I’m moving to a new studio apartment in June, about 200 metres to the west from where I currently live. This naturally causes a snail mail address change. While very few people need my snail mail address, it’s listed in some of my free software as an alternative contact point, so I’d better get the word out on the change. (I will, of course, update the addresses in my software as I release new versions.) My current address is

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho
Helokantie 1 A 16
40640 JYV SKYL 
FINLAND

My new address, which becomes valid in the beginning of June, is

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho
Sienitie 2 B 27
40640 JYV SKYL 
FINLAND

(Some post offices may require a country prefix in front of the postal code; use “FI-40640″ in such a case.)

(Written mostly for my family since hundreds of others are probably writing their take on the same for Planet Debian.) So glad tonight wasn't another slow dinner for 300 geeks, but instead a masterpiece that couldn't have been orchestrated better on purpose. Sitting in the center of a Debian "swirl" of tables in a big echoing metal-roofed meeting hall with two rough stone walls. At the "DPL table", which means we get to eat last. A mariachi band comes in in a bit of a hurry, horns playing way too loud but still fun. And quickly after there's a sound like a thousand tapping drums underneath the music as rain starts coming down, drumming on the roof. A couple of songs, a couple of burts of rain. One time the band is up on the stage, reach the climax of their music perfectly timed with a torrent of rain that concludes it, washes it away and drowns it out. Just to add to the flavor, a scene develops in front of the stage. If you ignore what's really going on (which I won't go into), it's right out of a Mexican telenovela: One tall guy with multicolored hair and some others remonstrating a guy who subtly reminds me of the Mexican clown that would be characterised as the "tramp". And then they push him right across the room to the door, with him gesticulating broadly all the way, but seeming beneath it all to be going along, miming out the scene. A croud develops over there, and for a minute the croud dynamics seem about to get ugly, but the band does their best to drown it out and soon there's a bunch of people dancing in line to the buffet. And the weather does its best too, as a whole side of the wall begins to fountain water down inside the building, pouring down, exciting and beautiful and completly unexpected. And then we sit down to eat. And then the power goes out. Pitch blackness for seconds, then it's a strobe show with one camera flash after another, the odd laptop or PDA or laser pointer breifly lighting up the scene. The lights come back on slowly, in stages, like theater lights at the end of a show. By now I'm so hyped up on Mexico and drama and disaster and life that I get up and go all over the room, chatting with lots of folks about how amazing that was, how it couldn't have been scripted better, how it's like the Debian release process, what the pictures from the blackout will look like, and just reacting to the catharsis. And outside it's a cool and gorgeous night in the street washed clean, I'm really happy right now to be in Mexico.

Tuomo just released ion-3ds-20060519, and I uploaded an updated ion3 package to experimental. The reason why I uploaded to experimental instead unstable is that ion3 switched to lua 5.1, and most available scripts from the ion3-scripts package still require lua 5.0 to work. Please be patient, I'm sure these scripts will be updated soon.

Christmas has come early and vim7 has finally made its way on my unstable machine thanks to the miracle of dist-upgrade. I’ve made some notes on my faq. So far the feature that might change my life forever, is omnicompletion. Spelling is a little disappointing. In the help page it says hitting CTRL-X after a misspelled word will present some alternatives. Doesn’t work for me. Starting spell support is quite ugly: :setlocal spell spelllang=en_gb Am I supposed to put that in my .muttrc? As it doesn’t setup automatically when editing mail. Might just stick with aspell for the time being. Tabs are cool. I’ll use them. Before I used to split and minimize windows. Kinda ugly really. I am still desperately looking for something that can close HTML tags or something that can assist me writing HTML. Some basic well formedness check would be nice. :hardcopy looks cool, but it doesn’t seem to be able to hardcopy Korean letters. Perhaps I am missing some Korean fonts in my postscript path. After peeking at “postscript-cjk-printing”, it looks like I need to install some fonts. Argh! How in Debian? Ok good luck vim7 users. Update:

• Undo actually behaves better. I was a little too hasty in my initial tests.
• Bracket highlighting, nice.

Note: This article is part of my OS Install Experiences series.

OK, so let's start with something simple: Debian. Simple in the sense that there probably won't be too many surprises for me as a Debian developer (or for most readers of Planet Debian). For other people this might be interesting, though, and some facts are probably interesting to one or the other experienced Debian user/developer, too... Hardware A few words on the hardware I'll be installing all these OSes on. It's a cheapo (200 Euros) x86 PC (Intel Celeron, 2 GHz), 80 GB IDE hard drive, 256 MB RAM, ATI Radeon 9200 SE graphics adapter, Realtek PCI ethernet controller, CDROM, USB, and all the other standard stuff. Nothing fancy, really. Install

1. First, I downloaded a Debian sarge 3.1r2 CD image, burned it on a CD, and booted from that.
2. An installer menu showed up, where you can press F3 for boot options. I chose "expert26", which will ask me more questions and give me a 2.6 Linux kernel instead of 2.4.
3. The installer (newt-based, i.e. not graphical) will now start to boot a base Linux system.
4. Now, you can choose your language (used in the installer), country, region, and keyboard layout.
5. You'll be asked which additional kernel modules you want to load (default: all), and whether you want PCMCIA support. Also, you can choose which extra installer components should be loaded (LVM, PPP, serial, IrDA, ...).
6. Your hardware can be automatically detected (my Realtek card was successfully detected, the "8139too" kernel module was then loaded).
7. The network was successfully auto-configured via DHCP within seconds.
8. Now you can choose a hostname and domain name for the box. I used "hydra" as hostname (guess why), and "local.domain" as domain name.

