and sort themselves out.

--Bruce
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Re: TCL problem. Can someone help?

[Bruce Dawson]

On 11/04/2010 11:09 PM, Steven W. Orr wrote:
> On 11/4/2010 11:41 AM, David Rysdam wrote:
>> An agent or agents purporting to be Steven W. Orr said:
>>> I have a stupid question in tcl that I'm just not getting. I'm hoping to get
>>> lucky here.
>>>
>>> I have a script in tcl/expect that spawns su and needs to pass its arguments
>>> to su.
>>>
>>> argv in tcl has the command line args. I lop off the first couple of args 
>>> that
>>> I need in my script via:
>>>
>>> set user [lindex $argv 0]
>>> set passwd [lindex $argv 1]
>>>
>>> Then I want to pass the *rest* of the args to su. What I have is this:
>>>
>>> spawn su - $user -c "[lrange $argv 2 end]"
>>>
>>> If I call me script
>>>
>>> sss me secret 'pwd; ls'
>>>
>>> Then what happens is this:
>>>
>>> spawn su - swagent -c {pwd; ls;}
>>> Password:
>>> -bash: -c: line 0: syntax error near unexpected token `}'
>>> -bash: -c: line 0: `{pwd; ls;}'
>>>
>>> I vershtumped about where the braces are coming from. found out that if I 
>>> pass
>>> a single command without any semicolon , it works ok.
>> The braces are there because the result of the lrange is a list.  The
>> way we handle this in our code (which may not be The Right Way) is by
>> doing something this:
>>
>> set args [lrange $argv 2 end]
>> eval {spawn su - $user -c} "$args"
>>
>> (I don't know if you need the quotes for either spawn or su, so those
>> might be extraneous or need some special quoting or something.)
>>
>> Newer versions for Tcl (and therefore Expect?) also have an expand
>> operator that probably does this better, but I don't know if you are
>> using that.
> I'm impressed. Thanks

Note that the 'join' operator removes the top level of braces. This may
not be the right thing to do in all circumstances, but it frequently
helps when you need to get rid of extraneous braces.

--Bruce
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Re: [SOLVED] cable modem requires reboot because one site falls off DNS?

[Bruce Dawson]

 This is just a guess, but it could some sort of spoofing/caching
mechanism - that's clearly broken in some way they can't determine.

--Bruce

On 09/20/2010 11:15 AM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) wrote:
> This problem happened again today.  We were unable to access a website
> that we access repeatedly for business.  This time we couldn't access
> our intranet.  I called Comcast and they said right away that they
> would disable the "Smart Packet Detection" setting in the modem.  The
> support person couldn't tell me what "Smart Packet Detection" was, but
> did say that nearly 100% of the time it resolved problems like this.
>  Now that I know what the problem was, I can find similar stories all
> over the Internet going back several years.
>
> Quote from one story:
>
> "Our Comcast business class cable modem (SMC make, model escapes me at
> the moment) has a packet dropping feature called "Gateway Smart Packet
> Detection".
>
> I've yet to see any documentation on this "feature" but when left
> unchecked, as is by default, you may black hole certain IP addresses
> simply by visiting them too much. Or uploading to them too often. Our
> web team was editing a site and this feature would constantly black
> hole the IP they were sending to when this feature was left enabled."
>
> http://nwlinux.com/blog/comcast-business-class-router-and-smart-packet-detection/
> http://lmgtfy.com/?q=smart+packet+detection
>
> Greg Rundlett
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 4:32 PM, Dan Jenkins  > wrote:
>
>  On 9/3/2010 11:19 AM, David Miller wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Greg Rundlett (freephile)
> > mailto:g...@freephile.com>
> >> wrote:
> >
> > I have a strange problem where one (and only one as far as we
> > know) particular website becomes inaccessible to our office.
> >
> > The "fix" for this problem is to reboot the Comcast cable modem,
> > however I don't understand how the modem could be the culprit.
> >
> > The website in question is nnerenmls.com
>  
> >  and the modem is configured to use Comcast's DNS servers
> > 68.87.71.226
> > 68.87.73.242
> >
> > One red herring:  It would seem that Comcast changed their DNS
> > servers, because the ones currenty in the modem configuration do
> > not appear in the list
> > http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses.php  I thought to
> myself,
> > "I just switch to Google's Public DNS servers" (8.8.8.8 and
> > 8.8.4.4)  I'm pretty sure they are not going to change.
>  However,
> > it doesn't make sense to me that one website would fail, while
> > general DNS would still be working.  And, at the time of the
> > failures, other people using Comcast can resolve that domain
> > meaning it doesn't even appear to be an issue where the target
> > domain is occasionally falling off the web.
> >
> > Any ideas on what could cause this and how to troubleshoot?
> >
> >
> > We have that problem here time to time.  It doesn't appear to be
> a DNS
> > issue in our case it's always been a very strange routing
> problem that
> > happens after a bunch of correct hops.
> >
> > We are lucky enough to have a 2nd internet connection and when
> we have
> > this problem here I can traceroute from each connection and the
> > comcast one normally will get to the correct datacenter and then
> take
> > a different hop from our T1.  I've never been able to make any sense
> > out of it.  But for this reason I have a few sites setup to
> route out
> > our T1 so that it doesn't cause any interruptions in our business.
> >
> > Rebooting the comcast router in our case has always resolved this
> > routing problem.  I'd be interested in any theories as to what
> causes
> > the routing to go awry after many hops and outside of comcast's
> network.
> >
>
> We've had this strange routing problem several times over the last
> year.
> It makes no sense to me either, but power cycling the Comcast-provided
> SMSC cable modem/router has solved the problem in all four cases at
> three different clients. In one instance, the traceroute made it
> to the
> very last hop before their web server, and then died. I wondered if it
> could be some odd TTL issue. Comcast's tech support has been pleasant,
> but not very informative about the cause. Since power cycling
> works, and
> is quick, I haven't tried to diagnose it further though I'd like
> to know
> why it happens. In one of the other cases the route to a specific IP
> number immediately went along a completely different path than another
> IP that was in the same destination

Re: e-mail sync options?

[Bruce Dawson]

 On 08/30/2010 11:14 AM, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
> I could just write a suite of code to implement this myself,
> but maybe someone can save me the effort by pointing me to a canned
> solution :)

A many-to-many sync is extremely resource intensive. And the optimizations
for doing it with fewer resources are mathematically difficult. I'd like to
test it if you think you've come up with code to do it! (I've done this
in the
past with sync'ing databases, and gave up on all but the one-to-many
scenario.)

I'm not satisfied there are any (commercial or otherwise) products that
do the generalized many-to-many sync correctly. (Including tracking
deleted and attribute records.)
> It really seems like IMAP is the only thing available that's
> at all like a `portable, ubiquitous mail-handling API'..., so
> maybe what I want is to just use OfflineIMAP in IMAP-to-IMAP mode?
> If so, what sync-*topology* should I be using? Do I have to
> use a star topology, where everything syncs with each other
> through a central node? Or can should the IMAP UUID support
> be sufficient for me to do an N-way distributed sync with
> data flowing every which way?

I would recommend using a "master" node that all the satellites sync to.
I believe
an N-Way distributed sync will eventually end up in a mess that you
won't be able
to unravel (other than just declaring one the winner and dup'ing that to
all the other
potential "master" nodes). I say this given the unreliability of network
connections,
software releases, humans, and the world in general (e.g. practical
experience).

--Bruce
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Re: Where to dispose of UPSes?

[Bruce Dawson]

 Remove and properly dispose of the batteries, and most town dumps will
let you put the UPS in the normal waste stream or the electronics waste
stream. Note that you might need to show that there are no batteries in
the UPS.

--Bruce

On 08/21/2010 12:07 PM, Dan Miller wrote:
> I have a dead UPS and a UPS that starts yelling whenever a ground plug
> gets plugged in. Is there a local place that will take dead UPSes?
>
> Dan
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Re: Help with: openldap / active directory / sasl

[Bruce Dawson]

If I remember correctly Active Directory requires Kerberos.

