The Daves Collective

Back with a revamp
2004-05-29 15:18

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.

Search terms and answers
2004-01-11 01:21

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
2004-01-09 17:37

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.

MRTG graphs
2003-11-25 20:11

I've installed MRTG. As a start, you can admire a snapshot of the traffic graph of my router, automatically updated on a daily basis.

Cyveillance
2003-11-23 00:51

So whats this traffic from 63.148.99.229 then? A quick Sam Spade and then Google dishes the poop - Cyveillance, a private snooping business in Arlington, Virginia (an interesting neighbourhood: CompTIA and dead hegemonist oppressors). Their bot goes looking for anything their corporate and government customers wouldn't like, whether that be filez, trademarks or freely held opinions. (Eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves.) Cyveillance are a seriously big operation. They have no reverse DNS and are proud of it. Their public statement about robots.txt is at odds with other peoples' observations and their bot deliberately conceals its own identity. Of course, as a free enterprise they are not publicly accountable. No surprise that they're in the homeland security racket. Their motto is "Minding your business on the Net", and indeed they are minding my business, whether I like it or not. Cyveillance say they "enable businesses to capture revenue by taking control of their brand identity, digital assets and corporate reputation online". Their customers should consider whether their own reputations are enhanced by being associated with, and should consider the value of intelligence received from, a company that behaves in such a manner. Related information:

• I've got a bone to pick with Cyveillance
• What to think about Cyveillance?
• How to block spambots, ban spybots, and tell unwanted robots to go to hell

A rich source of info about this is in the fora of Webmaster World. However, they are a tiny bit unpleasant themselves - the site throws a wobbly about abuse if you surf in on a deep link and disables Google cacheing of forum messages freely donated by other people. And for the paying punter they have "Private Forums" - to the Daves Collective those words denote a chain of sex shops and a long defunct dirty mag. Anyway, there is posted an interesting Perl CGI script which is supposed to sit somewhere excluded by robots.txt. As soon as Bertie Bot gropes Cecil CGI, Cecil plops Bertie's IP into a .htaccess deny list. Hah! but not really recommended, as a CGI script with write access to a .htaccess file is truly repugnant from the security angle. Anyway I'm too tight to pay for hosting with CGI.

Acknowledgements
2003-11-15 14:31

For the record, the following resources have been useful in building this website.

Core applications

• Content management: Blosxom and plugins iconset, update, categorytree, headlines
• Photo library management: Gallery
• Offline preparation: Apache, PHP, lftp, wget

Graphics

• 80x15 buttons: Taylor McKnight
• Fonts: Jason Kottke's Silkscreen, Nathaniel Porter's Road Sign Fonts
• Apps: TweakPNG, png2ico

Reference

• PNG Support in Internet Explorer for Windows (it bloody doesn't)
  and PNG Alpha Transparency

Bobby is a Booby
2003-11-13 21:27

I thought it would be nice to check out this nice new webshite for accessibility, so I moseyed on over to Bobby to run the validation check. Well, what a performance, not a single genuine problem but 1001 "manual check" items. Well, to cut a long story short, I ran some of their own pages through the W3C Validator, and they failed. Badly. Then I ran some of their own pages through their own validator and it raised most of the points I'd been stuck for. Hahahahah. There was some worthwhile advice there but it'll be a while before I care enough to work on it.

How this site works
2003-11-11 22:38

A brief writeup about how this site works. It is entirely served as static pages from my ISP, there is no server side scripting at all. The reasons for this are (1) it's cheap and reliable, (2) I could use the same stuff on my old 486 which would creak a bit if it were laden with PHP and (god forbid) MySQL. So it's Blosxom for content management and Gallery for picture management as they both have the capability of local rendering into static pages.

A site update consists of combining three sets of pages into a single tree: (1) a set of static files, (2) pages rendered from the locally hosted Bloxsom installation, and (3) a snapshot of dynamic content (Gallery and anything else I fancy) created using wget. The combined tree is then incrementally mirrored to my ISP using lftp. Lastly, the local tree is retained as a handy backup. And it can all run from cron. Sweeeeet.

Note that I'm using some cunning tricks with Blosxom. As my pages are intended to be 100% static, I don't need to worry about getting a mixture of static and dynamic working. The only purpose the local installation fulfils is for preparing and verifying new content. So, local pages are accessed as normal via the Blosxom CGI script at /opt/local/share/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi, and its $url setting is empty so that it only accesses Blosxom content on the local host. But for rendering static pages I use a second copy at /opt/local/bin/blosxom, in which $url is set to http://www.daves-collective.co.uk/. And I don't use the static_file plugin; all static files are merged from my parallel static tree, either (in the CGI context) by Apache aliases, or (in the static case) at render time.

Updated

For quota reasons I've now split the Gallery content to a different ISP site, but the same principles apply. Also, a bit of tweaking now means only changed content needs to be mirrored to the ISP sites. So the script now looks like this:

#   First mirror Blosxom content to site1
mkdir /srv/www/dc/new-site1
blosxom -password='1of2' -quiet=1 -all=0
for d in /srv/www/dc/static-site1/ /srv/www/dc/rendered-site1/
do
    cd $d
    find . ! \( -name '*.orig' -o -name '*.$$$' \) -follow -print \
    | cpio -pdm -u -L --quiet /srv/www/dc/new-site1
done
cd /srv/www/dc/new-site1
lftp -c "open -u user,pass ftp://site1.isp.example.com; mirror -p --delete -R"
mv backup-site1 backup-site1.prev
mv new-site1 backup-site1
rm -rf backup-site1.prev

#   Now mirror Gallery content to site2
mkdir /srv/www/dc/new-site2
cd /srv/www/dc/rendered-site2
wget -m -k -K -E -q -np -nH 'http://dsds/gallery/?set_offline=true'
cp 'gallery/index.html?set_offline=true.html' gallery/index.html
for d in /srv/www/dc/rendered-site2/ /srv/www/dc/static-site2/
#   Note different order (cf above), for reasons I won't delve into.
do
    cd $d
    find . ! \( -name '*.orig' -o -name '*.$$$' \) -follow -print \
    | cpio -pdm -u -L --quiet /srv/www/dc/new-site2
done
cd /srv/www/dc/new-site2
lftp -c "open -u user,pass ftp://site2.isp.example.com; mirror -p --delete -R"
mv /srv/www/dc/backup-site2 /srv/www/dc/backup-site2.prev
mv /srv/www/dc/new-site2 /srv/www/dc/backup-site2
rm -rf /srv/www/dc/backup-site2.prev

exit 0

Netcraft Uptime Report
2003-11-11 02:14

Courtesy of Netcraft, you can see a report on the uptime of my hosting at Zen. At the moment they are showing an uptime of over 200 days, mmmmm nice, though their current Apache version is looking a wee bit tarnished.

Grand Inauguration
2003-11-10 03:10

Here is the Grand Inauguration of the new Daves Collective website. Hoorah! Lots of it is currently missing and/or doesn't work, and the HTML and CSS are unvalidated, but hell fire you have to start somewhere. And the front page tickles a bug in Konqueror. Tsk. It's probably wrong in Safari too. Well tough shit.

For further drivel see the Index