Search Results: "andy"

30 August 2006

Martin F. Krafft: Using LVM snapshots for filesystem recovery

This morning, I found myself in Gunnar's position and was looking at an empty /home directory because of the following mount failure: 
piper:~# mount /dev/mapper/vg0-home
mount: Unknown error 990
Starting XFS recovery on filesystem: dm-0 (logdev: internal)
Filesystem "dm-0": xfs_inode_recover: Bad inode magic number, dino ptr =
  0xffff810028a6bd00, dino bp = 0xffff81002851d140, ino = 33629
Filesystem "dm-0": XFS internal error xlog_recover_do_inode_trans(1) at
  line 2352 of file fs/xfs/xfs_log_recover.c.  Caller 0xffffffff88307729
I am used to XFS giving me hard times, but this time at least I didn't have much to worry as it happened at home, I have plenty other machines I can use instead, and all data was backed up. Since this is on a Debian unstable machine, I had the latest xfs_repair available, and told it to do its thing, but it refused: 
piper:~# xfs_repair /dev/mapper/vg0-home
Phase 1 - find and verify superblock...
Phase 2 - using internal log
        - zero log...
ERROR: The filesystem has valuable metadata changes in a log which needs to
be replayed.  Mount the filesystem to replay the log, and unmount it before
re-running xfs_repair.  If you are unable to mount the filesystem, then use
the -L option to destroy the log and attempt a repair.
Note that destroying the log may cause corruption -- please attempt a mount
of the filesystem before doing this.
Great. Catch-22. I decided to have a go at fixing it, but as much as I pretended to grok xfs_db, I did not manage to get the filesystem into a consistent state. I thus fired off an email to the mailing list (which has not arrived there 4 hours later) and started pv to dump the raw data to another machine for later use or debugging. Watching the progress meter of pv from time to time, it occured to me that my /home is in fact on LVM. I put it on LVM way back when LVM was new and cool and I wanted to gather experience with it. I've never actually done anything with it, but today it saved my little bits of remaining sanity. Why? Because LVM can take snapshots of volumes. It took me a while to put the pieces together, but in the end, a snapshot would enable me at least to run a test-round of xfs_repair -L and assess the damage, and if it wasn't all that bad, I could just run the repair process on the actual volume again. With the encouragement and knowledge of Christian Aichinger and Daniel J. Priem on IRC, I hence proceeded to give it a try. First I had to extend the volume group to make room for the snapshot data, and since I had no disks handy, I just used a loop device based on a sparse file: 
dd if=/dev/zero of=/srv/loop bs=1 count=1 seek=5368709120
losetup -f /srv/loop
pvcreate /dev/loop0
vgextend vg0 /dev/loop0
lvcreate -s -n home-snapshot /dev/vg0/home -L 5G
(Thanks to Ian Nicholls for spotting the error: I was using pvcreate instead of that last lvcreate previously). Now /dev/vg0/home-snapshot was a copy-on-write snapshot of the original volume, and I could do whatever I wanted with it, as long as I did not exceed the 5G size allotted for the copied data blocks that I modified. Using mount and xfs_repair, I could verify that the problem also shows up with the snapshot. Thus, I ran xfs_repair -L on the snapshot and finally was able to mount the snapshot to inspect the /lost+found directory. Fortunately, it wasn't all that full, nor was there anything important in there, so I sighed, removed the snapshot (lvremove) and unleashed xfs_repair -L on the original volume, which is now again mounted under /home. Finally, remove the loop device from the volume group (vgreduce). If you are like me and forgot to do so before rebooting and now find your LVM volumes not starting anymore, look into the --removemissing option. I like this method. I knew the filesystem was corrupted, but I did not know to what extend. Had corruption been worse, I could have waited for the XFS guys to help me out. But seeing the low damage, I was able to decide to just purge the journal and accept the damage. If this had happened on a more important machine (i.e. without recent backups), I would have proceeded a bit differently: once the snapshot was mounted, I'd have run xfs_dump on it to save the data. I would also have used more space for the snapshot and not removed it until the parent volume was repaired and mounted. It's unlikely that xfs_repair will produce different results when run on a volume and its snapshot, but better be safe than sorry. All this said, I just want to point out that the above method is filesystem independent and hence would work for any filesystem out there. I've never been a big fan of LVM, especially without RAID to build on (striping across physical media multiplies your chance of data loss), but this method is a good reason for using LVM regardless: use a volume group instead of your physical disk, and logical volumes instead of partitions, but don't span disks (unless you have to). Then, if stuff goes bad, you can hook in another disk, extend the volume group with it, and work on snapshots.

