I have downloaded the new MT v3.16 but have not upgraded yet, I've got some time coming up at work soon with not much on so I will probably get bored and get around to doing it then.
In doing so, some of the other outstanding issues will probably get resolved, such as fixing MT-Blacklist.
A new version of MT has recently been released which mainly addresses quite a number of issues that had been previously reported. Check out the full list of changes and fixes here and the known issues list here. Check out the official release statement, which provides some more information. I'll be upgrading shortly.
I've always thought that this is a limitation of certain sites, but it seems that the limit on the number of downloads from the same site at any time is not usually limited by the source HTTP server, but rather by IE.
It complies with the RFC 2616 by limiting the amount per site to 2. I find this annoying, as a lot of the time I start more than two and could not automate the downloading of them all without using a 3rd party application. It seems you can change IE so that you can download more and although this would break the RFC, in this instance it's nothing to worry about.
Check out the article to change the value to a higher one, pointed out on the IE Blog. Another interesting tip is to always ensure you put a trailing "/" at the end of a URL as a URL without one will result in a 301 being sent to the URL with a "/" at the end anyway.
If you'd like to see what the next generation of X Windows rendering will probably be like, check out some of the videos from Seth Nickell. They remind my of Project Looking Glass a little, which is also nice eye candy. Combining the best of both would see a really great desktop develop. A desktop that looks better, really helps to attract more people that are not anything but a Windows user, over to the other side and of course they then discover a whole lot more is possible.
Even though I'm running MT v3.14, it seems that mt-comments.cgi is still causing a high load from comment spam attempts even though comments from users that are not registered are not currently enabled. I've been meaning to sort out MT-BL as I've not been able to get it working since upgrading to MT v3 as I'm experiencing a strange error I've not been able to figure out. I'll get it posted on the forum and hopefully get it resolved at which point I can enable the ability for unregistered users to post comments once more.
The load issues may also be sorted out once MT-BL is up and running again. I thought all of the load issues had been resolved, but obviously that is not the case in relation to comment posting and even when non registered user commenting is disabled.
Sun is taking the first steps to open the Solaris code to the public. Already you can find the code to DTrace on the Open Solaris site and more to follow. There are a number of reasons for the decision to open up the operating system but for the community it's mostly an all win situation.
For example, more eyes looking over the code will help with the elimination of bugs and security issues because of them. There are of course other advantages, with regards to security it may well work both ways as some potentially dangerous bugs might be found and proof of concept exploits could be developed without Sun being informed.
They could render customer systems vulnerable to attack and although this is the case anyway with any open or closed system, because the opening of the source is taking place now the initial influx of bugs that are identified could be quite high rather than being more spread out as would be the case with open source projects. Given the past record of Solaris security, I'll bet there are quite a few problems identified.
DTrace is part of Solaris 10 and one of the main new features. The code is already available for download and more code will be appearing over the coming months. Sun is hoping that this will give more people the opportunity to develop applications for Solaris and allow a more community based approach. In the past it has always been a pain getting things to work under Solaris, things should now change and with more applications being developed and supported we'll see more people using it on desktop systems.
More Sun products should see the light of the open source treatment in the future too. As we have seen in the past, if one company does something they all do. The question is, will we see the same actions from other big software developers with regards to opening the source code to the public, for their major software products?
I'm a proud user of Soulseek but recently I've been having problems that although have been reported, are annoying. It seem that Soulseek is now not compatible with a number of other applications. Some of the applications such as Netlimiter are required to be used with certain programs that use all of the available upstream bandwidth unless they are limited.
When you have ADSL, programs that don't have built in limiters are a problem so using Netlimiter or an alternative application to reserve a small amount of upstream bandwidth is required. Using Netlimiter poses a problem for me when Soulseek is no longer compatible with it. I don't want to have to change application, but at the moment Soulseek keeps exiting after a while.
I'm going to try updating as a new build has been released. Hopefully that might resolve the issues that I and others have been having. It shows you how much you rely on something when it stops working.
For some reason Veritas NetBackup has been ignoring the rules that I have set in place to exclude certain files such as logs from the daily incremental backup schedule. Over 200 megabytes of compressed data was being backed up on a daily basis which was way too much considering a backup of most of that data is was not required.
As far as I'm aware the configuration allows files to be excluded regardless of path & just by name but that does not appear to have been working. It looks like the full path must be supplied and then any wildcards can be used if required.
I've updated the configuration to include the full paths for the exclusions, which now falls in line with the full paths which were setup in the include file. It makes sense, but could create a lot more work when creating large backup policies of the same exclusions of the same files in different locations in the directory structure.
