Synaptic Sycophant

Random Musings

Tuesday, October 18. 2011

Possessions Posted by Anonymous in Just Be at 09:11

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Possessions

Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age a great many of us are possessed by our possessions. - Mildred Lisette Norman

Friday, September 16. 2011

Secrets to Success - Character Traits Posted by Anonymous at 12:49

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Secrets to Success - Character Traits

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?_r=1&ref=magazine

Wednesday, February 4. 2009

Easy Amanda Client Install on ... Posted by Anonymous in Solaris at 14:41

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Easy Amanda Client Install on Solaris 8,9,10

First install BlastWave installer

http://www.blastwave.org/howto.html

install Amanda

/opt/csw/bin/pkgutil --install gzip

edit inetd.conf

vi /etc/inetd.conf

make sure amanda line looks like this

amanda dgram udp wait amanda /opt/csw/libexec/amandad amandad

on 8 and 9 restart inetd

/usr/bin/pkill -HUP inetd

on 10 install the inetd

inetconv

edit the amandahosts file

vi /opt/csw/etc/amanda/.amandahosts

change permissions

chmod 600 /opt/csw/etc/amanda/.amandahosts

install gzip

/opt/csw/bin/pkgutil --install gzip

Friday, January 16. 2009

Cisco VPN 3000 Error Posted by Anonymous in Cisco at 16:41

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Lan to Lan tunnel

43178 01/16/2009 17:41:39.290 SEV=4 IKE/100 RPT=2519 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Group [VPNC_Base_Group]
Received encrypted Oakley Main Mode packet with invalid payloads,
MsgId (0x00000000)

This can be caused by a client that does not support groups, use the default preshared key on the client.

Configuration/User Management/Base Group

Thursday, January 8. 2009

Simple NFS setup Posted by Anonymous at 12:14

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Simple NFS setup

edit /etc/exports

add a line like this

/opt/ 192.168.0.0/24(rw)

this shares /opt with the 192.168.0.0/24 subnet

On the client use

mount 192.168.0.25:/opt /opt

This mounts /opt on 192.168.0.25 to the clients /opt directory

/opt must exist

Tuesday, January 6. 2009

Xen Bridge Loops Posted by Anonymous in Cisco at 12:07

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Xen Bridge Loops

We discovered this problem after setting up 2 Xen boxes each with 2 network cards on separate switches. It seems like it should have worked, however whenever we activated the second card on the second box it would start throwing errors on the switch and shutdown the network.

Here is the solution. Basically you have to turn on spanning tree protocol on the Xen interfaces.

From the Xen Wiki. http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenBridgeLoop

Xen Bridge Loops

Contents

1. Bridged Network under Xen Overview
2. Why STP is turned off?
3. What's the problem?
4. Reference

This article describes the causing of bridge loops in dom0 and domU.

Bridged Network under Xen Overview

Xen uses bridged network by default. For detail, see: XenNetworking.

Why STP is turned off?

It will take longer for the bridge to "settle" when new vifs came online if STP is enabled. When DHCP is enabled, it may cause DHCP requests to time out.

On the other hand, turning off STP along with other parameters (hello/learning latencies) is part of a blanket effort to make the bridge dumb but efficient.

What's the problem?

This simple topology is not hiding bridges. If you intentionally set up soft bridges in the vm, loops may be established. Look at the following two scenarios:

There is a loop in switch0 and xenbr0:

+-----------------------------------+
| switch0 |
+-----+--------+----------+-----+---+
| | | |
+-----+--------+-----+ PC2 PC3
| | | |
| +---+--------+---+ |
| | | | | |
| | peth0 peth1 | |
| | | |
| | xenbr0 | |
| | | |
| | vif0.0 vif0.1 | |
| | | | | |
| +---+--------+---+ |
| | | |
| eth0 eth1 |
| |
| Domain0 |
+--------------------+

There is a loop in xenbr0 and vmbr0:

+----------------------------------------------+
| switch0 |
+-----+------------------------------+-----+---+
| | |
+-----+-------------------------+ PC2 PC3
| | |
| +---+-----------------------+ |
| | | | |
| | peth0 xenbr0 | |
| | | |
| | vif0.0 vif1.0 vif1.1 | |
| | | | | | |
| +---+------------+------+---+ |
| | | | |
| | +------+------+-----+
| | | | |
| | | +----+------+-----+
| | | | | | |
| | | | +--+------+---+ |
| | | | | | | | |
| eth0 | | | eth0 eth1 | |
| | | | | |
| | | | vmbr0 | |
| | | +-------------+ |
| Domain0 | | Domain1 |
+-----------+ +-----------------+

Both of them will cause the switch0 not working. Thus affect all PCs connected to switch0.

