From michael at halligan.org Mon Aug 2 10:25:14 2004 From: michael at halligan.org (Michael T. Halligan) Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 10:25:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SUMMARY : Reliable laptops under $1k? Message-ID: Well, after much wrangling back and forth, and a lot of advice heeded from this list, I took my wife down to the Apple store. She fell in love with the 12" Powerbook, so I bought one off of ebay this weekend, to arrive tommorrow. I also bought myself a new 17" to arrive later this week. :) I was very impressed with the weight, and the width of the keyboard. I actually found the powerbook easier to type on than the Thinkpad, which to date had been my favorite laptop keyboard layout. The screen is beautiful, with great clarity and acceptable resolution. If I were to find a problem with the 12" powerbook, it would only be that the touchpad isn't as smooth as I'd like it to be. Now, how to squeeze debian onto a powerbook? ------------------- BitPusher, LLC http://www.bitpusher.com/ 1.888.9PUSHER (415) 724.7998 - Mobile From strata at virtual.net Mon Aug 2 12:51:54 2004 From: strata at virtual.net (Strata R. Chalup) Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 12:51:54 -0700 Subject: BayLISA Tape Library Inventory Message-ID: <410E9B5A.2080502@virtual.net> If you are not currently the BayLISA Video Librarian, and you have borrowed a VHS or Hi-8 tape from BayLISA, or have an original Hi-8 tape that you planned to transcribe for us to another format, PLEASE send me a quick note. If you know of someone else who has original tapes that are supposed to be transcribed, please also send me a note. thanks, Strata From strata at virtual.net Mon Aug 2 12:56:55 2004 From: strata at virtual.net (Strata R. Chalup) Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 12:56:55 -0700 Subject: Aug 5 BayLISA Board Meeting: Pho Hoa, Mountain View, 7pm In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <410E9C87.2050307@virtual.net> Pho Hoa, 220 Castro St., Mountain View Tel: (650) 969-5805 Arrive by 7pm; begin meeting 7:30pm [Note: November is rapidly approaching. If you are thinking of running for the Board, please make a point of coming to a Board meeting sometime between now and the November general meeting! Or even if you're not, you are still welcome.] Not usually crowded. You can get a good cheap dinner there-- chicken, seafood, or veggie pho, plus a small selection of non-pho items for those who don't like vietnamese rice-noodle soup with beefy bits. -- ======================================================================== Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata "@" virtual.net VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ ** Project Management & Architecture for ISP/ASP Systems Integration ** ========================================================================= From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Mon Aug 2 12:21:24 2004 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 12:21:24 -0700 Subject: *whimper* NIS kerfluffle In-Reply-To: <215F0D1D-DD9F-11D8-8D58-000D9329BA8E@mac.com> References: <20040721230922.GK86438@bitshift.org> <57106.192.55.4.36.1090636386.squirrel@192.55.4.36> <215F0D1D-DD9F-11D8-8D58-000D9329BA8E@mac.com> Message-ID: <20040802192124.GB50111@2004.snew.com> Quoting John Martinez (rolnif at mac.com): > On Jul 23, 2004, at 7:33 PM, Robert Hajime Lanning wrote: ... > If you see lots or errors, it could be that autonegotiation isn't > working correctly. You may need to hard set it on 10/100 interfaces. > You can do that with ndd. Check out > for more info, if for > example, you have an hme interface. My general mantra is to ALWAYS lock interfaces to 100base T and duplex if your switch has it. Negotiation is just not wanted or useful for a server. (laptops may negotiate as they roam). From jxh at jxh.com Mon Aug 2 15:49:10 2004 From: jxh at jxh.com (Jim Hickstein) Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 15:49:10 -0700 Subject: SUMMARY : Reliable laptops under $1k? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2147483647.1091461750@[192.168.5.169]> > this list, I took my wife down to the Apple store. She fell in love with > the 12" Powerbook :-) > Now, how to squeeze debian onto a powerbook? fink.sourceforge.net From pmm at igtc.com Tue Aug 3 12:34:06 2004 From: pmm at igtc.com (Paul M. Moriarty) Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 12:34:06 -0700 Subject: Ballpark price for nework connections? Message-ID: <20040803193405.GA5432@igtc.igtc.com> I need 10 new network drops in my work offices. I'm being quoted $100/drop. It's been a while since I've done this. Is this a good price? If not, anybody you'd recopmmend? Thanks! - Paul - From jxh at jxh.com Tue Aug 3 14:11:50 2004 From: jxh at jxh.com (Jim Hickstein) Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 14:11:50 -0700 Subject: Ballpark price for nework connections? In-Reply-To: <20040803193405.GA5432@igtc.igtc.com> References: <20040803193405.GA5432@igtc.igtc.com> Message-ID: <2147483647.1091542310@[192.168.200.36]> --On Tuesday, August 3, 2004 12:34 -0700 "Paul M. Moriarty" wrote: > I need 10 new network drops in my work offices. I'm being quoted > $100/drop. It's been a while since I've done this. Is this a good > price? If not, anybody you'd recopmmend? When I was at Cisco a few years back, Walker Communications did this kind of work for us. I've never seen anything like it before or since. In a good way. :-) YMMV after this long, but.... www.walkercomm.com From alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com Tue Aug 3 16:51:05 2004 From: alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com (Alvin Oga) Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 16:51:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Ballpark price for nework connections? In-Reply-To: <2147483647.1091542310@[192.168.200.36]> Message-ID: hi ya On Tue, 3 Aug 2004, Jim Hickstein wrote: > --On Tuesday, August 3, 2004 12:34 -0700 "Paul M. Moriarty" > wrote: > > > I need 10 new network drops in my work offices. I'm being quoted > > $100/drop. It's been a while since I've done this. Is this a good > > price? If not, anybody you'd recopmmend? presumably, you want the outlets in the wall and/or in the cubicle/partition separators ?? - 8 port netgear hub/switch for 4 people in the 4 cubes works good too which means you drag 1 wire up instead of 8 ( 2 ports per person ) > When I was at Cisco a few years back, Walker Communications did this kind > of work for us. I've never seen anything like it before or since. In a > good way. :-) YMMV after this long, but.... i think you can get it for $50/drop in the current world of whackyness... i'd add explicitly into their PO : - if they have to come back to fix the wires, that they do so at their own expenses ( i've seen/heard that they like to not connect a wire or two ( so they get called back for another $100 repair jobbie - we used few local outfits .. none stick out as better than another - it's wires and an outlet ... :-0 - make sure its real cat-5 or better cable vs "cheap stuff" c ya alvin From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Mon Aug 2 12:19:43 2004 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 12:19:43 -0700 Subject: SUMMARY : Reliable laptops under $1k? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040802191943.GA50111@2004.snew.com> Quoting Michael T. Halligan (michael at halligan.org): > Well, after much wrangling back and forth, and a lot of advice heeded from > this list, I took my wife down to the Apple store. She fell in love with > the 12" Powerbook, so I bought one off of ebay this weekend, to arrive Good. Just bought my mom one from Small Dog this AM. > tommorrow. I also bought myself a new 17" to arrive later this week. :) And the slide begins... > I was very impressed with the weight, and the width of the keyboard. > I actually found the powerbook easier to type on than the Thinkpad, > which to date had been my favorite laptop keyboard layout. The screen > is beautiful, with great clarity and acceptable resolution. And I can add USB devices as I want. No dock (hello Apple! Didn't you come up with the DUO!?) Old G3-> Keyboard -> trackball -> bitpad. > If I were to find a problem with the 12" powerbook, it would only be > that the touchpad isn't as smooth as I'd like it to be. > Now, how to squeeze debian onto a powerbook? Or yellowdog or suse. Went to fry's this weekend with the GirlF (also an SA). She's already got the 17" PB; I fear for it's screen always, but its' not carried around THAT much and we got a Booqbag for it which doesn't have the titanium/kevlar shield I wanted, but does have something stiff to block blows. Anyway, picked up an IceCAD Macally bitpad. About 3"x5" work area. She's an ex-architect and learned system admin being the interface to some folks they hired to write a CAD system when Calcomp left the hardware biz. I can't drive the bitpad, I keep thnking it's a relative pointer. *She* spent about 20 seconds getting used to it. It enables "Inkwell" which lets you write. An improvement to the Newton code (egg freckles). USB and at $50 wasn't minor,but with an ex-architect - a huge decision. Pressure sensitive pen means cool stuff with drawing programs. I just haven't found nice and affordable drawing programs for OS X (whither cricket draw?). Omni Graffle is passable for network diagrams. bitpad's pretty cool. From deirdre at deirdre.net Thu Aug 5 22:42:24 2004 From: deirdre at deirdre.net (Deirdre Saoirse Moen) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 22:42:24 -0700 Subject: SUMMARY : Reliable laptops under $1k? In-Reply-To: <20040802191943.GA50111@2004.snew.com> References: <20040802191943.GA50111@2004.snew.com> Message-ID: <65015B97-E76B-11D8-B961-000A95F018D8@deirdre.net> On Aug 2, 2004, at 12:19 PM, Chuck Yerkes wrote: > Quoting Michael T. Halligan (michael at halligan.org): >> Well, after much wrangling back and forth, and a lot of advice heeded >> from >> this list, I took my wife down to the Apple store. She fell in love >> with >> the 12" Powerbook, so I bought one off of ebay this weekend, to arrive > > Good. Just bought my mom one from Small Dog this AM. Enjoy your small plastic dog. :) I used to work with the folks who founded Small Dog. Good people. -- _Deirdre http://deirdre.net "Cannot run out of time. There is infinite time. You are finite. Zathras is finite. This....is wrong tool." -- Zathras From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Thu Aug 5 23:31:32 2004 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 23:31:32 -0700 Subject: Ballpark price for network connections? In-Reply-To: References: <2147483647.1091542310@[192.168.200.36]> Message-ID: <20040806063132.GA34740@2004.snew.com> Quoting Alvin Oga (alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com): > On Tue, 3 Aug 2004, Jim Hickstein wrote: > > --On Tuesday, August 3, 2004 12:34 -0700 "Paul M. Moriarty" > > wrote: > > > > > I need 10 new network drops in my work offices. I'm being quoted > > > $100/drop. It's been a while since I've done this. Is this a good > > > price? If not, anybody you'd recopmmend? > > presumably, you want the outlets in the wall > and/or in the cubicle/partition separators ?? > > - 8 port netgear hub/switch for 4 people in the 4 cubes works good too > which means you drag 1 wire up instead of 8 ( 2 ports per person ) Not really. I had a client who has a 4'x4' box full of 4 and 6 port hubs. They were ALL OVER. And their network management and quality was utter crap. Framing starts to slip as you chain the 5th mediocre hub along the line. Debugging is shot to hell (yeah, it's on the 2900's port 5, but that represents 15 machines). After a couple years of their networks being just USELESS every several weeks, they hired a networking company to come in and deal with pulling loads of cable to each office and running huge patch panels every couple floors. Hell, I'm looking at an outlet in my TV room that has 4 CAT5's in use (oh, like YOU all don't need 3 serial ports into your TV room?) > i'd add explicitly into their PO : > - if they have to come back to fix the wires, that they > do so at their own expenses Yes. But they're going to have limits. You're job is to make sure that they to the testing you need before they leave when it's all done (not just before the stuff is put into patch panels, not before the outlets are screwed down). > - make sure its real cat-5 or better cable vs "cheap stuff" And cat5 wire is meaningless unless they test it (not just continuity) to be rated as CAT5e. It's easy to twist CAT5 to much or wrap it around a corner too tight and make it no longer CAT5. (that's one of the serial ports ;) From nicole at unixgirl.com Fri Aug 6 13:25:54 2004 From: nicole at unixgirl.com (Nicole) Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 13:25:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Looking for inexpensive Colocation between fresno, Sacramento Area Message-ID: Hi All I have a client who is looking to colocate a server or 2 for backups off-site. The requirements are that it be in a less shaky part of Cal (like between Fresno and Sacramento and that bandwidth be at ~50.00/Mb. Will be transfering up to 750 gigs of data a month to the server. So probobly sustaining 5Mb/s for some time each day. The colo part is easy, the finding it at 50/Mb is not. Any help, suggestions etc appreciatted Thanks Nicole -- ******* |\ __ /| (`\ ******* * * | o_o |__ ) ) * * * * // \\ * * * Blessed Be! | Powered by FreeBSD * ----------------------(((---(((-------------------------------- http://www.unixgirl.com - http://www.deviantimages.com http://www.nonsenseband.com I like Nader - But I hate Bush even more - Vote Kerry 2004! - me We are star stuff... We are the universe trying to figure itself out. --Delenn, "Babylon 5" You really get what you pay for. The problem is finding something that is worth what you paid for it.  From nicole at unixgirl.com Fri Aug 6 16:13:39 2004 From: nicole at unixgirl.com (Nicole) Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 16:13:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Changed: Looking for colocation In Tri State Area (now) with 50.00/mb Bandwith In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Oh I love replying to my own post but.. Now that my client is starting to understand 50.00 a MB may not be possible in CA, I have the OK to look elseware. So again I ask for any input and suggestions for $50/Mb pricing for a colocation pretty much anyplace in or around CA that is accessable by car within I guess a days drive. Thanks! Nicole On 06-Aug-04 My Homeland Security "observers" reported that Nicole said: > > > Hi All > I have a client who is looking to colocate a server or 2 for backups > off-site. > The requirements are that it be in a less shaky part of Cal (like between > Fresno and Sacramento and that bandwidth be at ~50.00/Mb. Will be transfering > up to 750 gigs of data a month to the server. So probobly sustaining 5Mb/s > for > some time each day. > > The colo part is easy, the finding it at 50/Mb is not. > > > Any help, suggestions etc appreciatted > > > Thanks > > Nicole > > -- ******* |\ __ /| (`\ ******* * * | o_o |__ ) ) * * * * // \\ * * * Blessed Be! | Powered by FreeBSD * ----------------------(((---(((-------------------------------- http://www.unixgirl.com - http://www.deviantimages.com http://www.nonsenseband.com I like Nader - But I hate Bush even more - Vote Kerry 2004! - me We are star stuff... We are the universe trying to figure itself out. --Delenn, "Babylon 5" You really get what you pay for. The problem is finding something that is worth what you paid for it.  *** Spam Sucks and I get tons of it. So I have some tight spam filters. If any email to me bounces, please use your secret decoder ring and send to blabgoo at yahoo dot com :) From ulf at Alameda.net Fri Aug 6 16:22:06 2004 From: ulf at Alameda.net (Ulf Zimmermann) Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 16:22:06 -0700 Subject: Changed: Looking for colocation In Tri State Area (now) with 50.00/mb Bandwith In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040806232206.GC26067@seven.alameda.net> On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 04:13:39PM -0700, Nicole wrote: > > Oh I love replying to my own post but.. > > Now that my client is starting to understand 50.00 a MB may not be possible in > CA, I have the OK to look elseware. So again I ask for any input and > suggestions for $50/Mb pricing for a colocation pretty much anyplace in or > around CA that is accessable by car within I guess a days drive. I use a colocation in Phoenix (Sterling Network Services) which are pretty good to us. But I think they are double on the bandwidth part (but that could also be because we have two uplinks). Might be worth to ask them. > > > > Thanks! > > Nicole > > > On 06-Aug-04 My Homeland Security "observers" reported that Nicole said: > > > > > > Hi All > > I have a client who is looking to colocate a server or 2 for backups > > off-site. > > The requirements are that it be in a less shaky part of Cal (like between > > Fresno and Sacramento and that bandwidth be at ~50.00/Mb. Will be transfering > > up to 750 gigs of data a month to the server. So probobly sustaining 5Mb/s > > for > > some time each day. > > > > The colo part is easy, the finding it at 50/Mb is not. > > > > > > Any help, suggestions etc appreciatted > > > > > > Thanks > > > > Nicole > > > > > > > > -- > ******* |\ __ /| (`\ ******* > * * | o_o |__ ) ) * * > * * // \\ * * > * Blessed Be! | Powered by FreeBSD * > ----------------------(((---(((-------------------------------- > http://www.unixgirl.com - http://www.deviantimages.com > http://www.nonsenseband.com > > I like Nader - But I hate Bush even more - Vote Kerry 2004! > - me > > We are star stuff... We are the universe trying to figure itself out. > --Delenn, "Babylon 5" > > You really get what you pay for. > The problem is finding something that is worth what you paid for it. >  > *** Spam Sucks and I get tons of it. So I have some tight spam filters. > If any email to me bounces, please use your secret decoder ring > and send to blabgoo at yahoo dot com :) > > > > > -- Regards, Ulf. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Ulf Zimmermann, 1525 Pacific Ave., Alameda, CA-94501, #: 510-865-0204 You can find my resume at: http://seven.Alameda.net/~ulf/resume.html From jxh at jxh.com Fri Aug 6 17:38:13 2004 From: jxh at jxh.com (Jim Hickstein) Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 17:38:13 -0700 Subject: Changed: Looking for colocation In Tri State Area (now) with 50.00/mb Bandwith In-Reply-To: <20040806232206.GC26067@seven.alameda.net> References: <20040806232206.GC26067@seven.alameda.net> Message-ID: <54F1B6EA014D3CF049C4C1E5@[208.238.182.132]> Not sure about pricing, but check out meer.net. Good prices, and _excellent_ service; I've used them for many years. In fact, here's an endorsement: Not one of the partners in IMAP Partners is still living in California, but our machines are still with meer.net in Sunnyvale because we dare not risk another co-lo provider anywhere. And they're my ISP in St. Paul (.mn.us) because, basically, everyone else lost my business. Also check out virtual hosting (if this will do) at servercentral.com. I picked Chicago. I didn't end up using them, for other reasons, but they seemed pretty good. From michael at halligan.org Sat Aug 7 00:26:03 2004 From: michael at halligan.org (Michael T. Halligan) Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 00:26:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 802.11G access point recommendations? Message-ID: I'm looking to throw a couple of ap's at each end of my apartment to make sure we have good wireless throughout. I'd rather not spend more than $200-$300 per access port (preferrably 1/2 that). My thoughts on security are I'd just like to use WEP, and limit MAC addresses. Does anybody have a good recommendation for something like this? ------------------- BitPusher, LLC http://www.bitpusher.com/ 1.888.9PUSHER (415) 724.7998 - Mobile From david at catwhisker.org Sat Aug 7 06:18:13 2004 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 06:18:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 802.11G access point recommendations? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200408071318.i77DIDj5068716@bunrab.catwhisker.org> >Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 00:26:03 -0700 (PDT) >From: "Michael T. Halligan" >To: baylisa at baylisa.org >Subject: 802.11G access point recommendations? >Sender: owner-baylisa at baylisa.org >I'm looking to throw a couple of ap's at each end of my apartment to make >sure we have good wireless throughout. I'd rather not spend more than >$200-$300 per access port (preferrably 1/2 that). My thoughts on >security are I'd just like to use WEP, and limit MAC addresses. Does >anybody have a good recommendation for something like this? Just about any working 802.11b AP ought to cope reasonably well, I'd think: I do that sort of thing -- mostly for historical reasons: one of the original Apple AirPorts was provided for my use a while back -- must have been around 3 or 4 years ago. One of the filter caps in its power supply started failing, with resulting flakiness. So I picked up a Linksys WAP-11 to take its place, then was told about a Web site where someone had documented the problem with the AirPort filter caps. I called Apple; the rep. pushed back a little when the serial number of the unit I had was not in the range of "affected serial numbers" that he was authorized to approve. I pointed out that I had opened the unit and saw he top of the filter caps bulging noticably; he asked to speak with his supervisor (granted), and came back a few minutes later with an RMA. So now I have 2 APs. They are set to the same WEP key and the same MAC filter list (though changing a MAC address is as easy as ifconfig an0 ether fe:dc:ba:98:76:54 so I am under no illusions about "security" that it provides), and none of them broadcasts the SSID (though that is trivial to obtain, e.g. via Ethereal). One of them is set to channel 1; the other, to channel 6. And WEP is demonstrably insecure. I have two reasons for going to this extent, but no further: * It's usually enough to help keep honest people honest. I lock my front door, but I don't always lock my back door, and the picture windows in front could be smashed by someone determined to get in. * I have just enough hurdles to be easy to implement, but that (to my mind, at least) would clearly show that someone gaining access to my network did so intentionally, and not by accident. (I note that I have heard that there is a "feature of dubious intent" with some Microsoft products, such that they will not associate with an AP that is not broadcasting its SSID. I don't really know if this is true or not, and can't bring myself to care.) Note that with 802.11b (which is what I am using), although there are nominally 11 "channels" that may legally be used in the US, the channels overlap enough that the set of maximal size of non-overlapping channels consists of channels 1, 6, and 11. Oh: I have a *separate* network for APs (and other "guest" access). It's "behind" a packet-filter, but spearate from my "trusted" net -- I have 3 NICs in my firewall. Each AP is set to merely bridge, and neither acts as a DHCP server. (I do have one of those, but it is elsewhere.) As to the same WEP key & MAC filtering, I have tested failover, and it works like a charm (at least, running FreeBSD on my laptop): I associated with one of the APs, then unplugged it; the NIC in my laptop promptly associated with the other AP without me needing to even be aware of it. More stuff on this at http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/Canyon/wireless.html and http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/FreeBSD/upgrade.html -- in case the above wasn't quite enough of my deathless prose. :-} Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org I do not "unsubscribe" from email "services" to which I have not explicitly subscribed. Rather, I block spammers' access to SMTP servers I control, and encourage others who are in a position to do so to do likewise. From david at catwhisker.org Sat Aug 7 06:34:51 2004 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 06:34:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 802.11G access point recommendations? In-Reply-To: <200408071318.i77DIDj5068716@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <200408071334.i77DYpPn068799@bunrab.catwhisker.org> And on seeing my post, I now note that Michael's query was re: 802.11g -- not 802.11b. Still, the principles ought to be similar regardless of implementaton details in physical transport. Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org I do not "unsubscribe" from email "services" to which I have not explicitly subscribed. Rather, I block spammers' access to SMTP servers I control, and encourage others who are in a position to do so to do likewise. From camorris at mars.ark.com Sat Aug 7 08:04:53 2004 From: camorris at mars.ark.com (Cheryl Morris) Date: Sat, 07 Aug 2004 08:04:53 -0700 Subject: 802.11G access point recommendations? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6.0.1.1.2.20040807080002.01c03b58@mars.ark.com> I head a BOF with Tim Pozar a year or so ago and he uses the equipment made by Soekris Engineering (www.soekris.com). The company is in Santa Cruz. Cheryl From alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com Sat Aug 7 08:14:55 2004 From: alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com (Alvin Oga) Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 08:14:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 802.11G access point recommendations? In-Reply-To: <200408071334.i77DYpPn068799@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, David Wolfskill wrote: > And on seeing my post, I now note that Michael's query was re: 802.11g > -- not 802.11b. Still, the principles ought to be similar regardless > of implementaton details in physical transport. not all 802.11g cards run at rated 54Mbps... and finding the drivers for it can be fun worst case might be to run the 802.11g at 802.11b speeds just so that it works c ya alvin - i see no difference between using the insecure WEP to minimize sniffing over the air vs people sniffing the copper wire ... sniffing the copper a much bigger problem than the van parked outside on the street From david at catwhisker.org Sat Aug 7 08:22:47 2004 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 08:22:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 802.11G access point recommendations? In-Reply-To: <6.0.1.1.2.20040807080002.01c03b58@mars.ark.com> Message-ID: <200408071522.i77FMlOJ069277@bunrab.catwhisker.org> >Date: Sat, 07 Aug 2004 08:04:53 -0700 >To: "Michael T. Halligan" , baylisa at baylisa.org >From: Cheryl Morris >Subject: Re: 802.11G access point recommendations? >Sender: owner-baylisa at baylisa.org >I head a BOF with Tim Pozar a year or so ago and he uses the equipment made >by Soekris Engineering (www.soekris.com). The company is in Santa Cruz. Yup -- but note that this is appriate for making your own AP, vs. buying an "off-the-shelf" product. Each approach has points in its favor for various situations. Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org I do not "unsubscribe" from email "services" to which I have not explicitly subscribed. Rather, I block spammers' access to SMTP servers I control, and encourage others who are in a position to do so to do likewise. From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Sat Aug 7 12:07:15 2004 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 12:07:15 -0700 Subject: 802.11G access point recommendations? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040807190715.GA48527@2004.snew.com> Quoting Michael T. Halligan (michael at halligan.org): > I'm looking to throw a couple of ap's at each end of my apartment to make > sure we have good wireless throughout. I'd rather not spend more than > $200-$300 per access port (preferrably 1/2 that). My thoughts on > security are I'd just like to use WEP, and limit MAC addresses. Does > anybody have a good recommendation for something like this? 2 quick options: a) The Apple Airport (extreme = "g") was non-ugly enough for my ex-architect/currnet system admin parter to allow it in the living room. An Apple Airport Express (wired in or no) ($130) allows you to EXTEND the wireless. And it lets you plug it into a stereo to stream music. Still figuring out if BSD and the "daap" stuff can speak to it because I don't want to control it from a mac. You likely want an external antenna option. http://www.netgate.com has been a great resource - small knowledgable and responsive company (except a week when they went on vacation). I buy antenna and cards from them. b) mentioned was the Soekris box. I have a couple, I've thrown them out as dedicated DNS appliances. As secondaries, they boot from a readonly compact flash and run unix. I've gotten it down to 8MB as a wireless AP. With 64MB of CF (the smallest CF's I readily find), you get ssh, a little web serving and what not. From a readonly Unix. Lose power? Who cares? I used a little battery jumpstart thing as a UPS on it for a while. 2-3 Ethernets + 1-2 wireless. You won't pass more than 40mb/s through it in practice. Clearly I like my Soekris a lot. They all have a miniPCI slot, some of them have PCMCIA slot(s), others PCI. With a good pair of antenna, I can get pretty solid coverage. (and one was throwing about half a mile to a neighborhood uplink at full power/speed). SPEED: 54Mb/s (or 11Mb/s for b) is the amount of data that leaves the radios under ideal conditions, not the amount coming INTO the card or leaving the card. The DATA within is about half that. So the actual DATA throughput you get from a "G" is around 25mb/s (b=6Mb/s). Both of these are faster than my Internet connection. So that's fine. On occasions, I need to sync a big laptop with a house machine (eg. hurl all the mp3s onto the laptop when making a trip) so I'll just use a wire and use GigE (~300mb/s > 25mb/s). WEP: WEP is clearly crap as david mentioned. Like speaking piglatin in a restaurant to keep people from listening. LEAP helps a little (spins keys faster). IPSec or even PPTP to the "house server" provides actual security. The house server can do IPSec math just fine. Until I messed up my IPSec setup (on the do to list), I allowed a slow port 80 to strangers and everything if you were coming from an IPSec connection. SMTP always requires authentication. 802.11i has been ratified and I know nothing about it except it supposedly deals with the WEP flaws. From michael at halligan.org Sat Aug 7 12:37:51 2004 From: michael at halligan.org (Michael T. Halligan) Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 12:37:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 802.11G access point recommendations? In-Reply-To: <20040807190715.GA48527@2004.snew.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, Chuck Yerkes wrote: > Quoting Michael T. Halligan (michael at halligan.org): > > I'm looking to throw a couple of ap's at each end of my apartment to make > > sure we have good wireless throughout. I'd rather not spend more than > > $200-$300 per access port (preferrably 1/2 that). My thoughts on > > security are I'd just like to use WEP, and limit MAC addresses. Does > > anybody have a good recommendation for something like this? > > 2 quick options: > a) The Apple Airport (extreme = "g") was non-ugly enough for my > ex-architect/currnet system admin parter to allow it in the > living room. > An Apple Airport Express (wired in or no) ($130) allows you > to EXTEND the wireless. And it lets you plug it into a stereo > to stream music. Still figuring out if BSD and the "daap" stuff > can speak to it because I don't want to control it from a mac. > > You likely want an external antenna option. http://www.netgate.com > has been a great resource - small knowledgable and responsive > company (except a week when they went on vacation). I buy > antenna and cards from them. Question on the apples.. Can the airport express act like an 802.11g bridge, so I could put an airport base in my office, then an airport express in my living room and hopefully get total coverage (1800 square foot apartment) ? Apple's site isn't very clear about that. One of my reasons for using 802.11g is I want to toy around with streaming video to laptops, I've got a couple of fibre channel jbods I'm thinking of throwing 14 146gb drives into, and using it as an overkill media server (I'd like to put my entire dvd/cd collection on my lan and not have to worry about using/finding media). > > b) mentioned was the Soekris box. > I have a couple, I've thrown them out as dedicated DNS appliances. > As secondaries, they boot from a readonly compact flash and run > unix. I've gotten it down to 8MB as a wireless AP. With 64MB > of CF (the smallest CF's I readily find), you get ssh, a little > web serving and what not. From a readonly Unix. Lose power? > Who cares? I used a little battery jumpstart thing as a UPS > on it for a while. > 2-3 Ethernets + 1-2 wireless. You won't pass more than 40mb/s > through it in practice. > Clearly I like my Soekris a lot. > They all have a miniPCI slot, some of them have PCMCIA slot(s), others PCI. > > With a good pair of antenna, I can get pretty solid coverage. > (and one was throwing about half a mile to a neighborhood uplink > at full power/speed). > > SPEED: > 54Mb/s (or 11Mb/s for b) is the amount of data that leaves the > radios under ideal conditions, not the amount coming INTO the card > or leaving the card. The DATA within is about half that. So the > actual DATA throughput you get from a "G" is around 25mb/s (b=6Mb/s). > > Both of these are faster than my Internet connection. So that's > fine. On occasions, I need to sync a big laptop with a house machine > (eg. hurl all the mp3s onto the laptop when making a trip) so I'll > just use a wire and use GigE (~300mb/s > 25mb/s). > > > WEP: > WEP is clearly crap as david mentioned. Like speaking piglatin in > a restaurant to keep people from listening. LEAP helps a little > (spins keys faster). IPSec or even PPTP to the "house server" > provides actual security. The house server can do IPSec math just fine. > > Until I messed up my IPSec setup (on the do to list), I allowed a > slow port 80 to strangers and everything if you were coming from > an IPSec connection. SMTP always requires authentication. > > 802.11i has been ratified and I know nothing about it except it > supposedly deals with the WEP flaws. > ------------------- BitPusher, LLC http://www.bitpusher.com/ 1.888.9PUSHER (415) 724.7998 - Mobile From rsr at inorganic.org Sat Aug 7 13:44:20 2004 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 13:44:20 -0700 Subject: 802.11G access point recommendations? In-Reply-To: References: <20040807190715.GA48527@2004.snew.com> Message-ID: <20040807204420.GB23214@puppy.inorganic.org> On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 12:37:51PM -0700, Michael T. Halligan wrote: > Question on the apples.. Can the airport express act like an 802.11g bridge, so > I could put an airport base in my office, then an airport express in my > living room and hopefully get total coverage (1800 square foot > apartment) ? Apple's site isn't very clear about that. One of my Yup. I don't know if it's WDS technically (so I'm not sure if it interoperates with WDS systems), but they do bridging. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2003/jan/07airportextreme.html From extasia at extasia.org Sun Aug 8 16:14:02 2004 From: extasia at extasia.org (David Alban) Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 16:14:02 -0700 Subject: [baylisa] SIG-BEER-WEST: NEXT Saturday 8/14 in Mountain View Message-ID: <20040808161402.A26388@gerasimov.net> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 [1]SIG-beer-west Saturday, August 14, 2004 at 1:00 pm San Francisco Bay area, CA [1] http://extasia.org/sig-beer-west/ Beer. Mental stimulation. Please note that the August 2004 event has been moved to the 2nd Saturday, instead of the usual 3rd Saturday. This is a temporary change, for this month only. This event: Saturday, 08/14/2004, 1:00 pm, at the [3]Small Brewers Festival, Mountain View [3] http://smallbrewersfest.com/ Coming events (third Saturdays): Saturday, 09/18/2004, 6:00 pm, location to be determined Saturday, 10/16/2004, 6:00 pm, location to be determined Saturday, 11/20/2004, 6:00 pm, location to be determined Saturday, 12/18/2004, 6:00 pm, location to be determined The San Francisco Bay area's next social event for techies and their friends, sig-beer-west, will take place at 1:00 pm on Saturday, August 14, 2004 at the [4]Small Brewers Festival in Mountain View, CA, behind [5]The Tied House Cafe & Brewery, located at [6]954 Villa Street. [4] http://smallbrewersfest.com/ [5] http://www.tiedhouse.com/locations/mtn_view.html [6] http://tinyurl.com/6lmnx Join us for this special sig-beer-west field trip. According to the Small Brewers Fest website: Within the 18,000 square foot big top tent will be the 40+ West Coast microbreweries participating in this Beer Tasting Event, offering more than 150 unique beers. Tasting kits, which include a festival mug and eight tasting tokens, will be available for a $20 donation. The first fourteen years has seen an outpouring of support from the community that exceeded the committees expectations. Approximately $800,000 dollars have been raised for local charities. For all your continued support, the Festival thanks you. Here are the participating microbreweries. Quite an impressive list. Alaskan Brewing Co. http://www.alaskanbeer.com/> Anchor Brewing Co. http://www.anchorbrewing.com/> Anderson Valley Brewing Co. http://www.avbc.com/> Beach Chalet Brewery http://www.beachchalet.com/> Bison Brewing Co. http://www.bisonbrew.com/> Bonnema Brewing Co. http://www.bonnemabrew.com/> Butte Creek Brewing Co. http://www.organicale.com/> Deschutes Brewing Co. http://www.deschutesbrewery.com/> Devils Canyon Brewing Co. http://www.devilscanyonbrewery.com/> E.J. Phair Brewing Co. http://www.ejphair.com/ Eldos El Toro Brewing Co. English Ales Brewery http://www.englishalesbrewery.com/ Faultline Brewing http://www.faultlinebrewing.com/ Firestone Walker http://www.firestonebeer.com/ Green Flash Brewing Co. http://www.greenflashbrew.com/ Happy Valley Brewing Co. http://www.happyvalleybrewing.com/ Hoppy Brewing Co. http://www.hoppy.com/ Hoptown Brewing Co. http://www.hoptownbrewing.com/ Kent Wheat (Beer Competition winner 2002) Lagunitas Brewing Co. http://www.lagunitas.com/ Los Gatos Brewing Co. http://www.lgbrewingco.com/ Lost Coast Brewery http://www.lostcoast.com/ Mad River http://www.madriverbrewing.com/ Mendocino and Carmel Brewing http://www.mendobrew.com/ Mount St. Helena Brewery http://www.mtsthelenabrew.com/ New Belgium Brewing Co. http://www.newbelgium.com/ Pyramid Brewing Co. http://www.pyramidbrew.com/ Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery http://www.rockbottom.com/ Seabright Brewery http://www.seabrightbrewery.com/ Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. http://www.sierranevada.com/ Speakeasy Ales and Lagers http://www.goodbeer.com/ Steelhead Brewery at Burlingame Station Stoddard's http://www.stoddardsbrew.com/ Third Street Aleworks http://www.thirdstreetaleworks.com/ Tied House Cafe & Brewery http://www.tiedhouse.com/ Triple Rock Brewery http://www.triplerock.com/ Two Rivers Cider Co. http://www.tworiverscider.com/ Widmer Brothers Brewery http://www.widmer.com/ Wyder's Cider http://www.wyders.com/ Here's a [43]map showing the location of the Tied House. The Tied House serves food and, in addition, downtown Mountain View has an impressive number of fine food establishments. Here is a [44]Guide to Restaurants in Downtown Mountain View. [43] http://tinyurl.com/6lmnx [44] http://www.mountainviewca.net/ Normally, sig-beer-west festivities start at 6:00 pm. But this month, festivities will start at 1:00 pm, and continue until ???. There is music scheduled at the Festival as early as 11:00 am that day, so anyone wanting to spend sometime at the festival before the start of sig-beer-west can show up at 11:00 to listen. The last musical event is schedule for 9:00 pm that day. When you show up, you should look for some kind of home made sig-beer-west sign. We will try to make it obvious who we are. :-) Note: Please look for the sig-beer-west sign, not for a particular person. sig-beer-west may have different hosts from month to month. Everyone is welcome at this event. We mean it! Please feel free to forward this information and to invite friends, co-workers, and others (all of legal drinking age) who might enjoy lifting a glass with interesting folks from all over the place. Can't come this month? Mark your calendar for next month. (Do it now before you forget!) sig-beer-west occurs on the third Saturday of each month. Want to suggest a venue? Suggestions for new places to sip and gab are always welcome. Have questions, comments, or other ideas concerning sig-beer-west? Send all correspondence to the current sig-beer-west Instigator. The Instigator's handle is extasia. The Instigator's email address is <*the handle*> at <*the handle*> dot <*org*>. A subject beginning with "sbw: " will increase the chances that the Instigator's spam filters don't molest your message. sig-beer-west FAQ 1. Q: Your announcement says "techies and their friends". How do I know if I'm a techie, or a friend of one? A: Well, actually, you don't have to be a techie to attend. You just have to be able to find the sig-beer-west sign at this month's event. That's it. Simple, huh? 2. Q: I'm not really a beer person. In fact I'm interested in hanging out, but not in drinking. Would I be welcome? A: Absolutely! The point is to hang out with fun, interesting folks. Please do join us. 3. Q: Is parking difficult, like maybe I should factor this into my travel time? A: Usually, but the earlier you arrive, the better your chances of finding a spot. 4. Q: I've been thinking about attending sig-beer-west for some time now. Maybe I should start with this event? A: Yes!! ______________________________________________________________________ sig-beer-west was started in February 2002 when a couple Washington, D.C. based systems administrators who moved to the San Francisco Bay area wanted to continue a [45]dc-sage tradition, sig-beer, which is described in dc-sage web space as: SIG-beer, as in "Special Interest Group - Beer" ala ACM, or as in "send the BEER signal to that process". The original SIG-beer gathering takes place in Washington DC, usually on the first Saturday night of the month. [45] http://www.dc-sage.org/ ______________________________________________________________________ Last modified: $Date: 2004/08/07 20:21:41 $ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFBFrFZPh0M9c/OpdARApiQAJ4yVLgpNZ0IthNC0c3lc8pV5WWxfwCfTV3r h0B5Z9NEiOf+6xR8C3pUoGU= =Ekw3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From bill at wards.net Mon Aug 9 16:05:38 2004 From: bill at wards.net (William R Ward) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 16:05:38 -0700 Subject: Anyone here interested in Commodore 8-bits and ancient PC's? Message-ID: <16664.834.149710.398737@komodo.home.wards.net> I have a storage locker and I want to stop having one. Trouble is, it's got stuff in it that I can't bear to just throw away. When I was a kid I used to beg and plead my parents to buy all the latest peripherals and accessories for my Commodore VIC-20, and later 64 and 128, computer. They usually refused, citing the cost. So when I got older, and the stuff became more and more obsolete, I started buying used computers, disk drives, monitors, printers, and all the essential fiddly bits of a complete Commodore setup. And in many cases I bought several of each item. It was the late 90's and money seemed to be flowing faster than I could spend it (I somehow managed to keep up, but that's another story). So now, I'm getting tired of paying $150 a month to the storage place for stuff I never play with. I still want to keep a few representative pieces but most of the duplicates I can part with. Trouble is, I can't bring myself to just throw it away. But, if someone wants to play with it, I'll happily give it away. Let me know if you or someone you know wants some of the best 8-bit computers ever made! --Bill. PS: I have old PC stuff too. Mostly 286 and 386 vintage. Nothing particularly useful today, and I'll recycle it if there's no interest. No idea if it still works or not - old CMOS batteries aren't known for their reliability. -- William R Ward bill at wards.net http://www.wards.net/~bill/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Movies are like life with all the dull parts left out." - Alfred Hitchcock From deirdre at deirdre.net Mon Aug 9 16:43:09 2004 From: deirdre at deirdre.net (Deirdre Saoirse Moen) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 16:43:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Anyone here interested in Commodore 8-bits and ancient PC's? In-Reply-To: <16664.834.149710.398737@komodo.home.wards.net> Message-ID: On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, William R Ward wrote: > So now, I'm getting tired of paying $150 a month to the storage place > for stuff I never play with. I still want to keep a few > representative pieces but most of the duplicates I can part with. > Trouble is, I can't bring myself to just throw it away. http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/donateArtifact/ You may have something they'd like. -- _Deirdre web: http://deirdre.net blog: http://deirdre.org/blog/ yarn: http://fuzzyorange.com cat's blog: http://fuzzyorange.com/vsd/ "Memes are a hoax! Pass it on!" From mark at bitshift.org Mon Aug 9 16:45:37 2004 From: mark at bitshift.org (Mark C. Langston) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 16:45:37 -0700 Subject: Anyone here interested in Commodore 8-bits and ancient PC's? In-Reply-To: References: <16664.834.149710.398737@komodo.home.wards.net> Message-ID: <20040809234537.GH50494@bitshift.org> On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 04:43:09PM -0700, Deirdre Saoirse Moen wrote: > On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, William R Ward wrote: > > > So now, I'm getting tired of paying $150 a month to the storage place > > for stuff I never play with. I still want to keep a few > > representative pieces but most of the duplicates I can part with. > > Trouble is, I can't bring myself to just throw it away. > > http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/donateArtifact/ > > You may have something they'd like. > I was talking with them recently, and they've got to the point where they're full up on most recent home computer tech, and need to be more selective about what they take in. -- Mark C. Langston GOSSiP Project Sr. Unix SysAdmin mark at bitshift.org http://sufficiently-advanced.net mark at seti.org Systems & Network Admin Distributed SETI Institute http://bitshift.org P2P Antispam http://www.seti.org From michael at halligan.org Mon Aug 9 17:05:15 2004 From: michael at halligan.org (Michael T. Halligan) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 17:05:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: laptop cooling ideas? Message-ID: I just got a powerbook 17", and though I've fallen in love with it, I've also noticed the tremendous amount of heat it seems to shoot down. In the coming winter months, I'm sure I'll learn to love this feature, but right now it makes me nervous. The first idea I've come up with is to buy a marble slab.. While this will be rather useless for placing upon my lap, or carrying, it should suck in the heat pretty well, since marble's a great heat sink. As a base to put the laptop on when it's on a desk, laptop stool, a chair/bed/pillow, it should work well (though be slightly cumbersome). Beyond a big piece of rock, does anybody have any better ideas for cooling laptops, that are preferably quiet? ------------------- BitPusher, LLC http://www.bitpusher.com/ 1.888.9PUSHER (415) 724.7998 - Mobile From mark at bitshift.org Mon Aug 9 17:07:00 2004 From: mark at bitshift.org (Mark C. Langston) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 17:07:00 -0700 Subject: laptop cooling ideas? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040810000700.GJ50494@bitshift.org> On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 05:05:15PM -0700, Michael T. Halligan wrote: > I just got a powerbook 17", and though I've fallen in love with it, > I've also noticed the tremendous amount of heat it seems to shoot > down. In the coming winter months, I'm sure I'll learn to love this > feature, but right now it makes me nervous. > > The first idea I've come up with is to buy a marble slab.. While this > will be rather useless for placing upon my lap, or carrying, it should > suck in the heat pretty well, since marble's a great heat sink. As a > base to put the laptop on when it's on a desk, laptop stool, a > chair/bed/pillow, it should work well (though be slightly cumbersome). > > Beyond a big piece of rock, does anybody have any better ideas for > cooling laptops, that are preferably quiet? > > http://www.laptopdesk.com/ . I've got two and love them. Not only for my PowerBook, but also for a 12lb. Sager monster with 3 cooling fans that blow straight down, with a desktop P4 3.2GHz in it. If it can keep that thing cool, it can keep anything cool. -- Mark C. Langston GOSSiP Project Sr. Unix SysAdmin mark at bitshift.org http://sufficiently-advanced.net mark at seti.org Systems & Network Admin Distributed SETI Institute http://bitshift.org P2P Antispam http://www.seti.org From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Mon Aug 9 17:18:59 2004 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 17:18:59 -0700 Subject: Anyone here interested in Commodore 8-bits and ancient PC's? In-Reply-To: <16664.834.149710.398737@komodo.home.wards.net> References: <16664.834.149710.398737@komodo.home.wards.net> Message-ID: <20040810001859.GA48535@2004.snew.com> Quoting William R Ward (bill at wards.net): > I have a storage locker and I want to stop having one. Trouble is, > it's got stuff in it that I can't bear to just throw away. > > When I was a kid I used to beg and plead my parents to buy all the > latest peripherals and accessories for my Commodore VIC-20, and later > 64 and 128, computer. They usually refused, citing the cost. ... > But, if someone wants to play with it, I'll happily give it away. Let > me know if you or someone you know wants some of the best 8-bit > computers ever made! Pfah! My (working and plugged in) Apple // and CoCo II are REAL computers. The coco II runs OS/9 - a multitasking, 64k OS designed around the 6809. The CoCo was a motorola 3 chip set implented by Radio Shack. It happened to have a "game cartridge port" that is all of the CPU pins except NMI - this made it a great hardware test platform. Also runs Forth. Which is great for hardware debugging. At $5/pop at garage sale, it was ok to make a mistake and let the magic smoke out. > PS: I have old PC stuff too. Mostly 286 and 386 vintage. Nothing Not sure how useful 286 was in 1986 either... From deirdre at deirdre.net Mon Aug 9 17:36:01 2004 From: deirdre at deirdre.net (Deirdre Saoirse Moen) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 17:36:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: laptop cooling ideas? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, Michael T. Halligan wrote: > I just got a powerbook 17", and though I've fallen in love with it, > I've also noticed the tremendous amount of heat it seems to shoot > down. In the coming winter months, I'm sure I'll learn to love this > feature, but right now it makes me nervous. I use a coolpad. When it's hotter than I like, I use an ice mat. http://www.roadtools.com/ The ice mats I got at Walgreens (3 for $10), but I can't find them on their site. It's really end of season for them, though. -- _Deirdre web: http://deirdre.net blog: http://deirdre.org/blog/ yarn: http://fuzzyorange.com cat's blog: http://fuzzyorange.com/vsd/ "Memes are a hoax! Pass it on!" From david at catwhisker.org Mon Aug 9 17:30:16 2004 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 17:30:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: laptop cooling ideas? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200408100030.i7A0UGH8005602@bunrab.catwhisker.org> >Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 17:05:15 -0700 (PDT) >From: "Michael T. Halligan" >To: baylisa at baylisa.org >Subject: laptop cooling ideas? >Sender: owner-baylisa at baylisa.org >I just got a powerbook 17", and though I've fallen in love with it, >I've also noticed the tremendous amount of heat it seems to shoot >down. In the coming winter months, I'm sure I'll learn to love this >feature, but right now it makes me nervous. I thought you spent enough time in San Francisco that it woulld be *summer* that you'd most appreciate that "feature." :-} >The first idea I've come up with is to buy a marble slab.. While this >will be rather useless for placing upon my lap, or carrying, it should >suck in the heat pretty well, since marble's a great heat sink. As a >base to put the laptop on when it's on a desk, laptop stool, a >chair/bed/pillow, it should work well (though be slightly cumbersome). Well, actually marble isn't as good as, say, solid copper. But you still need dump the waste heat from the marble, copper, or whatever. [/me envisions chilled water circulating between heavy copper plates... that's what I get for spending so many formative years around IBM mainframes....] Have a pair of the artifacts (whatever they are), and put the one not in active duty in a place where the waste heat could be dumped? >Beyond a big piece of rock, does anybody have any better ideas for >cooling laptops, that are preferably quiet? In all seriousness: * My laptop gets pretty warm, especially when it's working on the 2nd "make -j6 buildworld" of the day. I tend to set it atop an atlas when it's on my lap. * About 2 weeks ago, it started showing signs of thermal stress (as did its predecessor, a couple of years ago): it would get to some CPU- intensive activity and suddenly shut itself off. I found this disconcerting. * Since I had the service diagrams, and had already taken apart the previous machine (which was made by the same folks, and was sufficiently similar to my current one that the peripherals and batteries were interchangeable), and since the current one was no longer in warranty, and the probability that I could afford to pay to have it fixed or replaced was no greater than epsilon, I opened it up. The (intake) fan had become somewhat occluded, so I cleaned that out. Of course, the only way I could tell was by popping the heat sink, which destroyed the thermal tape that connected the heat sink to the metal plate atop the CPU. The usual "thermal grease" was not up to the task -- it needs to be a very thin layer, while the "thermal tape" was more like a foam with a substrate, and was thus relatively thick. I tried some "thermal tape" from Fry's; it wasn't think enough either. So I tried 2 layers, laid front-to-back. That didn't seem to work, either, but then I let the machine just sit, powered off, for overnight and the following day. Afterward, I powered it up, and it seemed OK, so I left it running while I went to work. Once there, I fired up a task to ping the laptop every 5 minutes or so ... and ut stayed up all day. Anyway: the 2 layers of tape seemed to do OK. NOTE: I am *not* recommending such surgery, especially for a working machine. Don't blame me if you destroy a machine or void your warranty. But while the laptop is powered off, you might try checking to see if the fan is getting occluded. Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Evidence of curmudgeonliness: becoming irritated with the usage of the word "speed" in contexts referring to quantification of network performance, as opposed to "bandwidth" or "latency." From sandy at wambold.com Mon Aug 9 17:08:25 2004 From: sandy at wambold.com (Sandy Wambold) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 17:08:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Anyone here interested in Commodore 8-bits and ancient PC's? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Sometimes I list things on ebay just to find them new homes. It'll cost you 30 cents or so to put up a listing though. -sew From tony at usenix.org Mon Aug 9 18:30:03 2004 From: tony at usenix.org (Tony Del Porto) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 18:30:03 -0700 Subject: laptop cooling ideas? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Aug 9, 2004, at 5:05 PM, Michael T. Halligan wrote: > I just got a powerbook 17", and though I've fallen in love with it, > I've also noticed the tremendous amount of heat it seems to shoot > down. In the coming winter months, I'm sure I'll learn to love this > feature, but right now it makes me nervous. > > The first idea I've come up with is to buy a marble slab.. While this > will be rather useless for placing upon my lap, or carrying, it should > suck in the heat pretty well, since marble's a great heat sink. As a > base to put the laptop on when it's on a desk, laptop stool, a > chair/bed/pillow, it should work well (though be slightly cumbersome). > > Beyond a big piece of rock, does anybody have any better ideas for > cooling laptops, that are preferably quiet? I have one of these: http://www.devdepot.com/morepictures.html?pcode=HTIHANDLE on my 15" TiBook. It folds under the laptop elevating it from whatever surface would normally be trapping heat. Also handy for its intended purpose, as well as starting conversations with people who haven't seen its like. It tends to keep the fan from going full bore when under moderate load (four or five ssh sessions, iTunes, browser, mail.app, etc.), but under heavy load (compiling anything) the fan still goes to max. My Ti is a 550, so YMMV. There is a handle available for the 17"; I have no idea if it works similarly: http://www.quickertek.com/cfiberhandle.html Tony Del Porto SysAdmin, Conference Network Coordinator USENIX Association 2560 9th Street, Suite 215, Berkeley CA 94710 tony at usenix.org | www.usenix.org | www.sage.org From bill at wards.net Mon Aug 9 23:39:59 2004 From: bill at wards.net (William R Ward) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 23:39:59 -0700 Subject: Anyone here interested in Commodore 8-bits and ancient PC's? In-Reply-To: References: <16664.834.149710.398737@komodo.home.wards.net> Message-ID: <16664.28095.594852.727271@komodo.home.wards.net> Deirdre Saoirse Moen writes: >On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, William R Ward wrote: > >> So now, I'm getting tired of paying $150 a month to the storage place >> for stuff I never play with. I still want to keep a few >> representative pieces but most of the duplicates I can part with. >> Trouble is, I can't bring myself to just throw it away. > >http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/donateArtifact/ > >You may have something they'd like. I talked to one of the main people from the museum once who made it pretty clear that Commodores, even the KIM-1 which I wouldn't part with anyway, aren't rare enough for them. But thanks for thinking of it. -- William R Ward bill at wards.net http://www.wards.net/~bill/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Movies are like life with all the dull parts left out." - Alfred Hitchcock From holland at guidancetech.com Tue Aug 10 05:21:01 2004 From: holland at guidancetech.com (Rich Holland) Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 08:21:01 -0400 Subject: laptop cooling ideas? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040810122104.179FB138F28@puzzle.pobox.com> Michael T. Halligan wrote: > Beyond a big piece of rock, does anybody have any better ideas for > cooling laptops, that are preferably quiet? Everyone's been suggesting passive cooling systems that work by just elevating the laptop. Go look on ebay for 'laptop cooling fan' (e.g. http://tinyurl.com/5gj2u) and you'll find several similar designs, but they have 2-3 low profile fans in the bottom designed to suck air out the sides of the device; I would think these would work better than a passive design that relies only on the laptop fan. I'm seriously thinking about an aluminum model; my 1.7G P-M gets awfully warm after a Doom3 session, especially around the memory slot where I've got a couple 1G sticks. I suspect the regular CPU cooling fan isn't doing much to help these, and it gets too hot to touch after an hour or so. Rich -- Rich Holland (913) 645-1950 SAP Technical Consultant print unpack("u","92G5S\=\"!A;F]T:&5R(\'!E References: Message-ID: <41196466.9060108@virtual.net> I use a simple metal baker's cooling rack, available cheaply (under $20) in a variety of sizes. The 12" x 12" one fit my Thinkpad X21 perfectly, and now works equally well for my Powerbook. Not high tech, not elegant, but very light, cheap, and effective. Actually, the stainless steel rack looks pretty good with the Powerbook. :-) _SRC On Aug 9, 2004, at 5:05 PM, Michael T. Halligan wrote: > >> I just got a powerbook 17", and though I've fallen in love with it, >> I've also noticed the tremendous amount of heat it seems to shoot >> down. In the coming winter months, I'm sure I'll learn to love this >> feature, but right now it makes me nervous. >> ... >> Beyond a big piece of rock, does anybody have any better ideas for >> cooling laptops, that are preferably quiet? -- ======================================================================== Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata "@" virtual.net VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ ** Project Management & Architecture for ISP/ASP Systems Integration ** ========================================================================= From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Wed Aug 11 09:58:27 2004 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 09:58:27 -0700 Subject: Spare Rack? Message-ID: <20040811165827.GA83990@2004.snew.com> Ok, I was tempted to en-subject this "nice rack" but decided it would get more reaction than action. I'm looking, for a friend doing a wireless thing, for a cheap lockable rack for a project where a computer and some radio stuff is going to be in a room that isn't 100% secure. I *have* a nice rack, but anyone with a philips screwdriver can get in in about 2 minutes if they don't want to damage anything (less if they don't care). I'm hitting craig's list and missed a lovely $50 one by an hour. So does anyone have a securable rack that's available/spare? From dsmith at FinancialEngines.com Wed Aug 11 10:20:04 2004 From: dsmith at FinancialEngines.com (David Smith) Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 10:20:04 -0700 Subject: Gig-E MAN providers in Phoenix? Message-ID: <6CE579EA6AB29040BEA6785E0150DE654326B2@inf-exch-pa-01.fngn.com> I know this is somewhat out of the area, but I did see someone mention Sterling Network Services in a previous post. Does any one have a recommendation for a good MAN provider in the Phoenix area? Thanks, Dave ---- David Smith Voice: 650-565-7750 Fax: 650-565-4905 432F 465C 5866 FC46 5B19 EAC6 AED3 E032 F49B 62CF From extasia at extasia.org Fri Aug 13 07:47:39 2004 From: extasia at extasia.org (David Alban) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 07:47:39 -0700 Subject: [baylisa] Reminder: SIG-BEER-WEST: tomorrow (8/14) at 1:00pm in Mountain View Message-ID: <20040813074739.A21589@gerasimov.net> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Reminder... [1]SIG-beer-west, TOMORROW (8/14), at 1:00 pm, at the [2]Small Brewers Festival, Mountain View [1] http://extasia.org/sig-beer-west/ [2] http://smallbrewersfest.com/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFBHNQqPh0M9c/OpdARAuRZAJ9AmsEuD4sqATGWUAdLeCPLL3fXzACePFRY 1aDkJmpNZmU9hRztDLbjACs= =/MW9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From michael at halligan.org Fri Aug 13 12:09:00 2004 From: michael at halligan.org (Michael T. Halligan) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 12:09:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Tough interview questions. Message-ID: I have to interview somebody I don't want to hire in about 1/2 hour.. Management wants him because he's their cronie. What are people's favorite "give them a tough time" interview questions? ------------------- BitPusher, LLC http://www.bitpusher.com/ 1.888.9PUSHER (415) 724.7998 - Mobile From mark at bitshift.org Fri Aug 13 12:23:42 2004 From: mark at bitshift.org (Mark C. Langston) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 12:23:42 -0700 Subject: Tough interview questions. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040813192342.GH41046@bitshift.org> On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 12:09:00PM -0700, Michael T. Halligan wrote: > I have to interview somebody I don't want to hire in about 1/2 hour.. > Management wants him because he's their cronie. What are people's favorite > "give them a tough time" interview questions? Explain how you'd distinguish between the Tahoe and Reno TCP/IP stack implementations. Describe the strengths and weaknesses of each. A machine for which you're responsible has suffered a catostrophic disk failure. Backups are not available. Reinstallation is not an option. Explain the steps you'd take to recover the data on the system. Explain the impact of the receive window, packet size, and Nagle algorithm on the SMB and NFS protocols. Provide off-the-cuff optimal setting for the first two for each protocol. Include (and describe) each implementation of NFS. Explain the benefits and drawbacks of TCP v. UDP DNS sessions, and their impact on system load, session count, and transfer rate. Explain how memory leaks work. Explain how buffer overflow attacks work, and describe three means to mitigate such attacks. Explain the current weaknesses inherent in WPA and WEP. Describe a secure method of integrating wireless networking into an existing corporate infrastructure. Describe in detail the boot process of $OS. Be as specific as possible. -- Mark C. Langston GOSSiP Project Sr. Unix SysAdmin mark at bitshift.org http://sufficiently-advanced.net mark at seti.org Systems & Network Admin Distributed SETI Institute http://bitshift.org E-mail Reputation http://www.seti.org From alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com Fri Aug 13 12:55:19 2004 From: alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com (Alvin Oga) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 12:55:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Tough interview questions. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Michael T. Halligan wrote: > I have to interview somebody I don't want to hire in about 1/2 hour.. > Management wants him because he's their cronie. What are people's favorite > "give them a tough time" interview questions? talking one's way in is easy... doing a live demo is lot lot harder if one doesn't know as well as one should they should have written/summary FAQs and HOWTOs for their area of expertise vs they having to google for answers c ya alvin - if for a sysadmin job power off the machine to remove(corrupt) /boot or /etc/fstab or /dev - ask um to boot the machine in 5 minutes ( lots of hands on fix it problems ) - more time .. more questions - fav dns options to turn on or off - fav web options to turn on or off - fav mail options to turn on or off - how long to restore a new PC from bare metal - how to do hotswap/load balance of the whole server ... - one has 100 production servers of various flavors, how does one upgrade them to the current patch levels - list of hardening processes - masks for subnetting for 8,16,64 hosts - egress and ingress fw rules - disallowed ip# ... ( 1.* 2.*, 3.*, ... not just 192.168.