Another important thing to note is that when including a number of directories so that the directories are not lost when a full system restore is done, it would be a good idea to exlude the files in the directory like so:
/test/test/*
Instead of excluding the directory itself also, which would be the case if the configuration was as below:
/test/test/
It might not be an issue, but if a number of applications require certain directories to be present and they are not, more time might be experienced where the system or applications are down because of missing directories. Hopefully that should solve the issue, but I'll have to wait and see the results of the backup tonight, in the logs tomorrow. If not, it'll back to the documentation & Google for me!
After delaying it for a long time, I've finally upgraded to Movable Type v3.14. The upgrade went as planned without any problems, as far as the MT side goes. Everything appears to be working as it should, I've probably got some changes to make and some that I had wanted to do anyway so will work on getting those done soon since I've got more free time than usual, for a while at least.
I'm having a few problems with getting the latest version of MT Blacklist running correctly, but that might be down to me and the fact I've been up all night and could probably do with some sleep now. I'll continue with that and the other changes and updates later.
The main thing is I'm now able to enjoy one of the features of MT v3 that I've been looking forward to which is forced comment moderation, especially since MT-BL is not working right now and also the fact of all the recent "junk" spam, it'll save me having to delete a load of spam, since it'll never even make it to the live pages now and can sit in moderated state for a while, before I remove it.
There is more of a rush to remove spam when it makes it to the live pages because of the web crawlers picking it up and that's what the spammers want. Not removing spam from live pages causes links to your pages to show up for all kinds of search results you probably wouldn't want them to.
There's a whole list of other things that has and will make the update worthy of my time spent doing it, I'm sure you'll say the same if you currently run an older version of MT and decide to upgrade.
I've also paid for the personal license from Six Apart, to show my support which will also enable me to get support if required.
It's time for me to get some sleep.
The new version has recently been released to address the issues which have recently been reported, minaly in relation to the rebuilding of pages when a comment has been moderated. Rebuilds are no longer ececuted when a comment is moderated as there is no need and because of this process taking place regardless, some sites have experienced high server loads when being subjected to large spam attacks.
Check out the full announcement here and be sure to read the previous release regarding the issues and the up and coming fix which has now been released.
Some of you out there that have blogs that are powered by Movable Type will have recently experienced problems relating to high server load caused by a number of bugs in MT and the way it handles the rebuilding of pages. I can't say I have had any problems myself, but it looks like it is mainly relating to the newer versions of MT.
A fix will be out the door shortly and MT-Blacklist will be updated as well to help eliminate any issues relating to large spam attacks.
You can check out the full details here from Jay Allen. On another note, be sure to keep your blacklist updated from the master, check out my blacklist if you want to import that as well.
I've recently started to add single words to my blacklist which has blocked a lot of spam that would have got through otherwise. I just saw a post from Jay Allen about this as well, I think this will be the way forward in combination with blocking domains and using regular expressions.
I'm still to upgrade to MT v3 and MT-BL v2 but in the mean time and even after the upgrades, I think adding certain words will make spam a lot easier to block. For example, I have in the past few months been getting a lot of spam with "texas" & "holdem" in the contents of the comments. Since there were so many different domains getting through, some with the words in the domain and some not, it made more sense to block words such as "holdem".
That solved that issue straight away. There have been more instances as well. Looking back through the activity log I can see plenty of attempts using certain words such as "mortgages" and since the chance of this word being used in a genuine comment is far less than spam ones it makes sense to block the word. I have found that this approach is working pretty well. Of course, any blocked words that might want to be used by genuine users can still be posted in a modified form.
Now, why didn't we start doing this earlier?
Microsoft has recently released the latest version of MSN, version 7 beta build 0425 to the beta testers. Of course, it has been released to the world the second it was released to beta testers as someone always leaks a copy, you can download it here.
I've just installed it after using MSN 6.2 for ages on Windows machines and some of the changes are really good. The new look, extra features including being able to use the mouse to allow you to draw and write things are all pretty good.
You can also send flash based winks to people and also nudge them, which makes the chat window shake. That could get annoying, but it could come in handy as a noficiation method that you want someone as well if the sound is off.
There are a lot of visual changes as well, it looks better. The only problem is when I upgrade, usually Messenger Plus does not work any more which means I loose all the custom names I set for people and only see email addresses instead. Check out this thread for the latest beta of Messenger Plus v3.40.110 which works with MSN v7.0.
Messenger Plus adds a lot of functions which are really handy to MSN, some of which you will never live without after trying them out. Other things, such as changing the colour of your name on MSN, just allow you to make things a bit different and personal. Messenger Plus is really worth checking out, I've been using it since the early days of its development and like MSN Messenger has come along way.