26 August 2006

Enrico Zini: evaluating-languages

Evaluating programming languages for playing with Debtags Since having workable bindings for the C++ Debtags libraries seems to be still a bit in the future, I'm planning to build a bit of native infrastructure in some higher level language. First step is seeing what language I could start playing with. The problem At the most basic level, in Debtags we have a number of packages, each of which have a set of tags. The way I usually save tags is a file with the format: 
package1, package2: tag1, tag2, tag3
package3: tag1, tag2
That is, every line has a list of packages with the same tags, and the list of their tags. Since any script I'm going to write has to at least be able to parse the data into something like a package -> tags hash, then print it out. Let's see how perl, python and ruby perform. Tests C++ The reference point for the experiment will be the C++ implementation, tagcoll: 
$ time tagcoll copy package-tags > /dev/null
real    0m0.421s
user    0m0.412s
sys     0m0.000s
Perl First attempt is with Perl, creating the script that parses into a hash of package => set of tags and prints the result. There are set modules for Perl on CPAN, but I have none handy at the moment. However, since they are implemented using hashes, I can approximate them by using a hash. Note that I also want to have a different copy of the tag set for every package, so that I can manipulate them in the future without unwanted side effects. Here is the code: 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my %db;
# Read the tag database
while (<>)
 
    chop();
    my ($pkgs, $tags) = split(': ');
    # Create the tagset using keys of a hash
    my %tags = map   $_ => undef   split(', ', $tags);
    for my $p (split(', ', $pkgs))
     
        # Make a copy of the tagset
        $db $p  =  %tags ;
     
 
# Write the tag database
while (my ($pkg, $tags) = each %db)
 
    print $pkg, join(', ', keys %$tags), "\n";
Here is the running time: 
$ time ./parse.pl package-tags > /dev/null
real    0m0.448s
user    0m0.436s
sys     0m0.008s
Not so bad, comparable with tagcoll. Python Then comes Python. I'm not much of a Python fancier, but I'm rather attracted by the new set native type introduced with Python 2.4, which seems to have most of what I need nice and done. Here is the script: 
#!/usr/bin/python
import sys
input = sys.stdin
if len(sys.argv) > 1:
    input = open(sys.argv[1],"r")
# Read the tag database
db =  
for line in input:
    # Is there a way to remove the last character of a line that does not
    # make a copy of the entire line?
    line = line.rstrip("\n")
    pkgs, tags = line.split(": ")
    # Create the tag set using the native set
    tags = set(tags.split(", "))
    for p in pkgs.split(", "):
        db[p] = tags.copy()
# Write the tag database
for pkg, tags in db.items():
    # Using % here seems awkward to me, but if I use calls to
    # sys.stdout.write it becomes a bit slower
    print "%s:" % (pkg), ", ".join(tags)
Here is the running time: 
$ time ./parse.py  package-tags  > /dev/null
real    0m0.418s
user    0m0.376s
sys     0m0.036s
I'm pleased, very pleased. Using the native set seems to be not only handy, but efficient. Ruby Finally, Ruby. I like to use Ruby. In this case, however, it lacks a native set implementation, although it has a set module which is implemented using a hash. Here is the script: 
#!/usr/bin/ruby
require 'set'
infile = ARGV[0] ? File.new(ARGV[0]) : $stdin
# Read the tag database
db =  
infile.each_line do  line 
    line.chop()
    pkgs, tags = line.split(": ")
    # Create the set using the Set module
    tags = Set.new(tags.split(", "))
    pkgs.split(", ").each do  p 
        # Is this a copy or a reference?  I need to find out.
        db[p] = tags
    end
end
# Write the tag database
db.each do  key, tags 
    # Ouch, Set does not do join by itself
    print key, ": ", tags.to_a.join(", ")
end
Here is the running time: 
$ time ./parse.rb package-tags > /dev/null
real    0m1.637s
user    0m1.572s
sys     0m0.052s
I hope I got something wrong in the script, but I can't see what. Results As much as I don't fancy Python, it looks like it's currently the best choice for playing around with Debtags. I hope the native sets will bring me joy. If in the future I'll be asked "how come you chose Python for this Debtags thing?", I can point to this page.

21 August 2006

Gustavo Franco: All i need is python-cairochart

Well, i've just started in the world of charts using the Python language. There's gdchart, gdchart2 and a few more, but all i can see using them are ugly images. The interface could be better too, but it's two or three year old.<br /><br />The fact is that i don't care too much about eye-candy, i feel comfortable with the numbers that my classes are generating in the reports (sqlobject is really cool), but i need to prepare a small website containing daily updates with images.<br /><br />If somebody already wrote a gdchart-like using cairo vectorial graphics library, that's exactly what i want. Drop me a comment if you have that or any suggestion better than 'start coding from scratch'.