Unfortunately, its been almost a year since I worked on that project,
and I don't remember much. Maybe some of the Microsoft/Linux interface
"members" can help?!

--Bruce

On 08/12/2010 06:14 PM, Flaherty, Patrick wrote:
> Hey All, 
>
> I'm trying to bind to LDAP interface using SASL. The ldap interface is
> running on an active directory server.
>
> Using a basic un/pw bind works: 
>  ldapsearch -h somead.local -b "" -s base -x -D "myu...@myrhelm" -W
>
> Outputs what I would expect, but
>
> ldapsearch -h somead.local -b "" -s base -Y DIGEST-MD5 -D
> "myu...@myrhelm" -W
>
> Outputs:
>  Enter LDAP Password: 
>  SASL/DIGEST-MD5 authentication started
>  ldap_sasl_interactive_bind_s: Invalid credentials (49)
> additional info: 8009030C: LdapErr: DSID-0C09043E, comment:
> AcceptSecurityContext error, data 0, vece
>
> I'm a bit stumped.
>
> I was under the impression that sasl/digest-md5 was it's own
> authentication method, that I didn't have to have a kerb ticket to make
> the call. It's common for linux ldap to ad connections to have Kerberos
> setup, I don't think it's necessary. Googling around for an answer has
> been a study in futility.
>
> Anyone know the magic for doing sasl auth against an ad server? I know
> there the server is set up for "reversible" passwords, so I don't think
> that's the issue.
>
> Why does LDAP+AD hate me? I'm a fun guy! I just wanna chat with it about
> some stuff...
>
> Patrick
>
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Re: Software Patents

[Bruce Dawson]

Jeffry Smith wrote:
>> On 07/17/2010 10:17 AM, Bruce Dawson wrote:
>> 
>>> Software patents are bad for the industry - its one reason I retired
>>> early rather than spend all my time fending off patent trolls instead of
>>> "innovating".
>>>
>>>   
>
> US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8:
> "[congress shall have the power ...]To promote the progress of science
> and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and
> inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and
> discoveries;"
>
> Given the innovation and productivity that has happened WITHOUT
> software patents, would love to see a study showing the extent to
> which software patents promote or hinder "the progress of science and
> useful arts" - I suspect it would show they hinder progress more than
> help.
>   
I believe your suspicions are correct. However without an "evidential
counterpoint", all the pro-patent lawyers have to do is show all their
court cases as proof that patents *help* promote the progress of
science. I can't think of any evidence that will prove the opposite -
unless a lot of software businesses are willing to open their books and
their legal papers.

Now, if that were to happen, (or be forced to happen), then (a lot of)
things will become more clear.

--Bruce
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Re: Software Patents

[Bruce Dawson]

Software patents are bad for the industry - its one reason I retired
early rather than spend all my time fending off patent trolls instead of
"innovating".

However, its going to take a few more decisive blows against software
patents before "corporate lawyers" decide its a lost game. Or before the
big software giants get some new legislation passed.

Either way, its going to be a long slog. At least now the slope isn't as
steep.

--Bruce

Jon 'maddog' Hall wrote:
> This article about software patents popped up today.  Any comments about
> the relevance and possibilities of software patent reform to the point
> of reversal and removal?
>
> http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/07/death_knell_for.html;jsessionid=GXGKJE0XM2GPJQE1GHPSKH4ATMY32JVN?cid=nl_IW_daily_2010-07-17_t
>
> md
>
>   

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Re: SCO vs. Novell; Novell wins.

[Bruce Dawson]

On 03/30/2010 08:24 PM, Benjamin Scott wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 8:05 PM, Bruce Dawson  wrote:
>   
>> I presume everyone heard that Novell won the lawsuit with SCO in a jury
>> trial?
>> 
>   I hadn't.  Thanks for the info.
>
>   My first reaction: That case is still going on?  Sheesh, SCO is like
> a fscking cockroach, in more ways than one.  :)
>
>   
Oh, its not over; SCO plans on suing IBM next. (Or at least SCO's
lawyers plan to - I suspect they're the only ones left given that
they're getting paid.)


...As the "disk" turns...



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SCO vs. Novell; Novell wins.

[Bruce Dawson]

I presume everyone heard that Novell won the lawsuit with SCO in a jury
trial?

If not, see: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100330152829622

--Bruce
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Re: Printing across multiple pages?

[Bruce Dawson]

I assume 'pdftops foo.pdf | pstopnm | pnmscale x | gv -' makes things
too grainy.

Have you tried scribus or inkscape? I believe one of them (but I forget
which) will manipulate .pdf files.

--Bruce

Bill McGonigle wrote:
> Does anybody have a favorite tool for spitting a print job across 
> multiple pages (enlargement to be re-assembled / poor-man's large-format 
> output)?
>
> I've tried a few tools which claim to do that, but they've all failed to 
> take a run-of-the-mill PDF chart and turn out working output.
>
> Last time I tried I wound up using screen-grabs and GIMP, and that was 
> really a dumb way to approach it.
>
> Thanks,
> -Bill
>
>   

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Re: Using xmlstarlet and OpenOffice

[Bruce Dawson]

Thanks to all who helped (especially Brian St. Pierre). I finally got
the script to work, and put it on the web site (see
http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Www/OfficeSuites).

This is useful for extracting form data from an OO document (I mean
document forms, not OObase forms).

--Bruce

Bruce Dawson wrote:
> Ahh. I see now why its an ugly hack. I shudder when thinking how you
> discovered that syntax.
>
> --Bruce
>
> Bruce Dawson wrote:
>   
>> Is there a syntax error in there? I looks like the quotes don't match
>> up. And I get the same error as before when I try to fix those up.
>>
>> --Bruce
>>
>> Brian St. Pierre wrote:
>>   
>> 
>>> This is an ugly hack, but it works...
>>>
>>> xmlstarlet select --net -T \
>>>  -N office='urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:office:1.0"
>>> xmlns:text="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:text:1.0' \
>>>  -t -v 
>>> 'office:document-content/office:body/office:text/text:p/text:span/text:text-input'
>>> content.xml
>>>
>>> Luckily it passes the namespace declaration through to the XSLT
>>> unchanged. You only need to declare the namespaces used in the XPath
>>> query.
>>>
>>> -Brian
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>>> 
>>>   
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>> 
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Re: Using xmlstarlet and OpenOffice

[Bruce Dawson]

Ahh. I see now why its an ugly hack. I shudder when thinking how you
discovered that syntax.

--Bruce

Bruce Dawson wrote:
> Is there a syntax error in there? I looks like the quotes don't match
> up. And I get the same error as before when I try to fix those up.
>
> --Bruce
>
> Brian St. Pierre wrote:
>   
>> This is an ugly hack, but it works...
>>
>> xmlstarlet select --net -T \
>>  -N office='urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:office:1.0"
>> xmlns:text="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:text:1.0' \
>>  -t -v 
>> 'office:document-content/office:body/office:text/text:p/text:span/text:text-input'
>> content.xml
>>
>> Luckily it passes the namespace declaration through to the XSLT
>> unchanged. You only need to declare the namespaces used in the XPath
>> query.
>>
>> -Brian
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Re: Using xmlstarlet and OpenOffice

[Bruce Dawson]

Is there a syntax error in there? I looks like the quotes don't match
up. And I get the same error as before when I try to fix those up.

--Bruce

Brian St. Pierre wrote:
> This is an ugly hack, but it works...
>
> xmlstarlet select --net -T \
>  -N office='urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:office:1.0"
> xmlns:text="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:text:1.0' \
>  -t -v 
> 'office:document-content/office:body/office:text/text:p/text:span/text:text-input'
> content.xml
>
> Luckily it passes the namespace declaration through to the XSLT
> unchanged. You only need to declare the namespaces used in the XPath
> query.
>
> -Brian
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Re: Using xmlstarlet and OpenOffice

[Bruce Dawson]

[WARNING: Lots of code here...]

