May 31, 2003

And They Rotated!

After my battle with the image linkers over the last few months, I've managed to get the situation under control -- even to the point where I have only been logging the 'bad attempts' to get images. I've been doing this for two reasons: 1) to catch people 'in the act', and 2) to study patterns.

Certain patterns can show up in the log files indicating that the referral information is being blocked (or not sent). This can be due to the browser, firewall, network, anything between here and the user. Sadly, using referrals isn't the best way to do what I needed to do (although it was the most transparent -- which is why I used this method). But, sadly some users must suffer in this case...all because of a few people taking advantage of a situation.

Anyway, as I mentioned I've only been logging the 'bad requests' for the last several weeks. That's great, but the log files were getting somewhat largish. Of course, I could just manually rotate and gzip them, but that's too much work. Instead, I installed/customized a Perl script I found online which works similar (near identical) to that of logrotate in Linux. And thanks to cron, I've got this process scheduled -- so it's completely automatic. On the 1st and 15th of each month, I rotate the file and compress the old one.

Power Problems?

A few months back, I purchased an ATX power supply tester while picking up some other odds and ends. I didn't necessarily anticipate using it for real purposes any time in the near future, but actually ended up using it to diagnose a real problem -- one which was becoming semi-obvious but not overly trivial. Needless to say, I will have to buy a power supply for replacement on Monday. Not on any of my machines, though. Everything here at home seems to be working just fine as of late...even when the power went out for a few seconds a couple of days ago.

6 of 7

Today marked day 6 of 7 straight at work. I have to go back there tonight (at close) to help one of the new people do the correct 'end of day' things in the cash registers...but aside from that I've got about 6 hours remaining before my first day off in a week.

This post was upgraded to the MZ Online Blog on 8/20/07

May 30, 2003

And there were Five...

Day 5 of 7 consecutive work days is complete. Two to go... Woohoo!!!

In other news...

• We went to see Bruce Almighty at the good ol' Morris theater tonight. I would have to say that it was money well spent -- a funny movie. Most likely will have to be added to the DVD collection at the appropriate time.

• The construction crew has completed one entire side of the building thus far, and started work on another, progressing by about 1/4 on aforementioned 'new side.' When I talked to the [building] management people today, I made note of their quick and relatively painless progress on the job

• Prior to work this morning, before running errands and such, I studied up some thanks to some HOWTO material on iptables and NAT. I have a much better grasp on the 'fine point' detail differences between ipchains and iptables now...and feel much more comfortable with being able to write a relatively robust firewall ruleset in the near future. I still have to do some more reading on things, but I found several good resources this morning...all of which are bookmarked for future reference. Once I get this material down a bit better, I plan on moving configuration files and doing the server thing.

• In regards to the server thing, I'm stuck at a point in time where I need to discuss exactly how much RAM will remain in each machine. My personal bias is to move as much RAM as possible over to the 'services' server...leaving only a bare minimum of, say 32/64MB of RAM in the 'router' box. I need to do some research on how the resident services on the router will use resources. Disk space I have plenty of -- I'm not worried about that. But, if these resident services on the router box require good chunks of resources to operate successfully (or speedily -- new word I just invented), namely RAM...I'll have to make that judgement as to what to keep in that box as appropriate.

This post was upgraded to the MZ Online Blog on 8/20/07

May 28, 2003

DICT Progress Is Made...

I took some time last night while doing other things (offline -- away from the computer) to download all sorts of stuff (indicies and data) for DICTd -- the server end of the DICTionary protocol. As you may know from previous news postings, I've been having difficulty in using DICT for some time, at least when it comes to querying the servers at dict.org.

But, unlike is mentioned at the dict.org website, the problem I'm having is a 'no route to host' type. Which hasn't gone away. I can't even get to the aformentioned website (unless I ssh to another machine outside my home network (and outside of my ISP's domain) and use a text-based browser such as lynx)...let alone make queries. Upon further investigation, I am able to make queries to their temporary server setup...which has temporarily allowed me to do dictionary lookups. But, that's just not good enough for me.

So, last night I downloaded several MB of data from a trusted dict.org mirror. At the same time, I also subscribed to the various administrative lists for updates on software, databases, etc. Like I said, I did this in off-time last night...and with my work schedule this morning/afternoon, I haven't yet had a chance to check it out. Perhaps later this evening...we shall see.

Server Update

I don't recall if I mentioned it in an earlier post, but I set up NFS between the server boxen...mostly for ease of use with backups of data and transferring the last of the configuration stuff. I will probably leave an NFS setup active once I've redone the old router box...mostly for ease of backup (I can set one machine to do backups for data on both machines).

Samba services, Netatalk, and iptables are the last things remaining... I'll probably use a cheap hack of ipchains -> iptables script to make my existing ipchains rules work with iptables...and go from there once I get the box back online, making them more robust.

Three Down, Four To Go...

Day three of seven at work is over. And there was much rejoicing!

This post was upgraded to the MZ Online Blog on 8/20/07

May 27, 2003

Another year passes...

Yup, another birthday has come and gone...and I'm as a result one year older than I was.

Pretty slow and relaxing weekend, which was good. Nothing overly strenuous, which was a nice change from the pseudo-chaoticness of the last several months. Still haven't managed to get all the server box stuff completed, but that's alright. Not in any huge hurry to do so anyway.

Let Construction Ring!

This morning at 8am sharp, I was woken by the sounds of strange things outside our bedroom window. Upon further investigation, I soon realized that the construction crew had arrived and was beginning to do their job of re-roofing/siding the building in which we live. I'd known for some time (over 9 months now) that this would be happening soon (which I found out around the first of May), but didn't know exactly when...until this morning.

So far, they've managed to get much more done (in one day) than the crew who did the building next door managed to do in two weeks. This is positive. I haven't gone outside to see exactly how much progress they've made by now (end of the work day for them)...but I know that it's pretty substantial (at least a good portion of one side of the building has been stripped...some already reshingled. More news (and possibly pictures) to come as they make progress...

Two Down, Five To Go...

I've been slated for a seven-day stretch at the salt mine (work), two of which are now complete. While I don't particularly care for that long a run without a day off, it's also okay as my upcoming paycheck will be weak...since it covers the pay period over graduation, where I worked very little. The money may not be great, but the additional hours I can get right now makes up for it in ways that taking on a second job wouldn't right now...

This post was upgraded to the MZ Online Blog on 8/20/07