You'll probably have to update when downloading v7.0 as there are new updates being relased quite often which you have to accept to continue using it. Anyway, if you use MSN on Windows at all, get the updates as they are worth it.
OpenNTPD 3.6 has been released, so for those of you that use NTP for keeping the time updated on your systems, if you have not checked it out then give it a try. I don't use NTP at all but for some applications that are distributed, having the correct & same time on all systems is required which is where OpenNTPD comes in.
It allows you to run an NTP server or just run as a client, receiving updates from another NTP server and is a free implementation developed by some of the OpenBSD team.
I've sorted out the problem I was having with MT-BL. As I thought it was due to some spam, for some reasons MT-BL did not like it and was throwing up the errors. I'm not sure why, but it's obviously a bug. Since most people are now running 2.0 and I have not found anyone else having the problem, it seems like it was an isolated case.
I'll be upgrading MT soon along with MT-BL so with regards to the spam fighting, things should improve even more.
I've been looking at various system monitoring applications. I've come over and used a few in the past, such as Big Brother. I've taken a recent look at BB and although it is good, I think a combination of this or another application and a third party monitoring service would be better so I've been looking around at paid services that can allow for monitoring of multiple servers and their services from various locations. Of course, there is a monthly cost attached but the options included for alarm notification are increased.
Although the notifications that I've found with software such as BB is good, paid for services allow for more control and variation in methods used for notification. One of the ones I've looked at is Alertra which seems to be quite popular with a lot of people. It allows you to setup notification via email, sms phone call, MSN and more although it does not monitor server internals. A third party monitoring service that allows for this would be good, I'm sure there must be one, obviously you would need to run an application on the system though.
The phone call option with Alertra is only available to the USA & Canada but the rest is available globally. I'm sure there are other paid for services and free ones also that are good so I'll have to check some more out and compare. I'll also have to see if there are any other monitoring applications that will be good for what I'm looking for. The other option would be a custom developed one either by a third party or our team but with everything else going on at the moment, something ready built and that just works would be great for now.
If anyone knows of a good system I should check out, let me know, it's looking like Alertra will do the job for now and maybe for quite some time depending on how good it works out to be. A future project will be to design and build our own system to a custom specification or have someone else do it.
Having the application monitoring allows for things such as disk space and CPU usage to be monitored, using most web based monitors don't allow for this which is where BB and other systems come in as they can monitor internally and externally, especially with BB as it can act as a distributed system. I will have a combination of both, to allow for more detailed monitoring of internal server statistics as well as from the outside to monitor web services from different locations.
For some reason I seem to be experiencing some issues with MT-Blacklist. I've upgraded since and reset the blacklist but still no change. For some reason it's displaying errors. I've found some things which relate to it but have not been able to resolve the issue.
The errors that I am getting when running a de-spam are:
--
jayallen::Blacklist=HASH(0x8297090) Malformed UTF-8 character (unexpected non-continuation byte 0xc5, immediately after start byte 0xf3) in substitution (s///).
jayallen::Blacklist=HASH(0x8297090) Malformed UTF-8 character (unexpected non-continuation byte 0xc5, immediately after start byte 0xf3) in transliteration (tr///) at /path-to/Blacklist.pm line 3159.
jayallen::Blacklist=HASH(0x8297090) Malformed UTF-8 character (unexpected non-continuation byte 0xc5, immediately after start byte 0xf3) in pattern match (m//) at /path-to/Blacklist.pm line 3103.
--
It's one of those times when something just stops working for no reason. The errors repeat all with the same line referenced (3103) but the first line is (3159). I thought it might have had something to do with some domains I imported as some of them had strange characters in. But I reset the list to test and it still made no difference so then I upgraded MT-BL and no still no change.
From looking at the code, I'm not sure what the problem is. I've spoken to Jay Allen about it but he has not really got time at the moment to investigate and would suggest the upgrades. There's nothing I could find on the forum, apart from one post from a while ago but with no replies.
I also changed the language so it is as shown below:
LANG="en_US"
SUPPORTED="en_US"
SYSFONT="latarcyrheb-sun16"
As the UTF-8 which was included before has been the cause of similar errors with other things reported by other people on their systems, but the change did not make any difference in this case. I'd not made any changes before the errors started but after some reading it might have something to do with some other things which may have been changed by Ben so I'll need to speak to him and check as I've not touched them - CPAN modules as an example.