Gregg: Thanks for following up on this. I too thought xmlstarlet would
be an excellent tool, but I'm having problems running it.

I'm attempting to print out an input field using the script:

#!/bin/bash
# $Header$

# Fetch the value of a field from an OO document

xmlstarlet select --net -T \
  -N office="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:office:1.0" \
  -N style="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:style:1.0" \
  -N text="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:text:1.0" \
  -N table="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:table:1.0" \
  -N draw="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:drawing:1.0" \
  -N fo="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:xsl-fo-compatible:1.0" \
  -N xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"; \
  -N dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"; \
  -N meta="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:meta:1.0" \
  -N number="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:datastyle:1.0" \
  -N svg="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:svg-compatible:1.0" \
  -N chart="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:chart:1.0" \
  -N dr3d="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:dr3d:1.0" \
  -N math="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"; \
  -N form="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:form:1.0" \
  -N script="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:script:1.0" \
  -N ooo="http://openoffice.org/2004/office"; \
  -N ooow="http://openoffice.org/2004/writer"; \
  -N oooc="http://openoffice.org/2004/calc"; \
  -N dom="http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events"; \
  -N xforms="http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms"; \
  -N xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"; \
  -N xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"; \
  -N
field="urn:openoffice:names:experimental:ooxml-odf-interop:xmlns:field:1.0"
\
 -t -v

office:document-content/office:body/office:text/text:p/text:span/text:text-input
content.xml

But this only produces:

XPath error : Undefined namespace prefix
xmlXPathCompiledEval: evaluation failed
runtime error: element value-of
XPath evaluation returned no result.

Note that before running that command, I unzipped 
http://www.brucedawson.com/files/SomeFarmRentalAgreement.odt into the
current directory. (That file is test data, feel free to look at it.)

The most frustrating part is that I don't know which namespace prefix it
is having problems with. And I'm including all the namespaces mentioned
in the content.xml!

Of course, the script will eventually be extended to extract a
particular element (like RenterDriverName, or AgreementDate, or ...),
but I need to get it to successfully parse the whole thing first.

--Bruce

G Rundlett wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 6:03 PM, Bruce Dawson  <mailto:j...@codemeta.com>> wrote:
>
> Has anyone used xmlstarlet (a command-line xml parser) to get data
> from
> content.xml (OpenOffice) files?
>
>
> I had not heard of it before, so thanks for pointing it out.  (Note to
> general readers: on my Ubuntu system I had to create a symbolic link
> 'xml' to /usr/bin/xmlstarlet to use the 'xml' command referenced in
> the documentation.)
>  
>
> It seems to be complaining about Undefined namespace prefix, and I
> can't
> seem to figure out what it wants.
>
>
> I was able to get results by specifying more/all of the namespaces
> used in the document in question.
>
> For example:
>
> xml select -N :1.0' -N
> table='urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:table:1.0' -N
> draw='urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:drawing:1.0' -N
> fo='urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:xsl-fo-compatible:1.0' -N
> xlink='http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink' -N
> dc='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/' -N
> meta='urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:meta:1.0' -N
> number='urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:datastyle:1.0' -N
> svg='urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:svg-compatible:1.0' -N
> chart='urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:chart:1.0' -N
> dr3d='urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:dr3d:1.0' -N
> form='urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:form:1.0' -N
> script='urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:script:1.0' -N
> ooo='http://openoffice.org/2004/office' -N
> ooow='http://openoffice.org/2004/writer' -N
> oooc='http://openoffice.org/2004/calc' -N
> dom='http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events' -N
> xforms='http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms&#x

Using xmlstarlet and OpenOffice

[Bruce Dawson]

Has anyone used xmlstarlet (a command-line xml parser) to get data from
content.xml (OpenOffice) files?

It seems to be complaining about Undefined namespace prefix, and I can't
seem to figure out what it wants.

Some background: I'm trying to create some shell scripts that will
extract (and possibly replace) particular elements from OO documents.
xmlstarlet seems perfectly suited for this task, but I can't figure out
what name space it wants or if I'm doing something wrong.

I'm using (all on one line):

j...@dawson:~/Desktop/oo-xmlstarlet$ xmlstarlet sel -T -N
office="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:office:1.0" -t -v
office:document-content/office:body/office:text/text:p/text:span/text:text-input
content.xml

And that's returning:

XPath error : Undefined namespace prefix
xmlXPathCompiledEval: evaluation failed
runtime error: element value-of
XPath evaluation returned no result.

Any help would be most appreciated.

--Bruce

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Re: mismatch_cnt != 0, member content mismatch, but md says the mirror is good

[Bruce Dawson]

Ben Scott wrote:
>   CentOS 5.4.  Running kernel is 2.6.18-92.1.22.el5.  The system has
> two disks, each with two partitions, making up two md mirror devices.
> md0 is ~ 509 MB and holds /boot; md1 is ~ 69 GB (the rest of the disk)
> and holds an LVM PE.The following arrived in my mailbox today:
>
> On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 4:22 AM, Cron Daemon  wrote:
>   
>> /etc/cron.weekly/99-raid-check:
>>
>> WARNING: mismatch_cnt is not 0 on /dev/md0
>> 


Odd, we had a similar report on one of our Ubuntu systems last night. I
suspect there's a date-sensitive bug in there somewhere - possibly
tickled by a counter overflow (that system has been up "forever" too).

But consider this a wild guess.

I suspect a reboot will produce acceptable results, given the results of
your comparisons.

--Bruce
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Re: Problems with DNS...

[Bruce Dawson]

Well, with lots of help from MV and lots of reading of dig(1) and
host(1) manual pages, we finally saw that there were trailing dots on
the IP addresses in the NS RR's. We changed the IP addresses to domain
names, and now things are working. We figure that IP addresses were
inserted for the NS records when registering the domain.

The IP addresses don't appear in the output below, but they do appear
when I use host's -r and -v options (-r: stop recursive lookups; -v:
verbose output). I had to "run out of options" before thinking of
looking at the man pages for more ways to use the commands to get more
"debugging" output. Sigh.

Can you imagine trying to diagnose this on a commercial operating
system? (I'm not thinking of a Unix based system. :-)

--Bruce
PS: We may also have uncovered some inconsistencies in IPV6 name
resolution, but we're not interested in solving that problem - at least
not tonight.

