New look for Suzuki

One of the things I do on the side is support the Bismarck Suzuki School of Music by doing stuff on their web site.

When I inherited it, it was a static website. It meant that updating content was time consuming and, quite honestly, I would have made it look a lot worse.

So I installed Wordpress. It made adding content a lot simpler. Last summer Cheryl, the president of the school, spent hours putting up lots of content. It means that she does not need to know any HTML to add all this content.

When I originally set it up, I used roughly the same style as the previous site. Now I have a new theme up there. It was designed by my brother, and then Douglas Tschetter was kind enough to turn it in to a theme for me.

I think it looks pretty good. So thanks Ade and Doug.

Not again!

Not content with serving us more snow this last month than we had the whole of last winter, the weather may have more in store for us....

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE...CORRECTED
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BISMARCK ND
421 PM CST THU DEC 18 2008
...SIGNIFICANT WINTER STORM POSSIBLE THIS WEEKEND...
.A SIGNIFICANT WINTER STORM MAY IMPACT WEST AND CENTRAL NORTH
DAKOTA BEGINNING LATE FRIDAY AFTERNOON AND CONTINUING THROUGH LATE
SATURDAY NIGHT. SNOW WILL DEVELOP ACROSS WESTERN NORTH DAKOTA
FRIDAY AND FRIDAY NIGHT...AND MAY BECOME HEAVY BY SATURDAY. SNOW
AMOUNTS OF 6 TO 10 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE FROM THE TURTLE MOUNTAINS
IN THE NORTH CENTRAL...THROUGH JAMESTOWN AND SOUTH TO THE SOUTH
DAKOTA BORDER BY SUNDAY MORNING. FOUR TO SEVEN INCHES OF SNOW IS
POSSIBLE FROM MINOT TO BISMARCK...WITH 2 TO 4 INCHES OF SNOW
POSSIBLE ACROSS THE WEST. ALTHOUGH THE WEST WILL SEE LESS OF THE
SNOW...WIND CHILLS TO 50 BELOW AND STRONG WINDS WILL CAUSE VERY
HAZARDOUS CONDITIONS BY LATE SATURDAY AND SATURDAY NIGHT. NEAR
BLIZZARD CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE ACROSS PORTIONS OF CENTRAL NORTH
DAKOTA SATURDAY AFTERNOON AND SATURDAY NIGHT WHERE THE HEAVIER
SNOW AMOUNTS ARE EXPECTED

Past experience has shown that such messages are not always wholly accurate. Suffice to say somewhere in the state somebody is going to get snow this weekend.

yet more snow

It looks like we will be measuring snow accumulations in feet and not inches this winter. I do not know what the running total is so far, but I now have a bank of snow beside my driveway that is as tall as I am. I do not think my boulevards can take much more snow. In fact the section of driveway between the side walk and the road is getting narrower because there is nowhere else to put the snow.

And it is cold! I wore so many clothes walking (more like wading) to work that my cube is full of outerwear.

And then to make matters worse, Kim has posted some photos of her modeling her latest shawls. While they are nice garments, I was more struck by the fact that they were taken outside in December and she is not wearing a coat. I wish I could stand outside like that without pulling on hats scarves, coats, etc.

not the light fantastic

Now that Thanksgiving has been and gone, everyting turns to Christmas.

While we will not put the tree up for another week or two, we are starting to put up some decorations. In that vain, I decided to hang out the lights outside.

Sure it was about 28 degrees out there, but chances are it will not be any warmer in the next few weeks.

So I get out the string of lights, I test them and they all work. Next I hang them out. After what felt like a good long time perching on a ladder and messing with hooks and cables with gloves hampering dexterity, I fanally get the lights hung out. Now its time to turn them on.

So after all that, fifty of the one hundred work and fifty do not. Why does that always happen? You test them and they work, then when they are hung out they don't.

