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June 29, 2005
Pick a Printer, Any Printer
Ran into a bit of odd behavior from version 6.0 of Adobe’s Acrobat Reader today (reportedly the same thing can happen under 7.0 but as I haven’t upgraded yet, I can’t say I’ve seen it.) Despite the fact that I have some 13 printers defined on my Windows XP box, when I tried to print a PDF the reader advised me “You need to install a printer…”, very strange indeed.
I was able to go into print set up and choose an alternate printer but still received the same nonsensical diagnostic when I tried print or preview. A little hunting around in the great font of racial memory that is the web, I ran across a few others who have encountered this conundrum. The fix? [Reported here] Set some other printer as your default printer and try again. Magic! It works. I’m not sure I could write this bug if I tried.
So far as I can tell, the problem will come up when you print a document in domain A on printer 1 then move your lap top to domain B where printer 1 is not defined. The reader appears to remember the last print device you used instead of always offering the default printer first. If that last printer used can’t be found in your current domain, you loose.
Filed under Software.
Posted by eric at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)
June 28, 2005
Paperwork: End Round 1
The package of documents that comprise the result of only HR knows how much paper shuffling between the company, its English affiliate, the State Department, the Home Office, along with assorted embassies and consulates has arrived on my desk for review. I’m more than thankful that I’ve been able to rely on a group of professionals who have already navigated this bureaucratic thicket rather than having to hack my way through it myself.
The next step, I’m told, is to gather up the passports of myself and my possessions and forward them along with the afore mentioned packet of paperwork to the U.K. consulate so that the passports may be properly endorsed before we show up on the U.K.’s doorstep so-to-speak. The trouble is I’m planning on traveling to London shortly on a house hunting expedition and will kinda need my passport. Had we known when this packet of forms would arrive today, we could have scheduled appropriately. As it is, my earliest start date will have to be pushed back a couple of weeks. The wheels of government turn in their own time however and it’s no use getting too worked up about it.
Filed under Relocating to London.
Posted by eric at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)
Start Now and Collect All Three
Also awaiting our return from our weekend trip was an envelope from the State Department containing the last of our required complement of passports, the offspringࢩs. So we now all three have our basic documentation. In each instance, the passport agency held to within a day or two of it’ promise that, without greasing their palms with a sixty buck sweetener, the process would take about six weeks. Co-workers have said that when you supply the appropriate emolument, the documents come back in about a week. Could be, it just seems gaulling to me that we’ve so lost touch with our finer feelings that it seems OK that the rich can supply a few more sheckles to receive special treatment from the government before which we are all, I was taught, supposed to stand in equality.
Semi-political rants aside, all I need now is for the paperwork to come through and we'll be able to set a date to head for the U.K.
Filed under Relocating to London.
Posted by eric at 12:17 AM | Comments (0)
June 27, 2005
Tri-band Cell Phone Arrives
Waiting for us on our doorstep when we came home this evening (glad we live in a nice, quiet, safe neighborhood) was the first of two unlocked, international cellular ’phones I plan to order. This one, a Motorola v180, I ordered from Telestial (a site recommended in an article on The Travel Insider). It apparently arrived well on time and due to my sad miscalculation of our travel schedule, it landed on our doorstep a few hours after we took off for Washington D.C. This ’phone is a three band (900/1800/1900) model which should give us full coverage in Europe and most urban areas in the U.S. The recharger included is a European plug type with a U.S. adapter. It purports to be able to take in anything from 60Hz/110V to 50Hz/220V. We’ll see as I just plugged it into an outlet in our house to top off the battery. Ultimately, this will be the spouse’s handset but I’ll take it with me on my house hunting expedition to try it out.
Filed under Relocating to London and Cell Phones.
Posted by eric at 11:57 PM | Comments (0)
Back from D.C.