I've covered all the angles I can at the moment, so will continue investigating later. Maybe this is another reason why I should hurry up and upgrade to MT v3 and MT-BL v2 to enjoy a lot of new features and things to make tasks easier and automated.
Soon, I will sort the upgrades.
I noticed this same days ago, but forgot to say at the time - a big well done to Jay Allen in accepting a job offer from the folks over at Six Apart to become the Movable Type Product Manager. After reading his post, I learned a number of things about the history Jay has had with MT. I was not aware that MT has played such a big part in his life and indeed will now play an even bigger part. With the great work he has done developing MT-Blacklist and the Spam Clearing House as well as other work, I'm sure he will now be able to better devote his time to improving MT. I think he's the best man for the job, going on past experience that he has with MT and even the devotion to write a book about it!
Check out the announcement from Six Apart.
Well done Jay!
I'm sure it has happened to everyone at some point or another. It's really annoying when it does. A certain software application decides to stop working for no reason and you have no idea what has caused it. I've got an application on my Nokia that monitors the amount of minutes I've used. It is great or was until recently.
One day it just decided to stop working, with no indication as to why. It just opens and then closes. I'm going to have to install it again, which should hopefully fix it. Just goes to show sometimes it is not the user that breaks things, they just do it on their own!
If you use MT Blacklist to keep the amount of comment and trackback spam on your blog down, then you may want to add the following to your list.
%2E or even % so that any URL / comment with % in is blocked as there could be a number of variations and there is no normal use of % in URL or comments, for the most part anyway. Once the bug is addressed MT-BL will decode the % variables first and then compare to the blacklist, which is what should happen already but adding % to your blacklist as well for now will stop any spam and show up any already posted via this method.
I just noticed some spam on my blog which should have been blocked by MT-BL but was not. Running a search did not find the comments either and I could not add the domains because they are already on my list.
%2E inserts a full stop so myspamsite%2Eorg would actually end up as myspamsite.org in your browser. Of course MT-BL does not pick it up and would let comments through like this as I have found & the links do work when clicked on.
I've already contacted Jay Allen about it and he states that MT-BL should address this but it's obviously a bug. There may be other holes in this form which will also need to be addressed either via the list or via MT-BL internally. I'd suggest running a complete scan of all your comments to find any that may have been there for some time after adding it to your blacklist for now, until the bug is fixed. This seems to be another method the spammers are using, but since it is so easily detected and then the hole is plugged it won't be of much use for long.
I'm using MT-BL v1.6.4, not sure if this is an issue with other versions at the moment.
UPDATE: 04/08/04
Jay has released MT-BL 1.6.5 which addresses this issue but since it is a simple code change, you could modify the code yourself:
Change:
$str =~ s/\%(\d{2})/chr(hex($1))/eg;
To look like:
$str =~ s/\%([0-9A-F]{2})/chr(hex($1))/eig;
The change needs to be made in Blacklist.pm
Bash 3.0 has been released and is now available on various mirrors as well as the master ftp site, of course. A few of the changes and improvements include as described in the announcement:
* Features to support the bash debugger have been implemented, and there
is a new `extdebug' option to turn the non-default options on.
* HISTCONTROL is now a colon-separated list of options and has been
extended with a new `erasedups' option that will result in only one
copy of a command being kept in the history list.
* Brace expansion has been extended with a new {x..y} form, producing
sequences of digits or characters.
* Timestamps are now kept with history entries, with an option to save
and restore them from the history file; there is a new HISTTIMEFORMAT
variable describing how to display the timestamps when listing history
entries.
* The `[[' command can now perform extended regular expression (egrep-like)
matching, with matched subexpressions placed in the BASH_REMATCH array
variable.
* A new `pipefail' option causes a pipeline to return a failure status if
any command in it fails.
* The `jobs', `kill', and `wait' builtins now accept job control notation
in their arguments even if job control is not enabled.
As well as a host of other changes, additions and improvements.
I've just stumbled upon MySQL Maestro which is a Windows based application for MySQL management. I've only had a quick play with it, but it allows for remote user and database administration with a nice interface and plenty of options.
Compared to command line it makes certain tasks a lot easier to perform, for example looking up data in a certain field in a table as you don't have to remember the SQL commands to perform the task. Although you could allow users to use this application to access their databases, phpMyAdmin would be better suited for this as to allow a user to use MySQL Maestro you would have to either allow external connections to the MySQL server or allow interactive shell access.
For administration, you can allow the MySQL connection to be tunnelled over SSH so you would not have to open MySQL up to the outside as the connection to the MySQL server is made locally once an SSH connection has been established.
