The Daves Collective

Possible surfeit

Only the second time this year (tsk). Went off too fast (possible surfeit of coffee). Nearly threw up (possible surfeit of coffee). Left foot still lazy (possible surfeit of ADSL). Sinuses gave birth (possible surfeit of pollen). Managed two miles (possible surfeit of hyperbole). Might try again tomorrow (possible surfeit of optimism).

Fatwa of Unsuitability

I hereby pronounce a Fatwa of Unsuitability (F.U.) upon Gallery. Its replacement will be JAlbum and its ExhibitPlus skin. Gallery was found guilty of PHP Abuse (register_globals, uncaught warnings), Recent Security Cockups, Wasting Too Much Of Dave's Time, and Pandering To Copyright Nazis (by adding watermark support).

Another F.U. was recently pronounced on fetchmail, now replaced by Getmail. Fetchmail was found guilty of Being Written By A Right Wing Gobshite and Too Many Security Advisories.

Copyright vs Community

Last week, a day out south of the river (ugh) to the one day Copyright vs Community event at Ravensbourne College. This featured talks from Fravia, Richard Stallman and Cory Doctorow.

Fravia's talk was great, although having slurped up much of his Searchlores site years ago, there wasn't much I didn't already know. He concentrates on locating and extracting information which is known to be out there. That isn't my current problem; to research those litigious bastards at SCOX, I need to use readily available information to discover connections. Nevertheless the talk was good fun (sadly, perhaps a bit misleading about Moldova) and his ability to hold an audience whilst performing a live demonstration was very impressive.

On this occasion Richard Stallman concentrated (as was appropriate) on copyright. His was the most conservative, nay, boring and measured of the three talks - why is he constantly depicted as some sort of loony? - until the audience egged him on to ever greater condemnation of the music business. That brought his talk to life; clearly it's not just software that RMS cares about.

Cory Doctorow's talk was hugely entertaining (lots of arm waving, agitation and good points bluntly made) but very much to the point. In some ways his was the most, er, (ahem) well-developed critique of modern copyright practice, but very reassuring that he made such a good case for current-day radicalism being just another iteration of the historical orthodoxy of innovation.

The most memorable bit was when Fravia took his radiomike with him for a quick pee before he started, treating the lecture theatre to an impromptu broadcast.

Back with a revamp

After a break of four months (for good but unstated reasons), things here are moving again. The site looks very much the same, but it's been refactored to take advantage of Zen's SSI support on their free homepages, enabling common content and presentation throughout the site without lots of duplicated code to maintain and get out of step.

This has also enabled the new content in the right column of most pages. On the front page, this tracks interesting links on a number of topics, with old links automatically expiring as new ones are added. Elsewhere, the right column contains links related to each leaf page's content; the links aggregate automatically at index pages. Each such link is actually an individual story of a parallel Blosxom flavour, generated as static pages and merged into the site using SSI. El Neato or what.

There's also some new content. The new system pages describe various nonbiological entities in the Collective. There are some new files in the Config Bistro, including an XF86Config for the Toshiba Portege 7200 and a Linux 2.4.26 kernel .config for the SGI Indy.

Lastly, the bloody drains blocked again. Fixed now. What a relief.

Kingmaker

An Official Communiqu� from Lord Roos, Marshall of England, on behalf of the Army Council of the Daves Collective.

Right last night. First Roder was a no show, so that was good from the off. Next we all got a pretty good deal, I got Constable of the Tower of London, superb. Unfortunately game turn one 'King to Preston' (of all places) and Scuttler pounced on him. I got me hands on matey in Harlech, sorry to say this but I topped him.

Pete had woshisname in Calais, John finally stormed York to get the Hunchback, Scuttler also managed to get Margaret and the brat. Couple of Scuttler's nobles was close to my faction so I steamed in with all my lads, shat all over him. Scuttler not happy. By now one of my chaps was Marshall of England, bad news was sent to Bodmin. Had another go at Scuttler, beat him again. He and Johnny attack me at Bodmin, bad weather delays attack, ha ha!