* ) - thousands of um - i just got asked to build/ship LOM ( lights out Management ) and told um up front, we haven't ship systems like that, and we do not stock LOM pci cards and motherboards suitable for it - but it should be fairly ez - if for shell app - put a typo into the (perl) script ... the modules that calls other modules .. - do "hello world" in each of the languages listed on their programming skills - if for c/c++ - more code examples - how to write code for xx problem vs yy problem (more then 1 solution ) - keyboard buffer examples - screen examples - "employee address" examples - sorting examples - search algorithms - snipping and rotating triangles/circles - SRC/DST coding changes in the tcp stack c ya alvin From alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com Fri Aug 13 13:16:44 2004 From: alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com (Alvin Oga) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 13:16:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Tough interview questions. In-Reply-To: <20040813192342.GH41046@bitshift.org> Message-ID: hi ya mark since i won't get hired anyway... On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Mark C. Langston wrote: > A machine for which you're responsible has suffered a catostrophic disk > failure. Backups are not available. Reinstallation is not an option. i'd say ... important lesson ... make backups .. - if reinstall is not an option .. it means the box is in a far away colo ... by not allowing reinstalling, it keeps the data intact which is a good thing > Explain the steps you'd take to recover the data on the system. i assume that you're implying that the disk still spins ... - move the disk to another pc or boot off a standalone disk and copy data off the "dead" ( but spinning ) disk - last resort is to take the non-spinning disk to a disk-repair place and pay their $100/MB to recover the data of the 10GB disk ( $10K ) ( one needs nice fancy toys w/ bunny suits to look at the platters ) if moving the disk or booting off something else is not permitted, in the far away colo, i still think one is s.o.l... for not having backups c ya alvin From rolnif at mac.com Fri Aug 13 14:18:36 2004 From: rolnif at mac.com (John Martinez) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:18:36 -0700 Subject: Tough interview questions. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <56E0F492-ED6E-11D8-AA51-000A959A1868@mac.com> On Aug 13, 2004, at 12:09 PM, Michael T. Halligan wrote: > I have to interview somebody I don't want to hire in about 1/2 hour.. > Management wants him because he's their cronie. What are people's > favorite > "give them a tough time" interview questions? Amazingly enough: "What's the difference between TCP and UDP?" Also, some of my favorites: Explain to me the boot up process of Solaris/Linux/FreeBSD/whatever from power off to the highest run level. When you use ping to check a remote host, what exactly happens? Troubleshooting questions of any kind. Difficult problems often have simple solutions, check for that. -john From lanning at monsoonwind.com Fri Aug 13 14:28:21 2004 From: lanning at monsoonwind.com (Robert Hajime Lanning) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:28:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Tough interview questions. In-Reply-To: References: <20040813192342.GH41046@bitshift.org> Message-ID: <27677.192.55.4.36.1092432501.squirrel@192.55.4.36> > On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Mark C. Langston wrote: > >> A machine for which you're responsible has suffered a catostrophic >> disk failure. Backups are not available. Reinstallation is not an >> option. >> Explain the steps you'd take to recover the data on the system. > > if moving the disk or booting off something else is not permitted, in > the far away colo, i still think one is s.o.l... for not having backups If you can get your hands on the disk, you can try swapping the drive controller board, with a working one from another drive (same model.) -- END OF LINE -MCP From lanning at lanning.cc Fri Aug 13 14:28:52 2004 From: lanning at lanning.cc (Robert Hajime Lanning) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:28:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Tough interview questions. Message-ID: <27677.192.55.4.36.1092432532.squirrel@192.55.4.36> > On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Mark C. Langston wrote: > >> A machine for which you're responsible has suffered a catostrophic disk failure. Backups are not available. Reinstallation is not an option. >> Explain the steps you'd take to recover the data on the system. > > if moving the disk or booting off something else is not permitted, in the far away colo, i still think one is s.o.l... for not having backups If you can get your hands on the disk, you can try swapping the drive controller board, with a working one from another drive (same model.) -- END OF LINE -MCP From rsr at inorganic.org Fri Aug 13 14:34:15 2004 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:34:15 -0700 Subject: Tough interview questions. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20040813213415.GA29961@--fqdn.inorganic.org> On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 12:09:00PM -0700, Michael T. Halligan wrote: > I have to interview somebody I don't want to hire in about 1/2 hour.. > Management wants him because he's their cronie. What are people's favorite > "give them a tough time" interview questions? Using Brainfuck or Whitespace, write a program that prompts a user for a term and then uses google.com to find the 67th best match. -roy From mark at bitshift.org Fri Aug 13 14:39:51 2004 From: mark at bitshift.org (Mark C. Langston) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:39:51 -0700 Subject: Tough interview questions. In-Reply-To: <20040813213415.GA29961@--fqdn.inorganic.org> References: <20040813213415.GA29961@--fqdn.inorganic.org> Message-ID: <20040813213951.GR41046@bitshift.org> On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 02:34:15PM -0700, Roy S. Rapoport wrote: > On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 12:09:00PM -0700, Michael T. Halligan wrote: > > I have to interview somebody I don't want to hire in about 1/2 hour.. > > Management wants him because he's their cronie. What are people's favorite > > "give them a tough time" interview questions? > > Using Brainfuck or Whitespace, write a program that prompts a user for a > term and then uses google.com to find the 67th best match. > Better yet: Show interviewee printout of Whitespaced code. Ask interviewee to debug. -- Mark C. Langston GOSSiP Project Sr. Unix SysAdmin mark at bitshift.org http://sufficiently-advanced.net mark at seti.org Systems & Network Admin Distributed SETI Institute http://bitshift.org E-mail Reputation http://www.seti.org From jxh at jxh.com Fri Aug 13 15:21:14 2004 From: jxh at jxh.com (Jim Hickstein) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 23:21:14 +0100 Subject: Tough interview questions. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8DCA1963E4CED90B19DA3808@[10.0.0.43]> DNS: What's the difference between a zone and a domain? DNS: How can you force a cache update in a secondary DNS server? DNS: What's the difference between "refresh" and "retry" in the SOA record? DNS: Do your glue records belong in the parent zone or not? DNS: If your TTL value is 86400 and you need to change where your mail comes in, in the next hour, worldwide, how can you do it? (I could keep going....) Ethernet: What does a MAC address of 55:55:55:55:55:55 or aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:aa indicate? Ethernet: How does a transceiver detect a collision, electrically? Ethernet: Draw a block diagram of an Ethernet transceiver. [10Base-5; lotsa laughs] IP: Can an IP router forward a packet out the same interface where it came in? IP: What happens next in this case? 802.11: What does WEP stand for? (Hint: _not_ Wireless Encryption Protocol) One of the easiest questions (I thought) on my "is this person a senior UNIX sysadmin" exam (21 questions, 7 in each of {DNS,IP,Email}, going from easy to hard; 14 is a passing score) is "1.1 What does TCP/IP stand for?" A surprising number of people don't get it right. Lots more, but I don't want to give away -all- my secrets. From alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com Fri Aug 13 17:38:47 2004 From: alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com (Alvin Oga) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 17:38:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Tough interview questions. - point ! In-Reply-To: <27677.192.55.4.36.1092432532.squirrel@192.55.4.36> Message-ID: hi ya robert On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Robert Hajime Lanning wrote: > If you can get your hands on the disk, you can try swapping the > drive controller board, with a working one from another drive (same > model.) point for you ... good one ... and i assume you/we/all keep the old dead drives ?? ( i do ) so i do have those spare controller boards for the disks including them notoriously bad deathstars c ya alvin From alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com Fri Aug 13 17:52:53 2004 From: alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com (Alvin Oga) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 17:52:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Tough interview questions. - passing In-Reply-To: <8DCA1963E4CED90B19DA3808@[10.0.0.43]> Message-ID: hi ya jim On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Jim Hickstein wrote: > One of the easiest questions (I thought) on my "is this person a senior > UNIX sysadmin" exam (21 questions, 7 in each of {DNS,IP,Email}, going from > easy to hard; 14 is a passing score) is "1.1 What does TCP/IP stand for?" > A surprising number of people don't get it right. and if one doesn't want to hire the interviewee, passing score for 2nd interview is 90% or better :-) > Lots more, but I don't want to give away -all- my secrets. that would take away the fun of guessing ?? ----- - you guys forgot to add "proper grammer and spelling" :-) ( pronounciation in the case of verbal responses ) and grammer and spelling is not in my list for obvious reasons and its a non-issue for me - i rather they get tcp/ip right :-) - i wonder how the interveiwee turned out c ya alvin From rsr at inorganic.org Fri Aug 13 18:26:56 2004 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 18:26:56 -0700 Subject: Tough interview questions. In-Reply-To: <56E0F492-ED6E-11D8-AA51-000A959A1868@mac.com> References: <56E0F492-ED6E-11D8-AA51-000A959A1868@mac.com> Message-ID: <20040814012656.GA8738@--fqdn.inorganic.org> On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 02:18:36PM -0700, John Martinez wrote: > Amazingly enough: "What's the difference between TCP and UDP?" > Explain to me the boot up process of Solaris/Linux/FreeBSD/whatever > from power off to the highest run level. > When you use ping to check a remote host, what exactly happens? Remember, this isn't "show you know your stuff," but rather questions that are meant to fail a candidate. -roy From strata at virtual.net Fri Aug 13 21:25:46 2004 From: strata at virtual.net (Strata R. Chalup) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 21:25:46 -0700 Subject: Tough interview questions. In-Reply-To: <56E0F492-ED6E-11D8-AA51-000A959A1868@mac.com> References: <56E0F492-ED6E-11D8-AA51-000A959A1868@mac.com> Message-ID: <411D944A.1020601@virtual.net> A great set of questions! I can't resist, however, to say that one is potentially a trick question, because there is no boot up process starting with power off. OK, I know, you assuredly meant, 'from powering off at the OK prompt (or equivalent), then powering on' but I hardly ever get the chance to be cheerfully obnoxious around here. :-D A question somewhat the converse to that one might also be quite interesting-- "I power off a running system, which has not been prepared for power-off in any way; can that damage anything, and if so, what, why, and how?" cheers, Strata John Martinez wrote: > ... > Explain to me the boot up process of Solaris/Linux/FreeBSD/whatever from > power off to the highest run level. -- ======================================================================== Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata "@" virtual.net VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ ** Project Management & Architecture for ISP/ASP Systems Integration ** ========================================================================= From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Fri Aug 13 22:09:32 2004 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 22:09:32 -0700 Subject: Tough interview questions. - passing In-Reply-To: References: <8DCA1963E4CED90B19DA3808@[10.0.0.43]> Message-ID: <20040814050932.GB30302@2004.snew.com> Quoting Alvin Oga (alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com): > > - you guys forgot to add "proper grammer and spelling" :-) > ( pronounciation in the case of verbal responses ) > and grammer and spelling is not in my list for obvious reasons > and its a non-issue for me grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar grammar From holland at guidancetech.com Sat Aug 14 07:25:05 2004 From: holland at guidancetech.com (Rich Holland) Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 10:25:05 -0400 Subject: Tough interview questions. In-Reply-To: <20040814012656.GA8738@--fqdn.inorganic.org> Message-ID: <20040814142504.D09F3139034@puzzle.pobox.com> Why are manhole covers round? How many piano tuners are there in the world? Other Micro$oft-ish questions... Rich -- Rich Holland (913) 645-1950 SAP Technical Consultant print unpack("u","92G5S\=\"!A;F]T:&5R(\'!E -----Original Message----- > From: owner-baylisa at baylisa.org [mailto:owner-baylisa at baylisa.org] On Behalf > Of Roy S. Rapoport > Sent: Friday, August 13, 2004 8:27 PM > To: baylisa at baylisa.org > Subject: Re: Tough interview questions. > > On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 02:18:36PM -0700, John Martinez wrote: > > Amazingly enough: "What's the difference between TCP and UDP?" > > Explain to me the boot up process of Solaris/Linux/FreeBSD/whatever > > from power off to the highest run level. > > When you use ping to check a remote host, what exactly happens? > > Remember, this isn't "show you know your stuff," but rather questions that > are meant to fail a candidate. > > -roy From woolsey at jlw.com Sat Aug 14 12:07:33 2004 From: woolsey at jlw.com (Jeff Woolsey) Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 12:07:33 -0700 Subject: Tough interview questions. In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 13 Aug 2004 21:25:46 PDT." <411D944A.1020601@virtual.net> Message-ID: <200408141907.i7EJ7Xgg023496@arglebargle.jlw.com> > A question somewhat the converse to that one might also be quite > interesting-- "I power off a running system, which has not been prepared > for power-off in any way; can that damage anything, and if so, what, > why, and how?" In a recent interview, I got that question from a different perspective: name as many ways as you can to stop a running system (Solaris, mostly), without worrying about how graceful it is... -- Jeff Woolsey {woolsey,jlw}@{jlw,jxh}.com first.last at gmail.com "A toy robot!!!!" -unlucky Japanese scientist "And Leon's getting laaaarrger!" -Johnny "Delete! Delete! OK!" -Dr. Bronner on disk space management "I didn't get a 'Harrumph!' out of _that_ guy." -Gov Le Petomaine From strata at virtual.net Sun Aug 15 20:46:14 2004 From: strata at virtual.net (Strata R. Chalup) Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 20:46:14 -0700 Subject: BayLISA Monthly: 8/19/04: Becoming a Mahout on the VOIP Elephant, David Kuder Message-ID: <41202E06.6090404@virtual.net> BayLISA Monthly Technical Talk & General Meeting Please RSVP to rsvp at baylisa.org so that we can get an idea of how many will be attending. This event is open to the general public. You do not need to be a member to attend. -------- Where: Apple Computer, Town Hall Auditorium Addr: Four Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA http://www.baylisa.org/locations/current.html -------- Date: Thursday, 19 August 2004 Time: 7:30pm - 9:30pm PST "Where the heck is my flying car?" Tom Limoncelli It's 2004 and we still don't have moving side-walks or flying cars, and computers aren't nearly as cool as they were on The Jetsons. Where did we go wrong and what can we do to solve the problem? Tom will talk about recent epiphanies he's had about "best practices" in system administration, mostly brought about by his recent experience visiting some of the largest and smallest networks in the world. (And he has a lot to say about Apple OS X Server.) He's also working on a new book about time management for sysadmins, and will be treating us to some excerpts! Tom Limoncelli is Director of IT Services at Cibernet Corp. Co-author of "The Practice of System And Network Administration", which has become "standard equipment" for employees at OSDN/Slashdot, Google, and many other companies. He was previously at Lumeta, Bell Labs/Lucent, and is a frequent speaker at Usenix/LISA conferences. This is his second BayLISA appearance. -------- BayLISA meets every month on the 3rd Thursday of the month. A short period of announcements of general interest to the sysadmin community is presented, followed by a technical talk. Anyone may make an announcement; typical are upcoming presentations, user group meetings, employment offers, etc. For further information on BayLISA, check out our web site: http://www.baylisa.org/ Directions and details about the current meeting and future events: http://www.baylisa.org/events/ BayLISA makes video tapes of the meetings available to members. Tape library is often available at the general meeting, or for more information on available videos, please send email to "video at baylisa.org". If you have suggestions for speakers, or would like to volunteer to present a talk at one of our meetings, please email the Board and Working Group at "blw at baylisa.org". Thanks! -------- -- ======================================================================== Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata "@" virtual.net VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ ** Project Management & Architecture for ISP/ASP Systems Integration ** ========================================================================= From strata at virtual.net Sun Aug 15 21:00:51 2004 From: strata at virtual.net (Strata R. Chalup) Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 21:00:51 -0700 Subject: BayLISA Monthly: 8/19/04: Where the Heck is My Flying Car? Tom Limoncelli Message-ID: <41203173.6050904@virtual.net> [please ignore earlier posting with incorrect title from template!] BayLISA Monthly Technical Talk & General Meeting Please RSVP to rsvp at baylisa.org so that we can get an idea of how many will be attending. This event is open to the general public. You do not need to be a member to attend. -------- Where: Apple Computer, Town Hall Auditorium Addr: Four Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA http://www.baylisa.org/locations/current.html -------- Date: Thursday, 19 August 2004 Time: 7:30pm - 9:30pm PST "Where the heck is my flying car?" Tom Limoncelli It's 2004 and we still don't have moving side-walks or flying cars, and computers aren't nearly as cool as they were on The Jetsons. Where did we go wrong and what can we do to solve the problem? Tom will talk about recent epiphanies he's had about "best practices" in system administration, mostly brought about by his recent experience visiting some of the largest and smallest networks in the world. (And he has a lot to say about Apple OS X Server.) He's also working on a new book about time management for sysadmins, and will be treating us to some excerpts! Tom Limoncelli is Director of IT Services at Cibernet Corp. Co-author of "The Practice of System And Network Administration", which has become "standard equipment" for employees at OSDN/Slashdot, Google, and many other companies. He was previously at Lumeta, Bell Labs/Lucent, and is a frequent speaker at Usenix/LISA conferences. This is his second BayLISA appearance. -------- BayLISA meets every month on the 3rd Thursday of the month. A short period of announcements of general interest to the sysadmin community is presented, followed by a technical talk. Anyone may make an announcement; typical are upcoming presentations, user group meetings, employment offers, etc. For further information on BayLISA, check out our web site: http://www.baylisa.org/ Directions and details about the current meeting and future events: http://www.baylisa.org/events/ BayLISA makes video tapes of the meetings available to members. Tape library is often available at the general meeting, or for more information on available videos, please send email to "video at baylisa.org". If you have suggestions for speakers, or would like to volunteer to present a talk at one of our meetings, please email the Board and Working Group at "blw at baylisa.org". Thanks! -------- -- ======================================================================== Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata "@" virtual.net VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ ** Project Management & Architecture for ISP/ASP Systems Integration ** ========================================================================= From asah at speakeasy.net Sat Aug 14 10:12:34 2004 From: asah at speakeasy.net (Adam Sah) Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 10:12:34 -0700 Subject: Tough interview questions. - passing In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <411E4802.20000@speakeasy.net> I prefer to ask questions that test thinking and first principles rather than arcane knowledge. some examples: - "tell me the solaris boot sequence" vs. "the boot sequence of modern OS's often involves lots of complex, non-obvious steps. why? give an example." - "tell me how the Nagle algorithm works" vs. "modern network protocols include several features to reduce congestion-- can you describe a few? when are these algorithms counter-productive and how can you work around their limitations?" - and my personal favorite... "applications which manage big data stores present special problems for system and data administration. name some, describe the problems that arise and possible solutions." One guy spent 10 minutes wasting time talking about 2GB filesize limits in 32-bit filesystems, when there's elephants in the room like backup/ restore, replication, migration, search performance, index rebuild, etc. Furthermore, if you really want to send someone home, don't ask hard "knowledge" questions because smart sponsors will discount your interview results as being "trick" questions and "how could anyone possibly be expected to know that." Of course, when The Committee ignores negative results on thinking questions, it's time to brush up the resume-- clearly they're hiring for speed rather than quality, and you'll be left holding the bag. adam From claw at kanga.nu Mon Aug 16 14:38:35 2004 From: claw at kanga.nu (J C Lawrence) Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 17:38:35 -0400 Subject: Tough interview questions. - passing In-Reply-To: Message from Adam Sah of "Sat, 14 Aug 2004 10:12:34 PDT." <411E4802.20000@speakeasy.net> References: <411E4802.20000@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: <10897.1092692315@kanga.nu> On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 10:12:34 -0700 Adam Sah wrote: > I prefer to ask questions that test thinking and first principles > rather than arcane knowledge. Likewise. I find I'm also particularly interested in problem solving ability, especially as so few seem to noticeably have it. Most of my standard interview questions are based on scenarios, usually wrapped in some sort of phrasing like: You have a machine|network|installation like XYZ in a situation like QRS and it is doing ABC. What do you do? The candidate then says something like, "I run `nmap` on the host" or "I build a network diagram and look for...`" or "I read the manpage on FOO" whereupon I tell them what they find there and then ask, "What do you do next?" This then repeats until they've either solved the problem or are clearly dead in the water, whereupon I trot out the next scenario. It isn't a fast interviewing technique, but I find I get a really good idea not only of the person in front of me, but the way they'll respond to problems when under pressure when you can least afford screwups. > Furthermore, if you really want to send someone home, don't ask hard > "knowledge" questions because smart sponsors will discount your > interview results as being "trick" questions and "how could anyone > possibly be expected to know that." Good point tho how you present your interview results can help or hinder that. While this has been an interesting discussion of interview questions (and I like your suggestions), I've not seen much direct answer to the original poster's question. If we were talking about a piece of equipment or software the process would be obvious as the reverse of what we like to think we do when selecting equipment and software: Find and describe a requirement for which the product isn't suitable. Normally we (hopefully) define a set of requirements and evaluate products against those requirements in making our selections. Just do the reverse: Find and justify a set of requirements that you know in advance the candidate can't satisfy. A UPS routes packets poorly and so is rarely used in place of Cisco routing gear... > Of course, when The Committee ignores negative results on thinking > questions, it's time to brush up the resume-- clearly they're hiring > for speed rather than quality, and you'll be left holding the bag. Quite. AIR the original poster used the term "cronyism". That already raised warning flags here. -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. claw at kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. From david at catwhisker.org Wed Aug 18 04:36:01 2004 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 04:36:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Yet another reason to block RFC 1918 address ingress/egress Message-ID: <200408181136.i7IBa1SM011867@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Noted the folowing in today's review of my home packet filter's logs. I had seen similar ones as of a couple of weeks ago, but finally got around to mentioning it: Aug 17 09:48:34 janus /kernel: ipfw: 1210 Deny TCP 172.16.1.21:4138 63.193.123.122:25 in via dc0 Aug 17 09:48:37 janus /kernel: ipfw: 1210 Deny TCP 172.16.1.21:4138 63.193.123.122:25 in via dc0 We see here an attempt to access my SMTP server from a machine using the IP address 172.16.1.21, coming from the Internet-facing NIC. Aug 17 13:50:28 janus /kernel: ipfw: 3020 Deny UDP 63.193.123.122:2727 192.168.0.5:53 out via dc0 Aug 17 13:50:28 janus last message repeated 2 times Aug 17 13:50:48 janus /kernel: ipfw: 3020 Deny UDP 63.193.123.122:2727 192.168.0.1:53 out via dc0 Aug 17 13:50:48 janus last message repeated 2 times Aug 17 13:50:52 janus /kernel: ipfw: 3020 Deny UDP 63.193.123.122:2727 192.168.0.2:53 out via dc0 Aug 17 13:50:52 janus last message repeated 2 times And here's an attempt to use 192.168.0.1 as a nameserver to resolve something (on the part of some machine on my net) -- likely trying to resolve the domain part of an envelope-sender. Even if either of the above is the result of an honest configuration error, it's the sort of thing that really needs to be corrected, not worked around. And I suspect that at least the first (and likely both) are the result of spammers. Yes, I know about "not ascribing to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity." I have my limits. :-} Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Evidence of curmudgeonliness: becoming irritated with the usage of the word "speed" in contexts referring to quantification of network performance, as opposed to "bandwidth" or "latency." From david at catwhisker.org Wed Aug 18 10:25:16 2004 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 10:25:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Report of collision-generation with MD5 Message-ID: <200408181725.i7IHPG2r013388@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Just got a pointer to this via ACM "TechNews Alert" for today: http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0818w.html#item2 Seems that "... French computer scientist Antoine Joux reported on Aug. 12 his discovery of a flaw in the MD5 algorithm, which is often used with digital signatures...." There's more in the article cited above. Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Evidence of curmudgeonliness: becoming irritated with the usage of the word "speed" in contexts referring to quantification of network performance, as opposed to "bandwidth" or "latency." From mark at bitshift.org Wed Aug 18 10:32:38 2004 From: mark at bitshift.org (Mark C. Langston) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 10:32:38 -0700 Subject: Report of collision-generation with MD5 In-Reply-To: <200408181725.i7IHPG2r013388@bunrab.catwhisker.org> References: <200408181725.i7IHPG2r013388@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <20040818173238.GK41046@bitshift.org> On Wed, Aug 18, 2004 at 10:25:16AM -0700, David Wolfskill wrote: > Just got a pointer to this via ACM "TechNews Alert" for today: > > http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0818w.html#item2 > > Seems that "... French computer scientist Antoine Joux reported on > Aug. 12 his discovery of a flaw in the MD5 algorithm, which is often > used with digital signatures...." > > There's more in the article cited above. Worse, they suspect a possible collision in SHA1 as well. I think we're beginning to see the possibility that entropy generation and cryptography will never truly be secure; it's just that we can invent complexity faster than we can explore and/or explain it, so showstopping bugs are always lagging deployment. I'm waiting for the first quantum crypto crack to be announced. ;) -- Mark C. Langston GOSSiP Project Sr. Unix SysAdmin mark at bitshift.org http://sufficiently-advanced.net mark at seti.org Systems & Network Admin Distributed SETI Institute http://bitshift.org E-mail Reputation http://www.seti.org From david at catwhisker.org Wed Aug 18 10:42:34 2004 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 10:42:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Report of collision-generation with MD5 In-Reply-To: <20040818173238.GK41046@bitshift.org> Message-ID: <200408181742.i7IHgYRv013476@bunrab.catwhisker.org> >Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 10:32:38 -0700 >From: "Mark C. Langston" >To: baylisa at baylisa.org >Subject: Re: Report of collision-generation with MD5 >Sender: owner-baylisa at baylisa.org >Worse, they suspect a possible collision in SHA1 as well. Right -- though at present, that's merely a suspicion, vs. demonstrated problem. >I think we're beginning to see the possibility that entropy generation >and cryptography will never truly be secure; it's just that we can >invent complexity faster than we can explore and/or explain it, so >showstopping bugs are always lagging deployment. Could well be, though I expect there'd be at least one PhD thesis in attempts prove or disprove the notion. >I'm waiting for the first quantum crypto crack to be announced. ;) But not holding your breath, I see.... :-) Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Evidence of curmudgeonliness: becoming irritated with the usage of the word "speed" in contexts referring to quantification of network performance, as opposed to "bandwidth" or "latency." From rsr at inorganic.org Wed Aug 18 11:12:35 2004 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 11:12:35 -0700 Subject: Report of collision-generation with MD5 In-Reply-To: <20040818173238.GK41046@bitshift.org> References: <200408181725.i7IHPG2r013388@bunrab.catwhisker.org> <20040818173238.GK41046@bitshift.org> Message-ID: <20040818181234.GB16308@puppy.inorganic.org> On Wed, Aug 18, 2004 at 10:32:38AM -0700, Mark C. Langston wrote: > I think we're beginning to see the possibility that entropy generation > and cryptography will never truly be secure; it's just that we can > invent complexity faster than we can explore and/or explain it, so > showstopping bugs are always lagging deployment. I thought the word we were looking for was "sufficiently secure"? My impression was that the goal of security algorithms was to make it so the job of unlocking the door was hugely more complex than the job of locking it. In other words, it's always a race against time for sufficiently large values of 'time'. I'll note that I remember reading from some text in the early 90's that 512-bit keys were going to be around for a long while. The RSA challenge has factored a 576-bit number now. And that's just with public computing systems. -roy From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Wed Aug 18 18:20:15 2004 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 18:20:15 -0700 Subject: Report of collision-generation with MD5 In-Reply-To: <20040818173238.GK41046@bitshift.org> References: <200408181725.i7IHPG2r013388@bunrab.catwhisker.org> <20040818173238.GK41046@bitshift.org> Message-ID: <20040819012015.GA47202@2004.snew.com> Quoting Mark C. Langston (mark at bitshift.org): > On Wed, Aug 18, 2004 at 10:25:16AM -0700, David Wolfskill wrote: > > Just got a pointer to this via ACM "TechNews Alert" for today: > > > > http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0818w.html#item2 ... > Worse, they suspect a possible collision in SHA1 as well. > > I think we're beginning to see the possibility that entropy generation > and cryptography will never truly be secure; it's just that we can > invent complexity faster than we can explore and/or explain it, so > showstopping bugs are always lagging deployment. And yet, we still have vendors that ship crypt()'ed passwords today. Sigh. From rsr at inorganic.org Wed Aug 18 19:15:00 2004 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:15:00 -0700 Subject: Report of collision-generation with MD5 In-Reply-To: <20040819012015.GA47202@2004.snew.com> References: <200408181725.i7IHPG2r013388@bunrab.catwhisker.org> <20040818173238.GK41046@bitshift.org> <20040819012015.GA47202@2004.snew.com> Message-ID: <20040819021500.GB6140@puppy.inorganic.org> On Wed, Aug 18, 2004 at 06:20:15PM -0700, Chuck Yerkes wrote: > And yet, we still have vendors that ship crypt()'ed passwords today. Who could possibly ever need a password longer than eight characters? -roy From hal at deer-run.com Wed Aug 18 19:23:49 2004 From: hal at deer-run.