I picked up the sampler Death... is just the Beginning Volume IV the other day, practically for free. On it, there are a few songs by bands I've come to like recently, so I expect to find a few more good tunes that way. Opening the case, I notice that it's not the standard jewel case but rather a unique mixture between paper and plastic. But it's not plastic as the case boldly asserts. It's a NaturePac no plastic biodegradable. Well, first off, I am glad that environmental consciousness is spreading. Next, I wonder whether the producers of the sampler expect me to get rid of it soon, or why they chose biodegradable packaging. And last, since we already know that heavy metal is for gifted kids, I can now boldly assert that all listeners of death metal are environmentally conscious. Or was it the other way around? NP: Man on Fire: The Undefined Design

Dear Lazyweb: we are looking for a decorative closet to house two servers in our flat. What I have in mind is a closet of about 60x60cm base area and around 1.3 metres height. The outer casing should look good, so a butt-ugly-computer-grey casing is out of the question. Rather, we would like a black case with a darkened glass door in the front. We do not need to mount 19" cases, so the inside just has to accomodate two 46x66x22cm towers and a few appliances, such as backup tape drive, switch, and cable modem. We're looking to spend around 300 , at most. I have been looking around on the web and on auction sites, but without any luck. Do you have any pointers? Please let me know! Thanks. NP: Dredg: Catch Without Arms

Thanks, pixie, you made my day: Now if only I could shower all by myself, I'd try it immediately. Or rather: I can shower alright, but still need someone to wrap my casted arms in plastic. And believe me, showering through plastic bags is really unsatisfying. Eleven days to go. Then those bloody things come off. I am looking forward that shower on 21 May even a bit more than I have at times craved the clean wetness during prolonged expeditions in the Alps or Asia. Now I am sure you didn't need to know all that. NP: Explosions in the Sky: The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place

Somehow my network device does not want to recognise that it actually has a carrier. This being Linux (and not Windows), I thus decide to reload the driver, after taking down the network interface:

lapse:~# ip l dev eth0
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:0a:e4:30:43:16 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
# notice: not UP
lapse:~# rmmod e1000
lapse kernel: unregister_netdevice: waiting for eth0 to become free.
  Usage count = 1
lapse kernel: unregister_netdevice: waiting for eth0 to become free.
  Usage count = 1
[...]
# goes on forever, uninterruptible; thus new shell:
lapse:~# ps u -C rmmod
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root      5624  0.0  0.0   1656   480 pts/2    D+   00:02   0:00 rmmod e1000

As we all well know, state 'D' uninterruptible sleep means: reboot. Especially since I cannot ssh into the box anymore (doh!), and su and sudo just end up in state 'D' as well, if I try them. So, on to reboot. Or wait, that doesn't work as the shutdown process will hang long before the filesystems get unmounted. Great. It's become impossible to argue that Linux is the more stable operating system Update: a few people responded with workarounds, ranging from use of watchdog to automate the reboot (this is my laptop, so it's not really necessary) to various combinations of flags to /sbin/shutdown or the use of sysrq to force the system to reboot without cleaning up or unmounting filesystems essentially the same as pressing the reset button. Ben Hutchings says:

I think this happens when the driver repeatedly attempts to fix an error condition and keeps scheduling future work (retaining a reference to the device) rather than giving up.

I thus ended up filing a bug against the kernel.

This message just went out to the debian-devel mailinglist:

Even though I am still somewhat physically limited, my brain today decided to start on the netconf development. And since we all know that the waterfall model is the One True Model and that Extreme Programming no solution, I started by drafting a document, nothing formal, just thoughts on how to implement the various parts of netconf. And open questions I already know need to be answered. I shall be posting this document to the netconf-devel mailing list sometime soon and am looking for comments (and answers and helpers). The purpose of this message is to get interested people to subscribe. Please do so that we can keep debian-devel free of this and so that I can get more feedback (and potentially help). If you don't know what I am talking about, check out the wiki page and slides from my last talk. Then subscribe.

