Author: Jan Dembowski (page 91 of 96)

October 4, 2006

OpenSuSE 10.1 quirks and postgrey RPM

Update November 13, 2006:

Fixed the rpm’s. I was putting the –daemonize in with the other options. That does not work, putting it in first works.

So now I read the /etc/sysconfig/postgrey with

test -s /etc/sysconfig/postgrey && . /etc/sysconfig/postgrey

And execute

$POSTGREY_BIN –daemonize $OPTIONS

And all is right in the world.

Here are the links for the rpm and source rpm that I use on my SuSE 10.1 server.

Original October 4th post starts here.

————

I run OpenSuSE 10.1 on my server. For a few weeks yast’s online update was acting up. It would list things for update and not seem to fully get that the update was already.

Saturday I checked and got a boat load of new updates. One reboot later and yast online update is working perfectly each time.

I like packaging the software I use. It’s one way to keep my technical skills fresh and make my server more manageable. I use Postgrey with my postfix installation and have had problems wrapping the software. The software and RPM build fine, and I can run it by hand but when I try to read the /etc/sysconfig/postgrey in the init script, junk gets added to the command line.

I hacked the postfix init script and created a new script for postgrey.

I run postgrey like so:

/usr/sbin/postgrey
–unix=/var/spool/postfix/postgrey/socket
–daemonize –user=postgrey –pidfile=/var/run/postgrey.pid

In /etc/sysconfig/postgrey I have

OPTIONS=”–unix=/var/spool/postfix/postgrey/socket –daemonize –user=postgrey –pidfile=/var/run/postgrey.pid”

So in my init script I should be able to just do

. /etc/sysconfig/postgrey

And set OPTIONS that way. Once that’s done I should be able to just run

POSTGREY_BIN=/usr/sbin/postgrey
$POSTGREY_BIN $OPTIONS

The options piece seems to be adding on junk. The OPTIONS variable is set correctly but when I execute the perl script junk gets added and the postgrey script exits.

I’ve replaced $OPTIONS with explicit command line arguments for now but it’ll bug me till I figure it out.

October 1, 2006

Picked up MINI Friday

Miniandml Getting a new car is always very cool. The family and I picked up the MINI Cooper S at the dealer Friday after 4 PM. It’s a fun car and over the weekend we put about 150 miles on it.

After driving an SUV for 6 years this will take a lot of getting used to.

It’s got

Automatic wipers
Automatic headlights (day running lights)
Climate control
Bluetooth phone integration (being able to press a button and say aloud “dial 12125551212” and having it actually confirm and dial that number is just too cool)

We took it over to a friend house and I let him drive me around his neighborhood.

Apparently I am a conservative driver. He was zipping around like you’d expect someone running around in a red MINI Cooper. Took this one corner with the tires screeching and got a “Please don’t do that again” from me.

The car is a lot of fun and I think I’ll actually enjoy driving to New Jersey in it.

September 28, 2006

The go-cart is at the dealer

I mentioned to my Dad that the MINI is on the ocean. It was originally supposed to arrive sometime in October and I had just mentioned it as part of a status update. I had no idea how long it takes to ship a car.

Without saying anything about it Dad cleaned up the entire garage to make sure I have enough room to park three cars. That was a really nice surprise and his timing was perfect.

I got a call from the dealer. The MINI Cooper S has arrived at the dealer and we can pick it up Friday afternoon.

I keep referring to the mini as a go-cart. After driving the SUV for 6 years it will be fun to be closer to the road. Lily has already begun driving the SUV whenever she is in the car. Looks like the SUV will be her car and I get to drive the new car.

Very cool.

September 10, 2006

Swapped out the system board

Earlier this week I received the replacement system board from Dell for my XPS 700.

The old system board was not always starting up. Sometimes it would take 4 false starts to get it to boot up; it it was more than 3 I usually just gave up and went to bed.

The new board came in an anti-static bag with one cleaning pad and conductive paste.

XPS replacement system board

The system board is attached to a plate that is held in by two screws. Once you get the cables put aside it’s straight forward to remove or install the system. Alek used the cleaning pad to make the top of the CPU spotless. The heat sink shined.

After the system was plugged in and running the fun began. The system would start and stop all without a hitch. That problem was completely solved. But the BIOS was not keeping the raid configuration, so the system could not boot.

I called the direct number I was given last week. I put in the extension and found out that my contacts voice mail was full. I could not even leave a message so I tried the general support line. While waiting I noticed that the BIOS was version 0.1.2 dated 5/5/06.

That did not fill me with confidence since the old system board was 1.1.3. After going around in circles, I unplugged the power, looked in the case at the connectors, and poof it started booting. I flashed the BIOS with the support person on the phone and all seems well now.

I’m going to call up the shipper and have the old system board picked up. In the meanwhile I’ll be pounding on the XPS 700 to make sure that it’s all good.

September 5, 2006

Labor Day scare

The plan for Labor Day was to invite family over, have a BBQ, and get ready for the boy’s first day of school.

Instead we ended up spending late Monday afternoon in the emergency room. My son ran up the stairs and fell hard on his chin. This opened up a 1 inch gash under his chin! It stopped bleeding almost immediately but he needed stitches to close the gap. So we took him to the emergency room.