I think MySQL Maestro is a handy tool that will be of great use to people that would like to do easy MySQL administration from a Windows application. There are a number of other tools available as well which offer varied functionality. Used in combination with command line and web based applications such as phpMyAdmin MySQL Maestro is another good tool to help administrators complete MySQL related tasks.
For POP3 I've always used Outlook Express on the Windows box, but recently I have been having a few problems in that some messages don't download and seem to hang the client. I've not figured out why, but they all seem to be destined for the same address, so I've just added local rules to ensure they are not downloaded. Also, the local rules don't seem to be working now, for some reason.
At work I currently use Evolution on Solaris, which is another nice client.
I've decided to give Mozilla Thunderbird a go on the Windows system at home. It seems to have the same problem with hanging on those certain spam emails, but that aside, it's a lot better. Another reason for me switching, is the total lack of proper spam filtering in Outlook Express.
Hopefully once trained Thunderbird will do a good job. Server side filtering is an option, which I will get round to, but having all mail delivered is better in some respects as it allows you to see all mail still, even emails that have been classified as junk - they might not be. Using server side filtering you don't really get this freedom unless you are alerted to blocked messages to check.
I've used 3rd party applications for local fltering, but have not found them to be any better, so using a built in function like in Thunderbird, should work just as well if not better.
Also, due to all the recent issues with IE, I'm probably going to start using Mozilla Firefox more. IE is lacking in a lot of features, such as tabbed browing, saved sessions and a lot more, Firefox and other good alternatives such as Opera fill these gaps in functionality. There are a whole host of things needed, MS really need to work on getting IE and Outlook back up there, by adding much needed functions that can be found in all the alternatives.
It's funny that the Microsoft offerings are still the most popular - due to the fact that they are bundled with Windows by default and are not better than the rest, but just easily available.
Sun will release Project Looking Glass under the GPL, which is good news for people who may want to add to it. I saw PLG in action a few months ago in London and as far as eye candy goes, it was rather impressive. It opened up a whole new look to what the desktop could look like and no doubt will look like.
It seems that gone are the days when to have a better looking and easy to use desktop environment you would be forced to use Windows. Other projects will also be released open source, including Solaris in some shape or form in the future but details remain unconfirmed at the moment as of course in the case of an OS, it's a hard thing to just distribute open source without considering a lot of things.
I've just been reading some interesting stuff about Movable Type 3 over at Dichotomy's Purgatory. I was thinking about upgrading to 3 at some point for a number of reasons, but after reading more about it, I'm not so sure right now.
Any current issues will obviously be sorted out so I think I can delay in moving over to version 3 for a while. We all know what they say about not touching something if it isn't broken so I've got to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages at the moment. For now I think, I can leave it.
Sometime soon though I'm sure I will upgrade.
I've just spend a good few hours setting up a whole host of domains for varoius people, near enough thirty. It's taken ages to manually configure them all.
Now it's all done, it's out of the way but it made me happy to think that soon doing stuff like that will be all automated. Well, not totally, but mostly which will save a lot of time and effort.
Doing these manually was the only option, as they had to be done quite soon, but I've got them all sorted in advance - setting customer expectations and all.
Doind one or two manually is not a problem, but for bulk loads all in one go - automation is the only way!
When restarting services such as Apache and other daemons, it is really annoying when there are various binaries and configuration files on the system and each time I come to edit the configuration and restart the daemon, things mess up because I restart the wrong binary or edit the wrong configuration file.
This calls for a clear out of defunct binaries and configuration files to make life easier. Also to note is the fact to find the log of standard procedures and processes to follow when carrying out tasks like this.
MT-BL v.164 has been released, I've just upgraded. It would be wise to upgrade, since a bug effecting all versions has been discovered which could allow people to leave comment spam that is filtered by your blacklist.
I think some recent spam was delivered this way to my blog, since I added some entries to the blacklist yet MT-BL was not picking it up. After the upgrade, it's all detected.
Go and upgrade.
I hate slow software, more than I hate slow machines. When the specification of the system is high, you would think that the applications would run fine. It's annoying having to wait around. I probably spend half the day waiting for our internal case management tool, which is written in one of our own technologies - Java.
The problem with it is it the amount of users, the face it is single threaded and also the fact the database is sitting in the USA, when I'm in the UK which causes some more latency issues.
There are some plans to make changes to help speed things up, but I think we'd need some major changes to get it working to an instant response, with no delays.
I've recently been reading the announcement made by Six Apart regarding the release of Movable Type 3.0 and the changes to the licensing. It seems that a lot of people are suprised at some of the points made and the thought of having to now pay for a product which was essentially free.
