Author Archives: bilborg

About bilborg

I am who I am, there's plenty of data on this site to tell you more. Briefly, I'm a husband, computer geek, avid reader, gardener, and builder of furniture.

Leftovers

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Our turkey day was full of thanks and food and more food. Just the two of us, and a 17 pound bird … shedloads of leftovers, needless to say. Marcia’s job-hunt continues, and I’m back to work tomorrow after a week off. It’s been very weird, frankly. I did a lot of schoolwork – both for the week in progress, and groundwork for the final website project. I played some Half Life 2, and watched a bit of Top Gear UK. And the week is gone, just like that.

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Lance Cpl. Dale W. Means, 23, of Jordan, Minnesota, died Nov. 18, while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Petty Officer 1st Class Kevin R. Ebbert, 32, of Arcata, California, died Nov. 24 while supporting stability operations in Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan.

Moving right along

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First, for US visitors, Happy Thanksgiving. A weird holiday, to be sure, but it’s always good to be thankful for life, family, friends, and first world problems.

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I’m posting from Linux again, for the first time in a long while. I’d been trying a variety of solutions for storage here, answers that didn’t involve running a full-size system 24×7. I couldn’t do it. You see, it isn’t good enough to just back stuff up here at home. I’m not going to backup home data on a cloud somewhere on the Internet – our friendly government doesn’t appear to respect the Fourth Amendment when it comes to online resources. So I don’t keep email online. Well, I try not to, but I’ll bet Google has it all anyway. But there are files and work I do here that I’m not willing to trust to another administrator and their devotion to security. So while I backup online stuff here, and I backup the home systems here, I need to get a copy of those backups offsite. Fire, theft, and other quirks of life are risks that need to be managed.

So, a weekly copy of the local backup, written to an encrypted disk, and driven to work … that’s a good answer. But when I stood down Slartibartfast, the old Linux server, and replaced him with a dLink NAS box … well, some things didn’t happen anymore. Automated backups of online properties – not happening. Trivially easy local and encrypted backups: neither trivial nor easy anymore. But I kept after it for a while, so that local systems could spin down, data could flow to the storage when it was available, and … I’d figure something out about the offsite.

That didn’t happen. Finally, I broke down a few months back and installed FreeNAS 8.mumble on one of the towers. Key needs: local AFP, SMB/CIFS, and NFS service. Scheduled tasks to pull backups from out in the world, so that problems there don’t kill our data forever. And encrypted backups to removable storage. Seems easy, right? And a dedicated local storage server STILL seemed like a better idea than toying with using a workstation ALSO as the storage server. Feh!

FreeNAS eventually solved everything but the removable storage problem … and the AFP service. The latter problem first: Apple presents a fast moving target for their file services, and I want a networked Time Machine target. Could not get it working with the latest FreeNAS, so the dLink kept spinning. Formerly, and more importantly, while I could plug in a USB disk, write an encrypted ZFS file system to it, create the walkabout tertiary backup, and take the drive to the office … I could only do that once per boot. That is, to get FreeNAS to recognize a drive reinserted into the USB or the eSATA connections, I had to reboot. Probably a failing of the non-enterprise support for hotplug … but a failing all the same.

This week, a “vacation” week for me, I’d had enough. I installed Scientific Linux 6.3, and got all of the above stuff working properly in less than a day. The ONLY thing I miss from FreeNAS (and this was a big driver for me) is ZFS. I *love* ZFS. Filesystem and volume management done properly, with superb snapshot capabilities – I LOVE ZFS. But I can’t have that, and everything else I want, so I’ve solved my problem.

