dannyman.toldme.com

Fun with IP Mapping

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/04/10/fun-with-ip-mapping/

We recently set up an old machine at work to play the part of an “ops warboard” . . . basically, a Firefox session with the tab-slideshow module, paging through screens of Big Sister status lamps. I got to thinking, that one very cool thing to do, is to set up a map, with little dots on it that light up when people log in to our web application.

There is a web site to map IPs to geographic information: hostip.info. I yanked IPs from web logs, and wrote a script to query the web site for Latitude and Longitude, and then delved into the complexities of xplanet.

To prove my own understanding, I hacked up this:

WARNING: Do not visit this link! Some Hungarian asshat linked to it in a message forum and stole a bunch of server bandwidth so it is currently serving alternate content. (Sorry.)

http://dannyman.toldme.com/scratch/animated.gif

That’s a 24-frame animated gif of hourly hits to my web site from last Wednesday. I’m hoping to write a script to generate such things automatically. For a “real time” deal it is a matter of getting the IPs you want to map from the web logs to the mapper. I’m thinking some minor daemon who tails logs and perhaps send RPC pings when it sees a “new” IP address. Where “new” is “new within the past five minutes” . . . that gets converted into geo coordinates, and the map is refreshed every so often. Not quite “real time” but close enough to look cool.

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“Error 25090”

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/04/06/error-25090/

So, here’s a neat bug:

Customer reports she can’t export her contacts from Outlook to Excel. “Why,” says I. But ours is not to question why . . . so, I fire up Internet Explorer (for good Microsoft Karma) and type kb.microsoft.com. Nope. microsoft.com/kb. Nope. But then it suggests support.microsoft.com. Okay. And I search for error code 25090, and voila:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827467/en-us

The solution? Go get the Office 2003 Install disk, and make sure it starts to run setup.exe, and then hit Cancel. Because by merely initializing setup.exe your computer system will be fixed.

I give the support folks points for documenting this fix without falling over themselves laughing. Problem solved, as I walk away from the scene chorlting “this is so going in my blog . . .”

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“Indiana Time”

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/03/31/freebsd-howto-fix-indiana-dst/

Nominally, you would fix a FreeBSD server by supping to stable, and running:

cd /usr/src/share/zoneinfo && make clean && make install

Though, you may have a valid reason for not doing all that. You could instead do this:

~> ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Indiana
Indianapolis    Knox            Marengo         Vevay
~> fetch ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2006b.tar.gz
Receiving tzdata2006b.tar.gz (149555 bytes): 100%
149555 bytes transferred in 2.6 seconds (55.68 kBps)
~> tar xfz tzdata2006b.tar.gz
~> sudo zic northamerica
~> ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Indiana
Indianapolis    Marengo         Vevay
Knox            Petersburg      Vincennes

A tip-of-the-hat to William Computer Blog and participants on the FreeBSD-questions mailing list.

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More DST Fun

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/03/30/more-dst-fun/

From Wired:

“This is like Y2K except this one is really happening,” said [Purdue University] IT spokesman Steve Tally.

Currently, most Indiana computer users set their PCs to a special “Indiana East” setting — Eastern time that doesn’t spring forward every April. Starting this April, however, they’ll change their PCs to Eastern Daylight Time. The few who observe Central time set their computers to Central, and will also make the switch. Tally predicts the changeover will create havoc with the widely used Microsoft Outlook calendar application. When the time changes, he said, appointments will still be listed according to the old Indiana East time. The calendars of Central time Outlook users, in turn, will continue to list appointments according to Central time.

With a nationwide shift in daylight-saving scheduling slated for next year, Indiana’s experience offers a preview of potential glitches in store for the rest of the country. Starting in 2007, daylight-saving time will begin on the second Sunday of March rather than the first Sunday in April, as it does today. Daylight-saving time will end the first Sunday of November, a week later than it does now.

I heard on the radio yesterday that computer technology actually plays a much bigger roll in the growing gap between high-wage and low-wage employees than does immigration, such that those opposed to immigration should also be opposed to computers. I suppose one could look at the legislature mucking around with timekeeping as a way of creating demand for IT jobs, and thus slowing, ever so slightly, the rate at which IT efficiency disempowers low-wage workers.