13 August 2006

Clint Adams: Waiting for something to break

Looking out over Toronto from the top of the CN Tower, and still running for public office, I realize that I have taken several actions in my life for which I owe public apologies. Once, I blamed the entire history of Middle East politics on a hapless middle-aged retard just because he said that he liked malls. He is currently awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court in rainy The Hague. I would like to apologize to the people of the Netherlands for my part in inflicting an American on them. When I was 55, I strapped a large snowboard to each foot and sat in the middle of a narrow trail in Vermont, just to be a dick. I would like to apologize to all the skiers who injured themselves fatally in attempts to avoid me. Four hours later, I tried the same on a mountain in Utah. I would like to apologize to the American people for failing to injure any Mormons in that endeavor. In order to console myself, I broke into a beer brewery and upped the alcohol content to 4% by weight, in contravention of state law. I would like to apologize for wasting alcohol on the people of Utah. When I was three, my cousin hung up on an imaginary phone call with Mr. President and proceeded to place an imaginary phone call to Mr. Government. I became so overcome by stress from her antics that I cast away her mock aloe, peddled my tricycle to Boston, and pissed all over the First Church of Christ, Scientist. I would like to apologize for not having waited several years in order to piss on some Scientologists instead. I would like to apologize to Uncle Bill for having dragged his name into this blog entry, especially in such close proximity to the Scientologists, who hate him with aplomb. I would like to apologize for having re-enacted this episode every month since then, despite the protests of Mr. "I-am-not-a-Jew" Schwartz et al. Several years later, I defecated on the streets of Hoboken, Jersey City, Atlantic City, and Camden during rush-hour traffic. I would like to apologize for not doing this in every city in New Jersey (Newark in particular). Last month on a flight to Dar-us-Salaam, I noticed that Steve Martin was sitting across the aisle from me. While he was sleepily drooling into his pillow, I swiped his notebook. I would like to apologize to Steve Martin for plagiarizing this blog entry verbatim. I would also like to apologize for having sex with his wife Karen seventeen times. I would like to apologize to Karen for having sex with her three times without her consent, and I would like to apologize to both Steve and Karen for having sex with their children while pretending they were members of the Plimpton family. I would also like to apologize for having sex with their elderly Hawaiian turtle, whom I mistakenly believed was dead. In 1981, I dined at Sammy's Roumanian Steakhouse while wearing a purple zoot suit with a silver see-through mesh tank top. I would like to apologize to the Romanian people, the denizens of Chrystie Street, the City of New Orleans, the poblano farmers, the shiksa that gave me a lapdance, and the marmot named Stu who saw the pictures on the website of a Jewish dog rapist and promptly choked to death on his own vomit. In 1987, I dined at a Benihana with a girl who would later get tattoos and piercings. We sat at a hibachi with a truckload of Italian tourists who spoke no English at all. I would like to apologize for laughing hysterically at them when one asked, Du sprichst Deutsch? , and for getting blood all over the teppanyaki when I slit their throats after another asked, Quel pays ? On New Year's Eve in 1989, I dined at the same Benihana with a different girl whose command of Japanese was incomplete. When a middle-aged drunken British woman jammed her tongue into my mouth, a Brooklyn school bus driver laughed at me. After leaving the restaurant, he offered me a Werther's Original candy to get the taste of old woman out of my mouth. I would like to apologize for following him home and forcing him to watch the same episode of Full House over and over again for 37 hours. I would also like to apologize to Girl Scout Troop 5166 for calling them a bunch of stupid whores. While they still are a bunch of stupid whores, there was no way I could have known that at the time. Furthermore, when I was growing up, the term stupid whore approximated the use of Khidir beneath Momouteh and Shaka, when the walls fell. Finally, I would like to apologize for making a Star Trek reference when I could have said that thing about porchmonkeys instead. Now on with the campaign!

3 August 2006

Arnaud Vandyck: Debian packages upload

Yesterday, I uploaded libcommons-collection3-java to add the testframework jar (bug#268223). I investigate the security alert for tomcat5 (CVE2006-3835) as mentioned by Alec Berryman in bug#380361. Alec also filed this bug for tomcat5.5 but I was not able to reproduce the attack with the releases of tomcat in Debian. I filed a removal bug for libgnujaxp-java (bug#381014) which is in GNU-Classpath for a long time now. I uploaded a new upstream of libapache(2)-mod-jk (bug#338158). Today, I uploaded libmsv-xsdlib-java (the package was prepared by Eric Lavarde, but it was refused by ftpmasters because of the license) to non-free and solved the FTBFS of libjaxp1.3-java reported by Andreas Jochens (bug#379530). Except the security alert I closed because I think they were not affected releases of tomcat in Debian, I did not investigate more bugs of tomcat. But I’ll need it for my day-time and extra jobs so I hope I’ll be working on it after augustus 15. Update: I’m trying to fix argouml in Debian and that’s a huge job (well, the whole afternoon!)!
  1. Update libtoolbar-java (new upstream + comment issue#6);
  2. Update libswidgets-java (new upstream + comment issue#1);
  3. Downgrade libgef-java to match ArgoUML development;
  4. Update ArgoUML from 0.19.6 to 0.22.beta3 (new upstream + open issue#4391 and issue#4392). The main developer of ArgoUML said in the mailing list that this release will not be that much different to the final release and the new upstream upload (plus some corrections in the package) will permit to close some bugs: bug#342200, bug#217878, bug#335294, bug#353464, bug#368244, bug#289241.
Even with all this work, argouml does not want to start on my laptop. It’s a problem loading the ‘models’. I suspect a problem with the new mdr-model that I do not build because of dependencies not documented and not DFSG free. So I uploaded every package except argouml. I updated the subversion repository so the work is not lost and I’ll review the problem as soon as possible. You can find a copy of the generated package at my Debian’s webspace (click on the argouml directory).

2 August 2006

Ian Murdock: Windows as a poorly debugged set of device drivers?

