Clowns will eat me

[unixronin]

Can't sleep.  :p

I had an amusing time today, for some values of amusing.  Which is to say, I was hauling monitors and other hardware around to get connected into minbar and nijo, after applying the latest Solaris 9 recommended patch cluster, which hosed /etc/init.d/sshd and /etc/init.d/samba by making the blind assumption that if you're running sshd and Samba, well, you just MUST be running Sun's sshd and Sun's Samba package, it's inconceivable that you could be running anything else, and so it won't matter if we just overwrite the startup files and point them at where the Sun versions should be, right?  Unfortunately, Sun's sshd doesn't play nicely with others, and in particular with OpenSSH (which I use universally), which left me completely locked out of both Solaris 9 boxen until I could hook up a physical console.  (I took the Bay switch and the fully configured¹ Ultra2 out of the rack for now to make room to sit a monitor in there, and didn't put them back for the time being because they're not in use anyway.)

During the course of this venture, I also hit frustration point and hauled the ten or eleven variously-broken boxes of assorted cables and stuff out into the middle of the office floor, where the Silly Goose and I spent about an hour sorting everything, coiling cables, and packing them into about six or seven decently usable boxes, labelling the boxes, and putting things away in a semblance of order.

Then we all went off to bed early, as two of the three girls have school tomorrow.  I've been reading The Hobbit to Wen the Eternally Surprised as a bedtime story recently, one chapter a night, except for the first chapter, which got split into two because it's long.  And, as it turns out, Chapter 5 tonight, which I stopped about half-way through because she just wasn't paying attention.

I then totally failed to sleep.  So I came downstairs, logged in, rewrote some sound-management code, and generally dinked around.  I brought myself a big mug of warm milk, spiked with Bailey's well, actually, Bushmills' Irish Cream, but found there wasn't enough left in the bottle to really flavor the milk.

As a final spasm of productivity, I found a reply back in my inbox from the outfit in Hawaii that actually lists the silicone/teflon sealing gasket for my Innova stainless-steel pressure cooker, saying that they confirmed their supplier had the Innova parts in stock in limited quantities.  So I started to order one, then reconsidered and made it two.  It's a very good pressure cooker, which I've had about twelve years, but apparently a few years back, Innova moved their production from Malaysia to China and Korea. Also apparently, in the aftermath of that change, the product quality went to hell, sales tanked, and the company went under.  I'd about resigned myself to having to buy a new pressure cooker due to inability to get a replacement for the sealing gasket, which needs replacing, until I tracked these down at the Hawaiian outfit.

Still don't know how I'm going to sleep.

[1]  The Ultra2 has 2GB of RAM and dual 400MHz CPUs.  Nice box, but it's SBUS.  Frankly, I'd swap it into service in place of minbar, the Ultra30, except that being an Ultra30, minbar has faster SCSI with better throughput.  Minbar has only a single 250MHz CPU and only 512MB of RAM though.  Since it's my NFS/Samba server, the disk throughput is more important (it can stream data off its disk arrays fast enough to saturate my 100Mbit network).

Comments

[tomatoe333.livejournal.com]

after applying the latest Solaris 9 recommended patch cluster, which hosed /etc/init.d/sshd and /etc/init.d/samba by making the blind assumption that if you're running sshd and Samba, well, you just MUST be running Sun's sshd and Sun's Samba package, it's inconceivable that you could be running anything else, and so it won't matter if we just overwrite the startup files and point them at where the Sun versions should be, right?

Been there, got bitten by that.

The "fix" is to pkgrm the Sun ssh and samba packages. If the packages aren't there, the patch cluster won't try to install the patches for them.

[bardricks227.livejournal.com]

The next time you have trouble sleeping, try taking a warm bath, drinking warm milk, turn off the TV in your bedroom, turn off the lights, light a chamomile scented candle and read an inspiring book.

The chamomile scented candle really works, I fall asleep within ten minutes!

Hope this helps :)

Bardo
www.findmypaydayloan.com (https://www.findmypaydayloan.com/Default.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

We don't have a TV in the bedroom. Having one there is a bad idea in the first place. And who sleeps with the lights on...?

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

Wen sleeps with the lights on. :-)

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

I don't know Solaris but I got pissed at a package and was too lazy to find out what part of it to evicerate so I just chattr -i file_2_save. ;)

I now have three computers I want to connect. I am perturbed enough with the DLink router I have to want a much nicer one. I want the ability to forward ports, VPN etc. What would be a good one? I may be interested in just running a PC in the future but for now a semi-flexible appliance solution would be what I'm after now.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

If you don't want a fully-configurable PC, have you considered a Linksys router with third-party firmware?

(Disclaimer: You didn't specify whether you wanted wireless capability, and I don't know if third-party firmware such as OpenWRT exists for any wired-only consumer routers.)

For reference, my network core router is a Sun Ultra5 running OpenBSD. It works well, is trouble-free, and can be easily configured for whatever I need it to do. I don't have a spare Ultra5 though.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Asking around, I now have at least one person who reports success getting a WRT54G with OpenWRT firmware to work with OpenVPN. (He offers his configuration notes if you need them.)

I also have another opinion stating that pretty much all the $30-$50 consumer appliances are pretty useless, and if you want something reasonably decent — a Cisco 851 or a SonicWall TZ150 — you're looking at spending around $250. The "business-class" appliances such as the Linksys RVL200 and the Netgear FVS318 aren't significantly better than the consumer appliances.

[bfudlmint.livejournal.com]

Yoiu have a spare 2gigs of memory for a SunU2 sitting unused? I would ask for it but I am really considering chucking all my Sun equipment since I don't use it.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Uh, I don't exactly have a spare 2G of U2 RAM sitting around. I have a U2 with 2G of RAM in it that we haven't gotten around to putting into service yet, but we do intend to do so at some point.