Mike Fedyk

Mike Fedyk Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Mike Fedyk" journal:

July 3rd, 2007
02:50 pm [Link]	"What version of trixbox should I use?" Trixbox 2.0 includes asterisk 1.2. Trixbox 2.2 uses asterisk 1.4 I'd stick with asterisk 1.2 or callweaver for now. Tags: asterisk, trixbox (Leave a comment)
02:47 pm [Link]	No program "pvscan" found for your current version of LVM That's what I get when I run pvscan right after installing the lvm2 package. It doesn't make sure the lvm kernel modules are loaded before reporting this error. This command fixes the problem: /etc/init.d/lvm start I need to report a bug... Tags: feisty, lvm, ubuntu (Leave a comment)
June 30th, 2007
11:59 pm [Link]	Stats gathering library I mentioned previously about using sysstat to create an unified stats gathering lib for tools to use, and it looks like someone else has already started a project to fill that gap. Check out libstatgrab: The libstatgrab library provides an easy-to-use interface for accessing system statistics and information. Available statistics include CPU, Load, Memory, Swap, Disk I/O, and Network I/O. It was developed to work on Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris. The package also includes two tools: saidar provides a curses-based interface for viewing live system statistics, and statgrab is a sysctl-like interface to the statistics. Tags: libstatgrab, linux, monitoring, statistics (Leave a comment)
June 29th, 2007
11:02 pm [Link]	Linux Firewall Distributions RedWall Firewall: redWall is a bootable CD-ROM firewall which focuses on Web-based reporting of the firewall's status. It includes Snort, snortsam, dansguardian, and support for fwbuilder, squidguard, reporting (using BASE/sarg/ntop/webfwlog), VPN (Openswan/PoPToP/Openvpn), Spam Filtering (spamassassin, dcc, razor2, clamav, amavis-new, dspam and maia mailguard), and mail-based, alerting. Configuration data are stored on a floppy or USB disk. SmoothWall Firewall: SmoothWall is a popular Internet Security software package (based on Linux) offering automated modem/advanced ISDN autoprobing, ethernet ADSL/cable, USB ADSL (Alcatel Speed Touch Home only in 1.x; additional support for USR, Fuji, ECI, etc in 2.x), and multiple ethernet card support within 5 minutes of install. Web managed and with full facilities normally only seen in expensive commercial offerings, it also offers SSH, DHCP, and full firewall logging and auditing functionality. IPCop: IPCop Linux is a complete Linux Distribution whose sole purpose is to protect the networks it is installed on. By implementing existing technology, outstanding new technology and secure programming practices IPCop is the Linux Distribution for those wanting to keep their computers/networks safe. Devil-Linux: Devil-Linux is a special secure Linux distribution which is used for firewalls, routers, gateways, and servers. The goal of Devil-Linux is to have a small, customizable, and secure Linux system. Configuration is saved on a floppy disk or USB stick, and it has several optional packages. Devil-Linux boots from CD, but can be stored on CF cards or USB sticks. My goal is to find one that I like and integrate bwmtools, bandwidthd and ShoreWall into their frontends. The proprietary vendors need a bit more competition in this space IMO. Also I think Shorewall would make a fine standard firewall framework for Linux. Either that or some standard API needs to be created for Linux Firewalls. Tags: firewall, linux (Leave a comment)
June 25th, 2007
10:32 pm [Link]	Database clustering with sequoia. I've been looking for something like sequoia for a while for multi-location database replication and failover. Current Mood: cheerful Tags: high availability, sequoia (Leave a comment)
June 5th, 2007
11:56 am [Link]	Ubuntu Feisty vs Radeon R200 QM [Radeon 9100] This is the third time in the total of three weeks this machine has been running that xorg and the console have become unresponsive while running the "flurry" screensaver. The screensaver would freeze on the screen, and unresponsive to mouse and keyboard input like ctrl+alt+f1, or sysctl commands. The second time I logged into the machine via ssh and found xorg spinning on the cpu. Unfortunately, when I tried connecting strace to the process, the entire machine became unresponsive. The third time, I installed oprofile with: apt-get install oprofile linux-image-debug-`uname -r` The system ended up spending most of its time in the native_read_tsc() kernel function which doesn't make any sense to me because that is for very fast timing. Unless it was stuck in a busyloop waiting for progress that never happens. But why wouldn't the kernel be able to kill or trace the process? I have commandeered ubuntu bug #65620 since it closely matches this problem and has been closed because of original bug reporter neglect. Tags: bug, radeon, ubuntu, xorg (Leave a comment)
June 3rd, 2007
