Another shot for the winter

We are having quite a humid weather these last few days around here, also, completely cloudy, not a ray of sun. A typical winter weather, perhaps a bit too much towards the humid side of things.

And it looks like, towards the week end, will be getting -once again- a few cold days.
Keep droppin' bastard :p

Slimming the service

I have been using it for a while now.
No problems at all, so it is time to issue the Service Pack 1 after install cleaner.

Executed the command, and regained some 500 MBs worth of HDD -from 21,7 GB to 22,3 GB of HDD available-, rebooted Tango to see if there is an unpleasant surprise (after making a backup of my Outlook bundle file).

Xubuntu on Judith

Or, "An experiment on the futile"... The thing goes nowhere.
Just for kicks tried to see what it was like, but it doesn't even boot, it stalls with a message like:

ata1.01: status: [ DRDY ]
Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 271543
ata1.01 exception Emask 0x0 Sact 0x0 SErr 0x0 Action 0x2 frozen

While trying to boot form the CD-ROM, actually, after booting from it, while it tries to load the OS, even tho, the Judith specs are within the minimum recommended by the Xubuntu page:

Minimum system requirements
To run the Desktop CD (LiveCD + Install CD), you need 128 MB RAM to run or 192 MB RAM to install. The Alternate Install CD only requires you to have 64 MB RAM.

Everything seems to point that Judith will continue a long and prosperous life running OpenBSD.

Remote backups made easy

With rsnapshot (again), what can I say??? I simply love the program :)
You can actually even enable the remote execution to happen form the same rsnapshot config file, but I prefer to have another script to do that, because:

- On the local machine, Rsnapshot does a whole backup to everything I can backup -as long as the HDD space can handle it-.

- The custom script uses as a base the latest rsnapshot backup, and syncs from that directory to the remote server.

- This custom script filters what should be sync'd to the remote server and what not.

This is the script:

#!/bin/sh

HOST='your.remote.host.here'
USER='your.username.here'
WORK_DIR='/the/path/to/the/local/files/here/'
REMOTE_DIR='/the/path/to/the/remote/dire/here/'
PRIORITY='/bin/nice -n +19'
RSYNC='/usr/bin/rsync'
RSYNC_OPTS='-e ssh -avzr --delete --progress --bwlimit=20'
EXCLUDE_LIST='/the/path/to/the/file/containing/the/excluded/files/and/directories/ja/ja/file.list'

cd ${WORK_DIR}

${PRIORITY} ${RSYNC} ${RSYNC_OPTS} --exclude-from=${EXCLUDE_LIST} * ${USER}@${HOST}:${REMOTE_DIR}

# EoF #

This script is invoked via cronjob, and, the login to the remote server is done via SSH with public keys.

So long dear (for the moment)

Sunday afternoon tried to beef up a bit the specs of Judith, my OpenBSD monster.
But it was in vain, the hardware is way too old, even after the previous bump I already did.
But neither of the RAM sticks I have, and I collected a bunch over time, works on this baby, all the 200 pins I have are PC 133, and Judith only likes PC 100.

So, no RAM bump for her... Too Bad.
For the moment, I have taken here out of line, turned off, it is not worth it to have it on all the time, since I'm making the local backups to my Seagate external HDD.

It is kinda sad, but I'll try to scrounge more hardware and make a more powerful machine.

Up will go (somewhat)

The mild winter seems to be returning towards the end of this week.

Mark Knopfler must be pissed

My little iTunes backup script is having problems with one particular file, or so it seems.

#!/bin/sh 

NICE="/usr/bin/nice -n +19" 
RSYNC='/usr/bin/rsync'
ITUNES_DIR='/Volumes/data2/esteban/Music/iTunes/'
SEAGATE_ITUNES_DIR='/Volumes/OsX/Users/esteban/Music/'

$NICE $RSYNC -aE -vv --delete --progress --exclude="toAdd" $ITUNES_DIR $SEAGATE_ITUNES_DIR

