Monday, March 31, 2008

Happy B'day Mozilla!

A happy and red birthday to you
Yes, 10 years old! Jo Jo Jo... So they decided to go red for the party :p
This days, while using Os X, I preffer Safari, but mostly because of the way it 'merges' with the whole OS; nevertheless on Windows, Mozilla/ Firebox is the browser.

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Its coming!

Its official, the summer died!
At last, I can't believe it! (Yes, I'm totally obsessed with the subject matter)

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Sunday, March 30, 2008

The kids are alright seem fine

It seems like everything is back to normal... Looks like yesterday's snafu was something temporal...

Both Thor as well as Judith are happy churning and crunching CPU time like any other. Turned off Thor last night when I got to bed, and it happily started today without any problem; Judith stays put like nothing ever happened, the only thing I did to her was putting a cap on the bandwidth for the rsync scripts for the backups.

Hope everything stays like this and we'll still be one happy family.

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Christmas catchup

I got all of the books I wanted, except for the one on FreeBSD security, but I really don't miss it much.
Incidentally, spannungsbogen didn't work on Weisman's, but I don't mind, the book is really interesting, gulped on the plane back, forced me to put aside Toffler's Revolutionary Wealth.

BTW, the cover of Toffler's English edition if awful, I'd preffer the more sever but discreet form the Spanish edition, the English one looks like a diet book or something.

Other books I got:

The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War
Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film

Biskind's book on US 70's movies (Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood) was rather good, a mix of gossip and scholar film critique, really entertaining stuff.

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The real autumn

Would the real autumn please stand up?
Who knows? Maybe this is the real thing, and form now on, it is all down hill...
One thing is for sure, the days are getting shorter and shorter.

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Saturday, March 29, 2008

Bumpy Saturday morning


Both Thor & Judith had a rough early start today.
When I turned on thor (I turn it off when I go to sleep), it got up OK, allowed me to login, give me full desktop, Dashboard, etc, but then, began a loud clicking sound from the box, I tought one of the 2 HDDs died on me, but to me sounded like way too loud to be a HDD.
Turned off, tried to turned on again, and nothing... The same sound, on screen a grey screen, no spinning booting circle or anything.
Turned off again, opened it up, and turned on while open, the sound might seemed to come from the power unit.

Turned off Thor, disconnected all the cables, touched a bit the power unit (there is no other way of saying it, simpley touch it), connected everything, and with the bay open, turned it on. No problem at all, so, closed the hatch, moved thor to its place, and on I went...

Logged me in, performed a backup to my external drive (I had recent backups but just in case), checked email, used Safari, Terminal & iTunes for about 2/ 3 hrs.

After that, turned off thor for about 10 minutes, and then turned on again, no problem whatsoever, I'm typing this from my beloved thor.

ITOH, Judith came out of the night apparently completely hanged, no network connection at all, but powered on, (at least the screen offered a login prompt). Connected a monitor and a keyboard, but the keyboard was not working at all, perhaps because it booted without one in the first place.
So, there goes another uptime stat down the drain.

If Judith goes down, it is annoying; but loosing Thor would be too much...


UPDATE:
Now that I stop to think about it, perhaps the roden bite the other day gave me super powers, and I now I can fix things by simply touching them...
I was thinking in adding some color to the bit, masquerading it as jailhouse tattoo to pick up a rapper girl or something.

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Nuclear apocalypse films from the 80's

The chance to begin again


Here is a top 3 list of my favorite nuclear war films from the 1980s, I think that the first two did more for the peace movement than all the Hippie & Flower Power combined, at least for my generation.
Of course, there was also The Day After, but personally I always thought it was kinda goofy, specially compared to "Threads".
The third one it is a comedy, but I have fond memories of it, so I have added it.


Threads
Testament
Miracle Mile


DISCLAIMER:
Do not watch the first 2 on a Sunday afternoon.