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:23:49 -0700 Subject: Report of collision-generation with MD5 In-Reply-To: <20040819021500.GB6140@puppy.inorganic.org> References: <200408181725.i7IHPG2r013388@bunrab.catwhisker.org> <20040818173238.GK41046@bitshift.org> <20040819012015.GA47202@2004.snew.com> <20040819021500.GB6140@puppy.inorganic.org> Message-ID: <20040819022349.GA20642@deer-run.com> > > And yet, we still have vendors that ship crypt()'ed passwords today. > > Who could possibly ever need a password longer than eight characters? I've been pondering setting up a DES hash to cleartext password web-based lookup service. It'd be a cool distributed computing/database project. Figured I register it under "death-to-des.org" or something... I'm not entirely kidding about this... -- Hal Pomeranz, Founder/CEO Deer Run Associates hal at deer-run.com Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training From david at catwhisker.org Wed Aug 18 19:29:41 2004 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:29:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Report of collision-generation with MD5 In-Reply-To: <20040819022349.GA20642@deer-run.com> Message-ID: <200408190229.i7J2Tf0e015772@bunrab.catwhisker.org> >Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:23:49 -0700 >From: Hal Pomeranz >To: "Roy S. Rapoport" , baylisa at baylisa.org >Subject: Re: Report of collision-generation with MD5 >Sender: owner-baylisa at baylisa.org >I've been pondering setting up a DES hash to cleartext password web-based >lookup service. It'd be a cool distributed computing/database project. >Figured I register it under "death-to-des.org" or something... >I'm not entirely kidding about this... Given the present political climate, I would encourage caution. :-( [Replies directed to baylisa-chat@ -- dhw] Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Evidence of curmudgeonliness: becoming irritated with the usage of the word "speed" in contexts referring to quantification of network performance, as opposed to "bandwidth" or "latency." From henry at vatican.com Thu Aug 19 11:06:23 2004 From: henry at vatican.com (Henry Goldwire) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 11:06:23 -0700 Subject: Report of collision-generation with MD5 References: <200408190229.i7J2Tf0e015772@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <003601c48617$41b0eba0$6a06e00a@instant802.com> Oh you nerds are soooooooo dangerous. kidding. sort of. >>I've been pondering setting up a DES hash to cleartext password web-based >>lookup service. It'd be a cool distributed computing/database project. >>Figured I register it under "death-to-des.org" or something... > >>I'm not entirely kidding about this... > > Given the present political climate, I would encourage caution. :-( > From henry at vatican.com Thu Aug 19 11:06:20 2004 From: henry at vatican.com (Henry Goldwire) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 11:06:20 -0700 Subject: Report of collision-generation with MD5 References: <200408190229.i7J2Tf0e015772@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <003501c48617$41198da0$6a06e00a@instant802.com> Oh you nerds are soooooooo dangerous. kidding. sort of. >>I've been pondering setting up a DES hash to cleartext password web-based >>lookup service. It'd be a cool distributed computing/database project. >>Figured I register it under "death-to-des.org" or something... > >>I'm not entirely kidding about this... > > Given the present political climate, I would encourage caution. :-( > From jorjohns at cs.indiana.edu Thu Aug 19 13:56:06 2004 From: jorjohns at cs.indiana.edu (Jordan Johnson) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 13:56:06 -0700 Subject: Report of collision-generation with MD5 In-Reply-To: <20040819022349.GA20642@deer-run.com> Message-ID: <3067A13F-F222-11D8-996F-000A9566DF3E@cs.indiana.edu> On Wednesday, August 18, 2004, at 07:23 PM, Hal Pomeranz wrote: > I've been pondering setting up a DES hash to cleartext password > web-based > lookup service. It'd be a cool distributed computing/database project. > Figured I register it under "death-to-des.org" or something... (Disclaimer: this may be my ignorance speaking--I'm a teacher, and sysadmin only "on the side"...) Is this not the idea behind "rainbow table"-based cracking? I think I saw a website that purported to offer just that, with several restrictions on password (size, maybe content, not sure which algorithm it was). Or is _DES_ the significant part of your idea? jmj -- "In this era of big brains, anything that can be done will be done - so hunker down." -- Kurt Vonnegut From strata at virtual.net Thu Aug 19 15:02:58 2004 From: strata at virtual.net (Strata R. Chalup) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:02:58 -0700 Subject: *TONIGHT*, BayLISA : Where the Heck is My Flying Car? Tom Limoncelli Message-ID: <41252392.7050700@virtual.net> BayLISA Monthly Technical Talk & General Meeting Please RSVP to rsvp at baylisa.org so that we can get an idea of how many will be attending. This event is open to the general public. You do not need to be a member to attend. -------- Where: Apple Computer, Town Hall Auditorium Addr: Four Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA http://www.baylisa.org/locations/current.html -------- Date: Thursday, 19 August 2004 Time: 7:30pm - 9:30pm PST "Where the heck is my flying car?" Tom Limoncelli It's 2004 and we still don't have moving side-walks or flying cars, and computers aren't nearly as cool as they were on The Jetsons. Where did we go wrong and what can we do to solve the problem? Tom will talk about recent epiphanies he's had about "best practices" in system administration, mostly brought about by his recent experience visiting some of the largest and smallest networks in the world. (And he has a lot to say about Apple OS X Server.) He's also working on a new book about time management for sysadmins, and will be treating us to some excerpts! Tom Limoncelli is Director of IT Services at Cibernet Corp. Co-author of "The Practice of System And Network Administration", which has become "standard equipment" for employees at OSDN/Slashdot, Google, and many other companies. He was previously at Lumeta, Bell Labs/Lucent, and is a frequent speaker at Usenix/LISA conferences. This is his second BayLISA appearance. -------- BayLISA meets every month on the 3rd Thursday of the month. A short period of announcements of general interest to the sysadmin community is presented, followed by a technical talk. Anyone may make an announcement; typical are upcoming presentations, user group meetings, employment offers, etc. For further information on BayLISA, check out our web site: http://www.baylisa.org/ Directions and details about the current meeting and future events: http://www.baylisa.org/events/ BayLISA makes video tapes of the meetings available to members. Tape library is often available at the general meeting, or for more information on available videos, please send email to "video at baylisa.org". If you have suggestions for speakers, or would like to volunteer to present a talk at one of our meetings, please email the Board and Working Group at "blw at baylisa.org". Thanks! -------- -- ======================================================================== Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata "@" virtual.net VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ ** Project Management & Architecture for ISP/ASP Systems Integration ** ========================================================================= From strata at virtual.net Thu Aug 19 15:18:50 2004 From: strata at virtual.net (Strata R. Chalup) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:18:50 -0700 Subject: Report of collision-generation with MD5 In-Reply-To: <20040819021500.GB6140@puppy.inorganic.org> References: <200408181725.i7IHPG2r013388@bunrab.catwhisker.org> <20040818173238.GK41046@bitshift.org> <20040819012015.GA47202@2004.snew.com> <20040819021500.GB6140@puppy.inorganic.org> Message-ID: <4125274A.50008@virtual.net> "Six letter filenames were never this bad." Roy S. Rapoport wrote: > Who could possibly ever need a password longer than eight characters? > > -roy -- ======================================================================== Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata "@" virtual.net VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ ** Project Management & Architecture for ISP/ASP Systems Integration ** ========================================================================= From sigje at sigje.org Thu Aug 19 22:48:33 2004 From: sigje at sigje.org (Jennifer Davis) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 22:48:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: General Meeting Message-ID: I'll send meeting notes later either this week, or early next week, but I'd just like to say that Tom Limoncelli's presentation was great! I definitely am looking forward to his part 2 speech next year about growth :) Jennifer From harker at harker.com Thu Aug 19 22:26:52 2004 From: harker at harker.com (Robert Harker) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 22:26:52 -0700 Subject: Wanted an eagle disk drive for my Sun 2/150 server Message-ID: <200408200526.i7K5Qqbt016684@auburnfw.harker.com> I am starting to get ready for the Vintage Computer Festival coming to the Computer History Museum on November 6th-7th and am wanting to build out my Sun 2 network. Remember them, the old Motorola 68010 multibus machines. I have a Sun 100u workstation than I hope to get running and I have a Sun 2/150 rack mount server, but I need a disk drive or two for it. What I really want is a pair of Fujitsu Eagle disk drives. Remember them, 14" platters, a full 5 amps of power, 100 pound hernia maker, with, count them, a whole 380 Million Bytes of space. I remember having a rack of four of them with over a giga-byte of useable space. It took full 20 amp circuit and the solid rubber wheels on the rack went flat. Since this is a labor of love, I don't really want to pay anything for them, but I am willing to pick them up and give them a good home and will gladly reconize the donor in my exhibit. I am also looking for a CDC 1/2" tape drive, thick yellow Ethernet cable and trancivers, and perhaps an old rack under the same terms. I would also be very interested in any other old Sun 2 hardware, especially a Sun 2/120 pedestal and a door for either a Sun 2/150 or Sun 2/170 server. I have some Sun 3/160, Sparc Stations, and Sun 19" B&W monitors to trade. I suspect that are a few fellow hardware junkies out there like me with a stash of old, might I say antique, hardware that is too good, or too important, or too special to throw away, but that you know you will never use again. (as my wife says, "When are you going to get rid of that junk!") Here is a chance to find it a good home and hopefully see it work again. A short plug for the Vintage Computer Festival. If you want to see some cool old hardware, much of it under steam (running), it is the place to go. Many old Xerox altos, durados (sp?), stars; PDP/8 and PDP/11's; Apple Lisa and pre IBM/Microsoft PCs were on display last year. Got something old, got something interesting, exhibit it. For more information, go to: http://vintage.org/2004/main/ Thanks in advance RLH There is a Sun 100u in the Smithsonian Museum of American History, but mine is older. From jxh at jxh.com Fri Aug 20 07:52:19 2004 From: jxh at jxh.com (Jim Hickstein) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 15:52:19 +0100 Subject: Wanted an eagle disk drive for my Sun 2/150 server In-Reply-To: <200408200526.i7K5Qqbt016684@auburnfw.harker.com> References: <200408200526.i7K5Qqbt016684@auburnfw.harker.com> Message-ID: <77AE2CFDF4B6AA77F74579C4@[10.1.16.105]> > I am also looking for [...] thick yellow Ethernet cable Weird Stuff has some 10Base-5 (for such it is) transceivers. I have one or two myself, but ... it's my collection! (of junk) And I have no idea whether any of it still works. Vampire tap tools might be fun, too, but harder to come by. From woolsey at jlw.com Fri Aug 20 14:11:58 2004 From: woolsey at jlw.com (Jeff Woolsey) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 14:11:58 -0700 Subject: Wanted an eagle disk drive for my Sun 2/150 server In-Reply-To: Message from Robert Harker of "Thu, 19 Aug 2004 22:26:52 PDT." <200408200526.i7K5Qqbt016684@auburnfw.harker.com> Message-ID: <200408202111.i7KLBwgg002107@arglebargle.jlw.com> > I suspect that are a few fellow hardware junkies out there like me with > a stash of old, might I say antique, hardware that is too good, or too > important, or too special to throw away, Or too difficult. Or too esoteric to recycle, but the Museum isn't that interested. > but that you know you will never use again. I'll use it to show the grandkids that I don't have yet what computing was like in the Old Days. My stuff mostly works; stuff at the Museum is usually static. Trouble is, computing evolves so quickly that it's hard to pin down exactly what the old days are. There were old days when you first got involved, and nowadays will be old days before too long. Whippersnappers. -- Jeff Woolsey {woolsey,jlw}@{jlw,jxh}.com first.last at gmail.com "A toy robot!!!!" -unlucky Japanese scientist "And Leon's getting laaaarrger!" -Johnny "Delete! Delete! OK!" -Dr. Bronner on disk space management "I didn't get a 'Harrumph!' out of _that_ guy." -Gov Le Petomaine From trm at eskimo.com Mon Aug 23 13:41:44 2004 From: trm at eskimo.com (Tim Mitchell) Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 13:41:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Computer Room Environmental monitoring, Legal --> DNS question Message-ID: <200408232041.NAA08334@eskimo.com> All, two very different questions. 1) I am curious what Production/devices/tools you might use to monitor your computer rooms remotely to ensure the Air conditioning is keeping the temp to a reasonable level and that the Utility electrical power has not yet failed over to UPS. These would provide an alert should there be a failure of Air Conditioning or Utility electrical power. I have found two such products which I am still looking into further, any comments about them or similar are certaily appreciated. We do use Nagios to monitor various servers where I work. The products I have come across are: a) http://www.eesensors.com b) http://www.weathershop.com.temptrax-E.htm 2) I came across an ISP/Network Provider based in a different state which has an IP address block registered to a organization of the same name as my employer. My employer does not have an office in the city in question. An abuse issue was submitted to abuse@ myemployer with the IP address in question from someone who reasonably thought the two were connected. This issue is both abuse and also mis-use of corporate name in registration of the IP address block. Other than contacting the Legal department where I work any other suggestions are welcome. Tim Mitchell trm at eskimo.com From david at catwhisker.org Mon Aug 23 14:01:39 2004 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 14:01:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Computer Room Environmental monitoring, Legal --> DNS question In-Reply-To: <200408232041.NAA08334@eskimo.com> Message-ID: <200408232101.i7NL1c0v006840@bunrab.catwhisker.org> >From: Tim Mitchell >Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 13:41:44 -0700 (PDT) >To: baylisa at baylisa.org >Subject: Computer Room Environmental monitoring, Legal --> DNS question >Sender: owner-baylisa at baylisa.org > 1) I am curious what Production/devices/tools you might use to >monitor your computer rooms remotely to ensure the Air conditioning is >keeping the temp to a reasonable level and that the Utility electrical >power has not yet failed over to UPS.... Well, I'd expect that any UPS worth deploying in that environment would have some capability of reporting its status -- either as the situation demands or (at least) in response to a (periodic) poll. There are also small circuits that will report temperature; I don't recall their names, but I expect someone (Hi, Chuck!) might.... > 2) I came across an ISP/Network Provider based in a different >state which has an IP address block registered to a organization of the >same name as my employer. My employer does not have an office in the >city in question. An abuse issue was submitted to abuse@ myemployer with >the IP address in question from someone who reasonably thought the >two were connected. This issue is both abuse and also mis-use of corporate >name in registration of the IP address block. Other than contacting the >Legal department where I work any other suggestions are welcome. Was the address also the same? Regardless, I think getting the legal folks involved early on this would be a good idea. There are possible/plausible ramifications that could get ugly, it seems to me. Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Evidence of curmudgeonliness: becoming irritated with the usage of the word "speed" in contexts referring to quantification of network performance, as opposed to "bandwidth" or "latency." From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Mon Aug 23 16:31:58 2004 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 16:31:58 -0700 Subject: Computer Room Environmental monitoring, Legal --> DNS question In-Reply-To: <200408232101.i7NL1c0v006840@bunrab.catwhisker.org> References: <200408232041.NAA08334@eskimo.com> <200408232101.i7NL1c0v006840@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <20040823233158.GB97942@2004.snew.com> Quoting David Wolfskill (david at catwhisker.org): > >From: Tim Mitchell > >Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 13:41:44 -0700 (PDT) > >To: baylisa at baylisa.org > >Subject: Computer Room Environmental monitoring, Legal --> DNS question > >Sender: owner-baylisa at baylisa.org > > > 1) I am curious what Production/devices/tools you might use to > >monitor your computer rooms remotely to ensure the Air conditioning is > >keeping the temp to a reasonable level and that the Utility electrical > >power has not yet failed over to UPS.... > > Well, I'd expect that any UPS worth deploying in that environment would > have some capability of reporting its status -- either as the situation > demands or (at least) in response to a (periodic) poll. And if said poll is via the Nagios box... > There are also small circuits that will report temperature; I don't > recall their names, but I expect someone (Hi, Chuck!) might.... Weather Duck has been highly recommended. I also have used a serial A/D with thermistors (weedtech.com) and I've got, at home, some 1-wire temp sensors (http://weather.snew.com/ tells you about my roof, it's in play, so it will disappear). My 1-wire issue is that I've not found Unix software I love for it. I'm using OWW - off of Source Forge(t). It's a GTK program and the UI is the reader is the configurator is the --- ick. And it's written for Linux rather than to Posix standards. I've got it on FreeBSD and it's adequate. Barely. But the weather station includes counters and A/D for wind speed and the like. Sensing for WATER under the raised floor is always a really good idea. > > 2) I came across an ISP/Network Provider based in a different > >state which has an IP address block registered to a organization of the > >same name as my employer. My employer does not have an office in the > >city in question. An abuse issue was submitted to abuse@ myemployer with > >the IP address in question from someone who reasonably thought the > >two were connected. This issue is both abuse and also mis-use of corporate > >name in registration of the IP address block. Other than contacting the > >Legal department where I work any other suggestions are welcome. > Was the address also the same? > > Regardless, I think getting the legal folks involved early on this would > be a good idea. There are possible/plausible ramifications that could > get ugly, it seems to me. Hmmm, rent a PO box in said town at a copy shop. Have them forward to you. Write in with a address change on corp stationary. Then reallocate the routing for the block. You might cover your ass on this first, but this appeals to me. Or call the damn ISP on the phone. (your company name isn't necessarily ONLY yours in all states. That 20+ year old "Amazon Bookstore" in Minn made that point. My folks at "Java Cafe" also got a cease and desist from Sun when Java (the lang) was poised to run everything. These folks still sell good coffee, despite Sun) From bill at wards.net Wed Aug 25 18:19:34 2004 From: bill at wards.net (William R Ward) Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 18:19:34 -0700 Subject: Peninsula Linux Users' Group, Thursday, August 26, 2004 Message-ID: <16685.15014.596347.778984@komodo.home.wards.net> We have a meeting of the Peninsula Linux Users' Group (PenLUG) tomorrow!! Here are the details about this meeting. For more information or directions go to http://www.penlug.org/ Our website is a TWiki; please feel free to create a user account and modify the website if you have something to contribute. Thanks! Date: Thursday, August 26, 2004 Time: 7:00 - 9:00 PM Location: 100 Oracle Parkway, Redwood Shores, CA 94065 Room 1op104 Conference Call: If you cannot attend in person, but would like to dial in and listen, please send mail to conferencecall at penlug.org and we will try to accomodate you. Agenda: ======= 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Presentation by Bernard Golden: "Succeeding with Open Source" 8:30 - 8:45 PM: Members' Minutes 8:45 - 9:00 PM: PGP/GPG Key Signing 9:00 PM: Adjourn to IHOP for social & food time Presentation by Bernard Golden: "Succeeding with Open Source" ============================================================= With Linux well-established as an enterprise platform, IT organizations are very interested in other open source products for their software stacks. However, unlike Linux, with its endorsement by a broad range of the very largest technology providers, other open source products require much more responsibility on the part of the users to obtain support, documentation, etc. The Open Source Maturity Model (OSMM) enables IT organizations to select, assess, and implement open source products. This presentation will describe the OSMM and provide a real-world example of its application for JBoss. See Bernard's bio on our Web site, http://www.penlug.org/ Bernard will be available to sign copies of his new book, "Succeeding with Open Source," and one copy will be available as a door prize! Members' Minutes ================ Members will have an opportunity to take a few minutes to... * Describe their latest Linux discovery * Ask questions and get help from other members * Discuss Linux projects You can just stand up and talk, or give a short demo or presentation. If you need audio/visual support for your Members' Minute, please contact Bill in advance to arrange for your needs. Although it is NOT required, we like to have an idea of how many people to expect, so if possible please email rsvp at penlug.org if you are planning to attend. Key Signing Party ================= Rick Moen will organize a GnuPG key signing event. For details, visit: http://www.penlug.org/twiki/bin/view/Home/KeySigning -- William R Ward bill at wards.net http://bill.wards.net ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Where a calculator like the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons." - Popular Mechanics, ca. 1947 From rsr at inorganic.org Thu Aug 26 14:41:13 2004 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:41:13 -0700 Subject: Two More Interview Questions Message-ID: <20040826214113.GA448@puppy.inorganic.org> The first one was thrown at me last week; I think it's actually very good: How do you define a successful (IT|Software) project? The second one, I was thinking about today when setting the password for the machine that will soon replace the current www.baylisa.org box: You have an enterprise with default installation and configuration of Solaris 9 boxes. What is the maximum effective password length you can use? Is there a way to change it? (By default, Solaris still uses crypt() for passwords, so only eight characters count. As of Solaris 9, at least, you can actually start using MD5-style passwords for a much greater effective password length). -roy From pmm at igtc.com Fri Aug 27 09:28:18 2004 From: pmm at igtc.com (Paul M. Moriarty) Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 09:28:18 -0700 Subject: [rsw@sendmail.com: [SAGE] Chuck Yerkes has passed away] Message-ID: <20040827162818.GC1484@igtc.igtc.com> For those of you not on the SAGE mailing list. ----- Forwarded message from "Randall S. Winchester" ----- Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 00:37:11 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time) From: "Randall S. Winchester" To: sage-members at usenix.org Subject: [SAGE] Chuck Yerkes has passed away Dear SAGE members, I am very sorry to have to share with you that one of your long time contributors, Chuck Yerkes, passed away this evening around 9:30PM PST due to trauma from a motorcycle accident on his way home from work at PeopleSoft. Chuck Yerkes, as a former Sendmail employee and long time opensource and Unix proselytizer had many current and former Sendmail employees at Eden Hospital in Castro Valley, California, in support him and his very significant, Val. Much of our company and compatriots were on email, IRC, wireless, and phone trees, united in concern for our very dear friend. The news from the doctor took us all by surprise, as this wonderful spirit who consistently sought to help those of his beloved opensource and Unix based community, and with a passion encouraged all of us to always seek to build better software, hardware, and products - was gone. I have been reading over many of the emails that Chuck has sent to the sage-members list. It is a pleasure to read his words, and consider his thoughts and heart. Chuck Yerkes has made a lot of friends and offered guidance and help to a large community. Chuck Yerkes' passion and friendship will be greatly missed. May you all continue to support and encourage each other in like fashion. Randall ----- End forwarded message ----- From rsr at inorganic.org Fri Aug 27 11:48:38 2004 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 11:48:38 -0700 Subject: FWD: We lost one of the good guys (Chuck Yerkes @ snew.com)] Message-ID: <20040827184838.GA21839@puppy.inorganic.org> Chuck was ubiquitous on baylisa; I figured I should forward this here. I know I, for one, will miss his insight and wit. ----- Forwarded message ----- >From Nick Christenson's post to comp.mail.sendmail. His words capture what I've been thinking all day and have been unable to verbalize. I post this to zorch since, while he was not a member that I'm aware of many of the people here may have rubbed elbows with him over the years. Subject: Loss to the sendmail community Last night, this community lost one of its own. Chuck Yerkes succumbed to injuries suffered during a traffic accident that occurred on his way home from work. I had the pleasure of working with Chuck for several years at Sendmail, Inc.. We worked closely together on many projects, and I got to know him fairly well. I admit it, sometimes he drove me absolutely nuts. But more often he'd say something funny that would completely make my day. He had done a lot of amazing things in his life. Moreover, he really knew how to put events together to form a great story. One of the true tragedies of an incomplete life is that we don't get to reap the benefits of the good work Chuck had yet to perform. I, for one, wanted to see what he was going to do next, and I was looking forward to someday hearing about it from him. Chuck was extremely bright and dedicated, and he knew an awful lot about some amazingly diverse things. His mind was able to make the sorts of connections that would astound me. Often these were pretty wacky. More then occasionally they were brilliant. He definitely had a way of turning a memorable phrase. One that I'm fond of quoting, although I don't know if it was original to him or not, is a mild admonishment he made to a colleague: "Do not anthropomorphize computers. They don't like it." I believe that this statement captures his spirit well. Many times when serendipity has struck or the gods of irony have manifested themselves in my life in the last few years circumstances would remind me of Chuck. Usually, that thought would make me smile. Now that remembrance will be bitter sweet. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- "Don't be an asshole -- vote Democratic in 2004." From strata at virtual.net Sat Aug 28 12:55:30 2004 From: strata at virtual.net (Strata R. Chalup) Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 12:55:30 -0700 Subject: BayLISA Monthly: 9/16/04: Forests & Trees: Building Open Source Discovery with XML, Philippe Ombredanne Message-ID: <4130E332.5020408@virtual.net> BayLISA Monthly Technical Talk & General Meeting Please RSVP to rsvp at baylisa.org so that we can get an idea of how many will be attending. This event is open to the general public. You do not need to be a member to attend. -------- Where: Apple Computer, Town Hall Auditorium Addr: Four Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA http://www.baylisa.org/locations/current.html -------- Date: Thursday, 16 September 2004 Time: 7:30pm - 9:30pm PST Forests and Trees: Building an Open Source Discovery & Management Tool with XML Philippe Ombredanne In a an ideal world everything on the network would have a simple management interface, and every tool could access it. Well, in our real world, large shops typically have at least one version of every major network equipment, hardware, and software produced in the last ten years.... As sysadmins, we rely on a mixture of commercial and open source network management tools and a lot of scripting and elbow grease to accomplish our magic. What about an open source system where all management data could be accessed remotely, without an agent to install on your 1000 servers and all protocols could be used with a friendly URL, and return standardized data that could queried and combined together regardless of where they are coming from? The recipe? Put a dose of ssh, sftp, http, nmap, smb, snmp, wbem, wmi, nfs, webdav, dns, dhcp, smtp, wins, ldap, sql, mibs, mofs, ping, arp and a couple other in a large pot. Stir well your alphabet soup, throw in a couple RFCs for spice, then add a pinch of URI, XML, Xpath and Xquery, some scripting, heat up to a gentle boil, and you get something that might taste good, or at least different. In this presentation, we will walk through design issues and trade-offs for such an open source system, and show new ways to extend the web and XML to network management, using existing tools, techniques, and skills. Some live demo will be made of the kind of weird and funny capabilities that are exposed. Philippe Ombredanne is the CTO of nexB, a developer of open source enterprise applications, the last frontier for open source. He was previously at BearingPoint, Accenture, and McDonnell Douglas, where he worked as a sysadmin, developer, and consultant. -------- BayLISA meets every month on the 3rd Thursday of the month. A short period of announcements of general interest to the sysadmin community is presented, followed by a technical talk. Anyone may make an announcement; typical are upcoming presentations, user group meetings, employment offers, etc. For further information on BayLISA, check out our web site: http://www.baylisa.org/ Directions and details about the current meeting and future events: http://www.baylisa.org/events/ BayLISA makes video tapes of the meetings available to members. Tape library is often available at the general meeting, or for more information on available videos, please send email to "video at baylisa.org". If you have suggestions for speakers, or would like to volunteer to present a talk at one of our meetings, please email the Board and Working Group at "blw at baylisa.org". Thanks! -------- -- ======================================================================== Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata "@" virtual.net VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ ** Project Management & Architecture for ISP/ASP Systems Integration ** ========================================================================= From david at catwhisker.org Mon Aug 30 16:42:07 2004 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 16:42:07 -0700 Subject: [tara@usenix.org: Re: [SAGE] Chuck Yerkes has passed away] Message-ID: <20040830234207.GA6186@bunrab.catwhisker.org> ----- Forwarded message from Tara Mulligan ----- From: Tara Mulligan Subject: Re: [SAGE] Chuck Yerkes has passed away Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 12:59:43 -0700 To: sage-members at usenix.org It's wonderful to see the outpouring of appreciation for Chuck on this list--it's just one of many lists he wrote to with his "sage" advice. Many of us in the office knew Chuck well from past USENIX/SAGE conferences, and he recently answered the volunteer call to help us staff our booth at the SF LinuxWorld. Ever helpful. Chuck's address, where he lived with his long-time partner, Valerie Acton, (also a USENIX/SAGE member), is posted at the web site below. Members of Chuck's family are in town, along with many of his non-Bay Area friends, and most are staying at the address posted. The site also contains information about a memorial fund that has been set up: http://www.adownie.net:8888/vqwiki/jsp/Wiki?StartingPoints We'll be happy to forward on any cards that are sent to the office to Valerie and his family, but the direct address is: 7070 Westmoorland Dr. Berkeley CA 94705 Per Hal's suggestion, instituting an award in Chucks honor is being discussed, and information about it will be posted when decided upon. Tara Tara Mulligan Member Services Manager USENIX Association On Aug 30, 2004, at 10:31 AM, Scott Francis wrote: >> > >from openbsd-misc (forwarded there from soekris-tech): >==== >Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 10:55:00 -0500 >From: "Christopher R. Hertel" >To: memorial at berzerkeley.com, soekris-tech at lists.soekris.com >Cc: >Subject: [Soekris] Chuck Yerkes Memorial Wiki > > >I received a message today from Chris Yerkes with the following URL: > > http://www.adownie.net:8888/vqwiki/jsp/Wiki?StartingPoints > >To all those who have posted thoughts to mailing lists, please copy >your >messages to this site. That way we can collect them and share them >with >Chuck's family and friends. > >Chris -)----- >==== >-- > Scott Francis | darkuncle(at)darkuncle(dot)net | 0x5537F527 > We have enough youth. What we need is a fountain of >smart. >-- http://bash.org/?70562 ----- End forwarded message ----- -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Evidence of curmudgeonliness: becoming irritated with the usage of the word "speed" in contexts referring to quantification of network performance, as opposed to "bandwidth" or "latency."