~chuck/blog

So, I read an article that is both sensical and scary:

Flaming Mountainside: Breeding Internet Superbugs

I get a LOT of junk mail in my USPS mailbox in front of my house, and I pretty much ignore it, as long as it doesn’t look terribly important. It goes right into the trash.

I have to agree with vixie in the above article; the issue is not being solved, just pushed away.

In the Linux Admin world, currently, in order to have a mail server that will send to Yahoo! and AOL, among others, you already have to jump through plenty of hoops:

• Email DNS – Forward and reverse DNS entries for the IP and A record.
• SPF – Sender Policy Framework
• DomainKeys - By far, the worst, in my opinion.

These are just a few things to try, and still, the spam keeps flowing, because the spammer has a need to get his message through.  I suppose I could try Spamassassin or Postini.  Some companies even offer to manage the spam problem for you (and they do a pretty darn good job of it, too!).

As the old saying goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Continuing to “fix” the spam issue will cause the number of spammers fluent in loopholes to exceed the number of hackers available to fix the problem.

All in all, how do we fix the spam issue? The same way we fix the junk mail issue: The delete key.

/cs

Oh, my.  What a weird couple weeks it’s been for my laptop…

I started with Alpha5, in which suspend worked.  Alpha 6 also supported suspend.  Both with the open-source ati driver upon install.  Beautiful!  Thank you Ubuntu for having an awesome distro!

Supposedly, the xorg-driver-fglrx package in the Ubuntu repos for the Hardy development version addressed the suspend/resume issues that have been the bane of Linux geeks with newer ATI cards eveywhere.  I, for one, did not notice that the issue had been resolved.

I DID notice, however, that out-of-the-box, so to speak, suspend worked with the open-source ati driver.  I could suspend, resume, hibernate, etc.  But, I’m whiney, and wanted my ever-so-cool desktop effects (mostly for the transparent terminals).

Upon installing this xorg-driver-fglrx package, my suspend/resume functionality broke.  Ouch.  That’s a beta-killer if ever.

I have tried every sort of configuration imaginable, and googled every combination of keywords for fglrx, suspend, hibernate, sleep, resume, ati, proprietary, and on and on.  I found several people (with different cards and different configurations) that were successful in manipulating the /etc/default/acpi-support file in such a way that suspend just worked.  Hoorah for them!  I was still stuck.

I have a Gateway MT3705 with an integrated ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M graphics card:

$ lspci -vv
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RC410 [Radeon Xpress 200M] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Gateway 2000 Unknown device 0318
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 255 (2000ns min), Cache Line Size: 32 bytes
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 19
Region 0: Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Region 1: I/O ports at 9000 [size=256]
Region 2: Memory at c0000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at c0020000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: <access denied>

Pulling info from dpkg, I can see the version and supported cards:

$ sudo dpkg -p xorg-driver-fglrx | grep ‘Version\|Xpress’
Version: 1:7.1.0-8-3+2.6.24.11-12.31
* Radeon Xpress: 1200 series, 1100 series, 200 series

All in all, it is “supposed” to work.  I have NO idea why it does not.  I am not that far along.  In fact, I don’t think the issue is with the driver, after my most recent discovery.

I have successfully been able to suspend and resume my computer for several hours now!  Hoorah!

Here is what I have done:

I changed a few things around in the /etc/default/acpi-support file, as per the instructions as cchtml pertaining to Gutsy and Feisty, because they have not yet gotten the Hardy page together (since it’s still alpha, i understand!).  Here is my current /etc/default/acpi-support file:

$ sed ‘/^#/d;/^$/d’ /etc/default/acpi-support
ACPI_SLEEP=true
ACPI_HIBERNATE=true
ACPI_SLEEP_MODE=mem
MODULES=”"
MODULES_WHITELIST=”fglrx”
SAVE_VBE_STATE=false
VBESTATE=/var/lib/acpi-support/vbestate
POST_VIDEO=
USE_DPMS=false
DOUBLE_CONSOLE_SWITCH=false
HIBERNATE_MODE=shutdown
LOCK_SCREEN=true
STOP_SERVICES=”"
RESTART_IRDA=false
ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=false
SPINDOWN_TIME=12

This is not stock.  However, I have made enough changes to it that I am not sure what the stock implementation is anymore!  It works now, so I’m cool with it.

Now, if I try to suspend via gnome-power-manager, or the Logout button, it will sleep and blink at me slowly and drearily, but will abruptly tell me to piss off when I try to wake it.  Ever poked a sleeping bear?  Same thing.

However, if I open my terminal and run this command (in bold), I can sleep and resume, as you can see by the output of the script (not in bold):

$ sudo /etc/acpi/sleep.sh force
ifdown: interface eth0 not configured
ifdown: interface wlan0 not configured
* Shutting down ALSA…                                                 [ OK ]
* Saving the system clock
* Setting the system clock
Ignoring unknown interface eth0=eth0.
Ignoring unknown interface wlan0=wlan0.
* Setting up ALSA…                                                    [ OK ]
FATAL: Module acpi_sbs not found.
FATAL: Module acpi_sbs not found.