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Friday, March 28, 2008

Black day to go on Safari

I have just read on Ars' Infinite Loop that the MacBook Air was compromised in less than 2 minutes.
Actually, it was on the second day of cracking contest, but nevertheless, nor Ubuntu or Vista were cracked so far, I'm sure a bunch of heads might be rolling on the floor of the dark side Apple

MacBook Air compromised in 2 minutes for $10,000

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Have freelance will travel

I was looking for a way of sending out the emails I have already on the unread spool from Judith to another box, and found this interesting site:

Get a Freelancer

The Linux section seems rather lively

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Heartbreakers

Wanted film
I have been looking for this movie for quite some time, I remember seeing it on cable during the 80's.
I always thought it was pretty good, later I found out that was shot by Michael Ballhaus, IIRC, on the "Repo Man" DVD ( link 1 link 2), Alex Cox comments both on the early LA work done by both Robby Müller and Ballhaus.
The other day had the chance to see (among many other movies) another of my favorite forgotten films from the 80's, "Miracle Mile" ( link 1 link 2 ), all the LA exteriors remembered a lot to Heartbreakers (or at least, the memory I have from the film)

Here is a review of Heartbreakers, and apparently, it can only be found on VHS (!!!):

Forgotten Films: Heartbreakers (1984)
Amazon.com - Heartbreakers (1984)

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Rodent bite



Stupidity bites?
After a 2 week agricultural strike (link 1  link 2 link 3 link 4), the urban centers in Argentina are getting left with shorter and rapidly diminished food supplies, desperate, the rats are invading the streets a la Alan Weisman (but with us still around) targeting the only soft and tasty flesh they can find: humans!
Last night I had a fight to death with one particularly big specimen who left the marks of its filthy fangs on my hand.





So long Intellipoint, and thanks for the scroll
Actually, more than a rat, it was my own stupidty, trying to pry open an old mouse of mine I nearly stabbed with a screwdriver. This mouse stopped working and I simply effing love it, but the sucker was bolt down and soldered, it was impossible to open, I don't get an idea how Microsoft build this things...
I am a fetishist when it comes not only to mouse pointers ( link 1 & link 2 ), but also regarding mouses, I particularly hate the so called 'travel mouses', those that are sold for the laptop users ( link 1 & link 2 ).
Right now, I have this mouse, but it pales in comparison with my late Intellipont...

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Thursday, March 27, 2008

Random pictures from the holidays

pf firewall for a workstation (III)

And another update on the firewall script.


## /etc/pf.conf

if="dc0"

my_nets="{ 1.2.3.4, 4.3.2.1, 4.3.2.1/27, 5.6.7.8/28 }"
my_lan="{ 10.120.10.0/29 }"

tcp_pass_universe= "{ 80 }"
tcp_pass_nets= "{ 22 }"
tcp_pass_lan= "{ 22 53 113 123 }"
udp_pass_lan="{ 53 123 }"
icmp_types="echoreq"

set skip on lo0

set block-policy return

scrub in

block in
pass out

antispoof for lo0
antispoof for ($if) inet

pass in on $if inet proto tcp from $my_lan to ($if) port $tcp_pass_lan
pass in on $if inet proto udp from $my_lan to ($if) port $udp_pass_lan

pass in on $if inet proto tcp from $my_nets to ($if) port $tcp_pass_nets
pass in on $if inet proto tcp from any to ($if) port $tcp_pass_universe

pass in on $if inet proto icmp from any to ($if) icmp-type $icmp_types

# EoF #

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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

What autumn???

We dont need no stinking autumn
It seems like the summer doesn't like to die... Today will be around and above 30 C.
I really, really miss the winter.

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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

No means no!

Excellent (but as the author states at the end, perhaps a bit harsh) list.

10 Absolute "Nos!" for Freelancers


Yes, they are aimed towards web design, I find funny the #3...

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Leopard wannabe on Tiger

I have made a few post on the Linux side of thing that try mimmick the Os X interface ( link 1, link 2, link 3 & link 4 ). And now, it is time for Os X (Tiger), who is trying to look like Leopard...

Leopard-ize your Tiger
Liger - Leopard theme for Tiger

Personally, never been much of a theme enthusiast on Os X, the default look seems really nice to me, except maybe for the iTunes rounded windows.

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Monday, March 24, 2008

Damn uptime

judith uptime graph
This sh*t is gets me mad... I can't get judith to stay on longer than a week, and the worst of it, the box (luckily, if you stop to think of it) it's not failing with a hardware problem...
It is PEBKAC all around, for whatever effing reason, I disconnect it by mistake.
The uptimes are a piece of crap, because, first of all, I enabled the MRTG graphing just a day before I left for my vacation, and then, after I got back, I disabled the DHCP server, so when the lease ended, I thought the server had crashed, and rebooted it...