Just got back home after spending the weekend in Washington D.C. We took the Silver Star (trains #92 north on Friday morning and #91 south this afternoon and evening) both ways. We ran late both directions. Running significantly late northbound is not uncommon as #92 has all the way from Miami FL to lose time on track that Amtrak does not control. (In the South-East, Amtrak runs for the most part on CSX track). Given the very hot weather, CSX was apparently nervous about running passenger trains at top speed, for fear of warped rails I suppose. We were also late southbound which is less common. In my experience, trains between New York and Washington D.C. run close to bang on time.
The southbound train set was one of the longest I’ve ever seen on this route. Two P42Cs, baggage car (actually they had now real baggage cars and had to press a spare lounge car into baggage service, an oddity that may have contributed to the last of our travails on this trip (see below)), crew dorm, four sleepers, dining car, lounge car and four or five coaches. What’s more, it was a pretty full train. Nice to see ridership going up like this. This may have something to do with the fact that the Silver Star now heads north from Raleigh at about 9:00 AM instead of 6:00 AM as it used to and it pulls in from the north at about 9:00 PM instead of closer to 11:00 PM. The revised schedule provides much more convenient hours to the midatlantic states.
Despite these inconveniences, the trip was enjoyable. The offspring was most pleased with his first real train excursion and quite liked dinner in the dining car (so much so that he was too distracted to eat very much). Near the end of the trip down the heir was getting just a bit wobbly and insistent that we get off at every stop. Still, he held out until Raleigh where we had just one more minor inconvenience to deal with.
After emerging from the comfortable coach into the steamy night air at the Raleigh station (condensation was dripping down the station’s windows) we found that all but one of our checked items had been unloaded. The tot’s car seat had headed south with the train. That was the bad news. The good news was that they keep a loaner car seat on hand at the station so we had no trouble getting our toddler set for the cab ride home. He did however grouse about the substitute seat and then, being very tired and apparently to no small degree punchy when we got home, he proceeded to claim that we had not returned to our house but to some substitute dwelling that looked a lot like it. (This is a pretty advanced delusion for a three year old.) Only when we pointed out that nobody was likely to find a substitute for our cats did he subside and agree to get ready for bed.
Update: Amtrak had our seat back in hand at the Raleigh station by the next morning. All’s well...
Update: While watching fireworks at the fairgrounds last night, the southbound Sliver Star passed us almost exactly on time (though it promptly lost a bit from having to come to a stop at a malfunctioning crossing gate). Again a surprisingly long consist and looking well populated.
Filed under Travel, Rail Travel and Amtrak.
Posted by eric at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2005
The T42 Returns
Well, the T42 is back from the shop, and quite quickly too. The return box arrived on Monday and was packed and given into the hands of DHL on Monday afternoon. Wednesday morning it was back with the T42 and a note to the effect that the BIOS had been updated and the wireless card, an Intel® PRO/Wireless Network Connection 2200BG. replaced. (Nothing about the antenna where my own personal suspicions lay.)
So how does it work now? Um, well, better… perhaps? It can now more reliably pick up APs on channel 11. Before channel 11 often seemed to be all but inaudible to this laptop. However, it still goes into episodes where it hops APs several times a minute and the connection is still rarely solid enough to run the AirFortress client. I’d be inclined to blame our wireless infrastructure were it not for the fact that we have other T42s that behave in an exemplary fashion while sitting right next to this machine as it hops about, looses the network, drops town to 1Mb/sec with a five bar signal. Very, very strange.
Filed under Hardware.
Posted by eric at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2005
CUPS Mysteriously Happy
A bit of pleasant fall out from my fiddling with CUPS last night in an attempt to get printing to work from Konqueror within KDE was that whatever I did, however little good it did for printing under KDE, has apparently healed printing via Samba. Just which of the things I did was the cause this happy accident is unclear but I suspect it was nothing more complicated than uncommenting the octet-stream mime types in the files /usr/local/etc/cups/mime.types and /usr/local/etc/mime.convs.
The line in mime.types to uncomment is:
application/octet-stream
The line in mime.convs that must be uncommented is:
application/octet-stream application/vnd.cups-raw 0 -
Making these two changes should make raw mode printing available which is what the Samba interface wants to use.