I often quote Marc Andreessen’s 1995 comment that Netscape would reduce Windows to a “poorly debugged set of device drivers” when talking about Linux on the desktop—namely, that with applications increasingly moving to the web, it matters less whether Windows is on your desktop, because all you need to run your apps is a browser. The assumption here is if you no longer need Windows to run your apps, you’d run Linux, either because of the freedom of choice it gives you, or simply because it doesn’t cost $200 (take your pick there). Of course, there’s a flip side to this: if the operating system is just a set of device drivers, wouldn’t you want the most extensive set? As far as Linux on the desktop has come in the past few years, it still lags Windows significantly in plug-and-play value. For example, during my recent trip to Moscow, my Windows-running colleagues hopped onto wireless networks with impunity, both at the hotel and even sitting in taxis in the infamous Moscow traffic. While they were clicking on nice little balloons saying “wireless network detected”, I was learning more than I ever wanted to know about iwconfig, cursing all the while. And it’s not just wifi. My laptop only successfully suspends about the half the time. For whatever reason, the 3D acceleration on my laptop doesn’t work with the latest eye candy. And so on.. Me, I actually prefer the Linux desktop over Windows. But now, with all the improvements in virtualization over the past few years, I can still use the Linux desktop as my primary UI and have access to the most extensive set of device drivers. For the cheapskates among us, cost really isn’t an issue either—VMware Player and VMware Server are now available for free, and who doesn’t have at least five Windows licenses sitting around that they aren’t using? Besides, who wouldn’t pay a measly $200 to get Linux perfectly working with their laptop hardware? Food for thought. Let the flames begin..

1 August 2006

Arnaud Vandyck: New upstreams

I’ve just upload new upstream (new for Debian, not really brand new! ;-) ) of libgnucrypto-java, libcommons-httpclient-java. The first upload will solve the libjessie-java FTBFS. I’ll work on new upstream of libcommons-net-java, then, I’ll track down Tomcat5 and Tomcat5.5 bugs.

28 July 2006

Michael Janssen: Serendipity plugin for LiveJournal markup

Serendipity is my blogging software of choice lately, but in the past I was a happy user of LiveJournal. Fortunately, now my friends at LJ can keep up to date with my current blog, because of a great event plugin which mirrors posts here on LiveJournal (configurable of course). On LJ people use markup like [lj user="jamuraa"] in order to make a handy link to the page of the livejournal user in question. I was missing that feature, so I coded up a small plugin for s9y which converts that into [info]jamuraa. This is version 0.1, which only does the user tag. It also works in comments if you enable it. In the future, I hope to add code to detect the user type correctly (on LiveJournal there are other icons for different user types). I also probably should not hotlink to the .gifs on the livejournal servers.

To install, just unzip into the plugins/ directory of your s9y installation.

Download the LJ Markup Plugin 0.1 for Serendipity

26 July 2006

Jeff Bailey: Vancouver friends

One of these days I'd like to understand why my life goes in waves. This round was contacts from Vancouver.

Katy and Ryan were here this weekend.
Frances just called to tell me about working at an Ottawa church this fall.
I sat down at my email and Mulan emailed me.
Ted, Tam, Heather and Rachel emailed to arrange visiting at the end of August.
Sandy (Angie's mom) is coming here on Saturday and will house-sit through Opus.
Jamu was in Montreal last week (even though I wasn't).
Heather (Angie's sister) was here the week before.

Weird. I don't mind at all, though. =) I miss all y'all!

John Goerzen: Something I can't understand

I can't understand Bush's (and the typical Republican position in general) opinion on life issues. He recently said that it is wrong to "destroy life to save life" and that every being is a valuable person in the context of the stem cell debate. He also said last year that 30,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed as a result of the Iraq war.

So, here's a Handy Chart:







TopicBush TheoryBush Moral Judgement
Death penaltyKill known murderers so others won't kill more peopleOK
Iraq warKill 30,000 Iraqi civilians during operation to overthrow Iraqi governmentOK
Stem cell researchA small minority could become babies if implantedWrong
AbortionKilling an unborn personWrong


I can't figure out any possible way that the first two should be OK for someone that believes that the last two are wrong.

In fact, to me, the items in this list that most clearly are wrong are the first two. There is no question about whether life has begun with them. Treating 30,000 people as regrettable results of an operation is not treating them with full human dignity. 30,000 people were killed. That's more than 10 times the number of deaths from Sept. 11.

20 July 2006

Arnaud Vandyck: Everybody wants to open source

It’s strange to follow state of minds of big companies about open source (they rarely speak about Free Software but that’s another story;-)). Dalibor Topic, Mark Wielaard and all friends from GNU Classpath spent a lot of time talking with Sun to try to open source Java (or even just be able to get the tools to make open source java virtual machines and API). They are some moves in that direction and people like Tom Marble is working hard to make Sun’s JDK license DFSG compatible and integrate Sun’s JDK in the Debian distribution. Robert Brewin, co-CTO of Sun Microsystems’ software group, said: “I believe that we will have components of Java released into open source within the year,” meaning by next June, Brewin said. “I think [release of] the whole thing will take a little bit longer.” One more step. Another amazing interview is the one of David Kaefer, director of Business Development, Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft who called the open source software movement a “very powerful force in the industry.” He also wants us to believe that Microsoft will be more and more open… Wait and See ;-)

Arnaud Vandyck: Free Software in education

On July 10 my trainees started a project on Sourceforge called bibliotheque. The training is about web development (Java, Perl, Python, Javascript, SQL) and the whole six month day time courses, they use Debian GNU/Linux (guess why ;-) ) (well, some installed Ubuntu on their laptop). The last big exercice is often a pain because they are looking for a job and they have a lot of interviews. So we decided the last project to be team oriented. I have the idea to publish it on Sourceforge so they can learn all how to use Bug tracker, Subversion tools the way we do in Free Software. Also, it’s amazing to see the enthousiasme of the trainees about a project that is published. Even those who are not ’so good coders’ did a lot of things like documentation, logos, maintaining the MediaWiki website (french). The web application they are doing is made with tools they’ll use in companies: Struts, Hibernate; they also use patterns like DAO, MVC; and they’ll try to integrate AJAX in the application. Congratulation to this group.