Next I go and reseat all the dark bulbs. I get to the very last bulb on the chain (the last possible bulb to test) and the bulb comes apart in my (very cold) hand. So I have the glass bit but the bulb casing is still in the socket. To make matters worse it ill nt come out. No amount of pulling at it with needle nosed pliers while cursing, perched on top of a ladder in the freezing cold helped.

This morning one of my freinds recounted a similar story. I smiled and said it was murphy. Whenshe hears this story I'm sure she will return the compliment.

electoral parrallels

I am a fan of the now finished telly program "The West Wing". In the final season, the presidential election campaign was, in my mind, spookily similar to the one we have just experienced in real life. Let me point out some similarities:

1. In the West Wing, the Democratic candidate was a Latino, in real life, he is African american. So, both are non-white.
2. In both cases the Democratic candidates are young.
   
3. Both Republican Candidates were old men with centrist tendencies and who were dragged to the right by their parties.
4. Current events hampered the campaigns of both republican candidates (the nuclear power plant in the West Wing, and the financial crisis in real life).

I'm sure there are more.

In the West Wing, the Republican candidate becomes a member of the new Democratic cabinet. If I remember right, he became the secretary of state. So, if the parallels hold true, should we expect McCain getting a job in Obama's administration?

first snow of winter

Winter came to North Dakota with a thud - well more of a whoosh and then a flump!

Snow came yesterday afternoon with high winds. Blizzard conditions ensued for pretty much the rest of the night. During the evening the wind started to gust up to 40-50 mph.

While we were eating our evening meal, the power started to blip off and back on again every so often. As the evening wore on the blips would start to be a couple of seconds then at 8:30 we lost power for about an hour.

Woke up in the morning to find that school was cancelled, and we had a waist high snow drift going all the way down the drive. I dug a trench through the snow to the roadside and then went back in and worked from home for the morning.

By lunchtime, the risk of more snow showers was pretty much gone and I started to shovel snow. After an hour and a half, all I had managed was to clear away the shallow drifts. I still had the big waist high drift to do. Time to call my father in law. He brought over his snow blower and an hour later he had the big drift cleared away too. It would not have been so hard if the bank of discarded snow at the side of the driveway was not taller than the outlet for his snow blower.

After all that I then tramped t work.

Liferea 1.5 has this cool feature where you can read blogs you have subscribed to on Google Reader. Now that is a feature worth compiling source for.

So I did!

Not all that bad of an install - was expecting worse.

Feature kind of works right now but seg faults every 10 minutes. So it is back to version 1.4 for now and I will eagerly await the stabilising of 1.5

Open Solaris

So I tried Open Solaris this week. I tried both the current release (2008.05) and the latest beta for 2008.11. I must say that they have done quite a nice job of it. It installed nicely and was quite simple to get a running system going.

What made me remove it after a couple of days was the lack of packages for it, and laziness on my part. In order to get Open Solaris up and running with all the extra stuff that I get from the Ubuntu community, I would have to spend a long time researching alternative package locations and probably compiling a bunch of stuff. Right now I am not willing to put in that much effort.

I have always had a soft spot for Solaris. I do want to use it and give it a decent shot. Its niche nature, underdog status and all those toys I want to play with make it a compelling thing. It flirts with me and every so often I install it. The thing is I am usually far too lazy and the draw of the seemingly effortless Ubuntu pulls me back.

So I have been thinking I should maybe try and resurrect this whole blogging thing. I have been feeling the urge to write something quite a bit recently, so that is a good sign to start again.

I thought about starting a new blog. In fact I shopped around the free blog services with that intention. I eventually decided to resurrect this one. The other free services did not seem to offer much more than what I have here, and I thought maybe if I started posting here again, then the three people who read it before may come back.

I took a look at Zim; a desktop wiki. In fact it is pretty much the same as Tomboy, only the one compelling difference was that Zim had in built subversion support.

The Subversion support should make it easy to do version control on your notes and potentially have a backup off-site. It would be really nice for things like sharing notes and documentation between people or computers.