Today, when I was cleaning a bit, I sent to hell all of my boxes.

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Sunday, March 23, 2008

Safari improvement

I have noticed a very, very nice improvement since installed the Safari update; Safari it is not crashing a lot like it used to when working on Blogspot.
It was a nightmare, to the point that I have to switch to Firefox to do anything Blogspot related, it used to crash for the most stupid things, I must have sent something like 20 Safari crash reports to the folks at Apple.

So far, I have made a few posts without a single issue, nice, I don't like to use Firefox on Os X.

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The state of things

The state of things, or at least, of my setup
Got a new chair, the ones I was using (nice ones, but 'fixed' ones) were slowly killing me; besides, they were a bit too high for my setup, not much, but just the exact amount to make it noticeable.
With this see thru chair, I have to get things organized no matter what.

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Friday, March 21, 2008

When will autumn start???

Where the hell is autumn
Today was one of those days is Bs As where you want to disappear until the winter comes...
Humidity, heat and then, a totally covered sky that announces rain, yes, but not just yet.
Not only because it is Easter weekend, or Holy Week or whatever the hell you want to call it, on days like this everything and everybody just stops, and wait for the sky, the wind and the cold to come.

Luckily, it seems like after tonight's rain, the temperature will start to drop, hopefully, this time, for good.

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The dark side of the Apple

A very, very good article dealing with Apple tactics/ strategies, and how, even seem like out dated, still work, or at least for Apple.

How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong

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Easter update spawned a monster (briefly)

Update troubles just a while
Last night installed the latest security and Safari update ( link 1 & link 2), it was pretty much painful, meaning that the box booted correctly, etc... Except for a little thing...
Upon starting the new installed Safari, I got a pop-up with the message from the screenshot, and of course, Keywurl did not start at all (but Safari did without any problem).
It was a bummer, since the plugin was rather handy, but given the nature of the error message from the pop-up, went to the plugin's homepage. and lo and behold, there was a new version, that after installation, works fine with the newest Safari.

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Thursday, March 20, 2008

pf firewall for a workstation (II)

An update on the pf.conf firewall rules/ script.
I have modified it to allow everything on the loopback interface, as well as having a aggressive block, actually denying actively everything that is not specifically enabled.
Other than that, the file is basically the same.


## /etc/pf.conf

if="dc0"
universe="{ 0/0 }"
my_nets="{ 1.2.3.4, 4.3.2.1, 4.3.2.1/27, 5.6.7.8/28 }"
my_lan="{ 10.120.10.0/29 }"

tcp_pass_universe= "{ 80 }"
tcp_pass_nets= "{ 22 }"
tcp_pass_lan= "{ 22 53 113 123 }"
udp_pass_lan="{ 53 123 }"
icmp_types="echoreq"

set skip on lo

set block-policy return

block in
pass out

pass in on $if inet proto tcp from $my_lan to ($if) port $tcp_pass_lan
pass in on $if inet proto udp from $my_lan to ($if) port $udp_pass_lan

pass in on $if inet proto tcp from $my_nets to ($if) port $tcp_pass_nets
pass in on $if inet proto tcp from $universe to ($if) port $tcp_pass_universe

pass in on $if inet proto icmp from $universe to ($if) icmp-type $icmp_types

# EoF #

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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

OpenBSD, ctorrrent & Funes

I don't get this... The memory usage of OpenBSD seems really bizarre.
I have installed 4.2 on a plain vanilla crap box. (an Intel Celeron @268MHz, 128 MB RAM & a couple of IDE drives), enabled MRTG & SNMP to poll data to graph trends on the hdd use, load, etc. (link).
Everything is fine & peachy; but, these last days I have been downloading a few torrents, and I noticed that the more stuff that ctorrent pulls thru the ethernet interface, the lesser the memory use...


Ethernet use graphThe ethernet card use starts to build up as the Torrent runs for a while.





Memory use graphAnd the RAM usage drops accordingly...

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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Oh my God! It's full of stars!

HAL 9000
I just found out by a friend that Arthur C. Clarke died.
Truly a sad day.

Besides '2001', I have really enjoyed 'Rendevouz with Rama', 'Songs from the distant Earth' & 'The fountains of paradise'.
Some of the novels, specially when he started to produce franchises of the titles were not very good, at least to me; for instance, like the sequels to '2001' and 'Rendevouz with Rama'.