Bruce Dawson wrote:
> OK, I'm sorta embarrassed to say this, but I'm having problems with DNS
> and can't figure out what I'm missing - maybe someone can give me a clue.
>
> I recently registered a domain (loudonag.org), and the root name servers
> know about it...
>
> j...@bruce:~$ whois loudonag.org
> NOTICE: Access to .ORG WHOIS information is provided to assist
> persons in ...
>
> Domain ID:D157281062-LROR
> Domain Name:LOUDONAG.ORG
> Created On:07-Oct-2009 00:12:38 UTC
> Last Updated On:07-Oct-2009 00:12:40 UTC
> Expiration Date:07-Oct-2010 00:12:38 UTC
> Sponsoring Registrar:Tucows Inc. (R11-LROR)
> Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
> Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
> Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED
> ...
> Name Server:199.125.75.9
> Name Server:199.125.75.14
> ...
> DNSSEC:Unsigned
>
> The authorative servers know about it...
>
> j...@bruce:~$ host -v loudonag.org 199.125.75.14
> Trying "loudonag.org"
> Using domain server:
> Name: 199.125.75.14
> Address: 199.125.75.14#53
> Aliases:
>
> ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 15507
> ;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2
>
> ;; QUESTION SECTION:
> ;loudonag.org.  IN  A
>
> ;; ANSWER SECTION:
> loudonag.org.   3600IN  A   199.125.76.131
>
> ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
> loudonag.org.   3600IN  NS  simon.codemeta.com.
> loudonag.org.   3600IN  NS  river.codemeta.com.
>
> ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
> simon.codemeta.com. 300 IN  A   199.125.75.14
> river.codemeta.com. 300 IN  A   199.125.75.9
>
> Received 130 bytes from 199.125.75.14#53 in 31 ms
> Trying "loudonag.org"
> Using domain server:
> Name: 199.125.75.14
> Address: 199.125.75.14#53
> Aliases:
>
> ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 65239
> ;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
>
> ;; QUESTION SECTION:
> ;loudonag.org.  IN  
>
> ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
> loudonag.org.   604800  IN  SOA simon.codemeta.com.
> jbd.codemeta.com. 2009102001 86400 1800 360 604800
>
> Received 88 bytes from 199.125.75.14#53 in 30 ms
> Trying "loudonag.org"
> Using domain server:
> Name: 199.125.75.14
> Address: 199.125.75.14#53
> Aliases:
>
> ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 55291
> ;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2
>
> ;; QUESTION SECTION:
> ;loudonag.org.  IN  MX
>
> ;; ANSWER SECTION:
> loudonag.org.   3600IN  MX  10 simon.codemeta.com.
>
> ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
> loudonag.org.   3600IN  NS  simon.codemeta.com.
> loudonag.org.   3600IN  NS  river.codemeta.com.
>
> ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
> simon.codemeta.com. 300 IN  A   199.125.75.14
> river.codemeta.com. 300 IN  A   199.125.75.9
>
> Received 130 bytes from 199.125.75.14#53 in 30 ms
>
> But no one else appears to know about it...
>
> j...@bruce:~$ host -v loudonag.org
> Trying "loudonag.org"
> ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
>
>
> The last message (no servers could be reached) is the most frustrating
> because I was able to "reach" the server in the previous command (host
> -v loudonag.org 199.125.75.14).
>
> An

Problems with DNS...

[Bruce Dawson]

OK, I'm sorta embarrassed to say this, but I'm having problems with DNS
and can't figure out what I'm missing - maybe someone can give me a clue.

I recently registered a domain (loudonag.org), and the root name servers
know about it...

j...@bruce:~$ whois loudonag.org
NOTICE: Access to .ORG WHOIS information is provided to assist
persons in ...

Domain ID:D157281062-LROR
Domain Name:LOUDONAG.ORG
Created On:07-Oct-2009 00:12:38 UTC
Last Updated On:07-Oct-2009 00:12:40 UTC
Expiration Date:07-Oct-2010 00:12:38 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Tucows Inc. (R11-LROR)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED
...
Name Server:199.125.75.9
Name Server:199.125.75.14
...
DNSSEC:Unsigned

The authorative servers know about it...

j...@bruce:~$ host -v loudonag.org 199.125.75.14
Trying "loudonag.org"
Using domain server:
Name: 199.125.75.14
Address: 199.125.75.14#53
Aliases:

;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 15507
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;loudonag.org.  IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
loudonag.org.   3600IN  A   199.125.76.131

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
loudonag.org.   3600IN  NS  simon.codemeta.com.
loudonag.org.   3600IN  NS  river.codemeta.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
simon.codemeta.com. 300 IN  A   199.125.75.14
river.codemeta.com. 300 IN  A   199.125.75.9

Received 130 bytes from 199.125.75.14#53 in 31 ms
Trying "loudonag.org"
Using domain server:
Name: 199.125.75.14
Address: 199.125.75.14#53
Aliases:

;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 65239
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;loudonag.org.  IN  

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
loudonag.org.   604800  IN  SOA simon.codemeta.com.
jbd.codemeta.com. 2009102001 86400 1800 360 604800

Received 88 bytes from 199.125.75.14#53 in 30 ms
Trying "loudonag.org"
Using domain server:
Name: 199.125.75.14
Address: 199.125.75.14#53
Aliases:

;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 55291
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;loudonag.org.  IN  MX

;; ANSWER SECTION:
loudonag.org.   3600IN  MX  10 simon.codemeta.com.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
loudonag.org.   3600IN  NS  simon.codemeta.com.
loudonag.org.   3600IN  NS  river.codemeta.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
simon.codemeta.com. 300 IN  A   199.125.75.14
river.codemeta.com. 300 IN  A   199.125.75.9

Received 130 bytes from 199.125.75.14#53 in 30 ms

But no one else appears to know about it...

j...@bruce:~$ host -v loudonag.org
Trying "loudonag.org"
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached


The last message (no servers could be reached) is the most frustrating
because I was able to "reach" the server in the previous command (host
-v loudonag.org 199.125.75.14).

And, using the Comcast server:

j...@bruce:~$ host -v loudonag.org 68.87.71.230
Trying "loudonag.org"
Using domain server:
Name: 68.87.71.230
Address: 68.87.71.230#53
Aliases:

Host loudonag.org not found: 2(SERVFAIL)
Received 30 bytes from 68.87.71.230#53 in 16 ms


Does anyone know what's going wrong?

--Bruce






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Re: How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

[Bruce Dawson]

OK. I'll bite.

What aspects of that document do you not like?

--Bruce

Lori Nagel wrote:
> For no particular reason, I will say I do not think very highly of that 
> document. 
>
>
>
>
> - Original Message 
> From: Kevin D. Clark 
> To: Greater NH Linux User Group 
> Sent: Fri, October 9, 2009 12:38:52 PM
> Subject: How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
>
>
> For no particular reason, I will mention that I think that this is a
> really good document.
>
>   http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
>
> I hope that others enjoy it as well.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> --kevin
>   

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Re: [GNHLUG] GNHLUG is turning 15! Let's have a party!

[Bruce Dawson]

Jon 'maddog' Hall wrote:
>>  So let's pencil that in.  Now we just need to figure out where to
>> have it.  :-)
>> 
> ...
>
> But I suggest either Manchester or Concord.  A reasonable drive for
> most, with a slightly longer drive for people like Bill and Rob and some
> of the people from Peterborough and Keene.
>   

Google found 2 brew pubs in Manchester:

* Milley's Tavern (www.milleystavern.com)
* Strange Brew (www.strangebrewtavern.net)

I believe we had a meeting once or twice at Milley's (when it was known
as the Stark Mill Brewery). It was OK. I don't know much about Strange Brew.

I'm not aware of any brew pubs in Concord - at least none that brew
their own beer. But there are numerous places to eat & drink.
Possibilities include:

* The Barley House
* Panera
* Boloco's


> But we would forgive (or even encourage) Bill and Rob if they decided to
> have simultaneous parties in their neck of the woods, IMHO.
>
> md
>
>
>   

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Re: [OT] Generator testing

[Bruce Dawson]

Dan Jenkins wrote:
> This is only tangentially related to Linux, but I'd like to gather your 
> thoughts.
>
> We have a client who installed a backup generator for their buildings 
> some months ago, which is all to the good.
>
> The unusual thing, to me, about it is that they test it in the middle of 
> every week during normal work hours. First thing in the morning, the 
> power in all the buildings goes off for about 20-60 seconds when they 
> switch to the generator, and then does it again 5-10 minutes later when 
> they switch back. The servers, all but one running Linux (to bring this 
> slightly on-topic), are protected by UPSes, so they aren't directly 
> affected. The network switches, wireless access points, printers, and 
> computers scattered throughout the buildings, however, are not so 
> protected. Everyone is supposed to turn off their equipment Tuesday 
> night, but often individuals forget. They have noticed it takes the 
> network awhile to operate normally after this weekly event. Not 
> surprisingly with a flood of DHCP requests and SMB network convergence 
> happening when several hundred computers are turned on. Some of the 
> network switches and access points require a power cycle. We have seen a 
> slight increase in equipment failures, largely among the oldest devices. 
> We have proposed a plethora of UPSes to support the network devices, 
> however, that has not yet been approved, and may not be until next year. 
> We have also requested a less frequent test cycle and relocation to a 
> weekend, so far to no avail.
>
> My question, is it normal to test a generator weekly, during operating 
> hours, and is it normal to shutdown all the power in the buildings to 
> test it? It seems wrong to me & to the maintenance director, however, 
> the company which installed the equipment says this is normal operation. 
> Someone involved with the project implied it is a legal requirement in 
> some manner. Does any of that jibe with others experiences?
>
> Thanks enormously for any feedback.
>   
Its more a function of their ATS (Automatic Transfer Switch). For
example, our ATS (for the 50KW generator we have here on the farm) has a
weekly clock (that does not understand daylight savings time, sigh) to
perform the automatic exercising.