They try again next turn, out number me 5 to 4 ish victory card was 4 to 1 victory, ha ha they haven't got enough lads. Suckers! Then Marshall to Thetford, hoorah I get away.

Me and Pete a faction by now, so are the other two. Scuttler slotted all 3 Lancastrians because of my unprovoked attacks on him, Johnny crowns Dicky boy as King. Pete and I can't get all our lads in the same place at the same time. However Johnny moves to the west country (where he gets an additional 100 blokes), we follow, still not at full strength, at least 3 battles fought, all inconclusive.

Finally the decisive battle. We had 670 lads to their 580 or 610 can't remember, draw the card MAJORITY VICTORY! Huzzah We WIN! What's more it's a Yorkist win, we of course slot all their nobles and Dicky boy and put young Clarence or what ever his name is on the royal potty as our little puppet monarch. Oh how I beamed with delight. One of the best games we have ever had.

UPDATE 2004/01/22: Update - Factional feedback

Pete requests this addendum:

However, they did have Richard of York, whilst all we had was his 4th son, [Yorkist spermatozoa clearly top notch - Ed.] Richard of Gloucester (the hunchback). ["differently vertebrated"] You could have mentioned that we were devout Lancastrians [Boo!] facing an overwhelming Yorkist force [Hoorah!] and although the Lancastrians were slotted, [Hoorah!] we still fought to have 'our man' in place (even though he was a Yorkist). [poor mixed-up souls] Also, Johnny had one of the largest forces in the field, and crowned Richard of York as king (a usurper). [just like Henry Bolingbroke] You should also mention that Scuttler is guilty of regicide!! [you mean "an act of proletarian liberation" - Ed.]

Search terms and answers

The Googlebot found me a while ago, and I can see from the webstats that there's a few folk tripping in with interesting search terms. For example, there are lots of people looking for answers to Linux 2.6 problems that aren't fully explained in the Linux 2.6 article I posted last month. So I thought it would be nice to provide what people are looking for.

linux 2.6 modprobe slackware -and- modprobe.devfs 2.6.0 etc

In recent Linux 2.4 kernels the new module-init-tools package is an alternative for the modutils package. In Linux 2.6, module-init-tools is required and modutils cannot be used.

Before upgrading to 2.6, you should install module-init-tools and its new config file /etc/modprobe.conf. If you use devfs, you will also need /etc/modprobe.devfs.

To create /etc/modprobe.conf from your own /etc/modules.conf, just run the script /sbin/generate-modprobe.conf. The /etc/modprobe.devfs file is provided in the module-init-tools source package, but not in the Slackware package. So you should get the source package, untar it and just copy the modprobe.devfs file from the top level directory to /etc.

bdflush pdflush update init -and- obsolete bdflush system call etc

warning: process `update' used the obsolete bdflush system call
In Linux 2.6 there's a new kernel thread named 'pdflush' which replaces the old 'update' daemon. All you need to do is to remove the command (somewhere in your boot scripts) that starts the old 'update' daemon. The new 'pdflush' thread runs all the time and you do not need to start it.

syslogd is using obsolete setsockopt so_bsdcompat

process `syslogd' is using obsolete setsockopt SO_BSDCOMPAT
The sysklogd package uses a socket option which still works in 2.6 but is deprecated. This package hasn't been updated yet (you can check here). You can ignore the message, or install the alternative syslog-ng package.

/proc/bus/i2c 2.6.0 test11

Ah yes, lm_sensors under Linux 2.6. Easy! Use the in-kernel i2c instead of the i2c package. The file /proc/bus/i2c and the i2c-proc module do not exist in 2.6 - there's an entry in the new /sys filesystem, but to use it you need lm_sensors-2.8.2. To build lm_sensors-2.8.2 you should only do 'make user' and 'make user_install' (and then do 'ldconfig'). Remove any references to i2c-proc in your boot scripts. Finally, in Linux 2.6.1, the 'sensors' script doesn't work with the eeprom driver, it gives a couple of errors (there's a fix in lm_sensors CVS).