9 July 2006

Erich Schubert: Beware of XGl...

This is what happens when you use fancy XGl/aiglx/whatever eye-candy too much. It will infect (remember the viral properties of opensource software) your body, and you'll start randomly flipping over, too.

5 July 2006

Martin F. Krafft: The Nokia E-series cell phones (E60 and E70 specifically)

I am on the look for a new cell phone, and now that the Nokia E60 and E70 are out, I went to the shop to had a close look at them, and one thing I can say up front is that they're both quite okay for people who like Series 60 (v3) phones and all the colourful navigation stuff you (have to) do with them. I personally don't really care as long as I can quickly learn to find my way, and as long as the physical aspects of navigation are okay and responsive (which rules out Sony Ericsson for me). With that I can start at one difference between the two E series phones: the navigation nipple on the E60 seems a lot easier to use than on the E70. That said, the two phones are otherwise very similar under the hood (see this link for details, in the following are only the points I consider important):
  • both are triple-band with WCDMA support.
  • both come with bluetooth, infrared, GPRS, EDGE, WCDMA, and WLAN (incl. WPA/WPA2 and EAP support).
  • both have a VoIP client, though the store manager didn't know for sure whether I could connect to a SER (SIP express router) on the 'Net over a WLAN connection. They say that you can connect to a local gatekeeper [0], so I'd assume it's possible, but that's something to try out; read on...
  • both can assign ring tones per contact. Nokia heard my cries...
  • both can reuse my 6230's battery and charger. This is really a major selling point of Nokia -- all of their phones have the same charger, and batteries are compatible across many!
  • both run Series 60 v3, Symbian OS 9.1, which is somewhat outdates (9.2) is current, but it does give you "improvements in the OS [which] mean that applications and content, and therefore a developers investment, are better protected than ever." (Wikipedia). Boy am I glad!
  • both can run ScummVM, meaning I can play all of the best games ever released! If this is not a selling point for a business phone, what is?
Obvious differences include:
  • the E60 has no camera, while the E70 comes with a 2 megapixel one. I am actually not sure whether this is a plus or a minus, given that it is nice to have a camera handy when your life isn't all cubicles and security-conscious companies.
  • the E70 sports a keyboard that you can fold out (as does the 6822). Unfortunately, here in Switzerland, all they offer is a QWERTZ version, which I'll avoid if at all possible. I don't think I'll be using the phone for "working" (as in word processing or spreadsheet editing; who does?), and I avoid SMS when I can, so even though the keyboard is certainly cool qand usable, I won't draw too much benefit.
  • the E70 seems to have better battery life (according to the specs), but that's something that can be addressed with a more powerful battery, I'd say (plus, I can use my 6230 battery with both).
  • the E60 is 3 cm smaller and weighs 10 grammes less than the E70. That said, it's still a lot bigger than the 6230 I now have.
You can compare the specs of the two phones as well as the 6822 (which is like the E70 in some ways, but without WLAN and VoIP) at this link. Oh, and then there's the Motorola A910, which runs Linux, comes in a little heavier and at about the same volume as the E60, doesn't include infrared support, and doesn't seem to provide a VoIP client, which I'd say is less of a problem given the Linux basis. Unfortunately, it does not seem to available in Switzerland. Together with a contract extension, I can get either of the E series phones at about half the street price. In addition, the shop manager told me he'd allow me to return the phone within three days if it didn't meet my expectations. All of this, and the above combined makes me want to sleep for another night, and then try out the E60 over the weekend. I have to make a decision whether to prolong my contract by 24 months, or only 12 months and pay CHF 100 more for the phone. That comes down to around 5 /month, which is around 10% of my monthly bill. Given that I was always happy with Sunrise as provider, it would seem natural to bind myself for 24 months. However, prices are expected to drop substantially over the next year, and I am not sure whether a provider could lock you in to an existing contract, even if the government ordered a price decrease. So in the light of the expected availability of more and enhanced WLAN phones, such as the Motorola A910, I think a 12 month contract will be the better choice.
[0]"gatekeeper" is an H.323 term and I brought it up in the conversation because I am new to SIP and, well... He said it would be able to connect to a company-internal "thing, like a Cisco router," so this leads me to assume it will be able to connect to any SER out there. Thanks to Mark Brown for bringing this to my attention.