Partitioning Now the funny part starts: partitioning the disk. As I will be installing >= 10 OSes, this needs a bit of consideration. I have chosen to create a 10 GB (primary) partition for a Redmond OS I'll be installing later (for games, testing, proprietary software I'm forced to use, and similar things). This will be the first partition and I marked it bootable, as Windows might choke otherwise. For the rest, I reserved 5 GB for each OS — that should do. So the next two (primary) partitions are 5 GB each. I'll leave these empty for now, as I might encounter obscure OSes which must be installed on primary partitions. Let's hope it won't be more than two ;-) As you can only have four primary partitions, I then had to create a logical partition, which will "contain" any further partitions. The next three (secondary) partitions are 1 GB each, intended to be used as swap. One of those I marked as swap in order to use it for Debian. Other Linux installations will be able to reuse this one. The other two are reserved in case I encounter OSes which have another form of swap and cannot use Linux swap partitions... The rest is easy: create twelve 5 GB partitions => lots of space for more OSes. Here's the resulting fdisk output:

Disk /dev/hda: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
      Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
   /dev/hda1   *           1        1216     9767488+  83  Linux
   /dev/hda2            1217        1824     4883760   83  Linux
   /dev/hda3            1825        2432     4883760   83  Linux
   /dev/hda4            2433        9964    60500790    5  Extended
   /dev/hda5            2433        2554      979933+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
   /dev/hda6            2555        2676      979933+  83  Linux
   /dev/hda7            2677        2798      979933+  83  Linux
   /dev/hda8            2799        3406     4883728+  83  Linux
   /dev/hda9            3407        4014     4883728+  83  Linux
   /dev/hda10           4015        4622     4883728+  83  Linux
   /dev/hda11           4623        5230     4883728+  83  Linux
   /dev/hda12           5231        5838     4883728+  83  Linux
   /dev/hda13           5839        6446     4883728+  83  Linux
   /dev/hda14           6447        7054     4883728+  83  Linux
   /dev/hda15           7055        7662     4883728+  83  Linux
   /dev/hda16           7663        8270     4883728+  83  Linux
   /dev/hda17           8271        8878     4883728+  83  Linux
   /dev/hda18           8879        9486     4883728+  83  Linux
   /dev/hda19           9487        9964     3839503+  83  Linux

Install, continued

1. The Debian partitioning tool allowed me to do all of the above via a friendly menu. As it does not modify the partition table until you say "done", I could revert many changes, and play around with different layout ideas until I was satisfied.
2. Next thing you can choose is the Kernel flavor (386, 686, smp).
3. You may now configure and install GRUB, the bootloader. I installed it at "(hd0)", the master boot record of the hard disk.
4. Soon the CD ejects, and you have to reboot.
5. After a restart (which also shows whether GRUB works fine), you can now choose your timezone, and decide whether you want shadow passwords (say yes!).
6. Now enter the root password, and decide whether you want to create an additional user account (say yes, and enter a different password here).
7. You can now configure apt, e.g. tell it which sources you'd like to use (CDROM, FTP, HTTP, ...). You'll be asked whether you want to install software from Debian's "non-free" archive. After choosing a mirror (and proxy settings, if you like), you can (should!) also say yes to the question whether you want security updates...
8. Finally, you may now choose "tasks" (desktop, web server, file server, ...) your machine should be able to perform; this will influence which packages will be installed. You may choose "manual package selection", of course, if you want more control. I used "desktop".
9. That's about it. You'll see a few more application-specific questions (configuration of MTA, ssh, fonts, X11, gdm, and others), and after that you'll be left with a GNOME login window.

Security I collected some (partly) security-relevant information after that.

• Portscan from another box:
  

  PORT    STATE SERVICE
  22/tcp  open  ssh
  111/tcp open  rpcbind
  113/tcp open  auth
  785/tcp open  unknown
  

  Not good. A default install should not have any ports open, IMHO. There are more daemons running: exim (port 25), and famd (port 771) for example. Those are fine however, as they only listen to the loopback interface and are not exposed to the Internet (eth0).
• Some permissions:
  

  drwxrwsr-x   3 root staff  4096 2006-05-17 22:48 /home
  drwxr-xr-x  11 uwe uwe     4096 2006-05-18 23:19 /home/uwe
  drwxr-xr-x  10 root root   4096 2006-05-17 23:43 /root
  drwxrwxrwt   8 root root   4096 2006-05-17 23:41 /tmp
  /dev:
  crw-rw----  1 root video    10, 175 2006-05-17 23:13 agpgart
  crw-------  1 root root      5,   1 2006-05-17 23:13 console
  crw-rw----  1 root audio    14,   3 2006-05-17 23:13 dsp
  brw-rw----  1 root floppy    2,   0 2006-05-17 23:13 fd0
  crw-rw-rw-  1 root root      1,   7 2006-05-17 23:13 full
  brw-rw----  1 root disk      3,   0 2006-05-17 23:13 hda*
  brw-rw----  1 root cdrom    22,  64 2006-05-17 23:13 hdd
  crw-r-----  1 root kmem      1,   2 2006-05-17 23:13 kmem
  crw-rw----  1 root root      1,  11 2006-05-17 23:13 kmsg
  crw-r-----  1 root kmem      1,   1 2006-05-17 23:13 mem
  crw-rw-rw-  1 root root      1,   3 2006-05-17 23:13 null
  crw-rw-rw-  1 root root      5,   0 2006-05-17 23:13 tty
  crw-rw----  1 root root      4,   0 2006-05-17 23:13 tty0
  crw-------  1 root root      4,   1 2006-05-17 23:24 tty1
  crw-------  1 root tty       4,   2 2006-05-17 23:13 tty[2-6]
  crw-rw----  1 root root      4,   7 2006-05-17 23:13 tty7
  [...]
  crw-rw----  1 root root      4,  63 2006-05-17 23:13 tty63
  crw-rw----  1 root dialout   4,  64 2006-05-17 23:13 ttyS*
  crw-rw-rw-  1 root root      1,   8 2006-05-17 23:13 random
  cr--r--r--  1 root root      1,   9 2006-05-17 23:13 urandom
  crw-rw----  1 root root      7,   1 2006-05-17 23:13 vcs*
  crw-rw-rw-  1 root root      1,   5 2006-05-17 23:13 zero
  