Thanks for your attention; that is all. NP: Trentem ller: The Last Resort

I am installing my first Ubuntu computer, a laptop for a friend who just wants to use the Internet. Even though I am not entirely sure whether to ridicule the installation process it took the installer 2:47 hours to produce the first user dialog on this PIII 600MHz with 256Mb of RAM, so I had to use the alternative text-mode installer or be impressed by the desktop that eventually filled the screen with more-or-less everything working out of the box, I think I did learn a lesson today, as trivial as it may sound. The screen of this laptop stays blank throughout the boot sequence even though Ubuntu put so much effort into a flashy splash screen. Thus, I logged on to #ubuntu and found someone who had time to help:

< madduck> i just installed feisty on a laptop and now when i start, after
           grub, it says "Starting up" and then has a black screen until gdm
           has started
< madduck> where is the fancy splash?
< someone> madduck: the splash screen uses a standard VESA mode which,
           apparently, your system doesn't support. Remove the "quiet
           splash" options from menu.lst to see boot messages in text mode.
< someone> madduck: you can try fixing the VESA mode with the vga= kernel
           boot option. Start with 'vga=ask' and enter 'scan' at the prompt
           at boot time.

But I still had no success when someone apparently typed into the wrong window and triggered the childish area of my brain:

< someone_else> ls
< someone_else> clear
< madduck> rm -rf ~
< someone> madduck: what was the purpose of that?
< madduck> someone: EWIN :)
< someone> madduck: I'm not prepared to support you if you go around telling
           people to delete their home directories, however funny you think
           that is.

I apologised (sincerely), and the person went on to help me, pointing me to more VESA modes and making me try them until I had a lead. No wonder Ubuntu gets the users. I am not saying that Debian is at the losing end in this scenario. Instead, I am preaching to the choir who sings back: "but Debian wouldn't be Debian without the flames." And I think to myself: "I wonder who actually engages their brains and continues to hold that view when they utter it." NP: The Young Gods - Kissing the Sun (Orange Mix) Update: without having to be told by anyone, I know there are people in Debian who try to be equally helpful and reasonable. In fact, Debian has gotten a lot better in the last years, in part (but not exclusively) thanks to Debian Women. This post does not try to discredit those who already make Debian a better place, or to piss anyone off. In fact, it's about a lesson I learnt, which may be obvious to many, but which hasn't been as obvious to me until today.

The Linux Professional Institute offers all its exams at a discounted price at debconf7. That's definitely good news and should earn Klaus Behrla another round of gratitude for his efforts (assuming he's behind this again). However, it also gets me thinking again: I've been meaning to complete my certifications for years but never could be bothered to spend the money (even at a discount) or actually devote the time to the exam itself. At FOSDEM 2007, I had signed up but then skipped the exams to do more important stuff. The reason? During the conference, someone responded with something like "LPI? Why? I am a Debian developer" when I brought up the subject. Good point. I think I could just sit down and pass the second and third stage exams (having contributed to the exams themselves), and do even better with a bit of studying for it. But is it worth it? Does the LPI certification actually prove something that isn't already obvious from my online track record. What do you think? I'd be interested specifically to hear from fellow developers who decided to take the exams. NP: Anekdoten - Monolith Update: thanks, Joerg, for your thoughts. I am not looking for employment, and if I was, I'd certainly not want to work at a company that thinks certifications are the true proof of capabilities. So I guess that leaves me with a 'no' still. But I also want to say that this post is not to discredit the LPI. I think their exams are fair and definitely not trivial. Even looking at some study notes for LPIC1, I learnt some new stuff, so I bet just preparing for LPIC2 and 3 would teach me things I did not know yet. Compared to other certifications by more commercial vendors, LPIC definitely ranks very high, so don't let my blog post discourage you: there are plenty of reasons to take the exams; I was just looking for reasons why I would want to continue taking them. Update: Mario, I would not be a DD if before I had not been and continue to be a system administrator. And I think you'll have problems finding a hand full of DDs who've never touched an ISA card.