4 July 2006

Clint Adams: Exploding moon pie

December came by, and the girl proceeded to remind everyone that her birthday was in a week. My birthday is in a week! she said. I like flowers and candy. I just love roses and chocolate, she said, and my birthday is next Tuesday. After making the rounds, the girl went to visit the boy. My birthday is in a week! she declared. Yes. Next Tuesday, he replied. I like flowers and candy. Do you like my shoes? she said. He looked down. You know I hate high heels, he sighed. She pouted and stormed off. He threw away the birthday card he had been making. He's so mean to me, she told everyone. I hate him! she announced. I hate him because he's so mean to me! Everyone mumbled supportive nothings, and soon she was pacified by a couple of passing rhinestones and a length of ratty yarn. Before long it was her birthday. The girl woke up to a plethora of Hallmark cards, flowers, and candies. She brushed her hair and went to see the boy. It is my birthday! she announced. I know, he said. I didn't see a present from you, she stated, puzzled. That's because your present is here, he retorted, grinning. She beamed while he went to fetch her gift. What the? she squeaked, her brow furrowed. I got you a new coat, he explained. It has reinforced thumb holes so you won't have to cut your own and repair them, and it has extra pockets for your herb bags. Do you like my shoes? He looked down. You know I hate high heels, he sighed. But they're shiny! Well, I like you. Then why didn't you get me flowers and candy she shrieked and stormed off. December came 'round again, and the girl proceeded to remind everyone that her birthday was in a week. My birthday is in a week! she said. I like flowers and candy. I just love roses and chocolate, she said, and my birthday is next Wednesday. After making the rounds, the girl went to visit the boy. My birthday is in a week! she declared. Is it? On Wednesday the boy bought her a box of chocolates and a dozen roses. Flowers and chocolate! she exclaimed, delighted. How thoughtful!

Evan Prodromou: 16 Messidor CCXIV

We hit Movies 4 Mommies again this morning, although some horrible construction project on Av Papineau around Jean Talon made us about 20 minutes late. They say that there are two seasons in Quebec: winter, and construction. I think they say that about a lot of places, though. Today's movie was The Devil Wears Prada, which reads much better in French on the posters at the theater: Le Diable s'habille en Prada. It's the story of a girl who wants to be a journalist and takes a job as the assistant to a powerful fashion publisher. It stars Anne Hathaway of The Princess Diaries as the earnest young striver and Meryl Streep as the Andy Warhol-like cruel and judgemental boss-lady. The girl learns about love, life, and being true to yourself. In other words, it was sappy dreck. But it was watchable dreck, unlike the horrible Click we saw last week. I didn't feel stupid for sitting through this movie, which is pretty low praise but for the Mommy Matinee there's only so much you can do. The only bummer is that Streep's character spoke in a ferocious, disdainful whisper, which was hard to hear over the crying babies. tags:

Lawn After the movie we stopped by the Canada Tire in March Central for some garden supplies. I'd promised Maj for a Mother's Day gift that I'd convert the 10'x10' square of weeds and trash outside the front door of our apartment into a nice lawn for sitting on and drinking white wine, but it was raining on Mother's Day and one thing or another got in the way of me actually doing what I said I was going to do. Until now. I had weeded the lawn on Sunday, which was pretty damn hard -- the weeds were waist-high and full of barbs and fluff and procrastination and other defense mechanisms. But I managed to rip out almost everything with a leafspan greater than half a centimeter, which left most of the area bare of plants. We spread out some grass seed given to us by friends Tara and Chris, but I wanted to give it a little more care. So I got one of those pushy lawn mowers at Canada Tire, and a big rake, and some grass seed with fertilizer mixed in since I'm apparently too lazy to mix it together myself. I assembled the mower when we got home, then mowed what was left of the grass down to a low buzzcut. I raked the little square like the dickens to get out the old leaves and dead grass and rocks and sticks and cigarette butts and wrappers, which had the side benefit of turning over the soil, too. Then I threw big handfuls of grass-seed with fertilizer pellets all over the resulting mulched up soil. Some water, some cleanup, and voila: I have what looks like a patch of dirt with seeds in it. Hopefully this will become a lush lawn sometime in the near future, because we also bought some beautiful fold-up wt:Muskoka chairs to put on the front lawn. I think these are just about the same as wp:Adirondack chairs, but I'm sure some expert in patio furniture could explain the difference. They are, however, my favorite kind of chair, and I'm looking forward to sitting out there with some white wine in a few weeks once the lawn grows in. Like, I dunno... maybe Labo[u]r Day. tags:

Hey, Baby Speaking of national (international?) holidays, in the aristo calendar it's the 4th of July. Happy Independence Day, everyone. My favorite 4th of July media item is the great song "4th of July" by X from their album See How We Are. X has an X the Band myspace thingy, which seems to play 4th of July when you navigate to it today. Which, like, hooray for them. Go, X. Amita June and I danced around the house this morning singing the "America -- Fuck Yeah!" song from Team America: World Police. Sometimes I wonder how Amita June is going to feel about her "dual heritage" when she grows up. She's got a Canadian passport and an American one; I hope for her that she'll be better able to appreciate the world by having that dual perspective. I've heard that there are parts of the world where Americans living abroad get together on the 4th of July and have hot dogs and toss the ol' pigskin around and stuff. I don't know if there's an Americans get-together in Montreal, and I kind of don't care. It's not like we're stationed in Siberia here, and we need to congregate once a year to remember what "home" was like. Quebec isn't so far from the US that I feel homesick for American culture -- just homesick for the people. I think the US Embassy in wt:Ottawa has a big party, but the Montreal US Consulate doesn't seem to. Which is probably just as well -- it's at the top floor of a 30-story building, which would make barbecuing hard, and playing tag football on the roof would probably be dangerous ("Go long!"). tags:

.de vs. .it Of course, there aren't any Stars and Stripes flying in Montreal today -- all the houses we passed today were flying the Italian flag, for the World Cup semifinals. Montreal has a vibrant Little Italy, and the residents and other Italians in Quebec are going nuts for the Cup games. I can't imagine what's going to happen tonight if Italy wins. I saw one car driving around with a German flag on the roof today... I hope they guy makes it home in one piece, is all I can say. I like the name "Little Italy" -- it makes me think of a cross between wt:Palermo and wp:Munchkinland. Like, 1-meter-tall Italians drinking espresso and playing tarantellas and dancing and cheering with those tiny squeaky speeded-up Alvin-and-the-Chipmunk voices. Teensy-weensy Italy! Itty-bitty Italy! It's so cute! tags:

Grilling After reading the Meathenge slapdown for once-a-year barbecuers, I'm once again happy that I'm a vegetarian (more or less). I just can't compete in that league, and my little propane BBQ with veggie burgers, portabellos and an occasional trout is enough for me, thanks. tags:

Wikitravel 10K Party I just announced on wt:Wikitravel:4 July 2006 that Maj and I are going to throw a little Wikitravel 10K Party during Wikimania 2006. I'm going to be presenting about Wikitravel and travel guide wikis, so it's going to be an exciting event for us. On a side note, it looks like we'll be in wt:Odense for Wikisym. Lots of people we like there, and Maj has always wanted to be in wt:Saint Petersburg for her birthday, so this will probably be close enough. tags:

El Destino One of the great minds of the Internet goes incognito as El Destino on Pigdog Journal. He may be one of the best media commentators I've ever read, and I'm proud to say that I know him well. Or, well, used to. He's written two articles for Pigdog Journal lately after a 3-4 year hiatus (I think... something like that). His article on the Devo + Disney combination is really funny and good. I hope I hear his voice more often; sometimes I wonder what he thinks of the Web in 2006. tags:

Stephen Hawking and the Long View Dr. Stephen Hawking asked Yahoo! Answers, " How can the human race survive the next hundred years?". tags:

1 July 2006

Jeff Licquia: Blog Update

Well, it’s been over a month since the last entry. So much for posting more often! Today, I’ve updated the blog to WordPress 2.0.3, and installed a new theme. I wasn’t too happy with the old Steam theme, but it was a variable-width theme, and I can’t stand fixed-width themes. (Why buy a better monitor if all the Web pages are forced to 600 pixels?) But with the new and improved theme support in 2.0, there are some nice themes that use your whole browser window. (Posted to all known aggregators, too; I hope Planet doesn’t decide all my posts are new now.) UPDATE: Well, that was fun; the nice-looking theme happens to be completely invalid. Expect theme changes over the next short while. UPDATE: Wow, that’s depressing; the state of valid XHTML in WordPress themes is, uh, underwhelming. So I switched back to the nice theme, and edited it to be valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and valid CSS. I’ve set up a Bazaar-NG repository for my changes.

Jeff Licquia: LSB Distro Testing

I’ve seen several requests for a simple set of instructions that test a distribution against the LSB. I wrote some Debian-specific instructions in a mailing list post back in October, and thought they’d do better as more general instructions. Before you start, you have to find out two things about the distribution you want to test: Go to the LSB download page and start downloading everything under the Runtime Tests for the LSB version and architecture you want to test. Make sure you don’t get the betas unless that’s what you want to test. You will also need the lsb-python package from the Application Battery list. Install all of these packages. Once all of the packages are installed, run the tests: Most of the tests are quick, taking less than 15 minutes usually per test. The runtime test takes somewhere in the neighborhood of six hours, and often looks like it has hung. Don’t assume the runtime test has hung until it’s run overnight. If you’re using an emulator, don’t give up on runtime until it’s run for at least 24 hours. The tests create two kinds of files: journal files, and the official runtime report (created by the runtime test). Where you ran the tests, look for files with names starting with “journal” in the current directory, or for paths like results/0001e/journal. The C++ tests create a directory called “qmtest_libstdcpp_[version]”. There’s a handy utility called tjreport in /opt/lsb/bin; run that on the journal to get a quick summary of the results. If you want to post results, use tjreport. The official runtime report (in /home/tet/test_sets/results) has some additional information: a list of FIP (Further Information Provided) results. What to do with failures: First, make sure it’s really a failure of the environment, and not a failure of the tests. The LSB publishes a list of official waivers for test failures; check that your failures aren’t on that list. For failures not on that list, Google is your best resource; most likely, someone else has experienced the same failure, and will have more information about it. If you really can’t figure it out, come over to one of the LSB’s mailing lists and ask around. On Xvfb: The Xvfb versions shipped with most distributions have bugs that can cause problems. Anything running XFree86 will likely not be able to complete the X tests, and anything running X.org may see a number of failures. Because Xvfb is not required by the LSB, you can replace Xvfb with one that doesn’t have these bugs. Recent Debian xvfb packages for etch don’t have these bugs, so Debian and derivatives can use them for testing. (The sarge backport of Xvfb can be installed on vanilla sarge without upgrading any of the other XFree86 packages; missing packages can also be pulled from the sarge backport without affecting the packages that do ship.) Please post questions, problems, criticisms, etc. in the comments. A version of this might end up on the LSB site someday, so any improvements would be appreciated.