At first glance, I thought (instead of jumping the gun / assuming) people running versions previous to 3.0 would not have to pay, which is correct.
One thing to remember, is that Six Apart spends a lot of time working on the development of MT, especially the change to 3.0 and obviously have to make a living in real life. Since all the time is spent on MT, it needs to become a feasible business project.
If you use MT and are going to upgrade, depending on how it is implemented with Type Key, you may well have to pay to be given any access to Type Key to use on your blog. A move like this would ensure that more people would purchase a license.
The initial public release is called Movable Type 3.0 Developer Edition. It's for use by everyone, but is basically the foundations on which great plugins can be made. Along with it comes other changes, to help developers to work with Six Apart to make MT 3.0 even better.
So, if you keep using a version previous to 3.0, you will not have to pay anything. If you want to use version 3.0, then you can choose the free version. You could of course make a payment, which I shall call a "donation" that will enable you to receive support and a list of other things.
In the time that MT has been produced, it has been done so at the time and cost of the developers and if you like it and want to thank Six Apart then you now know how to do so.
At some point, I'm sure I'll get round to upgrading, but I normally allow the dust to settle on new major releases before doing so.
I've just had a play with DVD Shrink and from the first lot of results, I'm impressed. In addition to the fact it is freeware, it does a nice job of backing up DVD's. No messing around with compression or anything, as it does it all for you.
You can be sure that a source DVD will fit on a DVD-R or DVD+R disc. It does not take that long to process a source DVD, I did the deep scan which will ensure the end result will be of good quality - In fact, you can't notice any difference - it's a complete image of the original, with all the extras and menu system too.
With the advent of the dual layer drives and media coming around now, we'll have even better options to choose from. As long as the software keeps up, it'll be interesting. You can burn direct to another DVD or create a DVD image file.
I'd really suggest checking it out, if you're looking for this kind of thing.
I'm using Mozilla and sometimes Netscape, on Solaris in the office. When posting, for some reason both browsers do not display the buttons to allow for easy addition of links and italic / bold to the posts.
These only seem to be available on IE & Opera as well as other browsers on Windows systems.
It just causes extra work when adding links and such, which is a pain.
Maybe it is just these versions of the browsers that don't support the code to allow these handy functions to work.
Something that needs to be sorted!
Jay has released v1.63 as final due to no issues being found in the testing stage when it was called v1.63 RC 2. Along with this release comes the news that it should run without problems on all versions of MT from 2.6 - 2.661.
I'll be upgrading mine later, to take advantage of some of the new features.
Of course, make sure you keep your blacklist updated.
I've moved all of the data off the existing drive and wiped it clean. That's half of the problem solved. Now I just have the issue of the main boot disk. So, whilst sorting that out I think I shall get another 250gb sata disk and install again.
On this system, my Windows one - it'll be 2000 server again or maybe XP/2003 server.
Who knows when I'll sort it, as it is so much trouble having to start all over!
Good old Windows.
Whatever next? That's right, you can now get games for your iPod thanks to the people over at IPodSoft.
I'm yet to get an iPod, as I'm looking at alternative options with more capacity. I'm sure the next release of the iPod will have more storage capacity, so I'll probably go with it since it really seems to be the device with the most stuff available!
I just hope the new iPod's are more like their mini counterparts, in the colour department!
From iPodSoft, you've got:
iPod Agent which allows you to manage contacts, RSS feeds and other things & also iStory Creator, which allows you to create text based games on the iPod.
Go check them out, if you've got an iPod!
After a few wierd crashes and such whilst installing Linux on one of my old systems, to use as a test / development system, it is now all up and running. Aside from getting the system updated, that's another thing off the list of to do items.
No doubt more will be added to this list quicker than I remove things, but I suppose it is better being busy instead of having nothing to do.
I've just noticed that 4gb of mp3 albums I had backed up on my computer, seem to have vanished. The directory they were all in is now empty. I think defrag has caused some data loss. Until recently the data was there, but I ran a defrag as both disks in my Windows system were quite fragmented.
Funnily enough, the defrag completed, but afterwards the disks were still both fragmented, one at 25%. Something wasn't right. This data is the only stuff that I can see missing, but I need to get the fragmentation sorted out but I don't want to loose anything.
There are some other things that have started happening recently on the Windows system (Running Windows 2000 Server) which I put down to Windows being Windows. I'd re-install, but it's more trouble that it is worth at the moment. The main priority is to backup everything on the 120gb disk, wipe that clean to remove the fragmentation and start again.
As for the boot disk, not sure what I am going to do yet, without a clean install to fix the fragmentation. As it seems that the Defrag utility is not working correctly. Who knows why.
