How Deep?

work linux variants bye bye solaris

2010-12-22T20:46:00.002+11:00

How sad, can't even give away sun fireblade systems anymore.
All sparc and x86 suns have gone away now.
Only ctie pizzeria remains - mainly using two ex-monash sun grid nodes and a pair of dell r710 dual xeon boxes.

Solaris has no place at my work anymore!!!!

At the moment, dell is winning the supplier race.

drats adsl disconnecting

2010-12-22T20:40:00.005+11:00

Still getting 10-13kbs from iinet.
After all this rain, noticed crackle on phone line and also that the adsl media has been going up and down like a yoyo.
reported it to iinet by pasting in part of security log from belkin modem.

Unfortunately it actually goes back to june when it first started doing a reset every few seconds - except for the odd times it stays up for hours.

belkin modem has a "always connected" setting - but there is also a 20 minute disconnect if no traffic.

fiddled with wires a little and crackle has gone away (unfortunately it was gone before I made first wiring change.

1950's house wire with above ground telstra connection to phone jack extension lead to phone-rj jack adaptor to splitter to adsl and phone.

I wonder if the street has dried out enough now for the problem to go away for a while?
Oh well, isolation test needed to eliminate splitter and extension leads and adaptors.
So far so good has stayed up for the last 15 minutes - even using phone.

Update: Did not last - 32:11 to 52:11 - 20 minutes session. At least it is a little faster on this reconnect.
2/22/2010 20:52:54 If(PPPoE1) stop
12/22/2010 20:52:52 If(PPPoE1) stop PPP
12/22/2010 20:52:49 ADSL Media Down !
12/22/2010 20:52:04 sending ACK to 10.1.1.5
12/22/2010 20:51:48 NTP Date/Time updated.
12/22/2010 20:51:39 Daylight Saving Observed.
12/22/2010 20:43:56 sending ACK to 10.1.1.5
12/22/2010 20:39:56 sending ACK to 10.1.1.5
12/22/2010 20:32:56 sending ACK to 10.1.1.5
12/22/2010 20:32:18 If(PPPoE1) PPP connection ok !
12/22/2010 20:32:17 If(PPPoE1) get secondary DNS IP:203.215.xxx
12/22/2010 20:32:17 If(PPPoE1) get primary DNS IP:203.0..xxx
12/22/2010 20:32:17 If(PPPoE1) get IP:203.214.xx.xx
12/22/2010 20:32:17 If(PPPoE1) start PPP
12/22/2010 20:32:17 If(PPPoE1) receive PADS
12/22/2010 20:32:16 If(PPPoE1) send PADR
12/22/2010 20:32:16 If(PPPoE1) receive PADO
12/22/2010 20:32:16 If(PPPoE1) send PADI
12/22/2010 20:32:11 If(PPPoE1) send PADI
12/22/2010 20:32:11 If(PPPoE1) Dial On Demand
12/22/2010 20:32:11 ADSL Media Up !
12/22/2010 20:31:56 10.1.1.3 login success
12/22/2010 20:31:52 If(PPPoE1) stop
12/22/2010 20:31:50 If(PPPoE1) stop PPP
12/22/2010 20:31:47 ADSL Media Down !

Can't publish or save draft - lost connection again.

And that session then lasted only another 7 minutes and came back slower - a bit more hash on the line.

removed the splitter - still with 3m extension lead from only socket in house
12/22/2010 21:33:08 If(PPPoE1) PPP connection ok !
12/22/2010 21:33:07 If(PPPoE1) get secondary DNS IP:203.215.29.191
12/22/2010 21:33:07 If(PPPoE1) get primary DNS IP:203.0.178.191
12/22/2010 21:33:07 If(PPPoE1) get IP:124.168.122.28
12/22/2010 21:33:06 If(PPPoE1) start PPP
12/22/2010 21:33:06 If(PPPoE1) receive PADS
12/22/2010 21:33:06 If(PPPoE1) send PADR
12/22/2010 21:33:06 If(PPPoE1) receive PADO
12/22/2010 21:33:06 If(PPPoE1) send PADI
12/22/2010 21:33:01 If(PPPoE1) send PADI
12/22/2010 21:33:01 ADSL Media Up !
12/22/2010 21:32:42 If(PPPoE1) stop
12/22/2010 21:32:40 If(PPPoE1) stop PPP
12/22/2010 21:32:37 ADSL Media Down !
12/22/2010 21:31:47 sending ACK to 10.1.1.5
12/22/2010 21:31:45 sending ACK to 10.1.1.5
12/22/2010 21:27:45 sending ACK to 10.1.1.5
12/22/2010 21:24:27 If(PPPoE1) PPP connection ok !

Still not "always connected" - I found 145 hours in june and earlier logs (iinet connection history).

greenwash? ecse is green, really.

