Entries tagged with “screwballs” from Garbage In, Garbage Out

After upgrading to FreeBSD 6.3 (from 6.2), my nagios setup kept going to 100% cpu over and over. There has been recent discussion and even patches posted on the FreeBSD list but those didn't help so much.

However, this did:

Restart nagios, then use lsof to verify that it linked to libthr instead of libpthread. (OR .. just check your CPU)

Some of the things we want to watch are... region 2 *only*. Grr!

Here's a cheap DVD player ($41 at Amazon - and with Amazon Prime, it was delivered free!), that can play discs from any region. It also can play PAL movies on my NTSC tv. The DVD player *is* cheap - the remote is a peice of crap, and the surround sound output is coax only, no optical. But, it does seem to work, and for the price it was worth a gamble for me.

To make it region code free follow these instruction:

• 1. Turn on the unit
  
• 2. Open the loading tray
  
• 3. Press the "Setup" button on the remote
  
• 4. Navigate to the "Preferences" page using the right arrow key
  
• 5. Press the down arrow once to enter the Preference page
  
• 5. Enter 138931 on the remote
  
• 6. You will now see the current region code displayed
  
• 7. Use the Up/Down arrow keys to select the region required or "0" for all regions
  
• 8. Press the "Play" button on the remote
  

This entry has been tagged "screwballs" in honor of the MPAA.

Using LSI's megaraid? Find your system bogging down every 4h? Could be PR.

sudo megarc -stopPR -a0
sudo megarc -enPRman -a0

If anyone finds docs on megarc that don't absolutely suck, please let me know.

Dear Congress

Thank you, for the extra daylight BBQ'ing time being provided to me and my family. We'll enjoy the great grub, spend some quality time together, and reminisce about the pain and suffering you've caused the IT industry, compounded by well meaning but too many levels removed management, who'd rather ignore reason and just arbitrarily overreact on a global level. As an IT professional, I have also appreciated the break from getting real work done, and instead focussing on helping you with your agenda.

I look forward to your next energy saving experiment.

Apparently some kind of mail is being sent in my name; something about UPS and/or Mailboxes Etc.
If you received one of those, can you please forward a copy (with headers if you know how) to postmaster@gigo.com. Once I've seen a few I'll update this entry with whatever I can find out
In any case, any email you receive out of the blue from me or my domain about UPS, please consider it to be illegitimate.

Due to the past security issues with Gallery 1, the open security issues with Gallery 2, and the philosphy that the Gallery dev team takes with regards to Gallery, I am pulling support for it on the gigo.com server.

Sigh. So, because, working from when I wake up till I pass out on this big ass move at work doesn't suck enough..

Friday, my wife went out to take the kids to school . She came back in, and notified me that the wheels were stolen. As in, someone jacked the car, detached the wheels, and took'em. Turns out that the Honda price for those is astrofuckingnomical. They also took the rear light assemblies while they were at it (but they were nice enough to not cut the cables, they nicely detached the harnesses - thanks, whoever you are!).

So, naively, I called the Insurance folk. They have the body shop send a truck out, and specifically mention the 0-wheels issue. OF course, the flat bed comes out, and no way to lift the car, short of sliding it on its belly. I declined their services. Insurance agent was suprised; then called their internal tow service. They at least told her up front "no can do". In the end, I had to go deal with buying the new wheels and tires and jack and all that crap, to get the car mobile again. And now it is at the shop, getting checked out thoroughly, and getting the light clusters replaced.

I think my next car needs to have a rocket inside but look like a total beater on the outside.
Bright yellow, of course, but beater.

or, Engineering from the Depths of Hell

Ah, anything to save a buck. Including, cheaper ways to remotely access your gear. IPMI is able to handle machine resets, power on/off, and even some basic monitoring of the health of the machine. This sounds great! Except, it is like getting married and you find out about the dark secrets of the inlaws after you've already tied the knot.

These are the quirks on a recent batch of gear I've ran across. (I can't mention names, sorry.)

1. IPMI is not configurable in the bios with a keyboard. That'd be too easy.
2. IPMI is configurable via DOS. Well, that's something, I guess.
3. IPMI requires an IP address. By default, it'll DHCP for one. That's cool. If your DHCP server is not responding, it'll just use the last known IP. That's not cool, if you changed networks, or it never had one. Now, the IPMI server is sending out arp requests for an address it should not own.
4. If you want to plan what IP is owned by what IPMI gear, you better have your DHCP server set up in advance. Depending on your vendor and quantity, maybe this is ok. Or.. Not.
5. Conflicting IP's suck, if the address IPMI is spewing arp for, happens to be owned by someone else.
6. Wrong IP's suck, since.. well, you probably can't reach them, in order to do things like power cycle the box remotely.
7. Speaking of suck, what is with this gratuitous arp crap, sending out a grat arp once a second? On small networks, I guess, most people would never notice. On larger networks, having every box you have sending out arp, your core network infrastructure is gonna get pissy. By pissy, I mean, fall to its knees and commit sepuku.
8. Boxes with power but off, still arp. You plugged me in - you fool!
9. IPMI is remotely reprogrammable. Cool. If you can reach it. If it hasn't already destroyed your network. If it has an IP you expect.

On a related note, hey, that visit to DC I took recently was fun!

Kwality with a K folks! Gallery upgraded.. again.
Anyone have a good altenative to
Gallery, that is written with security in mind?

"Gallery" upgraded for all known instances on the gigo.com server. Hopefully this doesn't break anything for anyone!

If you're hosting "gallery" on my server, I had to do an emergency upgrade on all of your gallery instances.

http://gigo.com/ftp/pub/src/mfpitgdav.pl

Filter for Verisign's wildcarding of *.net/*.com . This will prevent senders from using bogus "MAIL FROM:" addresses that wildcard resolve to verisign. Easy to extend to other types of wildcarding entities like .cc or .tv. (This is a postfix policy server)