Writer Arthur C. Clarke dies at 90

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pf firewall for a workstation

OpenBSD logo, Puffy
That is, for a box with only one NIC and no NATing involved.
I have already setup (on the previous Judith incarnation) a pf firewall, but that was a 'regular one', with 2 NICs, NATing addresses and working as the gateway for my home LAN (link 1 link2 )

But for the moment, I'm not using judith as the gateway/ firewall, so I wanted to enable a plain vanilla firewall that would allow access only to a limited services, and to differentiate services for internet hosts (public HTTP. for instance) and others limited to some of the networks I have control.

This site A Beginner's Guide To Firewalling with pf has some very good tips, specially the one regarding howto enable the cron that would, eventually, work as a fail safe access, if the worst happens.
One thing, tho, you do load the rules with:

sudo /sbin/pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf

Or whatever the path to the config file is, but, at least on OpenBSD 4.2, pf it is not enabled, so, on top of loading the rules, you have to enable the firewall, like this:

sudo /sbin/pfctl -e


Here is the script, and it is a work in progress actually:



## /etc/pf.conf

if="dc0"
universe="{ 0/0 }"
my_nets="{ 1.2.3.4, 4.3.2.1, 4.3.2.1/27, 5.6.7.8/28 }"
my_lan="{ 10.120.10.0/29 }"

tcp_pass_universe= "{ 80 }"
tcp_pass_nets= "{ 22 }"
tcp_pass_lan= "{ 22 53 113 123 }"
udp_pass_lan="{ 53 123 }"
udp_pass_lo="{ 161 }"
icmp_types="echoreq"


block in
pass out


pass in on lo inet proto udp from lo to lo port $udp_pass_lo

pass in on $if inet proto tcp from $my_lan to ($if) port $tcp_pass_lan
pass in on $if inet proto udp from $my_lan to ($if) port $udp_pass_lan

pass in on $if inet proto tcp from $my_nets to ($if) port $tcp_pass_nets
pass in on $if inet proto tcp from $universe to ($if) port $tcp_pass_universe

pass in on $if inet proto icmp all icmp-type $icmp_types

# EoF #

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Monday, March 17, 2008

The fire hazard continues...

Everything is a mess
I have to get things organized here, before a fire burns down the place...
There are a couple of things less than in this picture, but still it is a effing mess.
BTW, on the left, that's Judith, and barely making it on the picture, on the right, that's Thor, hanging on, as usual.
I am totally amazed at the amount of sh*t Judith can handle, OpenBSD really rocks on older hardware, if I did rebooted it, was due to some other problems, but so far, nothing to do with the box itself.

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G33k Sund@y

Last week I was really, really pissed with my DLink router, so I today I took the time to get things under control with the little bugger.
First of all, I changed all the defaults for good, of everything I could find, and just for the kick of it, what a hell, if I don't do it, nobody will.

Besides I have migrated my whole LAN to a new, and much, much clear configuration of IP addresses (in the process I had a few problems with judih, since I forgot to edit the TCP Wrappers config file to the new segment, I'm a schmuck, I know), the new one has a very skinny segment, only 6 hosts (for now, at least).

Also, got the WEP real tight, as well as the MAC filtering, I was a bit on the lax side of the road, since when I got it I was "just testing it".
And, to get things right from the start -and to avoid having the same problem than last week- this time, there is no DHCP server around.

BTW, the LAN, now calls 'arenales.lan'.

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Saturday, March 15, 2008

For whom the bells tolls (5)

You cant un-ring a bell
Or rather, back to the future, or the past, er... Whatever, something like that.

The time, the hour, got back to 'normal', meaning that today 12 PM the country's clock got back one hour, like what it was on December 30th. A shame to think that in all this time, Apple didn't even sent an update.. Anyways, it is back to my own time zone, and to sync via ntpd in order to get the clock under control on my Os X boxes (Judith works as my LAN's ntpd server).

Incidentally, all of my work servers that needed to get the change of hour got it automagically -as well as Judith here at home- the marvels of the Open Source I guess :)

This post, although it says posted at 11:28 PM, it is really being posted one hour later :D

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The summer of my discontent

Fucking summer, die
For the love of Christ or whatever the f*ck, when will the effing G*d d*mn piece of sh*t end????
In my book any day with a near 30C (or above) it is summer, and it sucks.