Serenity boots and runs from a ~160GB SSD, and I have three 1TB drives in a software RAID5 serving as the data partition. It’s all formatted EXT4. I have a SATA slide-in slot on the front of the system, I can slot in a hard disk, give the crypto password, and have my offsite storage accessible for updating using rsync. Everything is working again. I can spin down that dLink, and decide what it’s fate is, one of these days. I also don’t need Dortmunder, the Raspberry Pi, running as my SSH and IRSSI landing “box” anymore. That I will find another use for – I can play with it now. And I’ll cautiously update and maintain this system. Frankly, I happier with it running Scientific Linux – the stability of a RHEL derivative is good.

Now to figure out why I can’t get my external SSH port open again… Thanks, Netgear, for giving me one more problem to solve on my “vacation.”

Oh, and finally: a good disk management GUI for a Linux:

Gnome Disk Utility

Gnome Disk Utility

Gnome Disk Utility – I don’t often prefer a GUI, but managing complex storage, which may involve hardware or software RAID, LVM, encryption, and more … well, the visibility of this utility makes me happy. Thanks to Red Hat for writing it.

Marcia’s back (again) & Linux reloaded

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Today, I relaxed a bit. Shopping in the morning, a bit of Top Gear UK during the day, and I picked Marcia up at BWI around 1500 EST. Happy dog is happy, and so am I. The holiday bird is in the fridge, I’ve got a tray of mac-n-cheese ready, and … we’ll see how the table ends up.

Tonight, I blew out the FreeNAS installation, and installed Scientific Linux 6.3 x64 on the box still known as Serenity. I had a lot of trouble getting things working right, and there are issues with offsite backups that are much more easily solved with a Linux at the helm. Instead of returning to the Ubuntu way, I figured one of the RHEL retreads would be a good way to go – I’ve got to re-certify in the next few months, and more practice is good.

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Capt. James D. Nehl, 37, of Gardiner, Oregon, died Nov. 9, in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan, from small arms fire while on patrol during combat operations.
  • Sgt. Matthew H. Stiltz, 26, of Spokane, Washington, died Nov. 12, at Zerok, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit with indirect fire.
  • Staff Sgt. Rayvon Battle Jr., 25, of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, died Nov. 13, in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.
  • Sgt. Channing B. Hicks, 24, of Greer, South Carolina, died Nov. 16, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, from injuries suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device and small arms fire.
  • Spc. Joseph A. Richardson, 23, of Booneville, Arkansas, died Nov. 16, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, from injuries suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device and small arms fire.

Should Be True

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A great start to ten days before I go back to the office: I was up at 0500, and driving Marcia to the airport. She’s off to Michigan for a baby shower. I declined to attend, however. I’m going to attempt NOT to rise at that hour again for a week or so!

Now, here’s a reminder that Marcia is job hunting, and would appreciate legit leads for a new gig.

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New Feature: Should-Be-True Facts.

As I was dropping off to sleep last night, I had one of my weird little non sequitur thoughts, and I managed to remember it. It clearly drops into the category of “Should-Be-True Facts,” so here’s the inaugural SBTF:

The myth: Dog saliva helps heal wounds on humans.

The SBTF: Dog saliva has enzymes in it that selectively digest human neurons. The effect is that the wound “hurts less,” which is perceived by the partially digested human as “healing.”

The long term viability of this new site feature is entirely dependent on my ability to remember and transcribe such oddities whenever they occur to me. Good luck with that, me!

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Today is dedicated to schoolwork, so I’d best get to it. Ciao!

Xerox restructures

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USA Today reported yesterday that Xerox will lay off 2,500 employees. So it was nothing personal when one of those RIF’d yesterday was Marcia. She talks about that on her own site… Just wanted to let y’all know.

She’s already got feelers out, but if you have any input for her, be sure to get in touch.

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In other news, I’m on vacation. I’m going to burn a small fraction of my available vacation hours and return to work on Monday the 26th. I’ll take another week in mid-December, just for fun. Well, to finish up school, probably, but fun, too.

Marcia’s back!

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Marcia was away for a 3-day retreat, and got home a short while ago. Lexi and I are both dancing about with joy. I got my schoolwork done, and relaxed a little bit today, while baking a pork shoulder to incorporate into the macaroni and cheese I’m making tomorrow. Also tomorrow, since it’s a holiday (for me), I’ll finish up the yardwork for the year.