  Most of that looks sane to me (a "chmod 700 /home/uwe /root" would be nice, though), but maybe it can be tightened/secured a bit more? Ideas?
• Default users and shells:
  I installed some more popular applications (apache, mysql) to have more data.

  root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
  daemon:x:1:1:daemon:/usr/sbin:/bin/sh
  bin:x:2:2:bin:/bin:/bin/sh
  sys:x:3:3:sys:/dev:/bin/sh
  sync:x:4:65534:sync:/bin:/bin/sync
  games:x:5:60:games:/usr/games:/bin/sh
  man:x:6:12:man:/var/cache/man:/bin/sh
  lp:x:7:7:lp:/var/spool/lpd:/bin/sh
  mail:x:8:8:mail:/var/mail:/bin/sh
  news:x:9:9:news:/var/spool/news:/bin/sh
  uucp:x:10:10:uucp:/var/spool/uucp:/bin/sh
  proxy:x:13:13:proxy:/bin:/bin/sh
  www-data:x:33:33:www-data:/var/www:/bin/sh
  backup:x:34:34:backup:/var/backups:/bin/sh
  list:x:38:38:Mailing List Manager:/var/list:/bin/sh
  irc:x:39:39:ircd:/var/run/ircd:/bin/sh
  gnats:x:41:41:Gnats Bug-Reporting System (admin):/var/lib/gnats:/bin/sh
  nobody:x:65534:65534:nobody:/nonexistent:/bin/sh
  Debian-exim:x:102:102::/var/spool/exim4:/bin/false
  uwe:x:1000:1000:,,,:/home/uwe:/bin/bash
  identd:x:100:65534::/var/run/identd:/bin/false
  sshd:x:101:65534::/var/run/sshd:/bin/false
  messagebus:x:103:104::/var/run/dbus:/bin/false
  hal:x:106:106:Hardware abstraction layer,,,:/var/run/hal:/bin/false
  saned:x:109:109::/home/saned:/bin/false
  gdm:x:104:110:Gnome Display Manager:/var/lib/gdm:/bin/false
  mysql:x:105:111:MySQL Server,,,:/var/lib/mysql:/bin/false
  

  Not too good, IMHO. Almost all system accounts have a valid shell instead of /bin/false or /usr/sbin/nologin. Most of those should not need one, and security-wise it's a lot better to not give them a valid shell. The good news is that many daemons (ssh, mysql, etc.) don't have a valid shell. Uh, why is "Debian-exim" capitalized? Update: That's why.
• Setuid/setgid files:
  

  # find / -type f \( -perm -4000 -o -perm -2000 \) -exec ls -ld ' ' \;
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root tty 9784 2005-09-18 09:04 /usr/bin/wall
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 22872 2005-05-18 08:33 /usr/bin/newgrp
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root shadow 34488 2005-05-18 08:33 /usr/bin/chage
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 28056 2005-05-18 08:33 /usr/bin/chfn
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 28088 2005-05-18 08:33 /usr/bin/chsh
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root shadow 16696 2005-05-18 08:33 /usr/bin/expiry
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 34904 2005-05-18 08:33 /usr/bin/gpasswd
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 26616 2005-05-18 08:33 /usr/bin/passwd
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 34488 2002-01-18 09:13 /usr/bin/at
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root tty 7992 2004-11-01 20:29 /usr/bin/bsd-write
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root crontab 26872 2004-07-28 22:44 /usr/bin/crontab
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root mail 9860 2004-06-04 17:21 /usr/bin/dotlockfile
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 18136 2004-12-01 08:29 /usr/bin/traceroute.lbl
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 809836 2006-03-10 12:19 /usr/bin/gpg
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root mail 7764 2006-01-31 01:48 /usr/bin/mutt_dotlock
  -rwsr-sr-x  1 root lp 24184 2004-07-27 23:48 /usr/bin/lpq
  -rwsr-sr-x  1 root lp 22232 2004-07-27 23:48 /usr/bin/lprm
  -rwsr-sr-x  1 root lp 24440 2004-07-27 23:48 /usr/bin/lpr
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 44024 2004-12-12 20:35 /usr/bin/mtr
  -rwsr-sr-x  1 root mail 71640 2005-03-01 16:37 /usr/bin/procmail
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root mail 12712 2005-03-01 16:37 /usr/bin/lockfile
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root ssh 57304 2004-11-28 16:33 /usr/bin/ssh-agent
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 10894 2004-06-04 12:02 /usr/bin/fileshareset
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 5144 2006-01-15 14:37 /usr/bin/kgrantpty
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 5588 2006-01-15 14:37 /usr/bin/kpac_dhcp_helper
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 98488 2006-03-20 23:03 /usr/bin/sudo
  -rwsr-xr--  1 root plugdev 19096 2005-05-18 15:47 /usr/bin/pumount
  -rwsr-xr--  1 root plugdev 26680 2005-05-18 15:47 /usr/bin/pmount
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root nogroup 45600 2005-09-08 07:32 /usr/bin/kdesud
  -rwsr-xr--  1 root dip 575192 2005-05-24 09:18 /usr/bin/kppp
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 544332 2005-04-08 15:53 /usr/bin/gpg2
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root games 34872 2005-03-02 19:20 /usr/games/same-gnome
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root games 57152 2005-03-02 19:20 /usr/games/gnomine
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root games 65752 2005-03-02 19:20 /usr/games/gnome-stones
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root games 70296 2005-03-02 19:20 /usr/games/mahjongg
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root games 48952 2005-03-02 19:20 /usr/games/gtali
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root games 36652 2005-03-02 19:20 /usr/games/gnotravex
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root games 94200 2005-03-02 19:20 /usr/games/gnobots2
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root games 28776 2005-03-02 19:20 /usr/games/gnotski
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root games 42584 2005-03-02 19:20 /usr/games/glines
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root games 61944 2005-03-02 19:20 /usr/games/gnibbles
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root games 78096 2005-03-02 19:20 /usr/games/gnometris
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 5668 2006-04-02 15:32 /usr/lib/pt_chown
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root mail 10940 2006-03-13 14:30 /usr/lib/evolution/2.0/camel/camel-lock-helper
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root utmp 9144 2005-03-09 18:21 /usr/lib/libvte4/gnome-pty-helper
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 13304 2005-09-06 15:13 /usr/lib/apache/suexec.disabled
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 668568 2006-04-11 14:33 /usr/sbin/exim4
  -rwsr-xr--  1 root dip 265880 2005-05-05 19:32 /usr/sbin/pppd
  -rwsr-xr--  1 root dip 29420 2004-09-30 04:13 /usr/sbin/pppoe
  -rwxr-sr-x  1 root lp 32248 2004-07-27 23:48 /usr/sbin/lpc
  -rwsr-sr-x  1 root root 7860 2005-09-02 00:44 /usr/X11R6/bin/X
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 35512 2005-05-18 08:33 /bin/login
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 23416 2005-05-18 08:33 /bin/su
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 68440 2005-09-18 09:04 /bin/mount
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 40920 2005-09-18 09:04 /bin/umount
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 30764 2003-12-22 23:18 /bin/ping
  -rwsr-xr-x  1 root root 26604 2003-12-22 23:18 /bin/ping6
  -r-sr-xr-x  1 root root 15000 2004-06-28 20:39 /sbin/unix_chkpwd
  