Filed under FreeBSD, CUPS, and Samba.
Posted by eric at 09:54 PM | Comments (0)
Wireless/LAN Bridge Experiment (Failed)
Made one last attempt this morning to try bridging the ath0 and xl0 interfaces instead of running a different subnet on each. The process involved the following:
- Updated
rc.confto bring up theath0 interface on 192.168.0.4 instead of 192.168.100.1. - Updated
sysctl.confto activate a bridge betweenath0andxl0.
net.link.ether.bridge.enable=1
net.link.ether.bridge.config="ath0,xl0"
net.inet.ip.forwarding=1 - Updated
/etc/namedb/named.confto eliminate zones associated with wlan.spoobles.net and to keep named from listening on ath0 as a separate interface. - Updated
/etc/namedb/s/db.orion.spoobles.netto include a mapping for the DWL-G710. - Updated
/etc/namedb/s/db.192.168.0to include a reverse mapping for the DWL-G710. - Updated
/usr/local/etc/dhcpd.confto eliminate the subnet specification for 192.168.100.0/24. - Modified
/usr/local/etc/smb.confto keep Samba from trying to listen on theath0interface as well asxl0. - Rebooted.
- Not good. Bind is unhappy with its configuration file (turns out I’m still refering to a non-existant ACL). Even after that’s fixed, named is still not coming through with results.
- Editted
rc.confagain to moveath0back onto 192.168.100 and rebooted. Named happy now. I’m just gonna hafta punt on getting both wireless and wired clients on a single segment. It looks like bad karma to try to run a single box as both a server and a bridge.
Filed under FreeBSD.
Posted by eric at 09:05 PM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2005
Upgrading from 4.5 to 5.4: Fine Points of DHCP and Bind Configuration
While both DNS and DHCP have been working passibly well since their initial configuration following the upgrade, there are many ways in which they could be better; it would be nice if DHCP would automagically update DNS for example. This evenings goal was to fix up the configuration of dhcpd and Bind 9 to get things running smoothly.
- To start with, I’ve grown tired of loosing track of what’s changed when with my key configuration files. I started by copying all of my favorite configuration files into an Eclipse project so that they can be centrally editted and committed to CVS when stable.
- As part of a separate experiment, I’d like to see if I really need routed or if it’s overkill given my network architecture. Set
routerenable="NO"in/etc/rc.conf. - To regularize several changes I’ve made ad-hoc to the wireless interface, set
ath0configuration toifconfig_ath0="inet 192.168.100.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 wepmode on wepkey 0xXXXXXXXXXX channel 8 model 11b mediaopt hostap"in/etc/rc.conf. - Rebooted, all interfaces active. Traffic flows correctly between them.
- Updated named’s configuration tables to change wifi.spoobles.net to wlan.spoobles.net and to correct the spelling of the DWL-G710’s hostname.
- Restarted named. All OK with it.
- Updated
/etc/namedb/named.confto permit updates from localhost (plan is to get DHCP to update the records when it assigns an address). Accomplished this by addingallow-update { 192.168.0.1; 127.0.0.1; };to all of the relevant zone definitions. - Updated
/usr/local/etc/dhcpd.confto use the ad-hoc DNS update protocol (include the lineddns-update-style ad-hoc;in thedhcpd.conf) and to correct the subnet option so that wlan.spoobles.net and orion.spoobles.net are presented to the proper set of clients. - Updated named tables yet again to get rid of records for machines that no longer have fixed address assignments in DHCP.
- Forced named to reload its tables and restarted dhcpd.
- Addresses are being assigned correctly but the DDNS update is failing. Log reads:
"Jun 18 17:15:51 alnitak dhcpd: if DUKECE-1116.wlan.spoobles.net IN A rrset doesn't exist add DUKECE-1116.wlan.spoobles.net 1800 IN A 192.168.100.126: timed out." - Hmmm... what’s alnitak.spoobles.net doing as the name in the IN SOA record. Should be alnitak.orion.spoobles.net. Yep, that’s it. The the incorrect SOA record was causing the updates to appear to be coming from outside the firewall and consequently they were all blocked. Now the DDNS is working fine for both forward and reverse.