Maybe it is time to look for a 3rd party application to sort out the fragmentation.
A wider audience of people will now start to test Movable Type version 3.0, as recently announced by Six Apart.
Major changes to come with v3 will include a nw user interface which will be updated for easier localization & usability. One of the areas which will have received a lot of change is the comment management. A new user registration option will force users to register before posting comments if you want to work that way. There will be a lot of flexibility since user registration will be managed by a central service called TypeKey.
Version 3 will allow for better management and support registration and open communication. TypeKey will provide user authentication as well as allow for developers to build plugins and mods that are based on TypeKey's authentication hooks.
New support for the Atom API & syndication feeds will allow users to use this format as well as clients that operate through it's API. With support for many new hooks, developers will be able to create better, more varied plugins.
TypeKey seems like it will be a good solution to user registration on blogs. It will allow for one login, which will allow a registered user of TypeKey to post comments on any MT blog or other which is supported, without having to register on each blog.
It will mean that you can have the same identity on all blogs using TypeKey. Since this is a service of Six Apart who develop Movable Type, which is probably the most popular blogging application available, the user base will be great. That fact alone, will mean that more blogs can require authenticated users via TypeKey as the chances of a regular blog reader being registered with TypeKey will be high.
There may also be support for a blogger to use single registration that does not require TypeKey in v3 of Movable Type.
A good example of using TypeKey would be:
A spammer registers with TypePad and so can post spam to a whole host of blogs using TypeKey authentication. As soon as people report this user to be a spammer, the account can be terminated and such all of those blogs are free from that spammer for now.
Hopefully, there will be features which allow MT Blacklist type operations to centrally block URL's via TypeKey. In effect, your MT setup would check with TypeKey for blacklisted URL's before allowing the comment to be posted by a registered or non-registered user. Using this method you would not even need a local copy of the master blacklist as checks would be in real time, new spam could be added on the fly.
These ideas, which I would think will be the kinds of things implemented via TypeKey and MT v3 are the next stage from using MT-Blacklist. Jay Allen appears to have halted development of MT-BL due to the kinds of things we will see with TypeKey. Well done for the work so far Jay.
Of course, well done to Six Apart for their continuing work.
I await new updates with more details...
Ben has been busy updating stuff on the server today.
MySQL, Apache, OpenSSH & PHP all upgraded. Hopefully, amongst other things - the issues with Apache will now be resolved, we'll have to wait and see.
He made me feel guilty for a small period of time, due to me being lazy and not doing anything. I soon got past the guilt stage. I'll have to do something to make up for it.
Anyway, we should see some performance increases, mainly.
Apache died yesterday, due to the error log growing to over 2GB in size. I didn't know it would complain and die then not restart over log size. I noticed it was down at 7am when I got in from work, which reminds me to get the monitoring system up and running.
I had a quick look to see what was up and thought it was something relating to log file size, but when looking at the sizes, I thought the access log was bigger so moved that and tried but it did not work. It turns out the error log was the bigger file, but I missed that fact due to being tired - still can't believe I didn't notice though!
So I left it for Ben to sort out when he got up. It goes to show when you can't figure something out, especially when being tired - leave it and come back to it later, it usually all fits together then and works.
Another issue we've noticed with Apache on this server, is that every now and again it appears to eat all the CPU power so we have to go in and kill it off. As yet we've not established what is causing it, so the investigation is ongoing.
Strange!
The second release candidate of MT-BL v1.63 has recently been released, which comprises of bug fixes only over v1.63 beta rc1. v1.63 rc2 supports some new features available in MT v2.661 and is currently undergoing testing for an official production release.
Check them out.
The course is going along well so far - I am learning, which is always good!
I'm going over things that I have done before, but I am learning new subjects which are unique to Solaris or different in Solaris.
It's a long week, but I'm taking it easier this week!
MT v2.66 was just released, but update v2.661 has now been released to address some issues in v2.66.
There is some new protection to help prevent spamming by comment throttling, which is part of the new spam reduction features which will be present in MT v3.0.
So, go and upgrade - or wait for v3.0 / Pro.
On the storage course this week, I have been playing around with Fibre Channel & FC-AL. Below shows the output of luxadm, which is the Solaris utility to manage Fibre Channel. You can see the status of various GBIC's, temperatures of drives and other information. Having hands on experience with this kit in a lab allows you to play / break stuff without the worry of loosing data.
Consdering the cost of a Sun StorEdge A5000 for example, unless I was working at a company which uses them, the chance of being able to use one is slim - as I doubt most people would have one in their home. Fortunately for me, I will have access to this type of equipment in our labs, as we'll be supporting it all - so it makes sense.