  Quite a bunch, I'd say. The games are "only" "setgid games", but I'd really, really remove them on any production machine which should be halfway secure. Some of those binaries probably need the setuid/setgid bit (su, passwd, ...), but others probably don't. Maybe we should ship more of that non-setuid per default and add a note to the READMEs which tells the admin how he can make the apps setuid if he should want that?

Ok, so that's it for Debian stable. Unstable is 99% the same, except that you do a "vi /etc/apt/sources.list; apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade". I'll do that later maybe, compare the findings, and report notable differences here, but it shouldn't be too many (I guess). Not today, though, I need some sleep now. Comments, suggestions, flames? Update 2006-05-19: Updated "why is Debian-exim capitalized?" info as per comments, thanks!

So a lot has been going on here at DebConf 6. Yesterday we spent a sun soaked day at Xochicalco. It was hot out, but not unbearable, and it was really interesting. Makes me want to see Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, even though I'll bet it will be crap. We also had a delicious late lunch at a local buffet. I think the key to their deliciousness was serving actual Mexican food, rather than the quasi-Western fare at the hotel. We also had the foreign liquor BoF, which had excellent representation from various countries. I want to go to Puerto Rico for Christmas. The night before sfllaw had the genius idea to get some tuna and feed the kittens running around the hotel complex. They fought tooth and claw for every scrap of the tuna, then proceeded to wrestle and play for our amusement. They were still afraid of us, but not so badly, and it was completely adorable. Pictures are up on sfllaw's Flickr stream. Before a small group of us had dinner at a small Argentinian steak house. It was fantastic, and put me a meat coma for the rest of the night. Earlier in the day I attended an interesting talk by Don Amstrong about the GPLv3. He helped clarify some questions I had on the optional components of the license and how to combine them. Very interesting, and it's nice that Debian is represented on committees helping draft the next draft. Tuesday I attended a couple of very interesting talks by Manoj relating to SELinux. He basically confirmed my suspicion that SELinux is really hard, but nonetheless worthwhile. I'll have to pick up O'Reilly's SELinux book and learn more. It looks likely it will be in the base install in some form or another for etch. Monday night's highlight was a discussion between madduck, sfllaw and I. We talked mostly about why people feel unhappy about Ubuntu and maybe some ways of fixing it. Hopefully this DebConf will help bring the two camps together more than before. I've also been killed in Assassins, after only killing my first victim. I also thank the gods that I brought my old Orinocco wireless card, because the Broadcom drivers for my PowerBook isn't happy with the wireless here. I could of sworn that thing was working at some point. The flaky Internet connectivity is frustrating, but I can tell the volunteers are fighting a hard battle against some tough limitations, so thanks for the hard work! PS: If anyone knows a good way to get the Fn-key with Page Up/Down working on a Aluminum PowerBook, a beverage of your choice is yours.

Unsurprisingly lots of stuff has happened in the last 13 days since I last blogged. So much, that there were days where I wrote more emails than I read - and I haven't wrote many...

Also not unsurprisingly, debconf6 has been/is really a lot of fun - despite all the problems we have and had. Having met lots of nice people again (and some for the first time) will be the joyful memories I take home. I have hoped to be able to do (a little) more debian (not debconf) work, but well.. it is, as it is. We can and will learn for next years.

Also I really want to thank all those many people who gave their hands and/or brains and help get and keep debconf6 running. Muchas gracias!

Now my three short stories: on tuesday someone on IRC said "AAAARRRRGGG fucking stream!" and I replied "i'm happy about (bad) status reports, but 'ARRRGG fucking stream' makes me wanna say "streams are optional. STFU!" which then lead to "well, I didn't mean it that harsh. the streams are actually pretty cool. just too bad that the connectivity seesm to be to bad. I'm actually pretty impressed by video and sound quality."

I can understand that people at home get frustrated by interrupted streams, but we've allways said streams are optional, we do it for the first time and we had a hell more of problems than we thought off. And screaming on IRC (over and over) doesn't really make me wanna work harder.