2009-06-30T12:09:00.002+10:00

I wonder how many electrical engineering or electrical and computer systems engineering departments have greenwashed themselves?

Here is my contribution to the monash green and sustainability web presence:
www.ecse.monash.edu.au/green

It would be great if the academics and researchers would do a bit more marketing and expand on the above page.

Lotus Notes forced from above - quirks that the support people didn't know

2008-09-03T14:50:00.003+10:00

Assorted notes about the forced use of lotus notes for email and calendar

Can't send email as "group webmaster" with webmaster's email address from my usual account.

Even setting reply to address is a major task.

One option is to create a role account (and make me the delegate so I don't have to recall all passwords) for each role I send email for.

Better option is to use thunderbird and standard smtp/imap mail for real sysadmin work.

Role accounts and Delegates:

It turns out that the lotus web client works really well on a mac.

If you open the url of someones lotus notes and then log in as the delegate (who has permission for calendar access, you can control their calendar and see only their meeting invites in the mail tab - as expected.

One complication is that the real users preferences are what is seen by the delegate - so the OWNER of the account has to set all preferences that relate to display or working hours for the calendar.

Web client on late 2006 intel imac MUCH quicker and nicer than lotus client on p4 win laptop.

Finally connected at home

2008-06-18T19:01:00.001+10:00

Not really worth a blog entry!
iinet adsl2+ works first go - even with 1950's wiring and old fashioned telephone jacks and wires.

Now I need to do a speed check.

Will update this sometime

Recreational SCUBA and equity

2008-06-03T09:49:00.002+10:00

The SDFV was formed back in the 1960's to promote safety, protest competition spearfishing and promote education of scuba.

It's had a long and fruitful presence in the arena of marine parks, fisheries (abalone, cray or sourthern rock lobster), access, safe diving.

It's organised a variety of events, including the Sunken Assets series of seminars.

The SDFV codes of practice govern diving in shipping channels in Port Phillip Bay, and also while the channel deepening project is on.

A recent arena that will need to be watched is the ex-hmas canberra - a ship to be scuttled as a tourist destination.
The SDFV is involved - having provided seed money to the VARS organisation, as well as having member club members on the committees.

The biggest issue to come about with the ex-hmas canberra will be the question of equity of access. The company line (that VARS committee has agreed to and proposed from the start) is that there will be equitable access for all.

Now the definition of equitable access and access methods will be interesting - I read it as: No limitations on what a recreational group want to do - so they can use all bouys if they are provided, have same mechanism to access permit system if it exists for bookings. That there is a realistic way for small groups (say 3 guys in a private boat) to suddenly decide conditions are perfect to get thru the heads and go dive it.
So it needs to be flexible access and acknowledge that there are few if any physical limitations on accessing a scuttled wreck in the water.

Department or Central computing resources?

2008-06-03T09:30:00.003+10:00

The title says it all - what's better in the Monash Uni environment?

Central Computing Resources - Monash now has an eResearch Centre complete with projects to provide (or take over, depending on your viewpoint and knowledge of the history of facilities) disk, tape and compute resources like the monash sun grid.

ECSE dept. has the CTIE Pizza Cluster - which for most of it's life hasn't run as a grid cluster, but as a convienient set of compute nodes running specialist software and simulations.

So here we are with the chance to make changes:
Do we buy a few more rack mount boxes (perhaps sun x4150 dual quad core xeon's) or do we try and get the eResearch mob to provide boxes for our use resourced up to the level required by our non-grid software requirements?

Time for meetings and more meetings.

IPTV - so much confusion

2007-06-22T16:04:00.000+10:00

IPTV seems to be raising it's head more and more.
Confusion reigns!!!!!!!

Telco view: Triple or quad play = way to raise ARPU and retention rate
TV industry view: just a broadcast medium

Customer view: VOD or broadcast TV perhaps even internet on tv

Does multicast fit in?
Does IPv6 fit in?
Answer to both of above = yes.

I think I need to put a huge summary somewhere.

Or perhaps point them to IPTV magazine and totaltele and vendors like erricsson and alcatel and microsoft.

My research work since 1998 could be a useful starting point!
http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/EMERGE/multimedia/

And IPv6 and multicast integration with quicktime darwin streaming server = DSS and IPv6 enabled clients is also relevant.
http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/DSS-IPv6

I'd really like some stuff from thomson as well since they actually make set top boxes for iptv for many standards (microsoft, standards based .....) . Bits of thomson are near by to monash clayton.

old games on xp - hardware acceleration woes

2007-05-17T09:42:00.000+10:00

Remember:
Old games (2002 fisher price rescue heroes by knowledge adventure for example) use macromedia director and the projector (basically the whole game) will crash on start up after flashing black screen IFF you turn on full graphics card hardware acceleration!!!!!!!!

Moving it one or two notches to the left fixes it!!!!!!!!