The solution is to enable STP on all switch and bridges. Note: only enable STP in one or two bridges is not enough.

Tuesday, January 6. 2009

Print Disk Partitions in Solaris Posted by Anonymous in Solaris at 11:41

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Print Disk Partitions in Solaris

To print out the partitions on a disk in Solaris, use the format command.

WARNING: this utility will also wipe out everything on your disk if you ask it to.

bash-3.00# format
Searching for disks...done

AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
0. c0t0d0
/pci@1f,4000/scsi@3/sd@0,0
1. c0t1d0
/pci@1f,4000/scsi@3/sd@1,0
2. c3t2d0
/pci@1f,4000/pci@4/SUNW,isptwo@4/sd@2,0
3. c3t3d0
/pci@1f,4000/pci@4/SUNW,isptwo@4/sd@3,0
Specify disk (enter its number): 3
selecting c3t3d0
[disk formatted]
Warning: Current Disk has mounted partitions.

FORMAT MENU:
disk - select a disk
type - select (define) a disk type
partition - select (define) a partition table
current - describe the current disk
format - format and analyze the disk
repair - repair a defective sector
label - write label to the disk
analyze - surface analysis
defect - defect list management
backup - search for backup labels
verify - read and display labels
save - save new disk/partition definitions
inquiry - show vendor, product and revision
volname - set 8-character volume name
! - execute , then return
quit
format> partition

PARTITION MENU:
0 - change `0' partition
1 - change `1' partition
2 - change `2' partition
3 - change `3' partition
4 - change `4' partition
5 - change `5' partition
6 - change `6' partition
7 - change `7' partition
select - select a predefined table
modify - modify a predefined partition table
name - name the current table
print - display the current table
label - write partition map and label to the disk
! - execute , then return
quit
partition> print
Current partition table (original):
Total disk cylinders available: 7506 + 2 (reserved cylinders)

Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks
0 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
1 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
2 backup wu 0 - 7505 16.86GB (7506/0/0) 35368272
3 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
4 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
5 unassigned wu 0 0 (0/0/0) 0
6 unassigned wm 0 - 7496 16.84GB (7497/0/0) 35325864
7 unassigned wm 7497 - 7505 20.71MB (9/0/0) 42408

partition> ^C

Tuesday, January 6. 2009

Cisco Router Cheat Sheet Adding ... Posted by Anonymous in Cisco at 11:36

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Cisco Router Cheat Sheet Adding ports to a Vlan

To change to privileged mode:

enable

Show existing VLAN's:

show vlan

Change to configuration mode mode:

configure terminal

Switch to configuration for port 3:

interface fastethernet 0/3

Change port to vlan 10:

switchport access vlan 10

Wednesday, November 28. 2007

The Building of a Social Networking ... Posted by Anonymous at 15:38

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The Building of a Social Networking Site, Part IV

The response on Yelp was negative at first. They hated the site, they hated me for putting the site on there.

Eventually after speaking with a few of them I found out specifically what it was about the site that they did not like. Also the fact that I had posted something on their site, in a city that I was not from, without a profile picture or any previous posts made them instantly label me as a spammer, which I guess I was.

It is often difficult when working on a site for to long to be able to see the faults in it. Or think that other people might not necessarily think it is as cool as you do.

So, time for a major site redesign.

Wednesday, November 28. 2007

The Building of a Social Networking ... Posted by Anonymous at 13:33

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The Building of a Social Networking Site, Part III

Pay per click was not doing much for me. So time to bring in the spam.

First step I sent out messages to all of my friends on MySpace, almost no hits.