The first big issue with this feature is that there is no documentation on how to get this to work. I went through the Zim website and found nothing that was helpful. I ended up having to do some digging around myself. Here is how I got SVN support to work with Zim:

1. First you need to create your subversion repository. Use

svnadmin create

to create your repository.

2. Create your notebook in Zim. Note where you told the files to be saved. Close down Zim completely (not even hanging around in your notification are)

3. In a terminal window, cd to the directory and then run

svn import

to get the initial files in to the repository.

4. Move the original directory out of the way, or delete it if you are feeling brave.

5. Check out the svn repository in to the location where Zim is expecting the files to be.

6. Start up Zim again and open the notebook.

You can now start working away in Zim, writing stuff and saving the changes. IF you create a new page, then it automatically does the svn add stuff for you. You should then pull down the Tools menu periodically and choose the "SVN Commit" option.

If you are nervous that it is not behaving as you expect, you can always check out another working copy and see what it looks like.

Another thing to note is that Zim logs stuff to you .xsession_errors file. tail that file to get

Reading about a road trip while on a raod trip

So, I am sitting in a dark hotel room in Wisconsin Dells. The wife and kids are asleep, and I am catching up on some reading.

It has been a long time since posted anything here. There is only one real reason for that - laziness!

So I am reading about Doc Searl's road trip, and I am thinking that maybe I should do a travel blog of our trip from Bismarck to chicago and back again. It'll be a few days in the making because this laptop is barely powerfull enough to run a browser, and i have a bunc o f digital photo raws to process first. Expect more on Thursday when I am back home again.

The height of annoyance.

IMG_2787, originally uploaded by mr-potter.

This is a pet peeve of mine.

Don't you just hate it when they put the power adapter as part of the bit you plug in to the wall. It is especially so when you will be plugging it in to a power strip. The chances are you will end up covering at least one more poser socket one the strip. The strip is now heavy and cumbersome, and is generally a downright nuisance.

There! I feel much better now.

Spring is on its way

The snow all melted this last week, leaving muddy brown grass everywhere. The first half of the week was a lot warmer than of late. A sure sign that spring is on the way. Here are some others:

• Flocks of honking geese flying North over our heads in big V's.
• Birds singing, woodpeckers pecking.
• A huge increase in people out walking, and dogs taking their owners for a walk.
• Dry sandy roads, and torrents of water running down the gutters.
• An increase in the number of motorcycles, and noisy, old pickup trucks that, quite frankly, should not be on the road whatever time of the year it is.

There was a noticeable lifting of moods with the rising of the temperature. That was tempered by the time change (I may rant about that later). All in all, sure signs that the cold winter is nearly over, and spring in on the way.

Atchooo!

Aerial Angels

Pictures of the snow angel event from the air.

Snow Angels

Today, Bismarck took back the world record for the most people making a snow angel at the same time. We were one of the 9,000 odd people there.

Here's the Bismarck Tribune's coverage - including a rather poor video.

I took a couple of pictures too - but not of us making snow angels. Thats because I was busy waving my arms and legs in the snow at the time.





I also took a movie with my point and shoot of one of the many snow-waves (kind of like a Mexican wave but with snow) that kept us amused during the half hour wait for the twenty second event.

Installing Oracle on 64bit Linux

I have just installed Oracle DBMS server on RHEL (x86_64) for the first time. I have installed Oracle on Solaris and Windows tens of times, but this is my first real Linux install. I must say that I am not impressed. Installing on Solaris is a whole lot simpler. The two big issues were packages dependencies and poor documentation.