But, be glad that they are dumping the power for 20-60 seconds during
the "exercise interval"! It may be inconvenient, but if the power was
not dumped, there will be a "phase change" during the switchover that
will [eventually] destroy all the motors that are on the generator
circuit. (For motors, think: freezers, fans,
pumps, ...) I've also heard that those phase changes are hell on solid
state power supplies, but don't have any solid direct evidence.

If they had synchros on the generators, then that would make the
transfer nearly seamless. However, you're talking about a much more
expensive genset. Most gensets smaller than 100KW don't have phase sync
abilities, and those that do require additional expensive equipment to
take advantage of them.

BTW, I haven't found a line-interactive UPS that will protect against
generator initiated phase changes. Just dumping the power for a few
seconds is the cheapest most practical approach to protecting equipment
against phase shifts.

However, I did find something odd about what you said... Evidently the
test period is only "5-10 minutes". I would be a little concerned that
the genset has had time to warm up in that period. We've set our test
period to be 1 hour and during "prime time" to put as much of a load on
the genset as possible. (Most gensets hate variable loads, and the best
way to keep them "nimble" is to exercise them with a big load.)

Another thing they should be aware of is that the fuel tank is heated.
We've had ice crystals form in the fuel filter, thus clogging it, and
preventing the genset from properly activating during a real power fail
(or exercises). This was a real problem to diagnose because by the time
we got it running, the ice had melted and the generator would activate
flawlessly. I never would have figured out the problem unless something
similar happened on one of our tractors and the tractor repair shop told
me to check on this.

I've got lots of practical experience (and horror stories) if you're
interested in hearing about them off-list.

--Bruce
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Re: Asterix phone systems in a box?

[Bruce Dawson]

Neil Joseph Schelly wrote:
> I may soon have a need to acquire a phone system rather quickly.  Is there a 
> purchaseable asterix phone system in a box that can support <15 extensions 
> and voicemail boxes, as well as a few shared outgoing phone lines?  
>
> If the hardware exists to make it somewhat easy to support, I may just want 
> to 
> buy it and figure out the installation/configuration on my own time.
> -N
> ___
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>   

I once looked at the PIKA Warp
(http://www.pikatechnologies.com/english/View.asp?x=652) and almost
bought it, but my VOIP needs changed. At the time, it was *a lot*
cheaper than Digium's offerings.

--Bruce
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Re: Linux-compatible scanner with ADF

[Bruce Dawson]

virgins...@vfemail.net wrote:
> In message , Derek Atkins writes:
>   
>>> If anyone knows where I could find a scanner with ADF supported by
>>> SANE, for a SANE price (ha ha), I would much appreciate any pointers!
>>>   
>> I have an HP All-in-One and it works great.
>> 
>
> Does your scanner have an ADF?  Is it sheet-fed?  Do you have a model#
> you'd be willing to share?
>
> Also, does it run under SANE, or usethat special print/scan
> architecture (hplip?) that HP has for Linux?

We've been using an HP7410 "OfficeJet" MFP with Linux for a few years.
It works pretty well with the latest HPLIP software (and even a few
versions prior to the latest).

There's also the 'hp-toolbox' command that will bring up a GUI sorta
like the one on windows. NB: The GUI uses sane.

However, don't expect the OCR you get on the window's version to work.

--Bruce
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OT: Continuous mode UPSes

[Bruce Dawson]

I'm having a hard time making sense of all the sales speak on the
various web sites.

I need a continuous mode UPS that will be used 24x365 and it needs to
supply at least 500 watts for 15 minutes. Note: This needs to be
*continuous mode*; line-interactive and standby will *not* work (we have
too many phase changes here). The usual contenders such as APC,
TrippLite, ... don't seem to have continuous mode UPSes.

Line and battery monitoring would be nice but is not mandatory. If it
can use my batteries (deep-discharge marine type), that would be preferable.

I've tried building my own with inverters and chargers, but have had
problems with the batteries dying prematurely (min: 3 months, max: 9
months).

Does anyone have any recommendations?

--Bruce
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Re: linux accounting software or cheap winxp

[Bruce Dawson]

Paul Lussier wrote:
> Bill McGonigle  writes:
>
>   
>> On 02/24/2009 02:55 PM, Paul Lussier wrote:
>> 
>>> My goal is to track the gasoline usage, not the cost of the gasoline I
>>> use.  The former doesn't vary much, whereas the latter varies
>>> drastically.
>>>   
>> Can you just enter gallons as dollars?
>> 
>
> No, because I want to track both my costs and my usage.
>
> In Ledger I can simply do this:
>
>   08/08 BJ's Wholesale Club
>   Expenses:Auto:Fuel  GAL 13.569 @ $ 3.669
>   Assets:BankAccounts:Checking$ -49.78
>
> Then I can run a report like this to see total gas consumption:
>
>   $ ledger -f ledger.dat -p 2008 bal fuel
>
>GAL 316.516  Expenses:Auto:Fuel
>   
>GAL 316.516  
> p...@whozit - /Users/pll/personal/finance/ledger#[949]
>   

OK. I'll ask the obvious next question - where did this 'ledger' command
come from?

--Bruce
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Re: Launchpad to be free

[Bruce Dawson]

Greg Rundlett wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:43 PM, Bill McGonigle wrote:
>
>   
>> On 02/27/2009 08:35 PM, Jarod Wilson wrote:
>> 
>>> Somewhere or another there was an explanation in writing... Oh, there,
>>> found it:
>>>   
>> Ah:
>>
>> "There are two components, Soyuz and Codehosting, that we're keeping
>> internal. They're part of Canonical's "secret sauce" in business areas
>> that we care a lot about, and for now the costs to us of opening them up
>> outweigh the benefits."
>>
>> 
>
> My simple interpretation is that Canonical sees a benefit in opening (most)
> of Launchpad which should strengthen their position in the marketplace.
> Once their leadership position is further solidified, they have less risk
> with completing what they started (Mark Shuttleworth said he would like to
> open the source to Launchpad a long time ago).  The alternate - assuming
> they were even ready - seems like it would risk people opening dozens of
> code hosting sites (seeking ad revenue) which serves to only fragment the
> market for code hosting.
>
> An over-simplification is that they are open-sourcing to compete against and
> catch up to services like GitHub.
>
> The skeptic would say they are opening enough to get free labor AND
> increased market share to fuel new product development (aka Launchpad
> Enterprise).
>
> The fact that Sourceforge (the code) was free a long time ago, and went
> through free/non-free versions is an example of how money interests can
> trump freedom.  I'd also say that the quality of the Sourceforge system
> would be much better if it were free (e.g. it doesn't support other version
> control systems).  Sourceforge's TOS basically "All your code are belong to
> us" (you grant them a proprietary license [1]).   I think it's a big plus to
> the community that we will once again have a free code hosting system.
> Maybe this time they won't follow the same path as Sourceforge.  Or maybe
> not.  Karl Fogel seems to be very much involved in this [2] and he was also
> very much involved (in Subversion and) CollabNet [3], so he would know the
> true intentions and dynamics at play.
>
> I guess what I'm saying is that either Canonical wants to be in the Code
> Hosting business, or not.  I don't know.  I'm hoping for the latter.  What I
> do know is that we have room for improvement because there really aren't ANY
> free and complete code hosting systems [4].
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sourceforge#cite_note-4
> [2] https://dev.launchpad.net/OpenSourcing#what
> [3] http://producingoss.com/cv/
> [4]
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_software_hosting_facilities
>   

Risking being called on what "free and complete" means, I would venture
to say that savannah.gnu.org and savannah.nongnu.org are very free (at
least in the GNU sense of free), and complete enough for me to host at
least one project on.