This morning, some of the power plugs in the main auditorium didn't work. We then went to the fuse box and everything looked ok. Well, it took us some time to find out, that this main fuse box had not all fuses for the big room, there is another fuse box in the audio booth with has fuses for some (5%) of the power plugs in the main room in the tower. Arg. (Oh, and in case you wonder, yes, we have asked the hotel staff about this. They couldn't help.) So one switch of the fuses has moved a little and turned off. Arrrg. Now it's duct taped and should work till the end of the conference. Hopefully.

Story number three is my favorite: someone wanted to have wired access in the tower so plugged a cable into the hub which goes to the network panel which link to the network jacks under the table. The small switch we use has 8 ports and 9 jacks, one extra uplink jack. This broke one out of two APs in the tower and unfortunatly it was the 802.11g AP to which more clients can connect. Yay. So far so bad. Then I duct taped the entrance to the little server room in the audio booth (picture will be uploaded..) and put up a sign saying noone should enter without coordinated with me.

(BTW, then of course the AP needed some more power cycling to come back to life, but that's still not the whole story.)

The whole story is that after I duct taped that room completly some idiot(s) again plugged cables into the switch to get the net working for him or herself - of course without checking with the videoteam. Thank you very much! As I we didnt have enough issues already. Luckily this didn't cause new problems but I'm still shaking my head.

So, to summarize and to make it clear, I'm not frustrated, just stressed out, so much that I couldn't even stand people asking me to jump into the pool after lunch. It was just another request to me and I wanted to decide for myself what I do in my break. Finally I jumped into the water and was happy again :-)

Leaving to formal dinner now without reading this blog post before

People in the city of wt:Manchester are taking the streets back in a project called Mapchester. They're going to use GPS tools to map out the entire town, and store that data in the OpenStreetMap database, so it can be used by anyone. Open Source maps generated from the data will be used in the Futuresonic festival guide.

After a lot of discussions and mail exchanges with my contact there, it finally happens that I will indeed go to Bhutan at the end of the month. This trip is the consequence of an invitation received from the translator working on D-I translations in Dzongkha (the language of Bhutan). It happens that the Information Technology Institue of Bhutan is working on a local Linux distribution, named "Dzongkha Linux", which will be based on Debian. So, on June 2nd, will be the official launch event of that project, with most Bhutan officials attending, including the Prime Minister. I've then be invited there to give a keynote lecture about Free Software in general and more specifically the Debian Project, of course. One can imagine how a big honor it can be, both for me and Debian, actually. I hope I'll can sustain it and will give to Debian the representation it deserves.

For some reason, the kernel developers seem to like the "udev" system. For those of you who've been living under a rock for the past few years: udev is a pile of scripts that react to kernel hotplug events and will start setting up device nodes and go mount them, etc. While this is all probably very nice for users not very familiar with the system, it has one fatal flaw: It removes the perfectly deterministic and reproducible boot characteristics of a Linux system, and replaces them with something that will work when you're there, but break the next time. According to murphy's law, that "next time" is obviously when you're on vacation, the guy with access to the data center ran under a bus and is in hospital, and the breakage introduced with udev somehow also broke the VPN to your router, so you can't even remotely powercycle the beast. Or so. I don't like a system that starts playing with my device nodes. I have a static /dev, which does everything I need it to do; when I put a CD-ROM in the drive, I'll mount it myself, thank you. If I change something about my system configuration, I'm perfectly capable of modifying the configuration to match myself. I am perfectly happy with a system that will autoload kernel modules when I plug in some USB device, however, and there's nothing wrong with the ability to create some scripts that will set up stuff the way I want them to be. Hotplug allows all of that. By using hotplug, a USB mouse Just Works(TM) when I plug it in. There are more things like that, which Just Work. A USB key is not one of them, nor is a CD-ROM. And that's a good thing; I don't want filesystems to be mounted at random just because someone got hold of my laptop for a while. So don't use udev, I hear you say. And, well, I'm not. But the problem is that the kernel maintainers seem inclined to make it harder and harder to do so. And eventually, the result will be that I'll have to install a system which will break my boot sequence every other day just to be able to have a mouse work two seconds after I plug it in. Madness.

I was a bit lazy today and mostly attending nothing. Not saying that the talks were not interesting, but mostly I wanted to work on a few pending stuff such as this damn Xorg debconf templates rewrite and the subsequent French translation update (a huge one). Being in the hacklab most of the day lead me to good discussions with many people, out of which I'll keep a very long talk with Otavio Salvador. We could some day have a dedicated server for Grisu's work on the DDTP to be hosted while it is used y some translators as a testbed for a future infranstructure. I also attended the interesting "Debian in Latin America" BOF, even though it was in Spansih. It was good to get a picture of how building a community in Latin America is facing challenges. The discussion was animated and very nice with valuable interventions and good animations. Kudos to Anibal and Damog who animated it. Oh, I went assassinated during the day. I won't tell more, of course (except that now you are safe when meeting me, folks...I shouldn't even tell that, but anyway....). This sucks and I hate my murderer....:-)...I will find ways to revenge, believe me, pal. The day ended with the Wine and Cheese party. It was indeed added in the official schedule, so we felt in duty of organizing something nice. And, actually, I think it has been nice with something like 40 different cheese varieties around the table. It bringed a big crowd near the hacklab and triggerred a more than great moment, I think. So, it sounds like a Cheese Party is now becoming an official rendez-vous for all Deconfers, so see you in Debconf7 Cheese and Wine party, which will be huge. Mako, Hannah and Matt, we missed you on that one (Matt, where the hell were you?).