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Linux PoderPC

Fedora (Live) on my PowerBook
I have been playing a bit with a couple of Linux distros for the PPC architecture on my PowerBook.
Took the latest Fedora release (the one on the screenshot) and Ubuntu for a spin, both of them worked flawlessly, even all the 'Desktop Effects' work without any issue.
The only problem was connecting to my wireless Access Point on my DI-614+, with WPA 2 enabled (but I didn't tried really hard to be honest), the main thing was seeing how Linux behaved on the PowerBook, I'm sure it might not be too hard to get connected, since the card it is properly recognized by both of the distros.

Function keys works, backlight on the keyboard works, etc. Only caveat, on Ubuntu, to boot from the CD, I had to pass this option:

live-nosplash-powerpc

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Friday, March 14, 2008

Ohh, Zooey...

Zooey I love you
My desktop on Thor...
Got it from here, Zooey is certainly a super fine lady, a truly hot mamma, I certainly find her really attractive.

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SNMP & MRTG on OpenBSD

OpenBSD logo, Puffy
I have always being a total fan boy of MRTG, I can set it up in less than 15 minutes on plain vanilla Redhatish box, given that I did that lot of times because of work. Sure, there are many other solutions available, but MRTG setups in a jiffy, without any special requirements other than MRTG and Apache.
When I installed Judith, the second time, I put the box to do more stuff, since it has more stamina; the OpenBSD's builtin Apache, with MRTG was the first thing I tought.
The thing is that many of the scripts I use to gather data from the system don't work since they use either the /proc file system, or use the output from Linux commands; so I had to use SNMPD.

I don't have anything against it, but I this was the first time I use it, because at work all the servers are geographically distributed, so SNMPD its a bit unsafe to use, and all of the servers are Linux, so I have standardized the MRTG & the data gathering scripts setup.

For the configuration, specially for the SNPMD portion, I have used this site as reference:

Monitoring your Linux/Unix servers and network devices using MRTG and SNMP



So here is my mrtg.cfg from Judith:

# -------------------------------------------------------------------
# Multi Router Traffic Grapher -- judith.arenales.int
# -------------------------------------------------------------------

Htmldir: /var/www/htdocs/mrtg
Imagedir: /var/www/htdocs/mrtg/images
Logdir: /var/www/htdocs/mrtg/logs

Refresh: 600
XSize[_]: 250
Ysize[_]: 67

Colours[_]: --#7aafff,--#1000ff,--#006600,--#ff00ff

MaxBytes[_]: 125000000

LoadMIBs: /usr/local/share/snmp/mibs/UCD-SNMP-MIB.txt

## -----------------------------------------------

###############################
# Number of procs
###############################
Target[local_procs]: `/usr/local/scripts/mrtg/stat.pl procs`
Options[local_procs]: nopercent,gauge,noinfo,nobanner,noi
Title[local_procs]: Number of processes
MaxBytes[local_procs]: 1000000
YLegend[local_procs]: Processes
ShortLegend[local_procs]: procs
LegendO[local_procs]: Procs: 
Legend2[local_procs]: Number of processes
PageTop[local_procs]: Number of Processes
WithPeak[local_procs]:wmy
Legend4[local_procs]: Max number of processes

## -----------------------------------------------

###############################
# Number of TCP connections
###############################
Target[local_tcpopen]: `/usr/local/scripts/mrtg/stat.pl tcpopen`
Options[local_tcpopen]: nopercent,gauge,noinfo,nobanner,noi
Title[local_tcpopen]: Open TCP connections
MaxBytes[local_tcpopen]: 1000000
YLegend[local_tcpopen]: TCP Open
ShortLegend[local_tcpopen]:  
LegendO[local_tcpopen]: Open TCP connections: 
Legend2[local_tcpopen]: Connections
PageTop[local_tcpopen]: TCP Open connections
WithPeak[local_tcpopen]:wmy
Legend4[local_tcpopen]: Max number of open TCP connections

