Misc Updates

Weather: Switched on the Heating and put on wool socks.
Work: Tried to hack the Windows Installation on my Workstation (I didn’t boot Windows for more than a year and forgot the Administrator password) but failed.
Computers: jim.arved.de is now my new Mailserver, works great so far.
Reading: Amelie Nothomb – “Cosm�tique de l’ennemi” Great book for all people that haven’t talked to their evil alter-ego recently. Of course i read the german translation, as my french is too bad to read a book. It looks like there is no english translation available yet.
Wikipedia: Uploaded two pictures from Potsdam into the german Wikipedia.
Charlottenhof palace and the Roman Villas in the Park of Sanssouci palace

Addicted to cvs

19:28 <@Pav> any news on freeze? when it’s going away?
19:28 < ryam> gettin cold eh?
19:29 <@Pav> no but my fingers are itching to commit 🙂
19:29 <@reffie> haha
19:29 <@reffie> addicted to commits
19:30 <@Pav> i was addicted to gambling but i retrained on cvs
19:31 <@reffie> !
19:31 < ryam> they do have a lot in common.. mind you
19:31 <@Pav> yes you never win
20:04 <@arved> lol
20:05 < ryam> that depends on how many players are in god mode
20:08 <@Pav> having kris around is enough

Cisco 2940 crash

My desktop switch, a 2940 crashed today with the following output:

rom vtp function vtp_get_domain_info: No such domain
-Traceback= 803C9EDC 8038279C 80387918 80382AD0 80389998 8057FC54 80388100 803878AC 803841A8 80384C38 801C51CC 801C51B8
8w1d: ../src-calhoun/strata_stats.c at line 137: can’t not push event list
8w1d: ../src-calhoun/strata_stats.c at line 137: can’t not push event list
8w1d: ../src-calhoun/strata_stats.c at line 137: can’t not push event list
8w1d: ../src-calhoun/strata_stats.c at line 137: can’t not push event list
8w1d: ../src-calhoun/strata_stats.c at line 137: can’t not push event list
8w1d: ../src-calhoun/strata_stats.c at line 137: can’t not push event list
8w1d: ../src-calhoun/strata_stats.c at line 137: can’t not push event list
8w1d: ../src-calhoun/strata_stats.c at line 137: can’t not push event list
8w1d: ../src-calhoun/strata_stats.c at line 137: can’t not push event list
8w1d: ../src-calhoun/strata_stats.c at line 137: can’t not push event list
8w1d: ../src-calhoun/strata_stats.c at line 137: can’t not push event list
8w1d: %SYS-2-MALLOCFAIL: Memory allocation of 140 bytes failed from 0x801CDD6C,alignment 0
Pool: Processor Free: 140 Cause: Not enough free memory
Alternate Pool: I/O Free: 56 Cause: Not enough free memory
-Process= “Calhoun Statistics Process”, ipl= 0, pid= 21
-Traceback= 801CB320 801CD320 801CDD74 801DB914 801DB9C8 802D7C10 802D90C8 802D9690 801C51CC 801C51B8

Berlin impressions

Here are some pictures from my Berlin journey two weeks ago:
DSCN3461.JPG
This sign tells the people driving in a public transport bus, that there is an emergenty entrance. I have no idea why there needs to be an emergency _entrance_ and how it helps against racism and would be glad if someone could enlighten me.
DSCN3561.JPG
Here we have a picture of the “Berlin wall” opposite of the Berlin wall museum.
You can see that the concrete is still fresh and there is no graffiti on it. Looks like too many tourists stole a piece of the “original” Berlin Wall, so the museum had to build a new one.

Not my day

Today is not my day. My new computer arrived on Monday, and I tried today to install it via floppies. As usual 90% of the Floppies are broken. Not as usual FreeBSD (4.10, 5.2.1, 5.3-BETA) refused to install on the machine. Either it errors out during newfs, claims the disk is too somall or fails to load the mfsroot during boot.
I then installed OpenBSD 3.5, which worked without a problem, but OpenBSD does not support the re(4) NIC.
I tried buying an external CD-ROM enclosure, but the Digitus I bought does not work, neither with a Lite-On nor an Aopen CD-ROM drive.
I decided to stop fighting with my computers for today and insted finish reading Terry Pratchett’s “Monstrous Regiment”.

Grilled fly

Yesterday, when I went to bed, I switched on my bedside lamp. A few minutes later i noticed a strange smell and a few moments later i had to open all windows. First I thought my lamp was dying but than i noticed that a fly scrabbled into the halogen lamp and was now grilled.
I really wish you that you never have to smell something like that.

I’m back

I am back from Berlin. I will write about my journey when I recovered and sorted the photos.
I managed to kill the default route of my mailserver when I switched off the Wireless LAN, so my email bounced for two days, but it should be working again now.

Backup

My current backup strategy is to upload some stuff on my shell accounts and copy other stuff on my external Firwire Harddisk.
Today I tried to do a backup from my Epia system, which has no firewire, so i connected the harddisk via USB. Did you remember that USB in FreeBSD sucks? Of course hotplugging didn’t work and results in bazillion messages on the console:

Sep 4 10:14:16 via kernel: umass0: BBB reset failed, IOERROR
Sep 4 10:14:16 via kernel: umass0: BBB bulk-in clear stall failed, IOERROR
Sep 4 10:14:16 via kernel: umass0: BBB bulk-out clear stall failed, IOERROR

and hanging of every disk access. After the reboot the disk worked, I was able to dump the / filesystem. But when i tried to dump the /usr filesystem the box paniced.
Now I am looking for a better (reliable working) way to backup this system since Firewire is not an option.
Does anybody of you use tape backups? I got a DDS3-tape drive, but I never used it, as I need to get tapes somewhere. Should I try to install a professional backup solution like bacula? Or should I just use rsync to copy stuff from the Hard Disk to another machine.

METAR data

I tried to write my own weather plugin similar to the wordpress plugin Hendrik uses.
I ended fixing Jeremey Zawodny’s p5-Geo-METAR plugin.
I have learned that americans measure air pressure in inches of mercury.
And I have learned a lot more about the METAR format, a standard for weather reports, than I wanted to know.
Sampsa Toivanen wrote a nice overview.
More Useful links:

I committed a first patch to the FreeBSD port.
But then I got tired and installed the ugly php code of the WordPress plugin.