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June 2001 Archives

June 4, 2001

Administration Notes - June 4th, 2001

  • I finally managed to get Solaris 8 to install under VMware. As it turns out, the install CD won't boot under VMware/W2K, but it boots fine under VMware/Linux. Took about an hour to install. :(
    <
  • Did some network maintenance this weekend, put a third NIC in wolverine, and now it routes between enfusion-group.com, e-smith.enfusion-group.com and our DSL connection. e-smith.enfusion-group.com is attached to Rogers@Home, still, and unfortunately, for most things, it seems to be faster, since there's less latency. When istop switches over to their new Alcatel friendly DSLAM, and I finally get full 6Mbit throughput, things might be different, however, the latency issues will probably persist until istop repeers.
  • wolverine is now running kernel 2.4.5 with QoS enabled, and policy-based routing. Policy based routing allows routing based on source address, TOS, and numerous other fields, rather than just destination address. So I can route most LAN packets through Rogers and some through istop, instead of defaulting to wolverine's default gateway, *and* without disrupting outbound routes on wolverine itself. It also means that clients on the LAN can access both ISP's proxy servers, without having to change gateways. Isn't Linux great? :)
  • wolverine is also now running BIND 8.2.4

    • Posted by Adrian Chung on June 4, 2001 1:00 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

    June 16, 2001

    6Mbit DSL

  • Our istop DSL connection had some turbulence this week, our modem got switched over to a new DSLAM that used slightly different settings. After some research and telnetting into the Alcatel modem, and changing the settings, we were able to get back online. The modem is now syncing at 5.7Mbit inbound, and 932Kbit outbound. Latency is still pretty variable over istop's main Magma link, but that should change soon, as istop is awaiting a new connection from Bell, tentatively scheduled for the 18th of June.
  • I finally got around to fixing syslog-ng's configuration on both systems rogue and wolverine to resemble more of a RedHat configuration than a Debian one. Debian's got too many log files, RedHat's got just the right number. :)

    • Posted by Adrian Chung on June 16, 2001 11:43 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

    June 19, 2001

    Extended Weekend Report

    Had a great weekend, our friend Kim came to visit, and stayed with us from last Thursday morning, to this afternoon. Ate out a lot this weekend, Friday night we stopped in at Al's Steakhouse & Seafood, where Kim had too much wine. :) Saturday night we rented "Vertical Limit", which was pretty entertaining, and then on Sunday, after a full day of shopping, went out to Montana's. To top off the weekend, Monday night we ate at the Hard Rock Cafe in the market, which, as it turns out was hosting some type of Junior High School Dance. :(

    Lucy is recovering very well from her surgery on Friday morning, she was spayed. She was fairly groggy over the weekend, and a bit uncomfortable, but she seems to be getting back into the swing of things now!


    On a side note, Kelly thinks she's found her wedding dress, although I'm not allowed to see it. :)

    Posted by Adrian Chung on June 19, 2001 6:05 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

    June 25, 2001

    Rollerblades, and a sick toad.

  • Kelly and I bought new rollerblades this weekend, they're really comfy. After having seen K2's leisure ice skates, and then trying a pair of their similarly fashioned inline skates on, I couldn't resist. Unlike me, who already owned an older pair of skates, Kelly didn't have any, so her purchase was a no-brainer. :) We went skating on wet streets on Saturday, but at least it didn't rain while we were out. Sunday was hotter, and drier!


  • toad, my linux workstation mysteriously decided to not POST after being off for a few minutes to physically remount a hard drive inside the case. After hours of fiddling, the only conclusion I could come to was that the system would only POST after removal of 2 out of 3 of the DIMMs. It didn't matter which DIMMs, as long as there was only one installed at any given time. The system would then immediately enter the BIOS with an error stating that the system has entered safe-mode since the CPU external frequency had been incorrectly set -- strange, since it's a jumper-free board. Anyhoo, after a good night of sleep, I finally tracked down an updated BIOS, which seems to have fixed the problem. :)

    • Posted by Adrian Chung on June 25, 2001 1:48 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

    June 26, 2001

    PHP 4.0.6

  • Following a new release of PHP, 4.0.6, I've upgraded rogue. If anyone notices anything funny with the enfusion-group.com websites, let me know.

    • Posted by Adrian Chung on June 26, 2001 1:51 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

    Per User Web Statistics, vFolder security problems.

  • Wrote a script to auto generate web statistic output using analog for every user on the web server that currently has a web page. It's dynamic, so it automatically creates the necessary output directories, config files, and collects relevant log bits to do its job. I finally got too sick of trying to parse the last few visitors to my homepage out of the logs.
  • Been musing about the best way to fix some vFolder security problems Tony found while using the MP3 engine the other day. It was pretty secure, in that anyone could see, delete and add songs to other people's vFolders. ;)
  • istop.com has a new 10Mbit pipe through Peer1 networks in Toronto, and has been assigned a new netblock of IP addresses. This means that enfusion-group.com IP's will be changing in the next few weeks. Hopefully this change means that throughput will be less variable during busy times, although from initial investigations, traffic through peer1's network looks to have a latency of > ~80ms from all the usual places. We'll see whether high latency, or just variable latency plays a part in throughput. Stay tuned...

    • Posted by Adrian Chung on June 26, 2001 10:42 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

    June 29, 2001

    MP3 Engine Updates

    I noticed the other day that when I streamed a playlist, and then looked in my WinAMP/XMMS playlist window, all I saw was a bunch of songs that looked like:



    
1. http://www.enfusion-group.com/mp3/...
    
2. http://www.enfusion-group.com/mp3/...
    
3. http://www.enfusion-group.com/mp3/...
    
...

    Which was pretty annoying since I wanted to be able to see the names of the songs which were actually in the playlist. I also noticed that after the individual songs started streaming, the artist and title didn't show up either, I'd just get the URL scrolling across the display.

    Contrasting this with Lincoln Stein's Apache::MP3, which actually puts reasonable artist and title information in the playlist window, as well as proper ID3 info when individual songs are playing, I did some research and some hacking, and figured out that you can pass metadata that will be displayed both in the playlist window (using .m3u file extensions) and when individual songs are streaming (by using IceCast icy- headers, although I think ID3v2 tags work too).

    So I updated the MP3 Engine to make use of these features so that playlists are a little bit more user friendly, and useful:


    
1. Aerosmith - Fly Away From Here.mp3.stream.4846
    
2. Kris Kross - Jump.mp3.stream.4537
    
3. Tag Team - Whoomp! There It is.mp3.stream.2341
    
...

    Now, if I could just figure out how to enable clients to seek through streamed MP3 files... ;)

    Posted by Adrian Chung on June 29, 2001 11:34 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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    About June 2001

    This page contains all entries posted to adrian's home in June 2001. They are listed from oldest to newest.

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