My favorite DST bug was when Windows first started doing DST compensation automatically. The first time Windows computers were trusted to “fall back” an hour there was a bug such that several computers set their clocks back, and then set their clocks back, and then set their clocks back again . . . some computers ended up three, four, five, six hours behind . . . (more…)

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Customer Service Rant

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/03/07/customer-service-rant/

So, we use Bugzilla at work, and our users are mostly comfortable with it. On the other hand, there’s a popular “ticket tracking” system that is designed to track IT-type issues, which are considerably different from, although similar to, bugs. So, I have been asking around for advice . . . one reason I like RT is that it is simple for the user to send an e-mail directly into the system. A response was “well, then you don’t get enough information to solve the problem, so making the user fill out all the information in a web interface is better.” This . . . this, is one of my peet peeves:

Ah, personally, I HATE any system that makes “reporting a bug” any more cumbersome than absolutely needed. You need to make it as easy as possible to record that “something is wrong” and then query your customer for missing data as needed. All these “customer service” forms that have ever forced me to supply 5, ten, fifty pieces of frequently irrelevant data, and then ask me to explain my problem in a tiny little window . . .

No. Tools need to accomodate customer needs, and customer needs low barrier to entry. My cynical take on requiring the user to answer twenty questions is that you gain “efficiency” by making it sufficiently cumbersome for a user to report trouble such that the user will simply tolerate all but the very biggest problems, meanwhile cursing the jackasses over in the support organization with their “talk to our dumb*ss web interface” mentality.

A good compromise is to capture the user inquiry, and then, if there’s a standard questionnaire that needs filling out, have them fill it out.

Just, ah, my 2c. :)

I am so exhausted right now. Where has all my energy gone? Grr!

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Photos Flickr 0.4

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/01/29/photos-flickr-04/

Hello,

I have written a basic WordPress plugin to present a Flickr photo stream from a WordPress blog.

Photos Flickr provides for basic browsing of a Flickr photo stream from within a WordPress blog.

You can see this plugin in action at http://dannyman.toldme.com/photos/ and if you would like to try this plugin yourself, you can read more about it at http://dannyman.toldme.com/photos-flickr/.

Thanks,
-danny

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DST Productivity Drain

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/01/23/daylight-saving-sucks/

I am one of those contrarian freaks who despises Daylight Saving Time, regarding it as a stupid fix to a problem that does not exist. You want more daylight after work? Set your alarm clock ahead and get to work an hour earlier! Don’t go changing my schedule . . .

Most people . . . normal people, don’t feel strongly about DST. “Yeah, it is annoying to change all my clocks twice a year, but then I don’t mind the extra daylight in the evening.” Of course, my last job I was working 7AM-3PM anyway, so I was saving Daylight . . .

So, enough bitching. Let’s talk turkey. Let’s talk Operational Qualification for third party auditing of a production database system. When I run the regression tests for PostgreSQL-7.4.8, the “horology” regression test fails. The README for this version reports that this may happen if you run on the day of DST switchover . . . or if your Operating System naively applies current DST rules retroactively. But, in my case? Huh, just don’t get it: (more…)

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Standby for Maintenance . . .

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/01/03/standby-for-maintenance/

Upgrading WordPress to 2.0, which promises mucho new features . . . let us see . . . the site may be wonky for the next few hours?

Damn, that was easy. We’ll see what bugs crop up . . .

. . . well, I still need to figure out how to reverse the posts in some categories, but that is no biggy. Please chip in comments here, just to see if the new anti-comment-spam feature is doing its thing properly. :)

Cheers,

-danny

4 Comments

I am Lame!

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/29/i-am-lame/

So, I discovered yesterday, that if one goes to Google, and types i am lame, then my web site is the first hit. Don’t that make me feel special?

But I didn’t drag you here for my inverse ego thing, here’s some cool videos that I have seen recently:
Internet Musical — World of Warcraft Monsters praise the Internet, in song. Best. Video. Ever!
Climbing Russian Kids — Man, talk about making good use of a post-utopian wasteland. Hollywood should steal these kids for stuntmen.
Sushi Documentary — Everything you shouldn’t know about sushi.
Devil Dogs — Lucian Reed went to Iraq to take photographs. This video is a valuable glimpse at how our folks are doing over there.

I have decided that Google Video is mostly tolerable. It’s not standard CODECs in files . . . probably they have some decent reasons, but unlike RealVideo, or QuickTime, they don’t require you to install spyware on your computer and watch the video in a little 2″ window. So, well, okay, maybe forcing you to stream . . . why? Maybe that is somewhat evil, but it is definitely less evil than “Video on the Internet” that has come before, and easier for the masses than Bittorrent . . . though it’d be neat . . . give it time . . .