Evan Prodromou: 12 Messidor CCXIV

I got up this morning with hundreds of messages in my inbox, and re-sorted them to the correct folders. My monkeyplexer program, which sorts stuff into the correct folders automatically, has been running out of control. I developed it for a version of CRM114 that's now totally obsolete, but the file formats and interfaces have all changed. I've taken a poke at bringing the program up to speed with later versions, but it's just not bad enough to deal with. Also, the horrendous interface of crm114 is just too ugly to imagine. Blech. Instead, I took the opportunity to unsubscribe from about 25 mailing lists that I no longer read and that go from my inbox to an overstuffed folder to a trashcan two weeks later. Hopefully this will take some of the pressure off of the monkeyplexer until I get time to either a) move to something easier and bayesian like ifile or b) upgrade monkeyplexer. tags:

My mom, the rattlesnake magnet So, my Mom got bit by a rattlesnake yesterday morning. She'd taken a baby car seat out of my Dad's car the night before to put it in her car, but it was too late and dark so she left it in the driveway to install in the morning. Apparently when she tried to install it the next day, a rattler had snuck in there to sleep and nailed her on the arm. (My folks live on a pretty big lot in wt:Los Altos Hills, and there's a lot of wildlife, of the fuzzy and also scaly nature.) She got to Stanford Hospital just fine, and she's had 4 rounds of anti-venom. She's hurting but they think it's going to be all right. The strange part of the story is that this is the second time she's been bitten by a snake. I'm not sure how she's survived the process twice, but I'm pretty amazed that it happened twice at all. Waiting for news, here in Montreal... a little nerve wracking. tags:

Peer-to-peer, broadcast style I read through TechCrunch that three major studios will be distributing shows via P2P in the coming months. That's all well and good, but if it's a for-pay system (content costs $0.99 and up), why should you have to contribute any bandwidth into a peer-to-peer system? For a dollar a pop, these should be easy, high-performance HTTP downloads, not shaggy and unreliable p2p stuff. I contribute my upstream bandwidth to Free Software and Open Content, not to re-forwarding something I had to pay for. tags:

Stimulus and response Thanks to Matt for forwarding this excellent summary of blogs. tags:

While on the subject Our home mail server went on the fritz while we were in California, and it was a serious pain in the keester. I had to redirect all our mail redirects from our home server (bad.dynu.ca) to Gmail. The home server's back in business now, but I hadn't changed the email stuff back yet... and today I decided not to. I've re-pointed mail for our business, Wikitravel, and personal domains to the old Wikitravel server at iWeb (the same server this site runs on). I think that's probably the best thing for us to have a "home" server that's not at home; we really need to be able to get to our stuff from the road. It's been good so far; most of the domains were pretty easy. It's been the ones I'd forgotten about that are a hassle. Like, say, bad-people-of-the-future.san-francisco.ca.us. Damn, man. The geographical .us domains used to be one of my favorite things. Now they're not so much. tags:

Second wife So, I guess I'd finished some work yesterday, and I was feeling pretty good about it, because after dinner I decided to spend a little illicit "me" time. And with me, that usually ends up being a game. I'd heard a lot about Second Life, and I was especially impressed by some of the important appearances in the world, like Larry Lessig and Mia Garlick of Creative Commons. But I also have a terribly addictive personality, which is exemplified by the large pile of coffee cups on my desk, but also by the way I go completely crazy over video games. I just don't play them that often any more, because they suck up huge parts of my life, and in the end I've just moved a few bits around. So I try to steer clear. So the fact that there doesn't seem to be much to do in SL -- no level-ups, no territory to conquer -- is kind of an advantage for it. So I gave SL a try last night. I had to use one of our laptops, since the Linux alpha of their client doesn't work on Ubuntu (as far as I can tell). I'll say this: it's awfully nice for graphics, and the world is incredibly built out. But I felt a little bit like a hobo in Vegas -- everything was about casinos and strip clubs and huge fancy houses and cars and planes that I couldn't afford. SL is pretty famous for charging for every little thing, and building an impressive dual-world economy. It seems to have worked pretty well -- there's lots of chasing after the lucre in SL. It was awfully good on the eye-candy, but I felt like Neo in the Matrix: all I could see was dollar signs behind the colors. When I told Maj this morning why I was up till 2AM last night, she gave me a serious scowl. I'm pretty sure my SL days are over... mostly. After all, there's a theory that MMORGs are the reason why we haven't met any aliens -- that any sufficiently advanced culture is going to get sucked into pretend worlds like SL and not go out and explore the universe. tags:

26 June 2006

Jonathan McDowell: I'd like another one like that, please.

Good things about the weekend: On the flip side I only actually saw Andy (the reason I was in Amsterdam at all) for a few hours thanks to a combination of BA delaying his flight for over 2 hours and my body deciding at 2am that it was really time to wander back to the hotel and sleep.

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