The installation would consistently fail during the linking process. Each time it failed required me to find out whay, install the required package, blow away the $ORACLE_HOME and oraInventory, and then start over. The list of required packages was well short. I also had to install both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of all the libraries it needed. So my dependancy list is this:

rpm -q --qf '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE} (%{ARCH})\n' binutils compat-db control-center gcc gcc-c++ glibc glibc-common glibc-devel gnome-libs libstdc++ libstdc++-devel make pdksh sysstat xscreensaver libaio libaio-devel
binutils-2.15.92.0.2-21 (x86_64)
compat-db-4.1.25-9 (x86_64)
compat-db-4.1.25-9 (i386)
control-center-2.8.0-12.rhel4.5 (x86_64)
gcc-3.4.6-3 (x86_64)
gcc-c++-3.4.6-3 (x86_64)
glibc-2.3.4-2.25 (x86_64)
glibc-2.3.4-2.25 (i686)
glibc-common-2.3.4-2.25 (x86_64)
glibc-devel-2.3.4-2.25 (x86_64)
glibc-devel-2.3.4-2.25 (i386)
gnome-libs-1.4.1.2.90-44.1 (x86_64)
libstdc++-3.4.6-3 (x86_64)
libstdc++-3.4.6-3 (i386)
libstdc++-devel-3.4.6-3 (i386)
make-3.80-6.EL4 (x86_64)
pdksh-5.2.14-30.3 (x86_64)
sysstat-5.0.5-11.rhel4 (x86_64)
xscreensaver-4.18-5.rhel4.11 (x86_64)
libaio-0.3.105-2 (i386)
libaio-0.3.105-2 (x86_64)
libaio-devel-0.3.105-2 (x86_64)

I even made a sym link to shut it up too. It's probably naughty, but it worked!

ln -s /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6.0.3 /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.5

And that's what I had to do.

So, Oracle went down another notch in my estimation today. It shouldn't be that hard. The whole "Linux is a constantly moving target" line doesn't wash for me. Oracle will only install on certain, certified distro's. They have made themselves a manageable environment, yet they still make it hard.

US Daylight Saving Time 2007

In North America, Daylight Saving Time is coming a few weeks early. You may need to update your computer to deal with it.

If your Linux is up to date then it's probably ready. Best way of testing that I have found is:

zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007

and the output should look like this:

/etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 07:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 08:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:59:59 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:00:00 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600

If not, then I suggest that you go read this thread.

Setting up Sun Rays on Solaris 10

I am committing a bunch of notes to blog. Somebody, somewhere may find this useful, and they won't find it if it's locked away in my $HOME.

1. Install Solaris 10

2. Apply latest cluster patch

3. Install latest PC/SC SRCOM Bypass package (available to download from the Sun download Center http://www.sun.com/download/products.xml?id=42c5d3d9 ). This was not obvious in the supplied installation documentation. This must be installed for smartcards and hot-desking to work. This is only required for Solaris 10.

4. download and unzip the latest Sun Ray Server Software from http://www.sun.com/software/sunray/getit.jsp

5. run srss3.1/utinstall – this will install the software

6. reboot

7. connect up Sun Ray DTU's

8. It seems that if you only have one NIC on your server box then you can only do a shared network configuration. So run: /opt/SUNWut/sbin/utadm -A

9. The defaults values looked incomplete to me, so I suggest not accepting them. Instead, go through all the questions and answer them with the correct information.