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Red Hat Rant

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/28/red-hat-rant/

Ahhh, so in my getting to grips with, I have a few gripes about Linux. Some day I may cultivate these into a well-formed, coherent technical explanation, but just now . . . just now, I’ll share with you a special favorite rant of mine.

New install, right? By default, it wants to check the install media (who cares?) then there’s a screen that says “welcome to <version of Red Hat>” where you get the chance to say “ohhh, wrong CD …” then you move on to disk partitioning, and you have to intentionally select that yes you want to erase all data, and enter a bunch of other parameters … network … firewall, SE-Linux … altogether 10-15 minutes if you know what you are doing. Nothing onerous. Lots of “yes, a firewall, and these other things, these are all a good ideas, I’ll just mostly agree to what you suggest.” (more…)

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WordPress: Last Month / Next Month

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/11/wordpress-last-month-next-month/

I was tweaking the site navigation–and I welcome any feedback a reader may have–and I had to grab a plugin to allow me to link to next month / previous month / next year / previous year:

Next Archive Date / Previous Archive Date Plugin from scriptygoddess

I appreciate scriptygoddess’ work, as I’m using her paginate plugin as well. Unfortunately, the example on her site is kind of nasty. So, if someone is casting about on Google, here’s the code in my sidebar template:

    <?php if (is_year()): ?>
        <p><b>By Year</b><br />
        <?php previous_archive_date() ?>
            ...
        <?php next_archive_date() ?></p>
    <?php elseif (is_month()): ?>
        <p><b>Last Month</b><br />
        <?php previous_archive_date() ?>
        <p><b>Next Month</b><br />
        <?php next_archive_date() ?></p>
    <?php endif; ?>

Thanks for the code, Jennifer!

3 Comments

pkg_info -W == rpm -qf

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/07/pkgwhich-rpm-qf/

Aye. So, let us say you want to know what package a file comes from.

On FreeBSD:

0-17:16 djh@web3 ~> find /var/db/pkg -name +CONTENTS | xargs grep -l pdftex
/var/db/pkg/teTeX-1.0.7_1/+CONTENTS

Ugly, eh? Which, I think the portinstall stuff has a pkgwhich command.

Update: On FreeBSD, one may use:
pkg_info -W `which pdftex`

Linux?

[root@novadb0 pdftex-1.30.5]# rpm -qf /usr/bin/pdftex
tetex-2.0.2-22.EL4.4

Schweet!

3 Comments

SysAdmin Brain

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/11/29/sysadmin-brain/

Well, the holidays were nifty but they are chased with half a week on the East Coast redoing the install I did last month that needs redoing for a variety of reasons you don’t want to be burdened with. So, move from the uber-chill four-day weekend without a lot going on beyong setting Grandma up with her new Mac (early Christmas present due to the death of her old Mac) and enjoying family time, especially wifey time . . . and we’re back in the data center demonstrating our mastery of the Linux operating system. Nyahh!!!

So, just an anecdote, I caught sight of a baby breast-feeding. How wholesome, I felt, hooray for breast feeding . . . that must feel intensely wonderfully intimate . . . hey, without my notice, baby is on the other breast, and I had my SysAdmin brain moment.

“Oh good, load balancing.”

Thank you, and goodnight.

-danny

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Installing Software on FC4

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/11/16/installing-software-on-fc4/

I’m new to Linux, but I’m trying out Fedora Core 4 on my work laptop. It’s pretty slick once you change the desktop environment to KDE. But I want to be able to play mp3s, and there’s nothing in the default system that can handle this, and yum doesn’t know where to find good stuff like mplayer or mpg123. (Yeah, I’m a command-line type of guy . . .)

So, I go shopping for “repositories” that extend the Fedora Core base repository . . . and the short answer is that if you do this: (more…)

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WARNING: PermitRootLogin defaults to “yes”

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/11/12/permitrootlogin-p4wn3d/

For many yers I have used FreeBSD nearly exclusively. In the BSD tradition, root is pretty well protected — root can not log in from remote unless you put some effort into hooking that up, and local users can only run su if they are members of the wheel group. Because of the nifty sudo tool and my own disinterest in memorizing any more passwords than necessary, I have tended to remain unconcerned with the root password, setting it and storing the thing somewhere, which is a pain, or setting it to something dumb, or just not setting it, depending on the security needs of a given system.

I recently learned a painful lesson from Fedora: not all unices are as protective of the root user. Sure, I knew that in Linux any local user can run su, but OpenSSH isn’t going to allow people to log in as root, right? Wrong! (more…)

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