# luxadm display DV
SENA
DISK STATUS
SLOT FRONT DISKS (Node WWN) REAR DISKS (Node WWN)
0 On (O.K.) 20000020370e104d On (O.K.) 2000002037070870
1 On (O.K.) 200000203704fa9c On (O.K.) 20000020370e3a89
2 On (O.K.) 20000020370e4f43 On (O.K.) 2000002037070bd8
3 Not Installed On (O.K.) 200000203707086e
4 On (O.K.) 2000002037078204 On (O.K.) 2000002037070835
5 On (O.K.) 20000020370c0a5b On (O.K.) 20000020370e1ade
6 Not Installed On (O.K.) 200000203714ecd0
SUBSYSTEM STATUS
FW Revision:1.09 Box ID:0 Node WWN:508002000001e3c8 Enclosure
Name:DV
Power Supplies (0,2 in front, 1 in rear)
0 O.K.(rev.-02) 1 O.K.(rev.-02) 2 O.K.(rev.-02)
Fans (0 in front, 1 in rear)
0 O.K.(rev.-05) 1 O.K.(rev.-00)
ESI Interface board(IB) (A top, B bottom)
A: O.K.(rev.-04)
GBIC module (1 on left, 0 on right in IB)
0 Failed(mod.-05): Not receiving a signal
1 Failed(mod.-05): Not receiving a signal
B: O.K.(rev.-04)
GBIC module (1 on left, 0 on right in IB)
0 O.K.(mod.-05)
1 Failed(mod.-05): Not receiving a signal
Disk backplane (0 in front, 1 in rear)
Front Backplane: O.K.(rev.-04)
Temperature sensors (on front backplane)
0:34ºC 1:36ºC 2:36ºC 3:34ºC 4:34ºC 5:36ºC
6:36ºC (All temperatures are NORMAL.)
Rear Backplane: O.K.(rev.-04)
Temperature sensors (on rear backplane)
0:33ºC 1:36ºC 2:37ºC 3:36ºC 4:36ºC 5:37ºC
6:36ºC (All temperatures are NORMAL.)
Interconnect assembly
O.K.(rev.-02)
Loop configuration
Loop A is configured as a single loop.
Loop B is configured as a single loop.
Language USA English
#
# cat wipe
for i in /dev/rdsk/c[!0]*s2
do
fmthard -s /dev/null $i
done
#
An easy way to destroy data on all disks that are not on controller 0. I just destroyed our array, on purpose of course. So now, I can re-create a new array and learn in the process.
One of the benefits of having labs to play with on courses or in general.
Below is a before / after status, after running the wipe script above.
Before:
# vxdisk list
DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS
c0t0d0s2 sliced rootdisk rootdg online
c0t1d0s2 sliced - - online
c6t0d0s2 sliced - - online
c6t1d0s2 sliced - - online
c6t2d0s2 sliced - - online
c6t4d0s2 sliced - - online
c6t5d0s2 sliced - - online
c6t6d0s2 sliced - - online
c6t16d0s2 sliced - - online
c6t17d0s2 sliced - - online
c6t18d0s2 sliced - - online
c6t19d0s2 sliced - - online
c6t20d0s2 sliced - - online
c6t21d0s2 sliced - - online
c6t22d0s2 sliced - - online
After:
# wipe
# vxdctl enable (re-scan drives in Veritas)
# vxdisk list
DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS
c0t0d0s2 sliced rootdisk rootdg online
c0t1d0s2 sliced - - online
c6t0d0s2 sliced - - error
c6t1d0s2 sliced - - error
c6t2d0s2 sliced - - error
c6t4d0s2 sliced - - error
c6t5d0s2 sliced - - error
c6t6d0s2 sliced - - error
c6t16d0s2 sliced - - error
c6t17d0s2 sliced - - error
c6t18d0s2 sliced - - error
c6t19d0s2 sliced - - error
c6t20d0s2 sliced - - error
c6t21d0s2 sliced - - error
c6t22d0s2 sliced - - error
#
The 2 drives on controller 0 are still active because we wanted those to be left alone, because they are the boot disk and another disk in the machine. All of the other drives are in the array. We could have messed the box up as well, as it could have had a jump start.
I'm currently spending this week working with A5000 / D1000 arrays. There is a lot to take in but obviously most people will not take it all in first time. I'm working with Veritas Volume Manager this week and will be working with Solstice Disk Suite soon too.
I'm back again in two weeks on yet another course.
It's all good.