January 2008 Archives

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:

21:18 PST | jfesler@goat:~/ % cat /etc/libmap.conf

[/usr/local/nagios/bin/nagios]
libpthread.so.2 libthr.so.2
libpthread.so libthr.so

[bin/nagios]
libpthread.so.2 libthr.so.2
libpthread.so libthr.so

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

Looks like a dictionary attack of spam is going out and using my email address as a forged from address.  The subject is in a windows-1251 character set.  Source is in *.ru, and destination appears (currently) to ukr.net, there may be others.  

A couple months ago, EngineYard poked me. Well, actually, Tom Mornini did, about EngineYard. Tom gave me my original break into this industry. As to the poking, this wasn't the first poke - but the company is now more mature, profitable, and growing like crazy. They reached the point where I could take the financial risk to join them, and once again work with that employer. I wasn't really looking for outside jobs, but this was a rare opportunity to work with Tom again.

Unfortunately, after spending a week there, I've come to the conclusion (more of a concussion) that the fit isn't quite right for me. The big Why? After spending a small bit of time at EngineYard, I wasn't comfortable with fit. This is not a reflection of EngineYard, but more a matter of spending time there that an interview alone doesn't really cover. I also found that going from guru to f.n.g. overnight is a bit of a shock - one that I'm not entirely ready to get over yet.

As such, I'm heading back to the big Y!. They are gracious enough to have me back (Thank you Adam, Raj, and David).

So, we recently rediscovered the gas fireplace in our house.  Once it warms up the fake log and starts radiating heat, it works nicely to keep downstairs warm (versus central heating, which keeps downstairs cold and upstairs hot).  The fireplace is convenient - just flip the light switch on the wall, and the gas starts flowing and gets ignited.

Sigh. Every useful medium for communication eventually gets ran over by spammers. In my case I'm now getting several Yahoo "spims" a day. Since my role at Yahoo is coming to a close, I've got little need to keep an official Y! client running. I do use Y! instant messenger for communicating with family members, and I do want to keep in touch with Yahoos.

My ultimate solution to the problem, is to use bitlbee, a multiprotocol messenging gateway that interfaces with IRC clients. On top of this, I've added a challenge/response system so that if someone messages me that is not in my contact list, they get an automatic response back, saying what they need to do to contact me. This can either be a keyword in the message, or alternately my email contact info is provided.

You are welcome to use my
bitlbee challenge/response patch; please drop me a note (jfesler@gigo.com) if you found it useful!

If you were sent here as a result of messaging me via yahoo or jabber, read on.

Spam has pervaded even instant messaging, to the point of it almost being preferable to disable entirely. However, I still have a great number of Yahoo contacts that I wish to remain in touch with. Anyone not on my contact list, is being sent to this page. Please don't take this personally :-)

You can still reach me via messenger, by simply using jason somewhere in the message. Any followup messages to me after that during that session will come through unimpeded. You'll need to resend the message that triggered the auto-reply for me to see it.

Alternately, you can email me - jfesler@gigo.com .

If you are interested in how I did this, see Challenge response for bitlbee created.