bash-3.00# ./utadm -A bge0 Error: unable to resolve network name: "bge0"
bash-3.00# ./utadm -A 192.168.1.0
### Configuring /etc/nsswitch.conf
### Configuring Service information for Sun Ray
### Disabling Routing 
Selected values for subnetwork "192.168.1.0"
net mask:           255.255.255.0
no IP addresses offered
auth server list:   192.168.1.10
firmware server:    192.168.1.10
Accept as is? ([Y]/N): n
netmask: 255.255.255.0 (cannot be changed - system defined netmask)
Do you want to offer IP addresses for this subnet? (Y/[N]): y
new first Sun Ray address: [192.168.1.245] 192.168.1.100
number of Sun Ray addresses to allocate: [155] 10
auth server list:     192.168.1.10
To read auth server list from file, enter file name:
Auth server IP address (enter  to end list): 192.168.1.10
Auth server IP address (enter  to end list):
If no server in the auth server list responds,
should an auth server be located by broadcasting on the network? ([Y]/N):
new firmware server: [192.168.1.10]
new router: [192.168.1.1]
Selected values for subnetwork "192.168.1.0"
net mask:           255.255.255.0
first unit address: 192.168.1.100
last unit address:  192.168.1.109
auth server list:   192.168.1.10
firmware server:    192.168.1.10
router:             192.168.1.1
Accept as is? ([Y]/N): y
### Configuring firmware version for Sun Ray
### Successfully enabled tftp for firmware downloads
All the units served by "demo" on the 192.168.1.0
network interface, running firmware other than version
"3.1_32,REV=2005.08.24.08.55" will be upgraded at their next power-on.
### Configuring Sun Ray Logging Functions
### Turning on Sun Ray LAN connection NOTE:
utrestart must be run before LAN connections will be allowed
DHCP is not currently running, should I start it? ([Y]/N): y
 

10. run /opt/SUNWut/sbin/utconfig

bash-3.00# ./utconfig  Configuration of Sun Ray server Software
This script automates the configuration of the Sun Ray server software
and related software products.
Before proceeding, you should have read the Sun Ray server 3.1 Installation
Guide and filled out the Configuration Worksheet.
This script will prompt you for the values you filled out on the Worksheet.
For your convenience, default values (where applicable) are shown in brackets.
Continue ([y]/n)?
Enter Sun Ray admin password:
Re-enter Sun Ray admin password: 

11. This script will automatically set up apache as the admikn console for you.
    If you are already using apache for something else, then answer no here.

Configure Sun Ray Web Administration? ([y]/n)? y
An installation of Apache Web Server version  1.3 has been detected at /etc/apache.
This script can configure the Apache server on this server for you.
Warning: if you choose to configure Apache, the existing Apache configuration
file will be over-written.
If this server is presently configured as a Webserver and you want to preserve your
current configuration, you must answer "NO" and merge the configuration file manually
by following the instructions in the Administration Guide on how to configure the
Apache server.
Would you like to configure this server to host the Sun Ray Web Administration? ([y]/n)? y
Enter port number [1660]:
Enter CGI username [utwww]:
Enable remote server administration? (y/[n])? 

11. Controlled Access Mode is the Sun Ray term for kiosk mode. If you wish to use it, you must say yes here. If you say no and change your mind, then you need to come back and rerun utconfig. Same goes for failover groups.

Configure Controlled Access Mode? (y/[n])? n
Configure this server for a failover group? (y/[n])? n
About to configure the following software products:
Sun Ray Data Store 2.1
Hostname: demo
Sun Ray root entry: o=utdata
Sun Ray root name: utdata
Sun Ray utdata admin password: (not shown)
SRDS 'rootdn': cn=admin,o=utdata
Apache Web Server 1.3
Apache Web Server port number: 1660
Remote server administration: no
CGI username: utwww  Sun Ray server 3.1
Failover group: no
Controlled Access Mode: no
Continue ([y]/n)? y
Updating Sun Ray Data Store schema ...
Updating Sun Ray Data Store ACL's ...
Creating Sun Ray Data Store Datastore ...
Restarting Sun Ray Data Store ...
Starting Sun Ray Data Store daemon .
Mon Oct 16 15:23 : utdsd starting
Loading Sun Ray Data Store ...
Executing '/usr/bin/ldapadd -p 7012 -D cn=admin,o=utdata' ...
adding new entry o=utdata  adding new entry o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=desktops,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=users,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=logicalTokens,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=rawTokens,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=multihead,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=container,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=properties,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry cn=utadmin,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=smartCards,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utordername=probeorder,utname=smartCards,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=policy,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=resDefs,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utname=prefs,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utPrefType=resolution,utname=prefs,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
adding new entry utPrefClass=advisory,utPrefType=resolution,utname=prefs,utname=demo,o=v1,o=utdata
Added 18 new LDAP entries.
Creating Sun Ray server Configuration ...
Adding user account for 'utwww' (ut admin web server cgi user) ...
/usr/apache/bin/apachectl restart: httpd not running,
trying to start /usr/apache/bin/apachectl restart: httpd started
Unique "/etc/opt/SUNWut/gmSignature" has been generated.
Restarting Sun Ray Data Store ...
Stopping Sun Ray Data Store daemon .Sun Ray Data Store daemon stopped
Starting Sun Ray Data Store daemon .
Mon Oct 16 15:23 : utdsd starting
Adding user admin ...
User(s) added successfully!
***********************************************************
The current policy has been modified.
You must restart the authentication manager to activate the changes.
***********************************************************
Configuration of Sun Ray server has completed.
Please check the log file, /var/adm/log/utconfig.2006_10_16_15:16:55.log,
for errors.
bash-3.00# 