# EoF #

It started to print this error message:

iTunes Music/soundtracks/Virgin suicides/Air - The virgin suicides - 11- Empty house.mp3 is uptodate
iTunes Music/soundtracks/Virgin suicides/Air - The virgin suicides - 12 - Dead bodies.mp3 is uptodate
iTunes Music/soundtracks/Virgin suicides/Air - The virgin suicides - Alone again naturally.mp3 is uptodate
iTunes Music/soundtracks/Virgin suicides/Air - The virign suicides - 13 - Suicide underground.mp3 is uptodate
iTunes Music/Dire Straits/Brothers in arms/Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 03 - Walk of life.mp3
     3953181 100%  148.20kB/s    0:00:26  (1505, 19.5% of 7379)
rsync: read errors mapping "/Volumes/data2/esteban/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Dire Straits/Brothers in arms/Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 03 - Walk of life.mp3": Input/output error (5)
total: matches=0  tag_hits=0  false_alarms=0 data=8047884
ERROR: iTunes Music/Dire Straits/Brothers in arms/Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 03 - Walk of life.mp3 failed verification -- update discarded.

sent 8389900 bytes  received 30120 bytes  132598.74 bytes/sec
total size is 22381954591  speedup is 2658.18
rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at /SourceCache/rsync/rsync-24.1/rsync/main.c(717)

This are the properties of the file, on Thor, my Quicksilver beauty:

% ls -lsth 
total 101216
12672 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       6M Nov 30  2007 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 06 - Ride across the river.mp3
 8672 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       4M Apr 18  2007 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 07 - The mans too strong.mp3
12112 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       5M Apr 21  2006 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 04 - Your latest trick.mp3
15368 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       7M Apr 21  2006 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 02 - Money for nothing.mp3
 6672 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       3M Apr 21  2006 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 08 - One world.mp3
15736 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       7M Apr 21  2006 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 05 - Why worry.mp3
 7728 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       3M Apr 14  2006 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 03 - Walk of life.mp3
 9616 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       4M Apr 14  2006 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 01 - So far away.mp3
12640 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       6M Apr 14  2006 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 09 - Brothers in arms.mp3

And on the Seagate, the external HDD where I store the backups:

% ls -lsht 
total 93488
    0 -rw-------   1 esteban  esteban       0B Jul 26 05:32 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 03 - Walk of life.mp3
12672 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       6M Nov 30  2007 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 06 - Ride across the river.mp3
 8672 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       4M Apr 18  2007 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 07 - The mans too strong.mp3
12112 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       5M Apr 21  2006 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 04 - Your latest trick.mp3
15368 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       7M Apr 21  2006 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 02 - Money for nothing.mp3
 6672 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       3M Apr 21  2006 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 08 - One world.mp3
15736 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       7M Apr 21  2006 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 05 - Why worry.mp3
 9616 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       4M Apr 14  2006 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 01 - So far away.mp3
12640 -rw-r--r--   1 esteban  esteban       6M Apr 14  2006 Dire Straits - Brothers in arms - 09 - Brothers in arms.mp3

BTW, I hate that song, I am completely fed up of it, the same goes for 'Money for nothing'; the best one, IMHO, is 'Brothers in arms'.

A splash of no VESA

Today updated my Ubuntu beauty, Odin, with everything Canonical had to offer.
It seems like I have a problem with one of the updates, I believe it is this one:

2008-07-27 22:18:54 status installed linux-headers-2.6.24-19-generic 2.6.24-19.36

It is no biggie, the problem seems to be that right now, if I keep booting with kernel options I used to had, I'm not able to use high resolution on the console.
For the tests I've done, it looks like the culprit is the 'splash' option, if I remove it, everything is kosher again with the console resolution and my beloved fonts.

This was the kernel entry from menu.lst:

kernel               /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=a3e104c2-f719-4c82-99e1-2706e05b9f3a ro splash quiet vga=771

And right now it looks kinda palsy like this:

kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=a3e104c2-f719-4c82-99e1-2706e05b9f3a ro vga=771

Related links:
No console mode in high resolution with Ubuntu 7.10 (applies to 8.04)
VGA Boot modes to set screen resolution

Before the screenshot

Another reddish screenshot form Tango, I'm starting to thing that the Compaq folks a re bit towards the commie side of things :p
VLC playing Before sunset, with Julie melting the LCD.

Beautifying Logwatch for mail servers

A couple of tips I come up customizing the Logwatch setup of a couple of mail servers at work.
First off, make a copu of the file:

/usr/share/logwatch/default.conf/services/sendmail.conf

then fire up your text editor, and uncomment the line:

$Sendmail_PrettyHost

So the information on the daily report email will be separated by tabs, really useful.
Also, if you have a somehow heavy duty mail server, take a minute to edit the values for provided with the 'Sendmail Threshold values', most of those are setup to report whit a very low threshold, so you end up getting a huge email report everyday.