usbfs kernel 2.6.0 fstab

The usbdevfs filesystem has been renamed usbfs. In Linux 2.4, both names work. In Linux 2.6, only the name usbfs works. Just change "usbdevfs" to "usbfs" in /etc/fstab, this will also work with recent 2.4 kernels, the relevant line should read
/dev/usb /proc/bus/usb usbfs defaults 0 0
You should also change /etc/modprobe.conf, the relevant line should read
alias usbfs usbcore
(If the mount point /proc/bus/usb does not exist, you probably forgot to change /etc/modprobe.conf.)

alsa asound.state emu10k1

Ah, now I'm glad you asked me that, you want to see my new Config Bistro. For information about building newer versions of ALSA for Linux 2.6 kernels, see the the AlsaBuild2.6 Wiki page.

exim no reverse dns deny

Interesting, you want Exim to reject incoming mail if there's no reverse DNS? Well personally I use sa-exim so that SpamAssassin scores IP addresses in 'Received' headers - not just if there's no reverse DNS but also if the address is in various RBLs such as the SBL.

filez par2 -and- part1.rar part2.rar help open

Listen kids, try something less intellectually demanding than warez. Like body piercing.

sex pix -and- unwanted gropes pix (I'm not making this up!)

Yes, I've had both these searches in the web logs. Apparently I'm second out of four results on a Google text search for "unwanted gropes pix". Blimey. Anyway, listen up idiots, if you want pix then do a Google image search. I did, and look what I found!

Announcing the Config Bistro

Now open - the provisionally wonderful Config Bistro. This contains some of my config files, shared in the hope that they will be useful and informative.

Why we like Class 37s

Superb set of photos of 37405 blowing vast amounts of clag at Healey Mills just the other day [James Rose's site]. Predictably, 37405 is now awaiting engine repairs at Immingham.

Death of the Internet, part XXXXII

Bing bong we regret to announce the Internet is broken due to the expiry of a Verisign root certificate. This jiggers yer Java and knackers yer Norton. Groooovy. It explains the repeated 20-sec hangs on starting the Norton firewall which have been bothering me all afternoon. If it wasn't for a couple of Windoze apps I wouldn't have this grief. Because the Norton stuff is Java based, upgrading the JRE fixed it.

Staggeringly, right-clicking in Windoze Explorer produces the same 20-sec hang! It would appear that the notoriously integrated MSIE gets upset over the expiry if you have "check for certificate revocation" checked (as you should) - even though you are not using any certificates that need checking. I'd be willing to bet this is an example of objecthead design, some bloody class constructor probably contains code it shouldn't.

So let's hear it for Sun, who could have been shipping JRE's with new certificates since December 2001, but who have apparently only done so since November 2003. Let's hear it for Symantec, whose software is not directly at fault but who chose to use Java for their product and who are too coy to admit to this problem on their webshite, or to recommend the JRE update as a workround, and whose LiveUpdate has insisted all day that everything is peachy. Let's hear it once again for Microsoft and the integration of MSIE. And let's hear it for Verislime, not the Net's favourite company, who reacted to the collapse of crl.verisign.com by null-routeing it in DNS, thereby temporarily abdicating their position of trust and (for now) making the Net just a little bit less safe.

Oh yes, not to forget, the new certs expire in 2011. Here's to the next time.

Return Of The King

Good points: Celtic knotwork on tents, plausible plate armour, funky trebuchets, and the Orcish Reichsmarschall had nasty inflammation and chapped lips. Bernard Hill should be acclaimed the next Star Trek captain (nobody else acted much). Mega battle scenes masterpieces of rendering. Saw it on Screen 13, which is the largest multiplex screen in the UK! Looked fab!

Bad points: "Excuse me, that wasn't in the book". Hobbits still far too gay. It wasn't nearly messy enough when the Nazgul King's flappy thing had its head chopped off. Scottish dwarf saying "laddie" all the time, oh dear. No Wormtongue. Oathbreakers looked like unscary green ooze when they pitched in. Ice cream too cold.