My blog has apparently become a canonical source (at least by PageRank) for the Webloyalty Scam (see also this update). It’s been about 18 months since I first posted about it—since then that page has gotten over 40,000 hits and over 1,000 comments. Perhaps the best testimony about this company comes from its own employees. At least two people purporting to be Webloyalty Call Center Representatives have posted comments to that entry; in both cases, the IP addresses resolved to a Connecticut location, so it is at least plausible that these people really work for Webloyalty. Here’s the most recent comment, posted from 69.183.205.129:

WOW!! The level of stupidity on this board is incredible. You people don’t get it, do you?? Webloyalty didn’t sign you up for anything. You signed yourselves up. The details are right there, in plain sight, in normal sized text, right in front of your faces. It details EVERYTHING, including the cost of the service and the billing cycle. The problem is that all of you idiots chose not to read it. You saw “free”, and figured “gee, something free for me? golly, I must be special”. WRONG!! YOU’RE NOT SPECIAL, YOU’RE JUST FUCKING LAZY AND STUPID!! YOU SIGNED YOURSELF UP! NOTHING HAPPENED AUTOMATICALLY!! THERE WAS NO SLIGHT OF HAND OR MISLEADING WORDING!! The bottom line is you’re all a bunch of stupid, lazy, crybabies who don’t want to take any responsability for your actions. NONE! Well, thats what you get for being stupid and lazy. LEARN TO TAKE RESPONSABILITY FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS. DON’T POINT THE FINGER AT OTHERS AND CALL THEM “THEIVES” AND “SCAM ARTISTS” AND BLAME THEM FOR YOUR OWN STUPIDITY. YOU ALL MAKE ME SICK!! FUCKING CRYBABIES!!!!

And here’s another for a few months ago:

comment: I’m a rep in the call center at Webloyalty. I have no pity for any of you people. You’re all suckers, plain and simple. Didn’t anybody ever teach you that nothing is free? When all of you idiots made your purchases on whatever website you did business on at the end of your transaction there was an offer asking if you wanted to save $10, or get award miles, or whatever. When you clicked on that link you were not automatically signed up. What happens is that you’re brought to the Reservations Rewards website. On that website it tells you that you are on the website for Reservations Rewards. You see, you can tell that because the banner at the top of the site says “Reservations Rewards”. Unfortunately you were too stupid to notice or remember. It then gives you instructions on how to redeem your “reward”. At that point you are instructed to enter you email address in twice and click accept. Now you have to manually type in the email twice in those boxes. No cut and paste is allowed. Then it tells you to click accept. Now, if you had any fucking brains in your head you would have noticed that right above the box where you enter your email mail address its says, in regular sized type, in plain sight, right out in the open, that entering your email twice will act as an electronic signature and that by clicking accept you are accepting that the website you just made a purchase on can share the billing information with Reservation Rewards. Also in the big box next all of this it gives the exact details of what you are signing up for, again in regular sized print, in plain sight, right out in the open. If you are too stupid to take the time to notice all of that then you deserve what you got. which was a membership in a overpriced bullshit ptogram.
>



Webloyalty depends on idiots like you to not notice this stuff. To be blinded by the idea that you are getting something for “free”. To not look at you credit card statement so charges go through every month. Its unbelievable the amount of dummies out there that fall for this stuff. Even if you do catch the charges eventually, and get a refund they still made money off of you by collecting interest on your money when they had possesion of it. Stay a member or cancel its win-win for webloyalty.
>



So, anyway I hope all you dummies learned a valuable lesson and wont fall for this again. I’m sure many of you will, though. You’d be shocked at how many people are repeat members where they canceled the service a while back but fell for the scam again a few months later.
>

Perhaps the funniest thing about my Reservation Rewards entry is that I get emails every day or two from people asking me how to get them to stop taking their money. There are, in fact, over 1,000 testimonials (including my own entry) explaining exactly how to get them to stop charging. Every few months, I receive an email from someone furious at me for charging them all this money. I wonder who these people are who get as far as doing a Google search to find my entry, but can’t seem to figure out that I have nothing to do with the company.

Well, it's finally arrived and here I am in the middle of it all.
Rails fun

The week kicked off with Matt and I teaching our tutorial on Ruby on Rails. It was the first time we've taught on that topic, so we were interested to hear the opinions of the attendees. We embarked on a fast-paced day-long tour of Rails features, with a large amount of live coding on screen.The aim was to give attendees an understanding of Rails as an environment for developing web applications, to let them see how fun it was to code (especially tests) and provide a bucket full of jumping off points for them to pursue their own investigations. With six or seven deployed Rails applications between us, we're in a good position to talk as real-world developers.
I think we pretty much succeeded. During the day we saw many places to improve the material and the flow, but the concept was sound. Teaching together meant we gave each other energy, humour and support. From the feedback, everybody was kept entertained and engaged as well as educated. Folks went away with the slides and the source code for the application we developed over the day. We thought about making our own course notes, but really there's nothing better than the Pragmatic Rails book, so there didn't seem much point in duplicating that effort.
We'd certainly like to do it again, and we're interested in visiting companies interested in Rails to bring their developer teams up to speed: we've already heard from one company attending the conference about that. So do get in touch if that interests you.KeynotesPaul Graham kicked off the conference with a provocative keynote comparing the conditions in the EU and US, and their suitability for stimulating startup companies. This has already sparked off a lot of discussion on the web, which is great to see. I'm really grateful to Paul for travelling a long distance to speak to us.We also heard from Jeffrey McManus of Yahoo! (I can never write "Yahoo!'s Jeffrey McManus" because the consequent train-wreck of punctuation upsets me). He shared the remarkable number of APIs and places where Yahoo! lets developers hook into their data and services. There's so much in there, I resolved to put some serious time aside to investigate what I could make use of.
CoverageThe site I set up for last year's conference, Planet XTech, is doing a great job aggregating blog coverage of XTech again this year. It's a great way for people here, and those following from a distance, to keep up with what's going on. Some folks are blogging really detailed notes, which is fantastic for the talks I've not been able to get to.Next yearIn a couple of weeks' time, I'll start thinking about next year's conference. I'll try to pull together what we've learned this year to make XTech even better. One thing we know already is that this year is our last in Amsterdam. We've been here three years and had a lot of fun. Next year, we're heading to Paris, which will be wonderful.Please do write to me with any comments and suggestions about XTech. One idea I'm playing with is the idea of a smaller related event later in the year, focused on educating people about web technologies.