Then I posted on Craigslist that I was starting a new site. This actually got me quite a few hits (40-50 per city) the first day. Occasionally Craigslist would delete my post but not very often. Though hits dropped off dramatically after the first day, so it didn't really matter.

From there I went to CityPages and found that I could post for free on their sites for each city. I tried this in a few cities and got a few hits.

I posted the site on some local forums related to music, this did fairly well but not as well as Craigslist.

Finally I posted to a site called www.Yelp.com. This got not many hits but a huge backlash.

Wednesday, November 28. 2007

The Building of a Social Networking ... Posted by Anonymous at 13:28

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The Building of a Social Networking Site, Part II

So I had the idea for a great site. However, nothing really happened until a couple of months ago when I finally started coding.

I got a site put together, I seeded it with some profiles of local bars, and started looking for good ways of marketing it.

I started by marketing the same way as I had all of my other sites. (None of which did too well)

Bring in Google Adwords. With a budget of $2 per day and localized marketing to the Des Moines area I was getting about 10 clicks per day. Not to bad but nothing too great.

On top of that I added Ask.com's pay per click advertising, which at the same budget of $2 per day didn't really do much of anything.

Wednesday, November 28. 2007

The Building of a Social Networking ... Posted by Anonymous at 13:15

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The Building of a Social Networking Site, Part I

I really meant to post more about my progress as I went along, but that didn't happen.

So to start from the beginning I will fill you in on what has happened so far.

A couple of years ago, I bought a domain name www.wamza.com thinking that it had kind of a cool sound to it, and 5 letter pronounceable .coms are at a premium. I don't remember exactly how I came up with the name, basically it involved playing with changing letters around until I found something that was available.

About the same time I was running a not so successful site called dsmiowa.com. It was meant to be kind of a communal city blog for Des Moines IA. I never did really put enough effort into promoting it and it quickly faded away. However, the one thing that I did get out of it was that I felt it would be a good idea to create a site for local bars.

After some bar time discussions with friends, I decided that bars by themselves were a bit boring and I needed to add in bands. Also, I decided that the real 'value add' to the whole thing was the spot where the bars, the bands, and the fans all connected.

Thus the idea of wamza was born.

Tuesday, April 10. 2007

Call to Civility Posted by Anonymous at 11:02

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Call to Civility

ARS Technica has a much better take on Tim O'Reilly's new code of conduct for bloggers.

Read the article here

This is all starting to beg the question, why is anyone even listening to Tim O`Reilly? I have a hard time listening to anyone that came up with a term as ridiculous as Web2.0. Seriously, do we really need another fluffy, pretentious, buzz word for corporate execs and other technically illiterate people to throw around? Especially since Web2.0 is just a theoretical, poorly defined, term to describe the natural progression of web site design and usage.

So in that same vein I offer you Web2.5 which will simply be the term for all websites using technology and ideas created after Jan. 1 2008.

Next time on buzzwords I hate, Enterprise Scalable.

Monday, April 9. 2007

Code of Ethics Posted by Anonymous at 15:48

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Code of Ethics

The New York Times reported today on an effort to create a set of guidelines to better facilitate communication in blogs. However this is unnecessary and ridiculous, this is another time when the simple guideline of if you don't like it don't read it should suffice. I agree that death threats, as some of the bloggers have received are over the top, and punishable by law. But, the petty insults and satirical sites like Violent Acres as much deserve to be part of the web as the egotistical `look how great my kid is` sites.

The comment was brought up that many bloggers are attacked for deleting comments and that the commenters feel that this violates their free speech. Shut UP. Posting your comment on someone else's site guarantees you nothing. If it is my site I will delete any comments that I feel like. If you feel that you need to make a statement start your own blog.

Lastly, the article brings up fact checking and source citing for blogs. I am sorry, but when did society become so dumbed down that they believe everything that they read. A blog is not a reputable source of information, and if you are too stupid to realize that you shouldn't be reading things on the internet. As the cost of entrance goes down, the reputability also goes down. When anyone can start a blog for free, then the blogs become nothing more than opinions.

Finally, grow up people. Mommy isn't there to keep the bullies from throwing insults, so maybe it is time to start growing a thicker hide.

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