My current desktop (Thor)

Haven't post a screenshot in while...
And another link to a huge screenshot, hosted on Image Shack.

I'm happy.YYYYMMDD

I just found out a very cool and handy option for logrotate, the option 'dateext', I simply don't understand why this options is not enabled by default(!!!!!)

  dateext
     Archive old versions of log files adding a daily extension like YYYYMMDD instead of simply adding a number.

The winter continues (my joy too)

The winter keeps on going strong. Thanks goodness for that, there will be plenty of time for summer.

Shell shock

Had to configure an FTP server (on this day and age!!!) on a CentOS 5 server...
Depression kicks in.

Any way, installed and configured the best FTP server I know, ProFTPD, of course, as usual, got the RPM from DAG. Compiling, unless you have a very special need, is for the birds, IMHO.

One thing tho, setting the shell to the regular '/bin/false' , wasn't working on my CentOS 5 install... It didn't allowed me to login to the server via FTP, tried with the really unsafe '/bin/bash' and bingo, it worked.
The solution, add the shell '/bin/false' to the '/etc/shells' file.

Music: right now (5)

The Birthday Party's - Jennifer's veil
IMHO, their best theme.

So you've come back for Jennifer
You know, she hides her face behind a veil
I'm warning you Frankie, leave on the next train
Your Jennifer she just isn't the same
Quit waving that thing about! Come back!
Come back and give me a chance to explain
Your baby will never cry again.

So don't try to reach out
And don't let the ship's flag down
Point the figure-head at the storm
And drive her hard upon
Don't stop and don't stop
And don't let the veil drop
(Another ship ready to sail--the rigging is tight
Tight like Jennifer's veil).

She drew the curtain on her face
Ever since they came and burnt the old place down
Why is she searching through the ashes?
Why, only Jennifer knows that now.
And the officer, without a word,
Left all his junk and just moved out.

So don't try to reach out
And don't let the ship's flag down
Point the figure-head at the glass
Smash! Smash! into shards
Don't stop and don't touch!
And don't let the veil drop...behind Jennifer's veil

Oh God! Frankie! Is that really you!
Get back! Don't reach out!
Get back, and get that lantern out of my room!

Don't try to reach out
And don't let the ship's flag down
Down, down over her, like a shroud

And let her sail on the sea like a stone.
Don't touch and don't touch
And don't let the veil drop
Another ship ready to dock...the
rigging comes loose...

Tango screenshot

Another one, its been a while since I have posted a Tango screenshot.

I'm falling in love :p

Since Apple is getting farter and farter away, not only in price, but also I'm not finding it as fun to use & dig around as it used to be (or maybe it is way too expensive to be digging around with it :D ), I'm pretty sure that my next laptop will be a Linux one.
Being looking online for a nice one, not only functional, but also a nice looking one (what can I say? I'm an Apple user, or was :D )

This one looks rather nice: Serval Performance, from a company called System 76, from Denver, Colorado, USA.

Here you can read "mini review" from the Ubuntu Forum: [ubuntu] serval mini-review

I only wish this baby was made on aluminum...

Rsync directories with spaces on their names

A little reminder.
How to make rsyncs when the directory has a space on the name:

rsync -e ssh -avzr --progress * esteban@judith.arenales.lan:/Users/esteban/Music/iTunes/iTunes\\\ Music/

Escape the name separation with three backslashes.
Yes, restoring a backup to Trantor yesterday, when I feared the worst happened

Lazarus HDD

Go figure, today it is working A OK.
I'm browsing with Safari, listening to iTunes, making backups, etc, etc.
It seems like it has come back from the dead.

Shopping for a Mac in Argentina

To put it simple, you have to be nuts.

Here is a little comparisson I did, I choose, in every case, the top of the line of the model, the prices were taken from this place in Argentina, and from the online Apple Store, they don't include taxes (on the USA case, the prices for Argentina do include them), nor any type of promotion/ discount (in the case of Argentina alone, Apple does not offer any on its plain vanilla site).

MacBook Black (super dupper) - Argentina
8230 $ - 2660 U$S

MacBook Black (super dupper) - USA
1500 U$S


Apple Cinema Display 20" - Argentina
3500 $ - 1130 U$S

Apple Cinema Display (20" flat panel)
600 U$S


Mac Mini (Super dupper) - Argentina
4400 $ - 1500 U$S

Mac Mini - USA
800 $

The clear "winner" is the MacBook, while the price of the other items are practically twice as much as you would pay in the USA.