It feels like (probably because it is) about 2 years since I last had a good fiddle around with Debian's installer. It's been fun to have another play in the last week or so. I've been on a mission to vanquish the ISC DHCPv2 packages, and I can't do this until the installer stops needing to use the udeb for dhclient. Previously, the dhcp3-client udeb had been way too big for the job (apparently it's the OMAPI stuff that gets linked in, I'm told by David Hankins from the ISC). Matt Zimmerman had thrown around the idea of using ipconfig from klibc-utils quite some time ago, but it's taken me this long to get the spare time to look into it further. Hacking the netcfg udeb to support ipconfig as a DHCP client was relatively trivial. dhcp.c wasn't too hair raising, and so I rebuilt the installer with my modified netcfg udeb and a udeb I made from the klibc source package, and it worked. However, it's not as simple as that (it never is). There's a couple of special cases as I discovered when hacking dhcp.c in netcfg:

1. with the DHCPv2 client, it adds a dhcp-class-identifier attribute (vendor-class-identifier in DHCPv3) set to "d-i". ipconfig is extremely lightweight. It can't add custom attributes, and apparently this attribute does cool stuff in relation to preseeding (although I haven't got a good handle on exactly what yet).
2. The other problem is related to a bug (I even remember it - #239591), where the hostname is optionally sent in the DHCP request. ipconfig doesn't appear to support that either, although in theory it should. One of the ways of invoking it includes providing the hostname, so I filed a wishlist bug regarding that, after emailing the upstream author.

So, my work in this instance is probably all for naught, but it was fun anyway, and it's something I've been meaning to do for absolutely ages. It is also hopefully a moot point, as apparently the space issues aren't so bad any more, so in theory the dhcp3-client udeb will now fit. The next dhcp3 upload will provide a dhcp3-client udeb again, so we'll see what happens on that front...

On the long bus ride back from the Mexican pyramids, I got to think about a long standing problem. If Israel's laws forbade prostitution, why didn't Israel's greatest judge enforce those laws? We've all heard the story of King Solomon and the two harlot's, where he finds the real mother by threatening to chop the baby in two. Since the laws of Israel carried a death penalty for adultery, why didn't Solomon enforce it? People today equate prostitution with adultery, but the Bible does not. Not always. As the wisest man who ever lived, a walking embodiment of true justice, Solomons judgement deserves a deeper look. Here is the text of the whole incident:

1 Kings 3:16-28 Then came there two women, that were harlots, unto the king, and stood before him. And the one woman said, O my lord, I and this woman dwell in one house; and I was delivered of a child with her in the house. And it came to pass the third day after that I was delivered, that this woman was delivered also: and we were together; there was no stranger with us in the house, save we two in the house. And this woman's child died in the night; because she overlaid it. And she arose at midnight, and took my son from beside me, while thine handmaid slept, and laid it in her bosom, and laid her dead child in my bosom. And when I rose in the morning to give my child suck, behold, it was dead: but when I had considered it in the morning, behold, it was not my son, which I did bear. And the other woman said, Nay; but the living is my son, and the dead is thy son. And this said, No; but the dead is thy son, and the living is my son. Thus they spake before the king. Then said the king, The one saith, This is my son that liveth, and thy son is the dead: and the other saith, Nay; but thy son is the dead, and my son is the living. And the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before the king. And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other. Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it. Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof. And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had judged; and they feared the king: for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him, to do judgment.

Whoredom, harlotry, prostitution; they defile the land. When Judah thought his daughter-in-law Tamar had become a harlot, he ordered her to be burnt. The problem was not with the sex for pay, but with violation of Judah's property rights. Tamar had been bought and paid for, and belonged to his family for the purpose of increasing their manpower. Biblically, sex for pay is fine. A ketubah (marriage contract) guarantees a woman a certain financial allowance in return for performing her sexual duties. The problem is that prostitution lowers the birthrate of the population, thus reducing its manpower, thus reducing its brainpower, thus reducing its ability to protect and defend itself. The connection between prostitution and lower birth rates isn't obvious to the layman, so just take it for granted right now.

Leviticus 18:20,28 Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour's wife, to defile thyself with her. That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you. Leviticus 19:29 Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.

Prostitution can fall into two categories; the woman is still the property of her father, or she belongs to a husband. Widows, divorced, and single women fall into the category of belonging to their fathers; they have a right to return to the family home and be supported there. How would a father prostitute his daughter? If he treats her harshly, refuses to marry her off to a suitable husband, does not feed or clothe her, train her or discipline her, she may well turn to whoredom to support herself. Look closely at the story of the two harlots. They say they have no man. They fall into the category of single women. Sex with a single woman is not adultery. Adultery carries the death penalty, but as single women, their prostitution was to be regulated by different laws. If a girl took up the prostitution trade, and then got married under false pretenses, pretending to be a virgin, the penalty was death. However no death penalty is indicated for the circumstance where the woman and her family were up front about her past. A man taking a wife needs to be able to accurately assess the risks of disease and future infidelity.

Deuteronomy 22:13-21 If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: And the damsel's father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him; And they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

Suppose a single woman was to work as a whore. What is the penalty? For the girl, no penalty at all. If she is a virgin turning her first trick, the man has to pay a hefty fine of fifty shekels to her father, who has the choice of giving her in marriage or not.

Exodus 22:16,17 And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife. If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins. Deuteronomy 22:28,29 If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.

