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2007-10-30 apache rocks the bottom
Scooter said it best with their song, "Apache rocks the bottom". Playing around with Aapche modules is great fun and I advise everyone who thinks of something that their pages must do each and every time they load should have a go at creating a module. It's not that much effort and is really easy to build.
2007-10-28 not much of a post but ...
This is isn't much of a post and maybe it should wait until next week when there could be more to write about. This really just surrounds a simple little filter that I made which sends some data back to the client. I write this because there seem to be some discrepancies in the documentations - only simple little things, but it still felt like the brakes were setting.
It's quite valid to say that I do love the c programming language, perhaps too much. So many people don't see how there is beauty in it's simplisity, sure it's easy to shoot both your feet off while trying to shoot at a target 50m away, but that's when thought should be applied. Anyway, enough with that. On with the code.
2007-10-27 not just me
It seems that others are also effected by the 'busy period™' at NTL, but it's also reported that a threatening phone call requesting disconnection unless the problem is promptly resolved will often re-enable network access.
This issue really is unfolding as a NTL controllable variable. Do they not want their customers anymore? This used to be a really reliable service for me, but perhaps it's time to find a DSL provider, perhaps one that can carry IPv6.
2007-10-26 modem provider
The ISP that I'm using at home seems to have taken a sharp turn for the worst this month.
They appear to have manufactured a 'busy period™' where they can limit the downstream to something hardly usable. This is obviously a royal PITA and I cannot stress enough how much of an insult it is to have to phone the technical support number (premium rate) to be told that a complete loss of connectivity is 'a minor issue'.
To distinguish what is causing the problem, either the ISP throttling/running out of transit or if the media layer is choking due to environmental issues, I have scripted something in perl to get the stats from the modem. There is also another script to get create something that is usable with MRTG.
This may become a zabbix plugin if I at some point become bothered enough to do that.
Here are the two scripts.
ntl_virgin_media.pl
mrtg_make.pl
The first file will print the stats of the modem, with an optional argument for the particular stat that you're interested in. The second file will write out the MRTG config to stdout and the index html lines to standard error.
2007-10-24 ipv6
Interesting evening tonight as I have stumbled upon an ipv6 -> ipv4 tunnel. It seems to be working quite well. I've got a route set up for the tunnel, really simple in linux and the provider (Hurricane Electric) provided the config in a copy/paste script :-)
If you're interested, then create an account on their site tunnelbroker.net.
A useful little program called 6tunnel will bind a local host/port to a ipv6 host/port. So things like irssi can be run using a command like:
6tunnel 65000 ipv6.chat.freenode.net 6667
and then /server localhost 65000 within irssi command window will give you a connection to freenode with ipv6 source. Excellent stuff!
2007-10-19 gutsy
Canonical released gutsy as stable today. Lots of people all around the world will be upgrading today, and rightly so. The biggest change really is that Sylpheed-Claws has gone from 2.6 to 2.10 and gaim has gone to pidgin.
Some settings got overwritten for me, like gcc, which I had linked to 3.4 suddenly become 4.1, no major issues though, my running kernel (2.6.23) remained as it should, at the top of my GRUB boot list.
All essentials, gvim, gpg etc are all good. One word I will suggest to anyone thinking of upgrading is to be thoughtful of what has been installed since the last upgrade. Little things can really slow the process down. apt does not thread (AFAIK) so things have to happen in sequentially. I noticed certain things that are no longer used, and I could have saved a lot of waiting around had I removed them first.
Simply running 'dpkg --get-selections' could point out lots of things that 'apt-get --purge remove wxyz' would get rid of.
There are some brilliant UI improvements in gutsy that I'm pleased about, the most important for me is that the fonts have become smoother. It's worth noting that although MS continue to package a metric ass load of fonts with their platform, the open source still makes the fonts easier to read! XP - the most common platform has incredibly rubbish. One of the most hurtful things when using any windows system is that they just can't get the fonts right. If you don't believe me, just ask a friend if you can have a shell login on their box, get a copy of Xming and export any X app to your windows explorer shell and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Here's a capture of a menu bare prior to whatever changed in gutsy:
And the same application after the upgrade:
p.s. one thing I did notice to my annoyance is that gutsy included a file indexer, which runs in the background 'trackerd'. It tends to hog resources a bit, especially if once has a lot of nfs mounts, as the server will be swamped while the indexer runs as a nice process on the clients. Might want to remove it if you prefer things like grep and find.
2007-10-17 more monitoring
Just finished off version 1.0 of netmon. This week was supposed to be going along the lines of: do small alterations to give postgres support, repackage and post online... then do some apache work.
Things not going quite to plan. The postgres functions took much longer than expected. Tomorrow I have to fit in evening class, and the latest Southpark Episode. I also noticed Elephant's dream has finished the download, so that has to be fitted in elsewhere... Things getting pushed to the back burner at an alarming rate.
Anyway, version 1.0 is available here: netmon 1.0.
2007-10-13 petrol
We are hitting 98p a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying £1 a ltr. Philip Hollsworth offered this good idea:
This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the 'don't buy petrol on a certain day campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to hurt ourselves by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of >an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work.
Please read it and join in!
Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is CHEAP, we need to take a ggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the market place not sellers. With the price of petrol going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not purchasing their Petrol! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. Here's the idea:
For the rest of this year DON'T purchase ANY petrol from the two biggest oil companies (which now are one), ESSO and BP.
If they are not selling any petrol, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact we need to reach literally millions of Esso and BP petrol buyers. It's really simple to do!!
Now, don't wimp out on me at this point... keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!
I am sending this note to a lot of people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) ... and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it...
THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!
Again, all You have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all (and not buy at ESSO/BP). How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8days!!! Acting together we can make a difference If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.
PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE 69p a LITRE RANGE
It's easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at Shell, Asda, Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons Jet etc. i.e. boycott BP and Esso
2007-10-07 mods
Once my lazy ass got into gear I had a poke around with an apache module, and I gotta say, it's impressive. Making some code that just slips into the Apache server seems a really well thought out process. The build process is so much more straight forward than that with the other OS's webserver. I can't stress just what a pain in the ass it can be doing a build. Providing you're sure with what you're doing (and unless you're on a live system it's not that important when screwing up), apxs just does what you want.