Fun day

Well, Semagic just crashed on me, what fun. Okay, let's see what I remember about my post...

My dad turns 49 (wow, he was around when the dinosaurs roamed the earth) this Sept 15th. Or my math's off. One of the two.

Linux needs a better way to do authentication than NSS and PAM. Actually, I *like* NSS. I don't like PAM. It has to be re-configured for every bloody service, and it's easy to foobar your setup. I just want to authenticate against a server. It can do Kerberos (I won't do that to myself), LDAP (difficult, but possible), WinBind (my boss has found out that this is no substitute for a Real Setup), or even NIS (via Services For Unix). Sadly, it just doesn't work, and there is almost NO real debugging info. Hopefully Novell or IBM jump in, figure it out, and make a cheap (yeah, we'd pay a little (a little!!) for it) program/script/plugin/system to authenticate against a real directory, like LDAP. But it's not fun.

And SFU's NFS server doesn't seem to like doing any useful logging, like why my attempt to write a file fails, even though I've got the permissions set (on both sides it appears correctly) and the share is RW but it doesn't work. Spent half an hour on that one, and decided to give up, I'll just mount my /home/ via samba.

Gmail

Gee. How can I describe Gmail. Cool. I am so surprised that some open source / free software webmail project hasn't stolen some UI gem (okay, gems) from gmail. Wow... threaded conversations (it even puts your responses in the same thread, and shows only new unread messages). There aren't folders, but labels, and multiple label per message, so you can organize a message in multiple "virtual folders". Great, once you get used to it. I wish our email system at work was like that...

Working on my spanish again, got my school book out and starting to go through the chapters. Hopefully I'll get back up to my previous low ability and then exceed it. I got a new fan, and boy, does it blow. Really. My old one sucks. Well, not really, but it's pretty close. Sadly, it's a strong enough magnetic field that my monitor at work does NOT like it. Oh well, it can be on the other side of the office.

I think I've finally got all of the XP machines at work with SP2 on them. Not a single problem with it, and I feel happier knowing that when my CEO at work plugs in at some unknown network, it's locked down by default. I still can't decide if I want to put the servers into a real DMZ, being as I'm the only person who's really familar with the network, how to secure it, and if I leave, it would cause real issues if they needed to change the setup. But it'd be MUCH more secure. So I dunno.

cyrus

Okay, in case I ever need to reconstruct from a cyrus mail server again:

To restore from backups:

cd /var/spool/imap

reconstruct -rf

And in the imap.conf:

sasl_passwd_check: plain

sasl_pwcheck_method: saslauthd

Today

Saw The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement. Thought it was kinda cute. Having Mac and Cheese for dinner. Went looking at swimming trunks, didn't like anything I really saw in my size (there was XL and XXL, I might be XL I think). Started the Alexander the Great conquest series in Rise of Nations (cool game, BTW).

Blogging in the rain...

I'm blogging in the rain! Okay. Finally got my American Communucations problem resolved. Seems that they got new IP addresses, and forgot to tell the static IP address-holders. They called me up, and gave me all the info. Boy, I wish they'd done something sooner. FOUR WEEKS! Unreal. I couldn't talk to their network department guys (NOC), and they kept sending the local guy out, when he could do nothing (and the last time he came out my wife happened to be there, which she didn't like, but I got on the phone, and I told him the problem (do they not send the notes out to the techs, or did the nice customer service people not write down a word I said??) and he agreed that there was nothing he could do, but his boss could get the NOC people to call me). A serious lack of decent customer service. And we're still occasionally getting packets dropped and some lag, but it's nowhere near as bad.

Okay, that aside, I'm happy with them. I can get a static IP, at least. So now I'll setup a IPv6 tunnel at home and play with that some. I also hope to get a Novell linux server up here soon, probably using my current Suse 9.0 Professional setup (we'll see if that "works" or not). Or maybe I'll just setup some virtualization thing. Dunno. Maybe I'll set it up at work. I definitely want to start working on that though, I've got my eyes on a Novell Certified Linux Engineer cert, and my boss even mentioned that Signal might be able to help pay for it (I'm assuming that's if I pass the test).

Took today off, spending some time with Kris. We're dyeing yarn (I put the E in there to make it clear, might even be the right spelling). Vinegar and KoolAid(tm) and yarn. Then she's going to make it into a steering wheel cover. And I got a book on building looms, which includes the details for a number of designs, a tapestry loom (which actually I already own one, GREAT starter setup), a Floor Jack loom, a Table loom, another floor loom, and then some little loom for wristbands (which I'm *not* interested in doing). So that'll be fun.