With that, I’ll quit on a high note for the evening. The next task will be to see if I can return to the idea of having both WLAN and LAN clients all on the same subnet with the server acting as a bridge. Now that routed’s out of the equation, it just might be possible.
Filed under FreeBSD.
Posted by eric at 10:51 PM | Comments (0)
June 17, 2005
Spotting a Flaky Wireless NIC
The whole 802.11x edifice is so shaky that it’s a bit difficult to draw the line between normal persnickety behavior and a downright bad piece of hardware. But in the case of the laptop I use at the office, I think we’re going to have to bet on the latter. I’d been having periodic troubles, particularly with the AirFortress client active. Yesterday and today I monitored the NIC’s view of the APs.
It was often not even noticing the AP just 20 feet from my desk while associating with one halfway, or occasionally completely, across the building. Even more curiously, it would change its association frequently; often several times a minute. To add to the confusion, the change would occasionally end up with the NIC associating with an AP providing a much weaker signal. An identical unit right next to mine exhibited no such eccentric behavior. Only idea we can come up with is a dickey antennae.
We finally decided to try this out on tech. support to see what they made of it. They were fairly good about it. It all sounded a bit strange to the tech. support rep. In the end he decided to active the warranty and said he’d send us a box by Monday.
Filed under Hardware.
Posted by eric at 10:36 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2005
Holly Implant I've Been Tagged!
In addition to myself, my spouse, and the offspring; we’re eventually going to be bringing three cats across the pond. This was a worrisome prospect when looking at possible months in quarantine for three already neurotic animals. Recently however, the US and the UK have begun cooperating on a program by which pets can, if properly vaccinated and documented, be brought into the UK without quarantine. The program is called PETS and it involves a long process of ensuring that the animals are identifiable and disease free. You have to start this process about six months prior to planned departure and we’re getting a late start so we’ll have to have friends or relations look after the guys for a few months before they can follow us over.
In order for this whole system to work, the folks in the UK must be able to be certain that the animal that they’re looking at is the same one that the accompanying documentation refers to. So the first step is to have identity tags implanted in the cats. The implant is about the size and shape of a slightly oversized grain of basmati rice. It’s implanted under the skin between the shoulder blades. Here we have one of our three after getting his implant as well as rabies and distemper vaccines. He’s still looking just a bit put out about it.
So now all of the guys have their seekrit government implants (theirs are compatible with Annex A of ISO Standard 11785) and we're ready for step #2. This is a long wait until their vaccinations, as well as any diseases they might have, have time to percolate. Then they get a blood test and the’ll be almost ready to travel.
Filed under Relocating to London and Pets.
Posted by eric at 07:30 PM | Comments (0)
Dreamweaver to Hang-up No More?
On occasion when I’ve started up Dreamweaver, version 7.0.1, it has completely hung up. The application would start, the startup page would be presented and I would touch anything in the file pane and that would be the last I’d hear from Dreamweaver until windows shut it down and I restarted it at which point the problem would typically not recur for a few cycles.
Now I’ve come to believe that the trouble lies in the start page, shown right, itself. Since I’ve disabled the start page I have had no trouble with Dreamweaver hanging on start up. I haven’t had time to look into why this would be. When it’s hung I’ve noted that the content in the lower right pane, it’s a flash app that always seems to be exhorting me to attend a seminar, isn’t showing up. Perhaps it’s tripping up on loading flash? That would be a bit embarrassing wouldn’t it?
Filed under Web Tools and Dreamweaver.
Posted by eric at 04:53 PM | Comments (0)
June 15, 2005
Upgrading from 4.5 to 5.4: Adding the IDE
Nearly all of the basic capabilities required of the server are now back in place. Internet connectivity and household networking are back. File service is back. Print service is kinda, but not quite back. And the new services like the WLAN and DHCP are working fairly well. Now it’s time to add in the tool I use most when I’m building software on any platform, Eclipse.
