Present Perfect

Ok, so the router I had to configure seems to do it's work. I should adjust some of the threshold, because this morning at work I got twenty e-mails from a one hour period telling me the router had switched to ISDN and back.

In any case, it works, so I can be happy, the boss can be happy, and I won't get calls at 5.15 AM. All in all, not bad.

This weekend I started working on converting the Dave/Dina box to Red Hat 7.2. One of the goals would be to allow for re-installs of selected partitions. Right now, the box has two "production" partitions, alpha and omega, and two development partitions, dev1 and dev2.

The idea here is that there will always be at least one working partition which is not touched. New stuff is installed on the other production partition. The first dev partition is used to actually create the RPM's with all of the stuff you need to compile them. The second dev partition is used to try out new stuff all of the time, on top of the current base install.

One of the hassles in the past was that I could not figure out how to put multiple KickStart configuration files in the boot disk. Now that I've figured that out (you have to get the kickstart files inside of the initrd.img file system and give an extra option to the kernel in syslinux.cfg) I've been able to create a boot disk which allows you to do a fresh install of the whole disk, or only re-install one of the partitions.

Now I just have to weed out the package selection (Red Hat 7.2 installs so much these days) and get the post-configuration stuff right. I've also allowed myself the time to make some sort of ASCII "art" as well ;-)

Now I have to reconfigure and recompile the kernel. Can anyone tell me if the sources installed in the kernel-sources package are the redhat-patched versions, or if they get installed as clean kernel sources ? Or is there an easy way to recompile the kernel through the RPM, but with my .config file ?

Ok, so the router I had to configure seems to do it's work. I should adjust some of the threshold, because this morning at work I got twenty e-mails from...

We've been having major network problems at work lately : our ADSL went bonkers with outside ping times of over 13 seconds, our leased line connection couldn't be used, and the Windows 2000 server started acting up, including the first blue screen on this machine in about a year and a half.

So I finally convinced my boss to let me install a dedicated linux router to handle all of this stuff, and put an ISDN modem and regular modem in that to be brought up when the standard ADSL fails.

I had no idea that the basics would be this easy : my boss gave me an old pentium he still had lying around. I plunked in the Red Hat 7.2 disc, booted, installed packages, gave it some IP info, and put it on the net. Then I just did echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward, gave my own machine this new machine as a gateway, and hey presto ! It worked.

Right now I'm going to a few routing HOWTO's, to learn some more on how to control bandwidth and stuff. With good reason : one of the main reasons the ADSL connection went fully saturated is because someone here thought it was a good idea to send a 2.5 MB attachment to 70 different people. Some people should be shot for sending more mail MB's in one mail than I do in a whole lifetime !

And I should be shot for having allowed this behaviour in the first place, but one can go insane listening to whining of marketing people who really insist on sending 5MB+ powerpoint presentationts through e-mail. And they make me feel like a dinosaur trying to explain them why e-mail shouldn't be used for this ...

We've been having major network problems at work lately : our ADSL went bonkers with outside ping times of over 13 seconds, our leased line connection couldn't be used, and...

My home machine's hard drive had been acting flaky as of late. When booting up, sometimes the drive wouldn't spin up and would not be recognized in the BIOS some of the times. Not that terrifying, but nothing you trust to let run for months either.

To be fair, I'd more suspect the power supply to be at fault, but since I needed an extra hard drive for the Dave/Dina box anyway, since the 80 GB in that are pretty much used up, I went and bought a new 40 GB anyway. So all I had to do was copy that drive on the new one, installing the new Red Hat 7.2 as I went along.

This would also allow me to start using rh72 for the Dave/Dina box as well.

Anyways, I used ddto transfer the Windows Millenium partition I still use for games like Metal Gear and for CoolEdit. I allocated a 0.5 GB partition for MS-DOS (Sometimes I get the urge to re-play Wing Commander or Privateer or Sierragames), and I made space for a /boot partition, a / partition, a /home partition, a second / partition for future installs (I'm thinking of trying out Debian), and some swap space.

Here's some things I learnt :

• Using mkfs.vfat is just *NOT* a good way to create FAT partitions. I could only create file systems with 64k clusters, which Windows wouldn't even scandisk ! Since I wanted to re-install Me over the copied partition to make sure it worked, but it insists on running scandisk, that didn't work.
• Windows sucks at estimating copy time. I copied all of my data drive (25 GB), it started out thinking it would last 15 minutes, but then quickly rose to 180 minutes, and then alternating between the two regularly depending on the file size of the file currently being copied. In the end it lasted 6 hours.
• Use fdisk in Windows to check if the partitions you allocated are actually visible the way you want them to be. The first time I copied all of my data, I hadn't noticed that it didn't recognize the logical partition in the extended partition the way it should. So I formatted it, copied all of the data, and after rebooting I noticed I had erased my new /home partition.