--Bruce

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Re: How many laptops to a wireless AP?

[Bruce Dawson]

This site would indicate there's a wide variance:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component/option,com_chart/Itemid,189/chart,124/

(Between 8 and 200 for various Linksys products - but the chart lists a
number of other manufacturers)

--Bruce

Ted Roche wrote:
> I'm looking at setting up a caf/é/-style space where somewhere between 
> 10 and 25 people will be working on their laptop. I'd be bringing in an 
> internet connection, likely a Comcast 16/2, and I anticipate most folks 
> will be surfing with 802-11g or n (draft). Mostly surfing, with 
> occasional file uploads, YouTube viral videos. Twittering, or debugging 
> a misbehaving Drupal app.
>
> Can 25 people share a single wireless access point, or will more than 
> one be needed? Would a consumer-grade WRT54G or equivalent be suitable? 
> For simplification, let's assume an open 40' x 50' space with fairly 
> clear line-of-sight and no major physical obstacles. I recognize if 
> there's a second space behind a brick wall they'll likely need their own 
> WAP or a switched connection. I'm more concerned with the load on a 
> single WAP. I've done mostly wired deployments or single AP layouts with 
> a couple people, so I'm not sure where the loading will drag it down.
>
> Any insights on things to set up (DDWRT, traffic shaping) or avoid would 
> be appreciated.
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Re: linux accounting software or cheap winxp

[Bruce Dawson]

Lloyd Kvam wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-02-17 at 09:06 -0400, Bruce Dawson wrote:
>   
>> Hmmm. Maybe its time to have a presentation on GNUCash? Seems there
>> have
>> been lots of changes since I last looked at it!
>>
>> Are there any volunteers?
>> 
>
> I'll attempt the conversion of my books to Gnucash and keep notes.  I'll
> still need to setup a Win/IE platform for payroll, but Gnucash should
> handle the rest.  The migration notes seem to be more focused on moving
> from Quicken, but I assume I'll figure out a reasonable approach.
>   
Great! I look forward to them!

> I'll report back and if folks are interested I'll writeup the details.
>   
Count me in as being interested!

--Bruce
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Re: linux accounting software or cheap winxp

[Bruce Dawson]

Hmmm. Maybe its time to have a presentation on GNUCash? Seems there have
been lots of changes since I last looked at it!

Are there any volunteers?

--Bruce

virgins...@vfemail.net wrote:
>> Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:49:38 -0400
>> From: Bruce Dawson 
>> CC: gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org
>> 
>
>   
>>> How is Gnucash not an accounting system?
>>>
>>>   
>>>   
>> GNUCash is/was more of a bookkeeping system than an accounting system. 
>> Accounting systems usually have something akin to a general ledger and P 
>> & L, ... and supports a traditional auditing methodology.
>> 
>
> When I used Gnucash, I made most of my entries with the ledger in
> general journal mode.  It wasn't immediately obvious how to do it, but
> there were ways to make it look like/behave real books.  Much of the
> code that I contributed (the P&L report among it) was intended to
> bring Gnucash's reports more in line with GAAP.  IIRC, it had support
> for AR/AP back in 2004.  (I have vague memories of having used AR/AP
> reports for homework problems.)  But again, it was never really
> obvious how to access many of these features.
>
> /me looks for warlord...
>
> Derek Atkins was one of the primary developers of Gnucash, and he used
> to be subscribed to this list.  Maybe he could shed some light on
> this.
>
>   

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Re: linux accounting software or cheap winxp

[Bruce Dawson]

virgins...@vfemail.net wrote:
>> Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:45:25 -0500
>> From: Jerry Feldman 
>> 
>
>   
>> GNUCash is not really an accounting system. Others have listed several.=20
>> 
>
> Oh, really?!  Now that you mention it, you're right.  It's funy how
> I've contributed code to Gnucash and never noticed that it wasn't an
> accounting system... *scratches head*
>
> How is Gnucash not an accounting system?
>
>   

GNUCash is/was more of a bookkeeping system than an accounting system. 
Accounting systems usually have something akin to a general ledger and P 
& L, ... and supports a traditional auditing methodology.

Although, the whole accounting industry has changed with the advent of 
the personal computer, so
the definition of "accounting system" has become a bit obscured as a result.

--Bruce
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Re: Eee PC, distro choice, power mgmt

[Bruce Dawson]

I've had good luck running xubuntu on "constrained" PC's like the Koolu.
I suspect the power managment works, but am not sure because I use these
things mostly as servers.

Note that xubuntu uses Xfce instead of fvwm, so I'm not sure if this
approach will work for you. (But at least it will run a gnome
application when I need to.)

--Bruce

Ben Scott wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>   So, I was in BestBuy the other day, and saw and bought an Asus Eee
> PC 900A for $200 (1 GB RAM, 4 GB SSD "hard disk", 1600 MHz CPU,
> 100BASE-T, 802.11g, MMC/SD, 3xUSB).  It ships with a Xandros Linux
> configuration which finds new and interesting ways to suck.  So, I
> plan on repartitioning the entire SSD and installing a better distro.
> (This was my intent all along anyway.)  I'm unsure on distro choice
> and wanted to poll for opinions here.
>
>   What I'd like to find is something lightweight and capable of
> supporting a traditional Unix environment.  I want X11, FVWM, and
> xterm as my main UI.  I want to avoid the collection of
> always-running, memory-hungry daemons which most modern Linux distros
> seem to assume these days.  I might tolerate them on a desktop PC that
> has resources to spare, but this little laptop is somewhat resource
> constrained.  I believe this rules out Fedora and Ubuntu.
>
>   I also want the hardware to work.  Fortunately, it seems like there
> are quite a few projects which will give me the needed drivers and
> modules for any number of distros.  So good.  I'm eying "DebianEeePC",
> which is basically Debian "testing" with hardware-specific packages
> pre-loaded.  I'm thinking Debian is a good choice for this because
> Debian has a small base footprint, allows heavy customization, but
> still comes with lots of packages of modern toys.
>
>   But what about power management?  In particular, I'd like to set up
> this guy with suspend-to-RAM and suspend-to-disk, so that I can have a
> mobile environment that wakes up quickly where I left off last.  I
> have absolutely no clue about how this stuff works with modern Linux.
> Am I setting myself up for trouble by going the minimalist route?  Is
> the suspend stuff all really complicated, and thus warrants bloated
> desktops and a plague of daemons to make it work?
>
>   On a related note: For suspend-to-disk, is it required that I have a
> swap partition equal to main RAM?
>
> -- Ben
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Re: Odd log messages from ISC BIND named

[Bruce Dawson]

Is it possible those strings are I18l names? (I seem to remember there
being a movement "a while back" trying to international-ize the DNS space.)