## -----------------------------------------------

###############################
# Uptime
###############################
Target[local_uptime]: `/usr/local/scripts/mrtg/stat.pl uptime`
Options[local_uptime]: nopercent,gauge,noinfo,nobanner,noi
Title[local_uptime]: Uptime
MaxBytes[local_uptime]: 1000000
YLegend[local_uptime]: Days
ShortLegend[local_uptime]: Uptime
LegendO[local_uptime]: Uptime: 
Legend2[local_uptime]: days
PageTop[local_uptime]: Uptime
WithPeak[local_uptime]:wmy
Legend4[local_uptime]: Max uptime

## -----------------------------------------------

###############################
# Users on the server
###############################
Target[local_users]: `/usr/local/scripts/mrtg/stat.pl users`
Options[local_users]: nopercent,gauge,noinfo,nobanner,noi
Title[local_users]: Number of users
MaxBytes[local_users]: 1000
YLegend[local_users]: Users
ShortLegend[local_users]:  
LegendO[local_users]: Users: 
Legend2[local_users]: Users
PageTop[local_users]: Users logged in
WithPeak[local_users]:wmy
Legend4[local_users]: Max number of users logged in

## -----------------------------------------------

################################
# HDD space
################################
Target[df-root]: `/usr/local/scripts/mrtg/mrtg-df.sh /`
Options[df-root]: nopercent,nobanner,nolegend,noinfo,integer,gauge
Title[df-root]: Disk usage for /
PageTop[df-root]: Disk usage
YLegend[df-root]: 1k blocks
ShortLegend[df-root]:  1k blocks
LegendI[df-root]: avail 
LegendO[df-root]: used 

Target[df-var]: `/usr/local/scripts/mrtg/mrtg-df.sh /var`
Options[df-var]: nopercent,nobanner,nolegend,noinfo,integer,gauge
Title[df-var]: Disk usage for /var
PageTop[df-var]: Disk usage /var
YLegend[df-var]: 1k blocks
ShortLegend[df-var]:  1k blocks
LegendI[df-var]: avail 
LegendO[df-var]: used 

Target[df-tmp]: `/usr/local/scripts/mrtg/mrtg-df.sh /tmp`
Options[df-tmp]: nopercent,nobanner,nolegend,noinfo,integer,gauge
Title[df-tmp]: Disk usage for /tmp
PageTop[df-tmp]: Disk usage /tmp
YLegend[df-tmp]: 1k blocks
ShortLegend[df-tmp]:  1k blocks
LegendI[df-tmp]: avail 
LegendO[df-tmp]: used 

Target[df-usr]: `/usr/local/scripts/mrtg/mrtg-df.sh /usr`
Options[df-usr]: nopercent,nobanner,nolegend,noinfo,integer,gauge
Title[df-usr]: Disk usage for /usr
PageTop[df-usr]: Disk usage /usr
YLegend[df-usr]: 1k blocks
ShortLegend[df-usr]:  1k blocks
LegendI[df-usr]: avail 
LegendO[df-usr]: used 

Target[df-home]: `/usr/local/scripts/mrtg/mrtg-df.sh /home`
Options[df-home]: nopercent,nobanner,nolegend,noinfo,integer,gauge
Title[df-home]: Disk usage for /home
PageTop[df-home]: Disk usage /home
YLegend[df-home]: 1k blocks
ShortLegend[df-home]:  1k blocks
LegendI[df-home]: avail 
LegendO[df-home]: used 

## -----------------------------------------------

#
# CPU Monitoring
# (Scaled so that the sum of all three values doesn't exceed 100)
#

Target[local_load]:ssCpuRawUser.0&ssCpuRawUser.0:mySecretCommunity@localhost + ssCpuRawSystem.0&ssCpuRawSystem.0:mySecretCommunity@localhost + ssCpuRawNice.0&ssCpuRawNice.0:mySecretCommunity@localhost
Title[local_load]: Server CPU Load
PageTop[local_load]: CPU Load - System, User and Nice Processes
MaxBytes[local_load]: 100
ShortLegend[local_load]: %
YLegend[local_load]: CPU Utilization
Legend1[local_load]: Current CPU percentage load
LegendI[local_load]: Used
LegendO[local_load]:
Options[local_load]: nopercent
Unscaled[local_load]: ymwd