Alternative approach apparently is to install using windows compatibility mode (either NT or 95/98) - I wonder if you can set the runtime to use windows compatibility mode or if it only works on install?

EG: This one fails!!!
fisher price rescue heroes Lava Landslide
Windows 98/ME/2000, Pentium II 266 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 24X CD-ROM, 16-bit color 640X480.

deepdan blog and google

2007-05-07T16:21:00.000+10:00

How does google choose which blogs to include in search?

It appears that you have to explicitly link to the blog to get google to include it in it's search.

So today I did that on my ancient http://users.monash.edu.au/~dan/
Which was first started while sitting in front of a decstation (no doubt fawlty1)

So, now the race is on, to see how often users.monash is cached by google and if this blog shows up.
Cached http://users.monash.edu.au/~dan/ has april13 date today, I wonder what the cycle is?

ldap in mozilla and IPv6

2007-03-21T12:30:00.000+11:00

The bug has existed for so long:
ipv6 enabled on winxp
thunderbird, mozilla etc address book hangs because the ldap connection tries to create IPv6 socket to IPv4 address.

So easy to fix, why hasn't it happened?
I'd fix it for them, but haven't followed it through.
I note some statements about IPv6 support in latest mozilla stuff, but so far no fix.

The ldap directory service attempts to
connect to the ipv6 socket ::ffff:xx.xx.xx.xx instead of the ipv4 socket
xx.xx.xx.xx

This is consistent with the last few years and on the thunderbird 3.0a1 that I
just downloaded/installed it still fails in the same way on a dual hosted ipv4
ipv6 machine.
Logging ldap:5 only produces the following:
0[274310]: nsLDAPOperation::SimpleBind(): called; bindName = '';
2348[278d2d0]: nsLDAPConnection::Run() entered

channel deepening port phillip bay victoria

2007-03-21T12:09:00.000+11:00

The newspaper reports today that the SEES will give the go ahead for channel deepening and dredging in port phillip bay, victoria.

As the SDFV secretary, I expected to see some prior notice - but we haven't received any thing through official channels.

What's the dredging going to mean for me?
Well it may interfere with some winter diving.
It's unlikely to interfere with summer diving (beach tourism too big for them to interfere with).
Long term should make no difference and if their predictions of fewer larger ships coming in are correct that means less ships to dodge while drift diving.

Alternatively it may absolutely ruin the ecology of port phillip bay - but the EES , SEES and monitoring process is meant to prevent that.
What's it going to cost POMC if they do stuff the bay? Is there an eco-bond?

Have to wait for the report I guess.

OSX 10.4.9 upgrade loginwindow crash

2007-03-21T12:04:00.000+11:00

Mac OSX 10.4.9 upgrade led to loginwindow crash.
Repeatedly put you back at login window after you type your password in.
Safe boot made no difference.
This is a new intel powerbook pro model - from about jan07.

crashreporter showed loginwindow crashing.

Solution: Remove users keychain file!!!!!
Tried all the other things first though - you know: remove user preferences, delete user Caches
delete System/Caches and System/Library/Caches

This seems to have been a problem that nobody else has identified - may be unique to this box.
Was set up by using the import/migration from a powerpc based unit during system set up.

Perhaps this should go on macfixit or macintouch or apple proper.

deepdan

2007-02-14T09:31:00.000+11:00

"This act of worship is called `deepdan', and the entire lake is illuminated" by candles.
So that could be why I can't get deepdan username on some systems like yahoo.

deepdan started as a name for me in forums back in the mid 80's to early 90's.
At the time I was considered a deep (air) diver.
Now the trimix community dives much deeper but I keep deepdan out of amusement.
I still prefer that 27-55m range though.
Which is where some of the best diving locally is.

viplus

2007-02-09T12:58:00.000+11:00

Why do scuba tanks fail viplus?
Passed in 2001 failed in 2007
Chances are the tanks sat around and probably had no more than 10-20 fills.

Then again, what do I care? my one failed and was replaced (for a fee) ages ago with one that doesn't need viplus.

expire on mammoth

2007-01-17T17:13:00.000+11:00

for a in $(ls /home) ; do echo $a; chage -l $a | grep 2007 ; done

And then change the end date of some of them using
usermod -e 2008-02-20 ttngu35

distribute_passwd+group+shadow+gshadow

Why press "i" during mammoth boot up?

2007-01-17T11:13:00.000+11:00

Why Oh Why?

redhat 9 system - swap partition on /dev/sda1 is commented out in /etc/fstab.

After major power fail, boot fails unless i is pressed for Interactive startup.

It hangs after enabling local filesystem quotas ...OK.
Which should have 'enabling swap space' as the next line showing on the console in a successful boot sequence.

So: is it related to having no swap partition/file?
Is it something else entirely?
sun cobalt lx50