So, when it suspends, I get a grey-and-white-blinky-screen-of-death, and then *poof!* it’s out and peaceful.  When returned to a wakeful state, I am greeted with my desktop and session information that I left behind.

Once concern I have is that the screen is not locked when the computer awakens, so theoretically, anyone could awaken my laptop and overtake me completely.  Since it is nearly always within arm’s reach, I am not terribly worried.  I worked around this issue as such:

$ sudo /etc/acpi/sleep.sh force && gnome-screensaver-command –lock

For me, this is too much to remember, so I have set up a little alias in my ~/.bashrc file called simply “sleep” that performs this command for me when I type, well, “sleep”:

$ grep “alias sle” ~/.bashrc
alias sleep=’sudo /etc/acpi/sleep.sh force && gnome-screensaver-command –lock’

I am a terminal junky, and am perfectly fine with this.  But, some people are not, so here’s a GUI-type version of the above.  These can be run by pressing Alt-F2, and copying in the commands.  You will likely be prompted for a password:

$ gksu gedit /usr/local/bin/sleeparound.sh

Type into file:
#!/bin/bash
gksu /etc/acpi/sleep.sh force && gnome-screensaver-command –lock

$ gksu chmod +x /usr/local/bin/sleeparound.sh

Now that the tough terminal part is done, simply add a custom launcher to the panel (right-click the panel, click “Add to Panel…”, click “Custom Application Launcher”) that calls this command.  It will prompt you for a password, then sleep, and lock your screen when it wakes up.

Cool.

Now, make a note that during my research, I found that some people had networking problems after resume, particularly pertaining to wireless.  I did not, so will not delve into that, but two key things that I saw (which could be added to the sleeparound.sh script) wereunloading and reloading the driver modules for the particular net interface, and restarting the Gnome Network Manager.

I gotta say, I love Linux.

/cs

UPDATE 080319: A smoother version of the command to use for sleep involves using the -S flag for sudo, which causes it to read from standard input.  For example, in .bashrc, the alias “sleep” would be comprised of this:

alias sleep=’gnome-screensaver-command –lock && sleep 3 && cat ~/.passfile | sudo -S /etc/acpi/sleep.sh force’

So, in your home directory, issue the command ‘cat > ~/.passfile && chmod 400 ~/.passfile’ and type in your password.  Setting the permissions to 400 disallow other users from reading the file (other than root).  You can also replace the command in the shell script we created above with this, as well.

This version will lock the screen, then sleep, whereas before, it would sleep, then lock the screen on wake.  Sorry – I wrote the last one at like 2 in the morning.  /cs

Ooh, I installed Ubuntu’s beta, the Hardy Heron, and I was unthrilled to find that they are including a BETA version of Firefox as the default browser.

Who knows, maybe it’ll be official by April, but for now, it’s still BETA!

I use a few plugins for various things, and was equally unthrilled to find that none of the were compatible with FF3.  Unthrilled, but not completely unsurprised.  The same issue happened when they release FF2 some time ago.

So, I found a way to fix it.

In the Address Bar, type “about:config”.  This will prompt you (which I laughed at) that it might “void your warranty”.  Right click on a blank space, and click New->Boolean.  Enter the value string “extensions.checkCompatibility” and select “false” for the boolean value.

Restart FF, and voila!  I was able to successfully use the ShowIP and Signature plugins, which I use quite regularly.

I am now happy. 

/cs

I love Ubuntu. It’s Linux that you can plug in and use quickly, without a whole lot of setup time. I even convinced my Uncle Phil and my Grandmother-in-law to use it, and they are die-hard Windows fans.

Well, wow. My first impression once I got Hardy installed was that the new modern art deco background is a far reach from their traditional “wiggly lines” art.

I think I like it.

continue reading…

Hello!

In a world where it’s green to be politically correct, why are we still seeing so many problems with addiction to environmentally unfriendly substances? If we are moving toward saving our natural environment, how can we be so addicted to things that are not of it?

If you’ve made it past the above sentence, then you haven’t yet gotten the point. Let me explain further.

continue reading…

I find the history of UNIX to be an interesting subject to me, because it’s history plainly lays the track for exactly why it is the way it is today in combination with Linux, FreeBSD, Darwin, and any other flavors.

I think Dave McIlroy sums up the open source initiative best in this quote from the Bell Labs site’s rundown of UNIX history:

“Thompson saw that file arguments weren’t going to fit with this scheme of things and he went in and changed all those programs in the same night. I don’t know how…and the next morning we had this orgy of one-liners.”

This profound statement brings to light exactly the mantra that I have seen at work in the Open Source Community, as follows:

1. A user needs something.
2. A developer builds something.
3. Everyone is happy.

In my opinion, this single sense of community is what make Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) well worth it in an every day setting.

continue reading…