#
# Memory Monitoring (Total Versus Available Memory)
#

Target[local_memory]: memAvailReal.0&memTotalReal.0:mySecretCommunity@localhost
Title[local_memory]: Free Memory
PageTop[local_memory]: Free Memory
MaxBytes[local_memory]: 100000000000
ShortLegend[local_memory]: B
YLegend[local_memory]: Bytes
LegendI[local_memory]: Free
LegendO[local_memory]: Total
Legend1[local_memory]: Free memory, not including swap, in bytes
Legend2[local_memory]: Total memory
Options[local_memory]: gauge,nopercent
kMG[local_memory]: k,M,G,T,P,X

#
# Memory Monitoring (Percentage usage)
#
Title[local_mempercent]: Percentage Free Memory
PageTop[local_mempercent]: Percentage Free Memory
Target[local_mempercent]: ( memAvailReal.0&memAvailReal.0:mySecretCommunity@localhost ) * 100 / ( memTotalReal.0&memTotalReal.0:mySecretCommunity@localhost )
options[local_mempercent]: gauge,transparent,nopercent
Unscaled[local_mempercent]: ymwd
MaxBytes[local_mempercent]: 100
YLegend[local_mempercent]: Memory %
ShortLegend[local_mempercent]: Percent
LegendI[local_mempercent]: Free
LegendO[local_mempercent]: Free
Legend1[local_mempercent]: Percentage Free Memory
Legend2[local_mempercent]: Percentage Free Memory

## -----------------------------------------------

###############################
## dc0 ethernet NIC
###############################
Target[local_dc0]: 3:mySecretCommunity@localhost:
#Options[local_dc0]: nopercent,gauge,noinfo,nobanner
Options[local_dc0]: nopercent,noinfo,nobanner
SetEnv[local_dc0]: MRTG_INT_IP="192.168.0.101" MRTG_INT_DESCR="dc0"
MaxBytes[local_dc0]: 12500000
Title[local_dc0]: Traffic analysis for ethernet card dc0
PageTop[local_dc0]: Ethernet card dc0
WithPeak[local_dc0]:wmy

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Thursday, March 13, 2008

Die, summer, die!


Slowly but steady, the effing summer is dying... I really don't give a sh*t if we'll not get enough energy (at least for now :p ) during the winter; I want the winter to come as hard, tough and mean as it can, I sincerely hope it is stronger than the last one.
People's poll for last year, you know, the ones conducted near the end of the every single year, determined that the Buenos Aires snowing was one, if not the event of 2007.

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Transferring Play Count info on iTunes

iTunes logo
I'm really, but really anal when it comes to my Play Count statistics ( link 1, link 2 & link 3), I like those to be consistent and real, even across boxes; so I have looked all around for a program, script, trick or something that would allow me to transfer the data back and forth between Thor and Trantor.

But it seems like there is none, I did found this link, tho:

How to Sync your iPod with one computer, but Listen to it through iTunes on multiple computers

But the solution involves using the iPod as the method to store the Play Count info when plugged to a different box. I don't want that, I prefer to store the data on the box, and simply move that from box to box.

So I have being using this method to transfer all the music (by far, the easiest part) as well as the Play Count, ratings, etc, from the iTunes on Thor to Trantor.

So, close your iTunes if running, and the important files, the one that store the info, are 'iTunes Library' & 'iTunes Music Library.xml', it will be wise to make a backup of the original ones, before starting to edit those. They are located on the '~/Music/iTunes/' directory on a plain vanilla Os X/ iTunes install.
You'll have to do two things to the files, wipe the contents of 'iTunes Library' (totally blank it), and then replace the file 'iTunes Music Library.xml' with the one you are transferring from the other box.

So, on the box you want to transfer the Play Count data, open Terminal, and cd' to the above directory, then type:

cat /dev/null > 'iTunes Library'


Then, you'll replace the file 'iTunes Music Library.xml' from this box with the one from the other box, with the update Play Count statistics, etc.
If, for instance, the iTunes libraries are located on different places on the different boxes, you'll have to edit the path on the file 'iTunes Music Library.xml' now.

For instance, on Thor, my Quicksilver, the path is:

file://localhost/Volumes/data1/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/


While on Trantor, the PB laptop, the path is:

file://localhost/Users/esteban/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/


I use Emacs, with the Meta + X + replace-regexp function to replace the old path with the new one, trying to edit the file with TextEdit simply chokes the program, it is probably too big to handle.

After the files are blanked, replaced and edited (if needed), start iTunes and wait till it regenerates the whole Music Library again.