12. Synchronise the firmwares on the DTU's.

bash-3.00# ./utfwsync
Stopping Authentication Managers on demo ...
Will restart Authentication Managers in 5 seconds
Restarting Authentication Managers ...
bash-3.00# 

13. Reboot the server

Other points of Note

If you need to change anything in utconfig, then you get a cleaner change by unconfiguring and then reconfiguring from scratch:

/opt/SUNWut/sbin/utconfig -u /opt/SUNWut/sbin/utconfig 

Setting up postfix with midco as a smarthost

This is specifically for Midcontinent's ISP, but it should work for any place where the smarthost requires authentication, and is picky about your mail headers.

1. Install Postfix

Installed by default on Ubuntu. On centos, I di the yum install postfix before I did the yum remove sendmail as it meant yum wouldnt try to remove a whole bunch of stuff where an MTA is a dependancy.

2. Configure mail relaying

add the following to /etc/postfix/main.cf

relayhost = smtp.midco.net

Midco also require you to authenticate before it will receive mail. So you need to add the following. You also need to tell postfix a username and password - we'll see that later.

smtp_sasl_auth_enable=yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps=hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options=

Next, midco rejects mail with a bad from address. So, you need to masqquerade all outgoing mail. Add this to /etc/postfix/main.cf:

smtp_generic_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/generic

3. Edit /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

Put your midco mail username and password in here. Use the following format:

relayhost username:password

so it should look something like this:

smtp.midco.net your.mailbox@bis.midco.net:yourmailboxpassword

4. Edit /etc/postfix/generic

Here you make a list of what you want to masquerade from and to. So, we want everything going out to look like it is part of the midco happy family. I solved this problem for a trixbox installation, so my file looked like this:

@asterisk1.local my.mailbox@bis.midco.net

This tells postfix to replace anthing from the host asterisk1.local (which is the trixbox) with my midco email address. It may look confusing to the recipient, which is unfortunate. You may be able to mess with the bit before the @ sign, but the stuff after has to be a proper domain name.

5. Make these files readable by postfix.

You need to encode the files you have just created.

postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
postmap /etc/postfix/generic

You should now see /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd.db and /etc/postfix/generic.db

6. Secure your files.

There are passwords in plaintext, so lets secure them.

chown root:root /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
chmod 600 /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

7. Restart Postfix and test.

/etc/init.d/postfix restart

Now send an email somewhere. Watch the logs in /var/log/maillog. All being well, the mail should sail on through the mail system.

Winter Sun

IMG_2974, originally uploaded by mr-potter.

It was quite warm today. The temperature reached the high 30's F (about 4C), which compared to -15F (-26C) at the beginning of the week, it felt pretty warm.

So, while the weather was balmy, we went barmy, and played outside. We had doors and windows open and aired the house out.

So here we are, sitting on deck chairs in the sunshine, with a snow drift behind us. Talk about crazy. Although, do bear in mind that if we were real North Dakotans, we would be sitting out there in short sleeves.