When she is no longer a virgin, her father either allows her to be a prostitute, violating the law at Leviticus 19:29, or he doesn't allow her. If her father allows her, then he becomes liable for her behavior and she is not punished, as described in Hosea 4:13,14 quoted below. If her father doesn't allow her, she is again subject to the death penalty, as set forth in the next set of verses:

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

In the case of Solomon's two harlots, there is no evidence at all that their father disciplined or otherwise acted to prevent them from their trade. Perhaps their father was dead, but in that case his responsibility to his daughters would have fallen on his next of kin. It really is a matter of family responsibility, not of persecuting individuals. There is one remaining corner case; what of the married woman who becomes a prostitute? What if the two harlots had been married after all? It is a principle of the Torah that it must be applied equally. You cannot hit one party with the full penalty then let another get off free for the same crime. It is better to err on the side of mercy, so if you do not convict one, you should not convict another. This is violated daily by un-Godly governments who selectively enforce their laws to "make examples" of people. Such selective enforcement is neither fair or just. In Solomon's case, assuming the women were married, the other parties to the crime of adultery were missing. Without them, there was no way to proceed. This is why Jesus was able to say "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." The two witnesses rule also comes into it; before a person can be put to death two witnesses to the crime are required. Solomon's two harlots had no witnesses against them. When people engage in false worship, and use the services of whores, God will not punish the women who turn to adultery and infidelity. He will punish those who are responsible; the men, who failed to take their patriarchal prerogative in setting a good example of just, fair, respectful, and temperate behavior.

Hosea 4:13,14 They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and elms, because the shadow thereof is good: therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom, and your spouses shall commit adultery. I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery: for themselves are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots: therefore the people that doth not understand shall fall.

If you have any Torah questions, feel free to write in to ted AT reactor-core DOT org.

I've been managing servers professionally for some years now. Support is one of the most important things when you are managing computers for work. You don't need support to help you out with a printing problem or an e-mail problem. You need support because every minute the machine fails to power up, your company may lose twice the value of the entire machine. Or even more.

My first day job managing servers involved Dell hardware. What a nightmare. I've never had a good experience with Dell support, ever.

First off, Dell support never puts me straight through to an intelligent support rep. I don't care whether I get to the Indian call center or someone in Texas. The first support person I speak to at Dell has less computer aptitude than my grandmother. One conversation I will always remember went like this:

Me: We have a disk in our array that went bad on our Linux server. The red light on the disk itself is on. Please send us a replacement.

Dell: Have you tried rebooting?

Me: No. This is a production server. The reason the disks are redundant is so I don't HAVE to. Besides, the light ON THE MACHINE ITSELF is on.

Dell: Ah, OK. Have you run scandisk?

Me: No. This is a Linux server, as I told you, and scandisk wouldn't see a problem anyway since this disk is in an array and the array is still up.

Dell: OK, great. How about you download the diagnostics .exe from our website...

Me: Can't. We don't have Windows on this machine. You did say you support Linux when we bought it.

Dell: Ah. Can you right-click on My Computer...

Me: NO. This runs Linux, and the BAD DISK LIGHT ON THE MACHINE IS ON.

Dell: Ah, OK. I wonder if the problem really is that you have a bad disk.

Me: Could be!

Our first HP server purchase happened to be at a time when HP had undercut Dell by several thousand dollars. I liked the hardware, but it wasn't anything that much more special than Dell.

But what I really like is the support. I haven't had to call HP support often, but when I do, I am almost always speaking to a live, experienced person within 5 minutes.

With only one exception, all the HP support people I've talked to have been very experienced. They all sound like they've been working with HP hardware since the late punched card era. They know what is going on and assume that I do too. The HP people don't make small talk (it *really* ticks me off when someone obviously in Calcutta or something asks me about the weather in Kansas, because you *know* they are reading it off a screen and don't care). But that's fine. I'm not calling them to talk about the weather, I'm calling them because my server is down.

We had a bad disk in an array on a HP server once. That conversation went more like this.

HP: Server support. Serial number please?

Me: [gives it to them]

HP: OK. What's the problem?

Me: The array dropped a disk. The failed disk light is on and the controller logged a disk error.

HP: OK. That's a 146GB SCSI, right? 15KRPM or 10K?

Me: 15K.

HP: OK. Is 1PM tomorrow good to send out the replacement?

Me: Fine.

HP: OK, your case number is xxxxx. Can you give us directions to your location?

Me: Sure...

So recently we got in our MSL4048 tape library. A very nice unit. And faster than most *disks*. 48 Ultrium3 tapes -- 400GB native each -- very nice. And a barcode reader built in.

So anyway, one small problem. When you open up a magazine to put tapes in, you can close the unit back up. It says "scanning", but it doesn't notice that we've changed tapes until we give it a command on the operator panel (yes, this tape drive has a LCD screen built in). This can be worked around, but is annoying and is just waiting to cause confusion. Plus it's not how it should work.

So I call HP support yesterday.

Turns out this MSL4048 is a brand-new unit. Had only been on the market a few weeks. Our support rep has never seen one or taken calls about one, and they haven't even given him all the HP technical docs yet. But no matter, he is willing to try to help us out.

He calls me back twice yesterday with tips and questions after speaking to colleagues. He asks intelligent questions, doesn't bother with the "are you sure you're putting the tapes in the right way around" or the "is the power cord securely plugged in" crap, and generally doesn't waste my time. He called me back about four times more today -- they duplicated our setup in their lab, right down to the exact firmware version, but didn't have the problem. Two of those callbacks were apologizing for taking so long, and explaining that they were learning about this machine as they went along. So a HP rep will be out to our location shortly.

Now THAT'S what I call service. No blaming it on someone else, no trying to make me do stupid troubleshooting things, and returning calls.

My *one* bad experience with HP was one time we put a new internal tape drive in the machine, and it was acting flaky. I got the only not-very-experienced HP rep I ever had spoken to that time, and they tried to blame Debian for what turned out to be a bad SCSI cable. (The symptoms weren't very similar to what I'd expect for a bad SCSI cable, and the cable had been working fine.) Oh HP, you donate to Debian -- why don't you support your hardware under it?

(In fairness, that is the ONLY time they have flinched when I said I run Debian, though it does make them hesitate sometimes)