I started the build for Eclipse 3.0.1 when I got home from the office today (the Thunderbird-enigmail build I’d started this morning had completed). It’s still going. One of the prerequisites is Mozilla. Sigh, I’ve already got Konqueror and Firefox, both of which took no small amount of time to build, now the poor server’s got to go and drag down and build another huge wad of browser. From past experience, Mozilla should take most of the night to build. I haven’t checked to see if this is still so but in previous versions I remember ORBit being one of its prerequisites. Now I understand that a web browser has to unify a lot of capabilities, but an ORB? Why bother.
Filed under FreeBSD and Eclipse.
Posted by eric at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)
Upgrading from 4.5 to 5.4: KDE3 Installed
At long, and I do mean long, last KDE3 has completed building and installing. This has been quite a saga. I started this build Friday evening and I may have selected just one or two too many wee optional features on the build configuration dialog. It looks like nearly every KDE tool known to man has been pulled in and each of those has required at least a couple of obscure libs to be built as well. At one point I had to halt the build because /usr was filling up. Packed up /usr/ports, moved it to one of the outboard SCSI volumes, left a symbolic link to point the way and started make off again.
The end result is that KDE3 is up and running and I must say it looks quite impressive. I’ve never been in the KDE camp before. (Neither have I been in the Gnome faction.) But I’m sold. Looks good, feels good and comes with an impressive array of useful tools.
Now all of this is just by the way. The main reason I started down this road to begin with was that I needed a browser so that I could connect to the CUPS configuration system from local host. I have that now in the shape of Konqueror (I have Firefox building as we speak but I’m not gonna wait). I’ve connected to http://localhost:631/, logged in as root and set up an interface to the local HP LaserJet IIP+ (yes I still have one of these, they just won’t quit).
Sadness: When I try to print I get ”Unable to convert file 0 to printable format for job 3! Hint: Do you have ESP Ghostscript installed?„ messages piling up in the log. I was under the impression that Ghostscript had indeed been installed… yep it’s there. More investigation required.
More sadness: added:
Printing = cups
Load printers = yes
To smb.conf but all attempts to connect to a printer are rebuffed with a note in the log like so: ”printing/print_cups.c:cups_cache_reload(85)
Unable to connect to CUPS server localhost - Connection refused„. I want my lpd. There does not seem to be a great store of wisdom out in the net for this problem. Too bad, and this CUPS stuff looked sooo slick. I’m just a sucker for a pretty face.
Filed under FreeBSD, KDE, CUPS, and Samba.
Posted by eric at 12:32 AM | Comments (0)
June 12, 2005
Tuning up an Anemic Signal
One thing I’ve found in my 802.11 experiments thus far is that you can’t cover a 2700 sq. foot, three story building with a single wireless NIC that’s been browbeaten into believing that it’s actually an access point. On the ground floor, the signal is low to very low and around back in the kitchen and on the porch, it’s usually zero.
To fix up this problem (and it is a problem as I’d really set my heart on working from the porch while sipping cocktails in the cool of the evening) I went hunting for wireless bridges. My first choice, the Netgear WGE101 wireless bridge, was a no-go. Nobody seems to have these readily enough available to satisfy my need for instant gratification. So I picked up my second choice, the D-Link DLW-G710, at our local Best Buy. In fact, I didn’t end up paying more than a few dollars above the best price I found on Pricegrabber.
Configuration turned out to be simple though the fact that my DHCP server is acting very flaky this evening made it seem hard. So far as I can tell, all of the troubles I encountered were due to that rather than any trouble with the bridge itself. I’ve fallen back on static IP assignment and everything’s working great. I’ve got five bars down in the kitchen and if it was still so humid outside, I’d try out the signal on the deck.
Now, back to my Manhattan.
Filed under Hardware and Home Networking.