--Bruce

Ben Scott wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 1:11 PM, Mark E. Mallett  wrote:
>   
>> It's possible that somebody's testing using random query names instead
>> of "." -- "." is pretty easy to look for in the logs, but the random
>> names are more difficult.
>> 
>
>   So why not just query for  or something else that's
> legitimate and quite common?  These long domain names are obviously
> bogus, so it's almost as easy to filter for them.  Just look for any
> query which doesn't include a known gTLD or ccTLD.
>
>   
>> Anyway that's just guessing.
>> 
>
>   Yah, me too in the above.  :)  It's not like we can see into the
> assumed attackers' minds.
>
> -- Ben
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Re: Postfix/Exim sender address rewriting (was: Postfix ... ComCast port 587)

[Bruce Dawson]

Ben Scott wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Ben Scott  wrote:
>   
>>  ... Sendmail ... /etc/mail/genericstable:
>>bscott  dragonh...@gmail.com
>>
>>  I presume Postfix has a similar capability.  Exim may as well.  Anyone?
>> 
>
>   I'm disappointined nobody has posted an answer to the above.  I'm
> changing the subject line and reposting to try and call attention.
> This seems like a real useful thing to know how to do.  For me, for
> others reading, for the list archives.
>   

Grumble. It depends on how you have your mail set up.
>   The goal here is to configure one's MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) such
> that mail from a local-only email address gets rewritten to an valid
> public Internet email address.  For example, on my home PCs, my *nix
> username is .  If I send mail from a local program, the
> sending email address generally becomes something like
> .  That's obviously not going to be
> useful on the Internet.  So I have configure my MTA (which happens to
> be Sendmail) to re-write those to be , which is
> my public address.
>
>   How does one do this in Postfix and/or Exim?
>   

Assuming:

* Postfix
* Your computer is sending mail using comcast as the ISP. (Typical home
set up.)
* Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) - I know its old, but its what I have up and
handy at the moment

In /etc/postfix/main.cf make sure you have the following line:

myhostname = c-99-999-999-999.hsd1.nh.comcast.net

(replacing the '9's with your reversed comcast issued IP address).

Note: I believe this will work. It works on this system, but I'm
forwarding via postfix all my mail for delivery by another system. Your
mileage is likely to vary. Also, I believe you can use *any* valid
domain there; I don't think comcast does double-reverse lookups on the
this name (but they should).

I'm sure others on the list will correct me if I'm wrong.
> -- Ben
>
>   
--Bruce

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Re: Postfix authentication to ComCast port 587

[Bruce Dawson]

This is the reason its being rejected...

postfix/smtp[11991]:3C4A1918124: to=, 
relay=smtp.comcast.net[76.96.62.117]:587, delay=0.39, 
delays=0.01/0.02/0.33/0.04, dsn=5.1.0, status=bounced (host 
smtp.comcast.net[76.96.62.117] said: 550 5.1.0  sender rejected : 
invalid sender domain (in reply to MAIL FROM command))


('e521' is not a valid domain name and not recognized by DNS.) I'm not
sure where its getting e521 from, but you can probably change it using
postfix - Unfortunately I don't remember the directive (or where to put
the directive) to do that.

Try giving it a domain name like c-99-99-99-999.hsd1.nh.comcast.net
(where the 99's are your comcast IP address).

You should at least get a bounce message from your own server since it
did detect that smtp.comcast.net rejected your message.

--Bruce



Michael O'Donnell wrote:
>  [ this msg transmitted via ComCast's godawful WWW email tool ]
>
> Once upon a time, ComCast invited customers to send copies of SPAM
> messages (those few which managed to get past ComCast's filters)
> to a particular email address, so I rigged my system to do so
> because I presumed they'd use them to better train their Bayesian
> recognizers, or some such.  I must say, I was happy to cooperate
> because their filters seemed quite effective and very little
> SPAM got through.  But, of course, no good deed goes unpunished;
> ComCast has consequently just summarily decided that *I* am a
> SPAM source and blocked all outbound traffic on port 25 (SMTP)
> and decreed that I may only use port 587 (submission) which my
> configured-and-working-for-at-least-10-years Exim installation
> seemed incapable of coping with.
>
> So I replaced Exim with Postfix in an attempt to get back on
> the air and made considerable progress.  I *think* I'm to the
> point where if I can figure out WTF is going on with Certificates
> and such I might be in good shape.  Details shown below (errors
> toward the end); any help or advice gratefully accepted, though
> please be informed that I am addicted to my local MH setup and
> very much want to get this working, so recommendations like
> "just give up and use Gmail" aren't really what I'm after...   >-/
>
>  #
>
> # The "stock" contents of my /etc/postfix/main.cf after the config script
> # had finished setting up Postfix to route outbound messages via ComCast's
> # server as a "smarthost" on the SMTP port 25:
>
> smtpd_banner = $myhostname ESMTP $mail_name (Debian/GNU)
> biff = no
>  append_dot_mydomain = no
> readme_directory = no
>  smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
>   smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
>smtpd_use_tls = yes
> smtpd_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtpd_scache
>  smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtp_scache
>   myhostname = e521
>   alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases
>   alias_database = hash:/etc/aliases
>mydestination =
>   mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8 [:::127.0.0.0]/104 
> [::1]/128
>  mailbox_command = procmail -a "$EXTENSION"
>   mailbox_size_limit = 0
>  recipient_delimiter = +
>  inet_interfaces = all
>
> # I then added these, intending to cause Postfix to act as an SMTP
> # client of ComCast's server, using the "submission" port 587 :
>relayhost = [smtp.comcast.net]:submission
> smtp_use_tls = yes
>smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
>   smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
>  smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
>
> # ...and I made sure that the referenced file /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
> # has a single line, thus:
>
> [smtp.comcast.net]:submission michael.odonnell:myPasswordHere
>
> # When I run 'dpkg -l' on my very recent Debian box and grep for (what
> # I imagine to be) items relevant to this problem I see this:
>
>   ii libssl0.9.8   0.9.8g-14 SSL shared libraries
>   ii openssl   0.9.8g-14 Secure Socket Layer (SSL) binary and related 
> cryptographic tools
>   ii openssl-blacklist 0.4.2 list of blacklisted OpenSSL RSA keys
>   ii ssl-cert  1.0.23simple debconf wrapper for OpenSSL
>   ii postfix   2.5.5-1.1 High-performance mail transport agent
>
> # When I run 'ldd /usr/sbin/postfix' I see this:
>   linux-gate.so.1=> (0xe000)
>   libpostfix-global.so.1 => /usr/lib/libpostfix-global.so.1 (0xb7ee5000)
>   libpostfix-util.so.1   => /usr/lib/libpostfix-util.so.1 (0xb7eb8000)
>   libssl.so.0.9.8=> /usr/lib/i686/cmov/libssl.so.0.9.8 (0xb7e71000)
>   libcrypto.so.0.9.8 => /usr/lib/i686/cmov/libcrypto.so.0.9.8 (0xb7d1e000)
>   libsasl2.so.2  => /usr/lib/libsasl2.so.2 (0xb7d07000)
>   libd

Re: Thots on evolution vs t'bird.

[Bruce Dawson]

I quit using Evolution and switched to Thunderbird when Evolution took
more than 28 hours to rifle though my (more than) 1024 .mbox files.
Thunderbird did it within 1 minute - and I got to watch as is progressed
through them.

I don't know why Evolution was taking so long; they were both going
through an IMAP server - so its not like some resource on the server was
being exhausted. Its been like that since Evolution release 1.0.
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Re: pseudo-terminal masters

[Bruce Dawson]

You can look at the modification date/time of (for example) /dev/pts/9
if you want to know when the last activity occurred.

--Bruce

Bill McGonigle wrote:
> Hi, all,
>
> Anybody familiar with the pseudoterminal setup on linux?
>
> I've got some scripts which look for idle time on connections.  They're 
> currently using the output of 'w' which I see now is really just 
> reporting the last modified date of /dev/pts/x, so I can throw out the 
> 'w' parsing.
>
> However, /dev/pts/x's modification date depends on data written to the 
> terminal by the system (for lack of better terms).  What I actually want 
> is to figure out idle time based on input by the user.
>
> On some other unixes there are /dev/ptm/x which represents this, but in 
> linux, apparently you open /dev/ptmx which returns to you a filehandle 
> for a new ptm, but I'm not sure how to find that from userspace.
>
> If I knew what I was looking for I wouldn't mind implementing a wrapper 
> in c, but I'm not sure where to look.
>
> Thanks,
> -Bill
>
>   

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Re: Anybody (else) get ping'ed by Comcast about Port 25 emailing?

[Bruce Dawson]

I've had similar experience. I don't think Comcast can tell the
difference between a joe-job and real spam.