A little winter (it was about time)

Well, at last, the winter is back. A nice, cold & rainy day, and the promise of a very nice week ahead.

The HDD ist kaput

It finally happened.
The system HDD from Thor is dead, so good I have backups, so, no damage is done.
What I'm thinking to get it back on its feet is taking out one of the HDD from Judith and use it on Thor.

As for Judith, I'm thinking in replacing the OpenBSD install with a CentOS 5 -minimal- one, just to see how it goes, and which one does perform better on such a totally sh*tty hardware.

CentOS 5 minimal install (2)

Here are some "facts" from a CentOS 5 ultra minimum install...

Disk usage:

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5             4.9G  254M  4.4G   6% /
proc                     0     0     0   -  /proc
sysfs                    0     0     0   -  /sys
devpts                   0     0     0   -  /dev/pts
/dev/sda8              20G  173M   19G   1% /home
/dev/sda7             996M   34M  911M   4% /tmp
/dev/sda3              20G  180M   19G   1% /var
/dev/sda2              20G  505M   18G   3% /usr
/dev/sda1              99M   11M   83M  12% /boot
tmpfs                1014M     0 1014M   0% /dev/shm
none                     0     0     0   -  /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc
/dev/sdb1             984M  434M  551M  45% /media/usb

Installed RPM packages:

setup-2.5.58-1.el5
basesystem-8.0-5.1.1.el5.centos
glibc-common-2.5-24
chkconfig-1.3.30.1-2
mktemp-1.5-23.2.2
popt-1.10.2-48.el5
bzip2-libs-1.0.3-3
libstdc++-4.1.2-42.el5
beecrypt-4.1.2-10.1.1
libgcrypt-1.2.3-1
keyutils-libs-1.2-1.el5
libsysfs-2.0.0-6
libacl-2.2.39-3.el5
pcre-6.6-2.el5_1.7
checkpolicy-1.33.1-4.el5
mingetty-1.07-5.2.2
wireless-tools-28-2.el5
libvolume_id-095-14.16.el5
cyrus-sasl-lib-2.1.22-4
nash-5.1.19.6-28
termcap-5.5-1.20060701.1
bash-3.2-21.el5
libsepol-1.15.2-1.el5
grep-2.5.1-54.2.el5
sqlite-3.3.6-2
gawk-3.1.5-14.el5
nspr-4.7.0.99.2-1.el5
diffutils-2.8.1-15.2.3.el5
iptables-ipv6-1.3.5-4.el5
less-394-5.el5
cpio-2.6-20
centos-release-5-2.el5.centos
redhat-logos-4.9.99-8.el5.centos
grub-0.97-13.2
ed-0.2-38.2.2
file-4.17-13
hdparm-6.6-2
gnu-efi-3.0c-1.1
libselinux-1.33.4-5.el5
e2fsprogs-libs-1.39-15.el5
kpartx-0.4.7-17.el5
coreutils-5.97-14.el5
rpm-4.4.2-48.el5
openssl-0.9.8b-10.el5
newt-0.52.2-10.el5
hwdata-0.213.6-1.el5
rpm-libs-4.4.2-48.el5
pciutils-2.2.3-5
audit-libs-python-1.6.5-9.el5
python-elementtree-1.2.6-5
yum-metadata-parser-1.1.2-2.el5
pam-0.99.6.2-3.27.el5
m2crypto-0.16-6.el5.2
libxml2-python-2.6.26-2.1.2.1
dbus-glib-0.70-5
libuser-0.54.7-2.el5.5
usermode-1.88-3.el5.1
device-mapper-multipath-0.4.7-17.el5
udev-095-14.16.el5
cryptsetup-luks-1.0.3-2.2.el5
lvm2-2.02.32-4.el5
net-tools-1.60-78.el5
policycoreutils-1.33.12-14.el5
selinux-policy-2.4.6-137.el5
mcstrans-0.2.7-1.el5
mkinitrd-5.1.19.6-28
selinux-policy-targeted-2.4.6-137.el5
openssh-server-4.3p2-26.el5
sysklogd-1.4.1-44.el5
dhcpv6-client-1.0.10-4.el5
authconfig-5.3.21-3.el5
ecryptfs-utils-41-1.el5
rhpl-0.194.1-1
hal-0.5.8.1-35.el5
pm-utils-0.99.3-6.el5.centos.19
libgcc-4.1.2-42.el5
filesystem-2.4.0-1.el5.centos
tzdata-2007k-2.el5
glibc-2.5-24
zlib-1.2.3-3
audit-libs-1.6.5-9.el5
glib2-2.12.3-2.fc6
elfutils-libelf-0.125-3.el5
expat-1.95.8-8.2.1
libgpg-error-1.4-2
db4-4.3.29-9.fc6
slang-2.0.6-4.el5
libattr-2.4.32-1.1
libcap-1.10-26
libusb-0.1.12-5.1
ethtool-5-1.el5
tcp_wrappers-7.6-40.4.el5
gdbm-1.8.0-26.2.1
dmidecode-2.7-1.28.2.el5
cracklib-dicts-2.8.9-3.3
centos-release-notes-5.2-2
libtermcap-2.0.8-46.1
info-4.8-14.el5
ncurses-5.5-24.20060715
readline-5.1-1.1
sed-4.1.5-5.fc6
libxml2-2.6.26-2.1.2.1
nss-3.11.99.5-2.el5.centos
iptables-1.3.5-4.el5
procps-3.2.7-9.el5
gzip-1.3.5-10.el5.centos
iproute-2.6.18-7.el5
iputils-20020927-43.el5
tcl-8.4.13-3.fc6
udftools-1.0.0b3-0.1.el5
sysfsutils-2.0.0-6
libhugetlbfs-1.2-5.el5
setserial-2.17-19.2.2
rootfiles-8.1-1.1.1
device-mapper-1.02.24-1.el5
shadow-utils-4.0.17-13.el5
findutils-4.2.27-4.1
module-init-tools-3.3-0.pre3.1.37.el5
krb5-libs-1.6.1-25.el5
python-2.4.3-21.el5
libsemanage-1.9.1-3.el5
e2fsprogs-1.39-15.el5
rpm-python-4.4.2-48.el5
libselinux-python-1.33.4-5.el5
python-iniparse-0.2.3-4.el5
python-sqlite-1.1.7-1.2.1
cracklib-2.8.9-3.3
SysVinit-2.86-14
python-urlgrabber-3.1.0-2
dbus-1.0.0-7.el5
openldap-2.3.27-8.el5_1.3
passwd-0.73-1
dmraid-1.0.0.rc13-9.el5
MAKEDEV-3.23-1.2
util-linux-2.13-0.47.el5
device-mapper-event-1.02.24-1.el5
psmisc-22.2-6
initscripts-8.45.19.EL-1.el5.centos.1
openssh-4.3p2-26.el5
kbd-1.12-20.el5
tar-1.15.1-23.0.1.el5
kernel-2.6.18-92.el5
openssh-clients-4.3p2-26.el5
setools-3.0-3.el5
dhclient-3.0.5-13.el5
prelink-0.3.9-2.1
yum-3.2.8-9.el5.centos.1
system-config-securitylevel-tui-1.6.29.1-2.1.el5
vim-minimal-7.0.109-3.el5.3
kudzu-1.2.57.1.17-1

Enabled services:

haldaemon       0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
ip6tables       0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
iptables        0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
kudzu           0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
lvm2-monitor    0:off 1:on 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
mcstrans        0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
messagebus      0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
multipathd      0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off
netconsole      0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off
netfs           0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
netplugd        0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off
network         0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
rdisc           0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off
restorecond     0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
sshd            0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
syslog          0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off

Note that crond it is not enabled as a service, actually, it is not even installed.
Another missing (and quite useful) package, are the man pages; but, you get a CentOS 5 install, using only one CD, you can access it thru SSH remotely, and then, using yum, install the other things you need to get the box actually doing something.

That's more like it

It now feels like a winter should be.
It was about time...

Winter sort of

It is actually falling, this effing winter summer has to die!

The fountain of youth

Or, how to get from 90 to zero in just the turn of a switch.
Well, it is back to square one I guess... All the movings around the house forced me to power it down for a while.

It finally happened

So the silence wasn't that long, after all

Apple sues Mac clone maker Psystar for copyright infringement

The charade has no end

Over the weekend it kinda, sorta looks like the temperature will be closer to what we should be expecting for this part of the year around here.
But then again, the Widget gets the thing to the far out limits, as usual, we will never on this Earth will be near the 4 degrees mark on this Sunday.