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Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Keyword for URL

Or, "Keywurl", for short, how the creator calls it. A free and very useful plugin for Safari, that allows you, for instance, to type in the Safari's Address Bar 'wiki Search string' to open Wikipedia with the results, of course, you can customize what to type instead of 'wiki' to open whatever site you wish to open.
It is free, small, and it seems to be working pretty well on Safari 3.

Keywurl

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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Damn LinkSys

The annoyance that never was
Sunday's night and Monday's dawn was a total nightmare for my home LAN... A stupid thing like installing a few of updates on Thor ended up with a total disaster, not being able to connect to my home network by any means.
It began when I wanted to get a screen grab, on Trantor, from a problem I'm having when I unzip a file, the unzipped one ends up kinda on top of the original one.

While I was doing that, I was installing updates on Thor (Os X, Quicktime & iTunes). After the reboot, the box wasn't able to connect to my home network no matter what I tried, I even re installed the AirPort card on the Quicksilver, I could not get connected to the network, I got not a valid IP from the DHCP server.
While on Trantor. connected to the same network, everything seemed fine...

In the end, the problem was on the LinkSys, which is temporarily working as gateway and DHCP server (Judith is the DNS server for the LAN), previously I had setup the DHCP server on the LinkSys to give me a fixed IP address to Thor and Judith, but, as I found out, while doing this, it also turned off the DHCP server; and on top of that, it also incorrectly assigned the IP address of Thor to Trantor.

To finally get connected I had to configure a fixed IP address for each of the boxes.

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Monday, March 10, 2008

They call it "MacBook Air" in vain

Solid state hard drive
A very interesting story regarding new technologies, TSA checks & perhaps a bit of stupidity too; problems with a MacBook Air, the lack of ports and the absence of a regular internal hard disk drive.

Steve Jobs Made Me Miss My Flight

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I re-install this!

There are a lot of "I use this" post, sites, lists, etc (Or even the site). So, this is my list! :D
Since I have re-installed Tiger on Trantor exaclty a month ago, I have made a list of the Apps & Widgets I like to keep around when I move from box to box.
Of course, the basics are all there (Emacs, SSH, rsync) but these are the ones I add, or at least, the very first ones I need no matter what.

Widgets:

Harmonic
Watchmouse  (I have already posted about this one, here)
IP Subnet Calculator
UNIX Permissions Calculator


Apps:

Menu Calendar Clock
MenuMeters
Adium
Temperature Monitor
Seashore
Chmox
MyMind

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Sunday, March 09, 2008

Google (Linux) error message

Strange Google error message
This one is a new for me, I'm setting up snmpd on my OpenBSD box at home, so I wanted to check something fast regarding the configuration file.
Opened Firefox, on Windows, and went to "google.com/linux"; to my surprise, it came out with the banner on the picture, and a CAPTCHA.
After typing the code on the box, I have been able to navigate to the page with out any problem.
I suspect this might be from a worm on the ISP I'm connecting from.

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Friday, March 07, 2008

Play count (3)

The current top played on my iTunes
An yet another one on the current most played tune on iTunes, it is getting harder and harder to beat the number one! :p

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Thursday, March 06, 2008

Happy RAM, Thor

Showing off the amount of RAM
Back at home from the vacations... Not much good to say, except that this is the time when you rush to test all the cool stuff you got abroad.
The winner, today, was Thor, who got its RAM maxxed to 1.5 GB, with 3 sticks of 512 MB each, the maximum the QuickSilver can handle.
Got it from Crucial, when by pure chance I found out that they reduced the price to 51 U$S, the regular was 68 or so... In Argentina the computer shop I asked wanted 90 U$S for each stick of 512MB...
Now both of my Os X boxes have the same amount of RAM.

So, in a geeky way, happy birthday, Thor.

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Monday, March 03, 2008

New juice for the PB

Brand new batt for my PB
It finally happened, I'm about to finish my vacations, so I decided to blow spend some of the money getting a new battery for my PowerBook.
Called a local Apple Store, and they told me that they would allow me to test the new battery, after paying for it; and if there was a problem, I would be able to return it for a refund.
So, after releasing 138 U$S, including taxes, I have a new battery, that it seems to be working good; it charged fine, and when I unplug the AC, it informs me that I have 3 hours of life (without making any adjustment to extend that life)

Happy, happy, joy, joy

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