The emergency room was okay and we only waited about an hour or so. He was not hurting and kept insisting that the bandaid was all he needed.

He really only did not like the pain killer shot they gave him to numb up his chin. Once that took effect, we all talked about toy trains while the nurse put stitches in his chin. Today it looks fine and Saturday we are going to have the stitches removed.

September 2, 2006

Dell still can’t get it’s act together (updated)

Update: 12:30PM 9/2/2006

After calling their 800 number, I got a gentleman who really knew what he was doing. It’s the system board. They are sending me a replacement system board.

The support technician actually restored my faith in Humanity!

That may be overstating it, but he really did his job well. I’ll see how long my replacement part takes to get here and if that solves the issue. Ought to; the error we were getting was the same each time.

Original blog entry here:

Sigh. Don’t buy computers from Dell. Give some other company a chance to screw up like Dell does.

I am really beginning to think that Dell’s only concern is to take orders and move boxes only. Their once really good support model is not really working.

Dell shipped me my XPS 700 and it works well. I am playing F.E.A.R. at 1920×1200 with all the options turned onto the max. I average about 112 FPS at that resolution.

It’s a great system. When it powers on that is.

Last night around midnight I tried to show Lily my new kick butt workstation. After 10 minutes of trying, the system would not turn on. The fans would switch on to max rpm and stay there. No BIOS messages on the screen, no sound from typing on the keyboard, nothing.

That’s bad on a new machine but that is not why I am complaining. When you buy something you expect it to work. But us “grown ups” know that sometimes this happens.

What really ticks me off is that Dell’s support system does not know my machine exists. I cannot get support because the service tag for my workstation is not recognized by their support system. I tried to call the support line and got the “Approximate wait time is 10 minutes” message. Having done that before, I figured I would try the online chat system.

The support rep I chatted with yesterday basically said “try back later”. 18 hours later the support system still does not know about my workstation. I tried the support chat again but since I did not have a valid service tag, the system would not even start a chat with the right person.

Instead I chatted with someone else who sent me to the correct queue. Which of course did not even start because I had did not have a valid tag number. One good thing about chat, as opposed to actually speaking with someone, is that I get a transcript of the chat, with me saying “it won’t work”. Doesn’t help me but I feel like I can at least track this nonsense.

I resorted to using the web page mailer to send a I’m-mad-as-hell message. I have no expectation that this will actually accomplish anything.

Sigh. Wonder if HP has decent workstations?

September 1, 2006

Dell XPS-700 arrived

The PC I ordered from Dell June 18th arrived today. No complaints about the time it took, I knew that was going to be the case for a long time now. And the projected arrival was October 17th, so August 31st really is not bad.

It’s a monster. The UPS sticker says the box weighs over 70 pounds and they weren’t kidding. I spent most of the evening installing ~~GAMES~~ CPU and graphic intensive applications.

The only potential problem is that sometimes when I power it up it does not get past turning on the fans. It gets stuck and I need to push the power button down till it goes off. Also standby does not work for me. Not too surprised since it usually only works for me on laptops. But I eventually got it working for my old PC so I’ll likely need to keep tweaking till it works.

August 27, 2006

Videotags this easy ought to be illegal

I frequent the WordPress support page to a) see if I can help someone and b) see if anything new is going on that might interest me.

Viper’s Video Quicktags is beyond interesting. It makes it ridiculously easy to add video to your post as so:

[ youtube width=”425″ height=”350″]wMwoexR1evo[ /youtube]

and

[ googlevideo width=”425″ height=”350″]4437565772125007816[ /googlevideo]

A space was added right after each [ so the plugin would ignore it. Without the spaces, this cheerfully produces

and

All into the posting. You can use the WYSIWYG editor that WordPress provides since Viper007Bond supplies you with easy buttons to produce a dialog box for inserting the codes.

This particular posting was made using BlogJet and not the built in editor. I used YouTube and Google Video but the plugin supports many more.

It’s well written, simple to use and works. Get it at Viper’s web page here.

August 20, 2006

Dirty window

FM Radio We came back from Washington DC Sunday. It was an 8 hour ~~painful,~~ ~~excruciating,~~ ~~non~~–~~stop~~ ~~lousy~~ ~~traffic,~~ family trip up I-95. That’s not bad since Friday it took 10 hours to drive down there. Most of that was actually in New Jersey.

Around reaching NJ I turned on the radio. My 4½ year old boy suddenly says “that’s my favorite word! Open up the dirty window!” We asked him the usual “what? what did you say??” and he repeated himself.

The radio was playing Natasha Bedingfield’s song Unwritten. He pays more attention to the words than I do! We had to wait till the chorus repeated just to hear it.

Washington DC was fun and the GPS unit we got worked like a charm. The time driving was death and my son learned a new trick called “Car Sickness”.

August 15, 2006

More speed test fun

Just saw this on digg.com http://www.speedtest.net/. It’s a slick method for checking your speed to various servers.

My cable speed clocks at

I get less going to Washington DC or San Francisco. It’s a cool toy to play with.