Before, in the middle, after

      

  


This is, obviously, a work in progress :D
At least, I hope it looks that way.

Winter (???????)

What winter?

What a week!

Amazing... simply amazing... We are royally screwed! It's the middle of the freaking winter!

Of cables and men

The problems with the HDDs that I had a couple of days ago seem to be history, at least for now.
Took the cance to do a thorough clean of the internals of Thor, that were really messy.

One thing I'll be doing is getting a longer ATA cable than the one I have, so I can put the 2 HDDs side by side, instead of one on top of another, to see if I can reduce the temperature on those.

Today's high

In the end, we topped 22, for tomorrow, the high will be around 26, or so they say. It looks like the heat will be around until Thursday at night.

3 months

3 months already.

Effing Blockbuster

The local Blockbuster(s) suck, suck big time. I have scouted a few today looking for this films:

The magnificent seven
Close encounters of the third kind
The French connection

Not one has them... I mean, they are not rented, the damn Blockbusters don't have the movies, not one. How on Earth they can afford to not have those classics????

Just follow the keyboard

I was Googling for info on something I have been thinking for a while now, cutting the numeric pad portion of a plain vanilla keyboard, making it look like a Happy Hacking Keyboard, and also, reducing clutter, and bringing the mouse closer, since I find it it is like in another galaxy.

I found this project: Keyboard Mods: Chopping the Numeric Keypad off a Microsoft Natural Keyboard, the interesting thing, aside from finding exactly what I was looking for on Google, is that the person who did it is an all time famous "net person", but also, he is now the founder of an amazing robot factory, Anybots, sort of a proto Eldon Tyrell :D

Rough and hot week ahead

This awful faux summer it is just not diying. We'll have a really torrid -for winter, for the middle of freaking July!!!- week.
I bet that at least until Thursday we'll be topping if not surpassing the middle twenties.

Fight font uglyfication (console)

The default font does not look too good, specially, on the ultra crappy and small LCD that the Presario 1200 has.
So, edit the file "/etc/default/console-setup", and look for the line that says:

FONTFACE="Fixed"
FONTSIZE="16"

Comment that out, and take a run testing other fonts, the fonts are located on the directory "/usr/share/consolefonts/".
After editing the file, you'll have to do a:

sudo /etc/init.d/console-screen.sh reload

To activate the changes.

Right now, my font of choice is:

FONTFACE="Terminus"
FONTSIZE="14"

This font uses the codeset "Uni3", so in order to get it working, you'll have to edit the CODESET variable too.

Correction: (September 28 2008)
Actually, the command to change the console font it is:

sudo /etc/init.d/console-setup stop
sudo /etc/init.d/console-setup start

Up the hill backwards

And up we go!

Winter, ja ja ja ja

This has to be the worst winter I can remember.
Will be topping 24 today, and it looks like we might even surpass that on Tuesday, a real piece of sh*t is this, this summer will be a real PITA.

24 degrees on July it is like 40 on a plain vanilla day during December.

Synergy clutter

My beloved pair, sharing the keyboard and mouse with Synergy

About to go KIA

One of the HDDs of Thor gave me a lot of trouble this morning, again... This time had ot opne the case, unplug both HDDs, and gave it a few minutes.

Everything seems normal now, I'm posting this from Thor, but I'm sure the days of that HDD are counted.
Called a local hardware vendor, a 120 GB AT HDD goes for "about 100 U$S" that doesn't seems that ridiculous, something like 40 to 30 plus of the street prize of a similar HDD on the USA.

Guess next week, if they have one, I'll be getting a new (& bigger) HDD for Thor.

Power Mac G4: Installing Internal Storage Devices
Extra internal hard-drive on PowerMac G4?

Ubuntu infatuation

I effing love this Ubuntu release.
Today I have been using it most of the afternoon, running Evolution, Pidgin and a few Terminals, it works amazingly responsive for such a turd as the Compaq Presario.
I wish this laptop would have a better video card, but what a hell, at least I have a laptop that I can carry everywhere.

Lotsa worka, no funni

This last few weeks I have been covered by work, I'm with interviews to get onto a new job, another one, as for the moment, I don't plan in deleting my present one.
I'm pretty sure I can handle both of them.

One year today

A whole year now, and not an inch of snow is falling, or have fallen since...
Matter of fact, it looks like we are heading for a really hot weekend (for winter)...
Boy I miss last winter.