I gave up pestering them and am just sending all outgoing email through
a VPN to one of our servers in Manchester.

--Bruce

Dan Miller wrote:
> I've called Comcast (when I had them) before on this very issue. Ask for 
> the security department, and then start asking for evidence. Since their 
> email states (and they state on the phone) that they closed the port 
> because it looked like you were spamming and have a virus.
>
> I would always ask for the date and time of when the emails were sent 
> that made it look like I had a virus. They always stated that they 
> didn't have any. I would then lay into them stating that you are closing 
> my port (tied to the account and modem) with no evidence that I have a 
> virus. They would then state that the port was closed because of the emails.
>
> This would go on a few times until I would state "So you accusing me of 
> spamming, but have no evidence of such." Comcast would reply no, so I 
> would ask for them to either A) produce evidence that I have a virus or 
> B) open up port 25.
>
> Usually at this point, they would concede and in a few minutes they will 
> come back on the line with port 25 being reopened. After a few minutes, 
> the modem will update its file, and everything will be kosher again..
>
> I would never back down, and would always get port 25 reopened.
>
> Every time I received these emails, all I had running was Linux with a 
> customized iptables script, so chances of a virus are virtually nil.
>
> Good luck.
>
> Dan
>
>   

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Re: Is this a postfix problem? Receiving mail from cellphone

[Bruce Dawson]

Dan Coutu wrote:
> This is a RHEL server running postfix.
>
> Sending email to the server from my cell phone is giving an error and I 
> don't understand why. I'm hoping that someone here can shed light on it 
> for me.
>
> Here's the mail log entries that show the problem:
>
> Dec  1 01:55:27 ec2-75-101-156-55 postfix/smtpd[31695]: connect from 
> 150.sub-69-78-129.myvzw.com[69.78.129.150]
> Dec  1 01:55:27 ec2-75-101-156-55 postfix/smtpd[31695]: NOQUEUE: reject: 
> RCPT from 150.sub-69-78-129.myvzw.com[69.78.129.150]: 450 4.7.1 
> : Helo command rejected: Host not found; 
> from=<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> to=<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> proto=ESMTP 
> helo=
>   

It appears that njbrspamp5.vtext.com doesn't exist according to:

[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ host njbrspamp5.vtext.com
Host njbrspamp5.vtext.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ host vtext.com
vtext.com has address 69.78.67.39
vtext.com has address 69.78.128.199
vtext.com mail is handled by 50 smtp-bb.vtext.com.
vtext.com mail is handled by 50 smtp-sl.vtext.com.

> Dec  1 01:55:32 ec2-75-101-156-55 postfix/smtpd[31695]: disconnect from 
> 150.sub-69-78-129.myvzw.com[69.78.129.150]
>
> Thanks for any help or pointers to resolving this.
>
> Dan
So the problem appears to be with either:

* vtext.com, which doesn't have an entry for njbrspamp5
* Your cell phone settings, which seem to be logging into the SMTP
  server w/HELO njbrspamp5.vtext.com
* Verizon Wireless' problem as they are probably forwarding the
  email from your phone.

--Bruce

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Re: "Relaying" video streams

[Bruce Dawson]

Seth Cohn wrote:
>> I think we sorta solved it. I only want one stream going out, and then
>> the "repeater" (PHP) will repeat it to multiple clients.
>> 
>
> I've sent Bruce the scripts that my coworker wrote, which use curl,
> ffmpeg, and ffserver, and certainly the same idea with VLC and other
> 'server' software could be substituted.
>
> I think the question is going to be stability, memory and cpu usage
> (per client, per stream, per feed, etc).
> The same basic principles will be used regardless, it's mostly a
> matter of what works best (best being maximized good/fast/cheap where
> the variables would be cpu/bandwidth/crashes/etc
>   

Given past experience, I believe you are correct!

> Bruce, sounds like you can experiment and see what works best in a
> real world setup, so maybe a good page documenting it for future open
> source webcammers?
>   


That's in my plan. And possibly a presentation.

I *hope* to get to this during the holiday season; its the only chance I
have to get the necessary testing done. (Seems "retirement" didn't free
up as much time as I thought it would.)

--Bruce
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Re: "Relaying" video streams

[Bruce Dawson]

Thomas Charron wrote:
>   I dunno, but you web cams right now aren't in a happy state.  Apache
> default directories and the such.  :-D
>   

Right. I just shutdown the Apache proxies so we could have some
bandwidth. Seems someone jumps on the cameras within minutes of setting
up the proxies. It would be OK if they were on for a minute or two, but
they're camping out, and they're usually from residental IPs. Then,
after a few hours, I've got about 6 users on them.

--Bruce
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Re: "Relaying" video streams

[Bruce Dawson]

Thomas Charron wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 8:06 PM, Bruce Dawson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>   
>> We've got several web cams that people like to visit
>> (www.milessmithfarm.net). However, they're chewing up bandwidth when
>> more than one person at a time views them.
>> Is anyone aware of a Linux based video re-broadcaster (either software
>> or a service)?
>> We'd like to upload the video streams to a single server that multiple
>> people can connect to and view them. This way, we're only sending one
>> video stream up to the server, and the server can rebroadcast it to all
>> the connected clients.
>> 
>
>   I can't speak for their use for your purposes (I cant go check right
> now, firewall says apperently webcams aren't work related, go figure),
> but I did search thru my email when talking to someone else in the
> past about this very subject.
>
> http://camstreams.com/
>
>   
Interesting service, and looks like something I want - except it
requires the "broadcaster" (me) to run the camstreams encoder on a
Windows box.

I don't mind encoding for such a service, but I don't want to run
Windows. It must run on either Linux or Unix.

--Bruce
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Re: "Relaying" video streams

[Bruce Dawson]

Ben Scott wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 12:52 AM, Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>   
>>  Sure.  Just multicast, for that matter.  The problem is that
>> effectively zero public routers forward multicast datagrams ...
>> 
>
>   FYI, I did find some resources on this:
>
> Multicast over TCP/IP HOWTO (1998)
> http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Multicast-HOWTO.html
>
> RFC-3170: IP Multicast Applications: Challenges and Solutions (2001)
> http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3170.html
>   

Thanks, but I seem to remember a message indicating that the RFC's
"expired" and the multicast addresses have been re-purposed. I'm not
sure about that though - it may have occurred in a [bad] dream.

However, your earlier point about public routers forwarding multicast
datagrams is well taken, so I don't think multicast will work for the
joe-beer-drinker or mom-and-pop crowd (which seem to be the main
audience for these webcams).

--Bruce
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Re: "Relaying" video streams

[Bruce Dawson]

Bill Mullen wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:38:05 -0500,
> Bruce Dawson wrote:
>
>   
>> VirginSnow wrote:
>> 
>>>> Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:06:35 -0500
>>>> From: Bruce Dawson 
>>>> 
>>>> We'd like to upload the video streams to a single server that
>>>> multiple people can connect to and view them. This way, we're only
>>>> sending one video stream up to the server, and the server can
>>>> rebroadcast it to all the connected clients.
>>>> 
>>> No matter where the server is, sending a fresh unicast copy to every
>>> client will consume (ie, waste) bandwidth.
>>>   
>> True, but the idea is to stream to multiple clients from an ISP that
>> supports a high outgoing bandwidth, and to provide that stream from an
>> ISP connection that doesn't (like DSL/broadband/...) The "high output"
>> ISP would, in effect, become a "repeater".
>> 
>
> Perhaps VLC is the right tool for the job?
>
> http://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Streaming_HowTo
>
> >From a quick glance, it looks as if running VLC on said server would
> allow you to have it connect from there to your source streams, and then
> make those streams available to clients connecting to it from the WAN.
>
> HTH!
>
>   
I've looked at VLC and VLM, but can't tell if those will do what I want.
I suspect it will stream without a problem, but I can't determine if it
will allow multiple clients to attach to the same stream.

--Bruce

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