Posted by eric at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)
June 11, 2005
New Best Video Yet on Overspun
OverSpun > Archive > A Humble Theory…
A couple of days ago McLusky posted an excellent video pastiche of some of the Bush administrationࢩs more recent antics. Itࢩs about 4Mb of .wmv and well worth the download (link).
Filed under Harmless Fun and Shrub.
Posted by eric at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)
June 08, 2005
Learning to Speak the Local Frequency
While I’ll be living primarily in London for the next couple of years, I’ll no doubt be making occasional trips back to the states and hopefully elsewhere in Europe. I’m fairly sure my doddering old GSM ‘phone wouldn’t work in the UK or Europe; it probably only understands 1900MHz. What’s more Cingular has locked it and I’m fairly confident that I don’t want to pay their roaming rates across the pond.
While looking for the information I need to figure out a solution, I ran across a series of excellent articles that directly address my problem on The Travel Insider. In a very informative series of seven articles, the author presents all that I need to know about world cell ‘phone use. The articles contain just the right level of detail and are broadly enough targeted to cover both the wide traveler and someone like myself who will be in one country for extended periods of time. I found the first three articles to be the most informative and useful. Great reading.
As an extra benefit, the author points to an unlocked GSM ‘phone provider that might be a good place to start shopping for a quad-band handset. Should probably check eBay as well. (I like the look and feature list of the Motorola v600 and might be inclined to get one, but only if I can shutdown Bluetooth.)
My information hunt also turned up O2, a UK service provider that appears to offer SIM only pay-as-you-go solutions. Their rates don’t seem out of line (10-25p/min) so I’ll keep them in mind.
Update A little investigation inside our old handsets reveals that the make/model is Ericsson r300z. Sure enough, they only speak 1900MHz and so even if unlocked would be worth nothing in the UK. In fact, a quick check on eBay shows that they're worth pretty much nothing in the US by now.
Filed under Relocating to London and Cell Phones.
Posted by eric at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)
Dreamweaver Suffering from Seizures?
Yet another odd Dreamweaver behavior, though at least this one hasn’t proved fatal: I was innocently downloading a few files using Firefox (no really, they’re just CUPS documents) with Dreamweaver (version 7.0.1) peacefully resting in the background when all of a sudden its files panel started madly blinking refreshing over and over again. Seems a bit odd considering that I wasn’t touching any directories that contain any of its sites. Does it go into this dance whenever anything on the volume changes? Hardly seems likely does it? More study is indicated.
Filed under Web Tools.
Posted by eric at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)
Finding a Survival Guide
The time is rapidly approaching, about a month away now, when I’ll have to up stakes and go house hunting in London. Having never touched foot to pavement in that city, or the country that contains, it in my life I feel that I could use a bit of a primer on how not to appear the complete fool while wobbling about town. So it was off to B&N last night to exploit a recently e-mailed coupon and my membership card to obtain a couple of current guide books. Yes, I know that doing so allows them to track and study my every purchasing move but I saved enough dollars for me to pocket my principles and besides, when I get to the UK I’ll probably defect to Blackwells anyway.
Ended up with two items from DK: a London guide and one for the UK in general. (We do plan to escape the city on occasions.) I also took the opportunity to relax with a cappuccino and a blueberry scone. Well, I got a couple of bites of the scone; the offspring consumed the bulk of it before I had much chance to get started.
Filed under Relocating to London.
Posted by eric at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)
Time to Punt on Cingular
I recently received a missive from our less than customer friendly — absurdly complex bills, Byzantine voice mail system, woefully poor web site, pissy late notices despite years of being a good customer — cellular telephone company Cingular. It looks like the rate plan presently associated with my ’phone isn´t making them enough filthy lucre so they´re discontinuing it. If I do nothing I´ll be automatically “upgraded” to a 50% more expensive plan that provides lots of services and minutes I won´t use in places I won´t be; another $120/yr for nuthn´. No thanks.