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Staff Sgt. Dain T. Venne, 29, of Port Henry, New York, died of wounds suffered Nov. 3, when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device in Paktia province, Afghanistan.
  • Spc. Ryan P. Jayne, 22, of Campbell, New York, died of wounds suffered Nov. 3, when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device in Paktia province, Afghanistan.
  • Spc. Brett E. Gornewicz, 27, of Alden, New York, died of wounds suffered Nov. 3, when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device in Paktia province, Afghanistan.
  • Pfc. Brandon L. Buttry, 19, of Shenandoah, Iowa, died Nov. 5, in Kandahar province, Afghanistan.
  • Spc. Daniel L. Carlson, 21, of Running Springs, California, died Nov. 9, in Kandahar province, Afghanistan.
  • Kenneth W. Bennett, 26, of Glendora, California, died Nov. 10, in Sperwan Gar, Afghanistan, from injuries sustained when he encountered an improvised explosive device during combat operations.

6 Weeks

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Just sayin’.

I finished this week’s schoolwork yesterday, so I managed to read the documentation for the new saw, adjust things that needed adjusting, and push some wood through the machine for the first time. Much easier to set up square and true. I still need to pay close attention to feed rate, because I didn’t want to spend 4 grand + an electrician to get a cabinet saw in… but it’s a very nice saw, and I’ve got it dialed in within about .005 on the fence, and an invisibly small fraction of a degree on the miter gauge. Happy, that.

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Cpl. Alex F. Domion, 21, of Richfield Springs, New York, died Oct. 31, as a result of a non-combat related incident in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
  • Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew G. Kantor, 22, of Gillette, New Jersey, died supporting stability operations in Zabul, Afghanistan.

This ain’t the Sandy that Bruce sings about!

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Winds ebb and flow, with the gusts a bit stronger, hour by hour. Light rain and drizzle overnight lead to 0.6 ” of rain by the time I left for work this morning. I came home shortly after noon, and it’s been raining gangbusters all day. The 24 hour total for Sandy in our back yard is 3.3″. I stand ready to fire up the generator when the power fails, which I expect this evening or overnight. Once gone, it’s likely to be days before it’s back. Right now, BG&E has 44K outages, and the others are likely following suit.

Sandy’s making landfall at the southern-most end of New Jersey right now, and will spend a bunch of hours dumping hurricane-force winds over several hundred (mental math problems, sorry) a couple of hundred thousand square miles of eastern seaboard, including us. After that, it should start tapering off for us, say by midday tomorrow, as life starts to really suck for Pennsylvania for a day or two.

Dangerous Sandy

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A bit of light drizzle, some breezes, and a second day under cloud cover. That’s what has happened so far. But Sandy approaches. The patio furniture is stowed in back, the hanging baskets and flag removed from the front, and the generator is tested and ready. I gave Marcia a walk-through on starting it up today, and she feels content with that.

At this beginning of things, our rain gauge stands at 2.96 inches, as of 1700 EDT.

School countdown: 7 weeks left.

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Our condolences to the families, friends, and units of these fallen warriors:

  • Chief Warrant Officer Michael S. Duskin, 42, of Orange Park, Florida, died Oct. 23, in Chak District, Wardak Province, Afghanistan, from small arms fire while on dismounted patrol during combat operations.
  • Staff Sgt.  Kashif  M. Memon, 31, of Houston, Texas, died of wounds suffered Oct. 25 when his unit was attacked by small arms fire in Khas Uruzgan, Oruzgan Province, Afghanistan.
  • Sgt. Clinton K. Ruiz, 22, of Murrieta, California, died of wounds suffered Oct. 25 when his unit was attacked by small arms fire in Khas Uruzgan, Oruzgan Province, Afghanistan.