faded.org

Upgrading Debian etch to lenny

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 04:22:41 -0500

Debian stable just jumped from the previous etch 4 to the new lenny 5. For those looking for an easy upgrade path, there actually isn't much to it. I ran through an upgrade a short while ago and if you're interested in the process, here were the steps I followed:

FreeBSD PPTP Server

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:24:42 -0500

I had previously setup a few FreeBSD systems to act as PPTP servers for places that I had them acting as firewalls using mpd. However, I was constantly running into problems with "No buffer space available" and packets would drop, connections would be sluggish, etc. I was just doing some system upgrades and decided to look at other options. I found a port called poptop "the pptp server for linux" in the ports distribution, and even a howto online detailing what my configs should look like. So I gave it a shot:

FreeBSD buildworld benchmarking

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:26:49 -0500

Having just acquired some new hardware at work, I decided to do some tests to see how well this system would run. Here are the specs of the system running the benchmark:

Supermicro X7DA3+ MB w/Intel 5000X (GreenCreek) chipset

(2) Intel Xeon Quad-Core E5450 (3.00GHz/1333FSB/2x6MB) CPU

3Ware Escalade 9650SE-16ML PCI-E 256MB w/16 PORTS + BBU

(8) Kingston 2GB PC2-5300 DDR2-667MHz FB ECC CL5 (16GB)

(12) Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive (RAID 50 array)

To test it out I installed FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE AMD64. Install completed flawlessly, so it was time to do some compiling. A vanilla make buildworld: 48 minutes Not bad.. but not amazing either. So I decided to do some threaded compiles to stress the system a little bit. Since it's an 8 core system, I used the following:

time -h make -j8 buildworld

The resulting time of: 12m 33s was nothing short of impressive. Following up with a:

time -h make -j8 buildkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC

Resulted in: 52s Quite impressive.

Gentoo 2007.0 Installation

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:51:30 -0500

Gentoo 2007.0 has been out for some time, but I just now got a chance to setup a few new Gentoo systems. Previously I've always installed via the 2006.1 installation media, either the LiveCD or LiveDVD, and used the GTK installer. While the 2006.1 GTK installer was certainly buggy, I was able to get a process worked out that allowed the system to be loaded fairly consistently each time. However, it was *much* more difficult with the 2007.0 LiveCD and DVD. Here are some of the trials that I ended up going through..

Google GrandCentral Review

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 21:35:13 -0500

There has been much buzz recently about google buying Grand Central, which was started as a free service that helped people organize their phone numbers, route calls, record messages, set distinctive ring tones, and much more... for free. Upon hearing the news, I immediately signed up for an account and began to test things out...

Progressive vs. Regressive Tax Structure

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 10:24:51 -0500

I recently ran across a story at the Washington post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/07/AR2007060702146_pf.html Democrats Seek Formula To Blunt AMT

House Democrats looking to spare millions of middle-class families from the expensive bite of the alternative minimum tax are considering adding a surcharge of 4 percent or more to the tax bills of the nation's wealthiest households. Under one version of the proposal, about 1 million families would be hit with a 4.3 percent surtax on income over $500,000, which would raise enough money to permit Congress to abolish the alternative minimum tax for millions of households earning less than $250,000 a year, according to Democratic aides and others familiar with the plan.

Which was being discussed on digg.com. I was surprised to find that there were many posts such as:

"Why is it that Democrats are ALWAYS looking for ways to specifically punish the wealthy with taxes?"

and

"Having everyone pay one flat tax makes more sense as everyone is paying the same percentage. I don't see why this has not caught on in DC. No one pays more percentagewise than another person. Seems more fair than charging the wealthy more. It seems like that in some way s destroys the American dream by sending the message, if you succeed you have to pay for it."

and

"I am fucking tired of hearing how compassionate liberals are just because they want to spend money that they stole from somebody else. Truly compassionate people don't steal (taxing is the same thing) they voluntarily give to other people in need."

Reading such uninformed garbage accompanied by the outright greed and lack of societal values gave me a bit of a reality check as to the number of people there are out there that hold such views. So I decided to write up my thoughts on the subject..