We're doing the NetFlicks(tm) thing. That's also cool, watched School Ties and Matrix: Revolutions yesterday. Now I think the rest of mine are West Wing Season 2 discs.

Well, gotta to dye yarn.

American Communcations Support Request

Okay, I'm hoping that American Communications (which doesn't seem to own any domain searchable on Google, BTW) actually reads this. I do NOT want someone to come out to my place. My wires are JUST FINE. My problem is the static IP that I get from you, and your DHCP servers are happy to serve me (which is good). The thing is, it doesn't seem to be routing to you. It's routing somewhere else. So, either a) it's your routers, and you can fix it, or b) I want a new static IP that is in another block, one that does route to your network.

Sadly, I *have* to have a static IP. Why, you ask? Because you seem to use a really old version of Linux on your routers. And it doesn't forward the port 20 FTP packets back to me, so I can't upload files to my web provider (since you don't provide webspace, I had to get my own), and b) they don't forward protocols other that TCP and UDP, so no VPN will work over the dynamic IPs. And you double-NAT the non-static IPs. They go to a local 192.168.*.* router, and then to 10.1.0.1, and THEN to the real world. And one of those boxes doesn't understand how to back-send traffic other than TCP/UDP, so the end result is that I need a real, honest-to-ARIN IP address. Also, I believe I'm paying for it, so yeah, I want to be able to use it. (You may be asking, how's he on the web? I'm using one of those non-real IPs right now, but I need to be able to use my static IP address.)


This is my static IP info:
IP: 66.250.122.130
NM: 255.255.255.224
GW: 66.250.122.129
NS: 66.250.49.2
NS: 66.250.49.3

From me to known good server:
1 9 ms 9 ms 9 ms 66.250.122.129
2 13 ms 14 ms 13 ms 10.1.0.1
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 * * * Request timed out.


From known good server to me:
1 firewall.signalbhn.org (192.168.15.1) 0.294 ms 0.243 ms 0.197 ms
2 63-255-0-102.ip.mcleodusa.net (63.255.0.102) 1.405 ms 1.285 ms 1.261 ms
3 216-43-158-254.dsl.mcleodusa.net (216.43.158.254) 6.320 ms 6.202 ms 6.450 ms
4 dnvtcouzh00jc01-at0-0-0-3.mcleodusa.net (64.198.100.97) 6.653 ms 6.489 ms 6.607 ms
5 chcgilwuh53jc01-at1-0-0-20.mcleodusa.net (64.198.100.2) 32.827 ms 32.525 ms 30.547 ms
6 206.220.243.177 (206.220.243.177) 31.277 ms 31.691 ms 125.841 ms
7 p15-0.core02.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.4.62) 32.338 ms 31.438 ms 32.556 ms
8 p12-0.core01.mci01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.4.33) 43.980 ms 42.705 ms 42.935 ms
9 p5-0.core01.den01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.4.29) 75.614 ms 53.706 ms 53.877 ms
10 g50.ba01.b000544-0.den01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.66.170) 54.170 ms 54.109 ms 54.035 ms
11 telosonline.demarc.cogentco.com (66.28.21.42) 54.381 ms 54.962 ms 54.314 ms
12 66.28.184.94 (66.28.184.94) 56.193 ms 54.441 ms 54.405 ms
13 gwdt1670.telosonline.net (66.28.184.1) 56.356 ms 65.334 ms 55.041 ms
14 66.28.184.94 (66.28.184.94) 55.921 ms 55.116 ms 71.470 ms
15 gwdt1670.telosonline.net (66.28.184.1) 57.667 ms 57.212 ms 57.611 ms
16 66.28.184.94 (66.28.184.94) 70.674 ms * 57.832 ms
17 gwdt1670.telosonline.net (66.28.184.1) 60.313 ms 57.200 ms 58.905 ms
18 66.28.184.94 (66.28.184.94) 57.723 ms 61.799 ms 65.171 ms
19 gwdt1670.telosonline.net (66.28.184.1) 64.409 ms 57.516 ms 60.903 ms
20 66.28.184.94 (66.28.184.94) 138.478 ms

Awake!

I am awake. It it 4:30 in the morning. I don't know what woke me, but I couldn't get back to sleep (although I just yawned, so maybe I'll try again). Managed some emails, told Mandy to we're going to take prisoners next time she comes to Colorado (not that that should scare her away). Can't check my work email, I'll have to look into that today..