Spiked winter

We have been blessed with yet another spiked winter day.

Power shift

Changed my synergy setup, moved the server to Thor, my Quicksilver beauty, and the client now it is executed from Tango, the main benefit of the whole setup? I can tunnel the traffic between the two boxes thru SSH.

All you have to do is setup a PuTTY connection to the box running Os X (that box has to have the SSHD up & running, and the firewall has to be open to allow connections), you setup the PuTTY session, with the tunnel aiming to the port (24800 is the default), login via SSH to the Os X box, and then execute the client pointing to localhost on the client box.

Presto! That's it!

Here is a screenshot of the PuTTY configuration, the important part, the tunnel, on the client box, on my case, Tango.
The main drawback of all of this? Space, I have an extra keyboard, the one from Thor, on the desk, while the Tango's keyboard (the one built-in on the laptop) simply stays there without being used.

I'll use the setup for a few days and post back if there is a problem.

A red glowing tango screenshot

Another screenshot of Tango, my Vista beauty, it seems like the red fits here nice.

A Quad-Core beast

A screenshot of a new server at work, (actually, it is a screenshot of a couple of PuTTY terminal emulators connected to it, thru SSH :D ), I have never saw such a beast before... A 2 x Quad-Core Xeon, with 8 GB RAM.

Take a look at the stack of CPUs on the top & and on the htop window!!

Effing spiked weather

What a Hell of a winter is this????

CentOS 5 minimal install

Last week I had to do sort of forensics on a Linux server.
Usually, I don't deal with this -I can't recall the last time I have installed Linux on a production server-, on a normal situation, the server is already handled to me installed, and I work remotely on it; matter of fact, there are a lot of the servers I work with that I have never saw "in the flesh", and that I never will.

But, last week, I had the chance to do a recovery on a server, actually... More than a recovery, it was a forensic re-install, or more like actually, a reinstall :D
One of the 3 HDDs died, taking along the whole RAID setup, but, on that LAN there were other servers that took over, so now rush not damage was done with the missing server.

The thing is, thanks to this, I was able to test a something, the newest release of CentOS comes in 6 CDs, and there is not a "Server CD" like they used to offer on the CentOS 4 release.

I read on the CentOS site, that there is an option to do a minimal install without all the CDs.

When you reach the package selection part of the install, deselect the "Gnome Desktop" and choose "Customize now".
On the next screen, deselect every single program, even the "Base" one.



I have tested this on 2 different, very different, boxes; without a single problem. After this, you'll have to install, via yum, what ever program you need, but you'll have a leaner system, not to mention that you'll install CentOS 5 on a jiffy.

Weather report hiccup

What a Hell happened here?? :D
It seems impressive, but it actually it is nothing more than something like a 2 degree drop.
I effing love this new graphs! I wish this suckers would enable a longer one, like a month or so.

Nice Sunday

In the end, it turned out to be a really nice Sunday...
A little bit of rain, the temperature gold cooler (although not winterish really, but far more better than yesterday), continued setting up Ubuntu 8.04 on Odin, played a bit with the built-in firewall "ufw", for "Ubuntu Fire Wall", or, "Uncomplicated Fire Wall".
Also, transfered/ imported all my emails, contacts and settings from my early Ubuntu install on Odin, it was ridiculous how easy is to migrate all of that.

Use, setup, and Take advantage of the New Ubuntu Uncomplicated Firewall UFW
Setting up firewall in Ubuntu
ufw disable ping / icmp

Ubuntu screensh*t screenshot

Well, Ubuntu has nothing to do actually, it is the Presario's LCD + video RAM that can't cope with anything above the 800x600 resolution...
Boy, how small & cramped that resolution was/ feels...

SU Mystery Theater

Installed the 2 updates, no problem so far.
My favorite add-ons, for both Safari (KeywURL) , and Os X in general (NuclearMouse) kept working after the update.

Life seems sweet.

Install Fest

Had a mini install fest this Saturday night.
Tested CentOS 5, just to test the minimal install on another box.
For the moment, I have settled on Ubuntu 8.04.
Installed my favorite programs & set the settings the way I want them, everything worked exactly the same that the way before, no surprises here, hey... It's Linux what you expect?

The little box that could

Judith simple keeps going and going and going... 82 days and counting, without a sinlge glitch, pretty amazing for a piece of crap of specs like she has.