Firefox 2.0 vs IE7

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 22:25:35 -0500

It looks like the long awaited Firefox 2.0 will be released on Tuesday according to news reports. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/289490_firefox21.html This is following closely on the heels of Microsoft releasing Internet Explorer 7 last week: http://news.digitaltrends.com/article11561.html I've loaded RC3 of Firefox, and I've got IE7 installed on a few systems. Here are some of my reactions to what I've seen so far.

VoIP Caller ID Spoofing

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 02:04:17 -0500

Caller ID spoofing is a service that allows a caller to masquerade as someone else by falsifying the number that appears on the recipient's caller ID display. Just as e-mail spoofing can make it appear that a message came from any e-mail address the sender chooses, caller ID spoofing can make a call appear to come from any phone number the caller wishes. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/etel/2006/10/18/solving-the-caller-id-problem.html There is growing concern over the interaction of VoIP systems with the legacy PSTN, and the transmission of caller identity data--most notably, Caller ID on the PSTN. It is not always possible, or obvious how, to handle Caller ID data when moving to or from VoIP and the PSTN networks. There are even business models predicated on the ability of Caller ID to be transmitted to the PSTN with a value that is not "expected"; call centers are an obvious example, where customer-support staff make outbound calls with a Caller ID that may be from one of many possible clients. More troubling is the possibility that Caller ID may be used to trick unsuspecting call recipients into certain actions or beliefs, and it is this concern that's currently creating a legislative threat I believe must be averted. I have a proposal at the end of this article that attempts to address these issues, but first some background.

Update Slackware with swaret

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 01:54:37 -0500

While looking for an easy way to keep my Slackware install up to date, I just ran across this article: http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/10/12/1337224 Now that Slackware 11.0 is out, you may wonder what is the best way to update the distribution. Swaret is an open source project that aims to keep various versions of Slackware up-to-date. I use Swaret and some cron scripts to keep my servers current automatically.

Slackware 11.0 is released!

Tue, 03 Oct 2006 07:51:13 -0500

A year after the release of 10.2, there is finally a new Slackware release. Please see the release announcement below:

Evolution Major Vanishes From Approved Federal List

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 22:29:39 -0500

According to an article in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/washington/24evo.html?ex=1314072000&en=51fe61534e0cf171&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss Evolutionary biology has vanished from the list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students. Evidently the spokeswoman for the Dept. of Education claims that it was not intentionally taken off the list. Since we know how the Bush administration stands on topics such as teaching evolution, this type of a stunt doesn't really surprise me, but it does reinforce my negative opinions of their policies.

Slackware 11 RC2 Released

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 23:02:30 -0500

For all of those Slackware fans out there: Patrick Volkerding, Slackware's benevolent dictator for life, has 'released' Slackware Linux 11.0 Release Candidate 2. From the changelog: "This is mostly frozen now unless bugs (or irresistible upgrades) come up, so I'll call this update Slackware 11.0 release candidate 2." http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=15558 I've installed it on a VM, and must say that I've always liked Slackware, and this release didn't disappoint. I'll be looking forward to the actual 11.0 release.

Is your blog a security threat?

Sun, 06 Aug 2006 23:01:35 -0500

Is your blog a vector that can be used to attack your unsuspecting readers? Some folks over at SPI Dynamics think it might be. At least that's according to a recent whitepaper release that details attacks that rely on Atom and RSS feeds to do their work. An attack could be as simple as adding malicious JavaScript to the comments on a trusted blog that in turn includes those comments in their RSS feed to end-users.

Atlas AJAX with Visual Studio

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 22:39:06 -0500

I ran across a tutorial that makes development work in Visual Studio Express (Free download from Microsoft) look terribly easy and fairly straight forward. I've not often been a fan of the Microsoft development tools, but after watching this tutorial I'm thinking about giving it a second look:

Supermicro 1U CSE-512L-260B Review

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 01:06:32 -0500

I've just built 20 1U servers using the CSE-512L-260B chassis. I went with these chassis because I have ordered previous pre-built SuperMicro systems and have always found them to be of the best quality. My main focus was to find a short-length reasonably priced 1U chassis that can provide sufficient airflow, with the power supply included. I didn't need any special bells and whistles, no floppy or CD access required.