As I rebooted my main system (but is it still?) I forced Norton to scan the drives of my "storage server". It was massively infected with this virus: Win32.pinfi. Fortunately it doesn't seem to do anything bad.
Thinking more and more about switching permanently to Gentoo Linux. This virus issue is pushing me away from Windows. Two applications are holding me back: RadioUserland and Adobe Premiere. I'll check if MoveableType and Cinerella can be up to the challenge.
6:40:00 PM Google It!comment [] - See Also: Micro$oftMultimediaRadio Trackback: trackback []
January 25th:
Still snowing!
Went taking pictures of the snow falling on Gion's temples this morning. Then went to Yodobashi to find longer screws to fix my new CPU fan. We spent almost 30 minutes there: 25 minutes to find somebody smart enough to understand our simple need and then 5 minutes for him to realise they didn't have this type of screws in stock. He recommended us to go to the "100-yens" shop. Went there, got it. Came back home, fix it and now you can read something new, at last, on this blog!
Now that my back-up script is working for me, I'll extend it to my wife's machine.
5:52:37 PM Google It!comment [] - See Also: JapanAMD Trackback: trackback []
Friday January 23rd:
I went to Yodobashi to get my fan. Right size but the screws are not long enough. I'll have to get longer screws...
I am still having problems with my backup program. It seems that there is an mv statement that is not doing its job. I tought initially it was cp that was taking too much memory but after closer inspection, it could be a limitation on the number of arguments of mv. However, even after replacing the mv statement by "find /backup/hourly.4 -exec mv {} /backup/hourly.2/.;", it doesn't work. I'll keep on poking around until I find the bug.
I found it! Bug in seq!!! I tried "seq 2 1" on one of my machine running "seq (coreutils) 5.0" and got the correct answer which is "2 1". When I tried the same thing on a machine running "seq (coreutils) 5.0.91", I got "" which is obviously wrong. I quick search on Googleconfirmed the bug (a.k.a badly documented feature). Four days of sleuthing for a mis-documented change to an utility. ^&^&*%^&%! One lesson to learn: "Never neglect a change in even the most simple command"
I read an interesting article about TCP/IP optimization in Linux. I'll try their tricks tomorrow.
5:10:54 PM Google It!comment [] - See Also: JapanGentooLinux Trackback: trackback []
Thursday January 22nd:
Today is Chinese New Year! Kung Hey fat Choi!
Very good article on slashdot about a guy running Linux on a Sun Ultra5. Make me feel like buying an used one next time I'll be in Akihabara!
5:06:51 PM Google It!comment [] - See Also: Linux Trackback: trackback []
Wednesday January 21st:
Snow! Big flakes of snow on Fukuoka. It lasted 45 minutes. Reminded me of Canada.
One annoying thing with man pages is that we can't search inside them while viewing them with xman.
Typo! In this article on can read "Before the game, the Flyers acquired defenseman Danny Markov from the Carolina Panthers for right wing Justin Williams. ". It should be the Carolina Huricanes, not the Panters. The later plays in the NFL, not the NHL... ;-)
India just announce that it bought an aircraft carrier and some planes. At the same time in Mumbai, the World Social Forum works on ways to nourish and quench the thirst of the poorest of the planet. One country, two "priorities": Bad choices and bad timing from the Government of India. It should have use the platform offered by this forum to announce initiatives to help its poors...
5:06:20 PM Google It!comment [] - See Also: JapanLinuxPolitics Trackback: trackback []
Monday January 19th:
I modified one on my Gentoo box to hold the tree for all the Gentoo boxes of my network (instructions here). It's a good way to save bandwidth for me and to reduce the load on the Gentoo's servers.
5:05:02 PM Google It!comment [] - See Also: Gentoo Trackback: trackback []
Thursday January 15th:
I finished rebuilding my proxy/back-up server. I am almost at the same point I was before it crashed.
4:59:12 PM Google It!comment [] - See Also: Gentoo Trackback: trackback []
Tuesday January 13th and Wednesday January 14th:
Upgraded 3 machines from OpenMosix 2.4.22 ro 2.4.22-r3 and one (the duallie) from 2.4.22 to OpenMosix 2.4.22-r3. Things went well for two of the three uniprocesors.
The duallie (based on an ASUS P2B-DS) was very unstable. I'll have to repatch the kernel and recompile it. Meanwhile, I switched back to 2.4.22 which has been rock-solid.
The 4th machine litterally melted away minutes after the upgrade. I tried to reboot, but the root file system was corrupted: I ran fsck.ext3 but it told me that the root inode was corrupted (not a directory?). I had to take the drive out of the machine, into another one and copy whatever I could recover. I'll use what I recovered to rebuild the machine from scratch later today. At least I won't have to re-edit all the config files from scratch. Argh!!!!!
I'll have to postpone the installation of the three last P2 until this one is done because it acts as a proxy, a back-up server and a unified .ebuild store for all my Gentoo machines. I hope I'll have time over the week-end. Lesson to be learned: back-up your back-up machine!
I ordered my tickets for my short holidays at the end of January. I'll be in Kuala Lumpur for 4-5 days.
4:57:27 PM Google It!comment [] - See Also: OpenMosixGentooPersonal Trackback: trackback []
Monday January 12th:
Busy day today! We reorganised all the boxes on the shelves. Took out of service 3 P166 and will replace them by 3 P2-350. Changed the KVM from a 4 ports (no-name low-end Taiwan-made one) to an 8-ports (Aten Master View plus CS-9138).The office look much cleaner now!
4:54:39 PM Google It!comment [] - See Also: Personal Trackback: trackback []
Sunday January 11th:
Went to Yodobashi to order a fan to replace the one that doesn't spin anymore atop of one of my AMD Athlon MP1800+. I should get it by the 17th. Couldn't find a 18GB-10K-68pin SCSI disk. I'll have to get a 36GB instead. I'll pick one up at Bic Camera on Friday.
4:47:27 PM Google It!comment [] - See Also: AMDRAID Trackback: trackback []