So, for future reference, the quickest way to make sure you're doing it right is :

• first allocate your partitions from Linux
• install your Windows partition (or use dd if you have a previous Windows partition and you've allocated EXACTLY the right amount of space, otherwise it's a waste)
• format your data partition under Windows, MAKING SURE fdisk has the right idea of what your data partition is
• copy a few of your data files from your old partition to the new
• install Linux
• check from Linux that your Windows partitions are accessible and OK.
• copy your /home directory
• go back to Windows and copy the rest of your data. Do this just before going to work. If you're lucky it'll be ready by the time you get home.

And I thought it would be a relatively hands-off, one day process. *SIGH*

My home machine's hard drive had been acting flaky as of late. When booting up, sometimes the drive wouldn't spin up and would not be recognized in the BIOS some...

Had to get up at 1 AM because I couldn't sleep and my phone had rung twice. Good thing I did so, because it seemed like the radio station I work for was dropping out intermittently. Sounded like a sync issue.

Connected with the studio PC from my house (thank god for laptops and ADSL) and tried various ways of getting the on-air software to listen to me. Then made a smart move by checking the internet stream - they were sounding fine, so the on-air software, Zenon, wasn't to blame.

Ok, so our signal gets broadcasted on FM through satellite receivers. Our signal travels to London and back through satellite. Call someone from the satellite provider at 2 AM here - no luck. Called someone in London. He answered the phone and called up a technician. So I had someone called out of bed ;)

So I had to wait half an hour for the technician to arrive in London at 2 AM at night. Times like that make you scratch an itch. I wanted to play Doom on my Dave/Dina box, but last time around the joystick acted flakey.

Here's what I learnt in that short half an hour :

• Prboom, a doom port, uses SDL, which is A Good Thing (TM).
• Joystick configuration is done through some user-space tools working directly with the kernel driver.
• If I had read the docs in the kernel correctly, I would have known that I was using the wrong module. I have a Logitech gamepad, with two axes and eight buttons. On loading the analog module, it told me I had four buttons and four axes. I never bothered to check that, and playing Doom didn't actually work because the calibration was way off and button 1 kept me shooting until I pushed it again (kinda like an unwanted autofire)
• I should use the adi module for my gamepad
• the joystick calibration stuff is cool, but I would have liked the software to tell me to PRESS THE BUTTON to do the next step. I was sitting idle in front of my television for two minutes before I realized it was waiting for me.
• It's really hard playing Doom with a joypad when it's about 12 degrees Celsius and your hands are shaking and you really want to get to bed.

So I did something useful in a short amount of time. The downside is, the technician now tells me there is a problem with our satellite feed in London, and the other radio stations on that satellite feed are having the same problem, and he probably won't be able to reach someone until 10 o'clock in the morning ! And we start live broadcasting at 6 AM. I told him to keep trying and call me, anytime.

I've called my boss to say I'm sleeping late tomorrow ;)

Had to get up at 1 AM because I couldn't sleep and my phone had rung twice. Good thing I did so, because it seemed like the radio station I...

Started looking for voice recognition software. Yes, I want to control my Dave/Dina box with my voice ! The goal is to sit on the couch all day, talk to my tv and never get up, except to get beer (*).

I started out with cvoicecontrol. I got it to work surprisingly fast on my desktop machine. Download the program, add an #include <float.h> to the source (FLT_MAX was undefined), run a microphone config program (which tells you to talk and shut up at selected times), run a model editor program (where you define what you will say and what the program needs to launch), and then start up.

In five minutes I was off shouting "Slashdot" and "Chat" into my microphone, and most of the times it actually did what I wanted !

So when I came home last night, the goal was to install it on the Dave/Dina box and watch Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but ONLY by using the microphone.

Big mistake. I installed everything, did everything four times, but the damn thing has a mind of it's own. It didn't start anything. My housebrothers must have thought I'd gone mad because I was shouting "Buffy" more than fifty times in a row. They now I have a craving, but was it this bad ?

Anyways, I'll try again with a better microphone. It hardly records anything, except for b's and p's, on which it distorts.

And of course, there are other voice recognition apps...

(*) Personal Tidbit Fact #490139 : Actually, that's a lie. I don't drink beer.

Started looking for voice recognition software. Yes, I want to control my Dave/Dina box with my voice ! The goal is to sit on the couch all day, talk to...