We´re going to be out of the country for extensive periods of time for the next couple of years so a monthly fee based plan makes no sense anyway. Had a look at Cingular´s pay-as-you-go plans, read the fine print and go somewhere else. The minutes on a $25 card go piff in 30 days while those on a $75 card last all of 90 days. Again, no thanks
F**K ´em.
Filed under General ’cause I don´t have a category for shameless weasels.
Posted by eric at 12:12 AM | Comments (0)
June 07, 2005
Dude You´re Gettin´ a…
Never liked that add campaign — though I must say that the interns adds were even worse — and I never figured on buying from Dell. However, of late they´ve been having $750.00 off sales on laptops and as we need one to replace the spouse´s old Gateway Solo (yes that was a long time ago) which had way too much to drink one night and hasn´t been the same since, I´ve been on the lookout for good deals. I noticed on Techbargains last night that another 15,000 $750 off coupons were to be made available starting this morning at 9:00 EDT (there may be some left but they´ll likely be gone by around 13:00 EDT 6/7/05) and for once I was in a position to take advantage of the offer.
End of the story, I was able to order a 730MHz, Pentium-M, Intel 2915 internal 802.11a/b/g NIC, 512Mb RAM, w/ XP Pro for a little over $800.00. Not bad. I´ll have to check my own laptop to make sure that the spouse´s new one won’t outclass it.
Filed under Hardware.
Posted by eric at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2005
Rebuilding CVS
Tonight´s goal in the server upgrade project is to get CVS running again. I tried to rebuild the source tree that resulted the last time I ran configure and it tanked. Noticing that I was using 1.11.2 and that the current release is 1.11.20, I decided to download the latest stable version and try again. No joy.
The build fails with several references in server.c to the undefined symbol gss_release_buffer. Use of the gss API is apparently an option so I´ve run configure again with the additional argument --with-gssapi=no. This appears to be the fix and I´ve got a clean build.
Su to root, run make install, update inetd.conf, ensure that the pserver ports are all completely swallowed by the firewall, poke inetd and try it out. I usually use Eclipse as my CVS client so after a quick look through the CVS repository explorer therein, all appears to be in order. Great joy and time for bed. (The offspring doesn´t seem to have bought into bed time tonight. May have to drop by and try to convince him to dream about trains and rockets.)
Posted by eric at 11:36 PM | Comments (0)
June 05, 2005
A Stop in Roanoke
We were out of town visiting the southwest Virginia highlands this weekend. Driving back today we were making quite good time so we decided to give the tot a treat and stop in Roanoke to visit the Virginia Transportation Museum. Exhibits there run from ancient cars through early aircraft and on to a small rocket standing out back but what we´re really here for are the locomotives.
The offspring´s just mad about trains and locomotives lately and we thought he might enjoy a close up look at some of the larger specimens. We weren´t disappointed. He had a great time running around goggling at the vast stretches of boiler, drive wheels and push rods. Of particular interest were the museum´s show pieces: The Norfolk & Western J class number 611 and A class number 1218. Also of note, to the little one at least, is a miniature hood diesel standing on the loading doc near the end.
Definitely a worthwhile stop if you, or somebody in your car, cares at all about rail transport history. The rest of the museum’s exhibits are a bit iffy but for trains, they´re quite good.
Filed under General.
Posted by eric at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)
June 01, 2005
Upgrading from 4.5 to 5.4: The JDK
There’s little time tonight. Spouse exhausted so I’m looking after the sprout some more this evening.
Began installation of JDK 1.4.2, it’s all just a bit tedious:
- make, make replies that I need to manually download
j2sdk-1_4_2-bin-scsl.zip. - Do so, make, make replies that I need to manually download
j2sdk-1_4_2-src-scsl.zip. - Do so, make, make replies that I need to manually download
j2sdk-1_4_2_07-linux-i586.bin.
I’m out of time and patience. Couldn’t this port advise me up front of all of the files I’ll have to download instead of having me do this back and forth all evening?
Filed under FreeBSD and Java Notes.
Posted by eric at 10:32 PM | Comments (0)