07:34 pm [Link]	Middle clicking with a touch pad In the course of typing on my laptop, the movements of my hands have found a way to either middle-click or left and right click with a touch pad without either pressing any of the buttons or touching the pad. It's quite frustrating to be in the middle of a thought and while typing it out you get pasted text right in the middle of a word and realizing I forgot to disable the touchpad. Now I have come across syndaemon in "Ubuntu Guide Feisty/Hardware: Disable the touchpad while typing". Hopefully with this, I won't have that problem anymore. :) Tags: synaptic, syndaemon (Leave a comment)
05:10 pm [Link]	gnome-sound-properties and ~/.asoundrc.asoundconf "Why doesn't the audio output device change when I set it in the gnome-sound-properties (g-s-p)?" I have been seeing this for a while, as far back as dapper, but tabled looking into it until just now. Changing the output device in g-s-p affected gnome apps, but not anything non-gnome that used alsa or oss directly like vlc. Running strace on g-s-p revealed some files to lookup and google that brought me ubuntu bug #31893 and the two commands below to set the default sound card for alsa (non-gnome apps) to use: asoundconf list asoundconf set-default-card <devicename> This configures some nice settings in ~/.asoundrc.asoundconf. Looking at the strace output of g-s-p further shows that ~/.asoundrc.asoundconf is being open()ed, mmap()ed, read(), close()d and unmmap()ed, but not written to by g-s-p. That explains why the sound settings only affected gnome applications and since these settings are read by the alsa libraries, it is only checked when each process starts up. Any changes made with asoundconf will not take affect until after a process using alsa is exited and started again to get the alsa libs to re-read the config files. So why isn't g-s-p changing the generic alsa configs? The asoundconf man page says: This program is under development. Its features will change without notice and without preservation of backward compatibility, except insofar as they are put to use by other components of the Debian and/or Ubuntu operating systems. (As of this writing the Ubuntu developers have plans to use asoundconf for setting the value of defaults.pcm.card from the system sound preferences menu.) I have filed ubuntu bug #119033 to help track this issue. In feisty (or possibly edgy, I have avoided using edgy because I haven't had much success with that release), they have made the distinction in g-s-p between "sound events", "music and movies" and "audio conferencing". The developers will be have the task of finding a way to present a way to configure which sound card regular non-gnome alsa apps will use and presenting the options in an intuitive way. This may be especially hard since to my knowledge, non-gnome apps have no way to inform alsa they will be playing music or audio conferencing. One nice thing In feisty, there is now an asoundconf-gtk package available that adds a menu entry in (system -> preferences -> default sound card) and removes the tedium of the two asoundconf commands above (and makes the process a little bit more user friendly, but not very much). Tags: .asoundrc.asoundconf, asoundconf, gnome-sound-preferenes, ubuntu (Leave a comment)
02:10 pm [Link]	Ubuntu Feisty and a Z22 Palm Pilot I'm trying to get a Z22 Palm Pilot working with Ubuntu Feisty today. First I found this in the kernel logs: usb 1-1.4: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 5 usb 1-1.4: device descriptor read/64, error -71 usb 1-1.4: device descriptor read/64, error -71 usb 1-1.4: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 6 usb 1-1.4: device descriptor read/64, error -71 usb 1-1.4: device descriptor read/64, error -71 usb 1-1.4: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 7 usb 1-1.4: device not accepting address 7, error -71 usb 1-1.4: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 8 usb 1-1.4: device not accepting address 8, error -71 Then I found ubuntu bug #54419 and it gave me three commands that were useful: sudo modprobe -r ehci_hcd sudo sh -c 'echo blacklist ehci_hcd > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ehci' sudo update-initramfs -u -k `uname -r` That takes away the error messages in the kernel log, but I was still having trouble finding the USB serial device for communications from jpilot. That brings me to ubuntu bug #108512. Apparently the visor module doesn't get loaded when a palm gets plugged into a usb port on feisty. The two commands below take care of that problem in a "works for me" kind of way. The permanent fix would probably be in the form of udev rules. sudo modprobe visor sudo sh -c 'echo visor >> /etc/modules' With that, jpilot works on Ubuntu Feisty. Tags: ehci_hcd, feisty, jpilot, palm, palm pilot, pilot, ubuntu, z22 (Leave a comment)
May 29th, 2007
07:18 am [Link]	Servers either lost power or rebooted at PIHost $employer has servers located in PI Host. All of them were either rebooted or lost power over the weekend. Should I need a UPS at a co-lo facility? Current Mood: aggravated Tags: colo, pihost, ups (Leave a comment)

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